Meta Hands WhatsApp to Fintech Unicorn CRED’s Founder, Takes 20% Stake 🇮🇳
We're also covering Barclays buying GoHenry to lock in young customers 🇬🇧, Koho's $130M raise to out-build the banks 🇨🇦, Current's 70% growth streak 🇺🇸 & Borrowell's 4M members 🇨🇦
🇮🇳 Meta Hands WhatsApp to Fintech Unicorn CRED’s Founder, Takes 20% Stake
Meta just put Kunal Shah (right), founder of CRED, in charge of the world’s biggest messaging app. Kunal Shah is stepping down as CEO to become WhatsApp’s new global head, while Meta pours $900 million USD into CRED, giving it a roughly 20% stake in the Indian fintech and valuing the company at $4.5 billion post-money. Miten Sampat, who has led CRED’s strategy and finance since 2020, steps in as interim CEO.
Meta’s nominating Kunal Shah seems tied to its push in India’s digital payments market, where it already runs WhatsApp Pay. Installing a payments native founder atop WhatsApp points the same direction. It looks a lot like the messaging plus fintech model that powers Asia’s super apps, WeChat Pay and Grab being the obvious comparison.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg (left) seems to have tapped Shah to build something new, writing in a Facebook post that he “brings the kind of builder mentality and global perspective that will serve him well in running the world’s biggest messaging app.” Shah went farther about the scope of the job ahead, writing in a LinkedIn post: “While it’s come very far, the delta between WhatsApp today and its full potential is massive.”
Founded in 2018 as a credit card bill payments app, CRED has grown into lending, insurance, wealth management and commerce, now counting 17 million monthly members and handling more than 40% of India’s credit card bill payments.
Growth metric: WhatsApp has 3 billion monthly active users
The new boss of WhatsApp built one of the fastest growing fintechs in India, and could now be tasked with bringing payments to WhatsApp's 3 billion monthly active users worldwide.
Sources: Fintech Growth Insider, The Economic Times & Bloomberg
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🇬🇧 Barclays Just Bought Its Way Past the UK’s Biggest Customer Acquisition Problem
UK high street bank Barclays has agreed to acquire the UK business of GoHenry, a children’s debit card and money management app, from US fintech Acorns.
GoHenry gives six to 18 year olds personalized debit cards with parental controls, alongside tools to save, invest, and complete money lessons. About 500,000 children in the UK have GoHenry accounts, and the brand will continue operating under its own name following the acquisition.
GoHenry as a whole has been loss-making, making the acquisition more about cross-selling and customer inertia than deposits. Customer acquisition is expensive in the UK, where switching banks is rare and the deal deepens Barclays’ relationship with families, making it harder to lose those customers as children grow older.
Barclays CEO C.S. Venkatakrishnan framed the deal as a household strategy rather than a product addition: “It will enable us to help parents help their children by offering them a more seamless financial experience,” he said in a Linkedin post. Barclays is not the first to make this calculation. NatWest acquired children’s app RoosterMoney in 2021, while Revolut and Monzo both launched interest-bearing children’s savings accounts last year.
Growth metric: 500,000 UK children using GoHenry
GoHenry has approximately 500,000 child account holders in the UK, giving Barclays a direct relationship with the next generation of banking customers before they reach adulthood.
Sources: Fintech Growth Insider & The Guardian
🇨🇦 Koho’s CEO Says the Only Way to Beat the Banks Is to Out-Build Them, Not Out-Spend Them
Canada-based neobank Koho has raised $130 million at a $1.33 billion valuation and its CEO Daniel Eberhard is clear that no amount of that capital will go toward trying to outspend the incumbents on marketing.
“We’re never going to outspend the banks,” Koho CEO Daniel Eberhard said in an interview with The Logic. “The only way we win is if our product is structurally and meaningfully better.” Koho offers bank-account-like products alongside crypto trading, credit-building tools and is pulling in revenue in the mid-200-millions with a staff of 250. Eberhard reinforced the build-over-spend philosophy in a LinkedIn post announcing the raise, writing that “the only way we win is if millions of Canadians choose us. We cannot out-spend or out-market. We have to out-build.”
The funding was structured to satisfy regulators’ capital requirements as Koho closes in on a banking licence it has pursued since 2021.
