Retail Sales Drop; Klarna Plans Mobile Phone Service; Payabli Raises $28Mn

Table Of Contents

This is some text inside of a div block.

Fed holds rates steady. Retail sales drop. Ramp valuation hits $16Bn. PostHog, GrailPay, Juniper Square, Payabli raise fresh funding. Klarna testing U.S. debit card, plans to offer mobile phone service. Happy Money inks $500Mn forward