Growth metric: mid-$200 million revenue on 250 staff
Koho is generating revenue on a lean operating model that supports its product-led growth strategy against far larger competitors.
Sources: Fintech Growth Insider & The Logic
🇨🇦 Borrowell's Free Credit Score Bet Pays Off With 4 Million Members and 87 Million Points Gained
Canada-based credit monitoring app Borrowell has reached four million members or one in nine Canadian adults, a decade after becoming the first company to offer free credit scores in the country.
The platform have helped its members what those members achieved a collective 87 million-point increase in their credit scores. CEO and co-founder Andrew Graham said in a LinkedIn post that the company’s founding bet was simple: “if we could just give Canadians visibility into their own credit, good things would follow. Four million members and 87 million points later, I still believe that.”
Its Rent Advantage product, which lets tenants build credit through rent payments, has delivered an average 32-point score increase within seven months. Its Credit Builder product has delivered an average 41-point increase within five months. These translate into customers qualifying for better credit cards, securing loans, and buying first homes. Borrowell also layers AI-powered recommendations on top, showing members their approval chances for financial products so they can apply with confidence.
Growth metric: 87 million credit score points gained
Borrowell members who joined between 2016 and 2025 collectively increased their credit scores by more than 87 million net points, enabling for better borrowings.
Sources: Fintech Growth Insider
🇺🇸 Neobank Current Hit 70% Growth Three Years Running and Is Approaching Profitability
US-based neobank Current has raised $80 million in a Series E round at a $1.5 billion valuation, on the back of three consecutive years of more than 70% annual growth alongside a clear path to profitability in 2026.
Current CEO and co-founder Stuart Sopp tied the growth directly to product focus. “Over the last several years we’ve focused relentlessly on building products that solve real financial problems for everyday Americans. That focus has driven three consecutive years of more than 70% growth, strong unit economics, and a crossing over to profitability,” he said in a LinkedIn post.
Much of consumer fintech has been built on growth-at-all-costs models that burn cash to acquire users and defer profitability indefinitely.
The round was led by Springcoast Partners, adding to backing from Andreessen Horowitz, Tiger Global, and QED Investors, and brings Current’s total funding to $682.4 million.
Growth metric: 70%+ annual growth for three consecutive years
Current has reported more than 70% annual growth for three years running while approaching profitability in 2026
Sources: Fintech Growth Insider and Coverager
🇺🇸 Yendo Poached a Nubank Founder-Era PM and a $150M Budget Marketer
US-based digital bank Yendo, which offers a credit card secured by customers’ vehicles, has appointed Kevin Bird as chief product officer and Nizar Rana as chief marketing officer.
Bird was Nubank’s first product manager, helping scale the world’s largest neobank from 45,000 customers to more than 60 million and growing its product organisation to over 300 managers. Rana most recently served as head of growth at OnePay, one of the largest consumer fintechs in the US, and previously managed a $150 million acquisition budget at LendingClub. Both have spent their careers scaling consumer fintech products to tens of millions of customers.
CEO and co-founder Jordan Miller framed the appointments around the mission of growth. “Kevin and Nizar have spent their careers building financial products that actually work for people the system has overlooked,” he said as quoted by Dallas Innovates.
Yendo recently launched a new unsecured card, completing a credit suite that now spans secured, asset-backed, and unsecured products for nonprime Americans, customers that legacy lenders have largely overlooked.
Growth metric: 45,000 to 60 million customers
Yendo’s CPO Kevin Bird helped scale Nubank from 45,000 to more than 60 million customers as its first product manager
Sources: Fintech Growth Insider & Dallas Innovates
🇨🇦 Fintech Ad of The Week: Wealthsimple Is Giving Away $1 Million a Month and Turning Savings Into Lottery Tickets
Canada-based fintech Wealthsimple, valued at $10 billion CAD ($7.15 billion USD), has launched Monthly Millionaire, a recurring giveaway awarding $1 million to one Canadian every month. The campaign is part of a broader Wealthsimple strategy to move beyond investing and position itself as a full replacement for a traditional bank, launched alongside family accounts, business chequing, and USD accounts.
Source: Fintech Growth Insider
Who Am I?
Hi, my name is Julien Brault.
From 2017 to 2024, I was the CEO of Hardbacon, a fintech I co-founded, which reached 400,000 unique visitors at its peak.
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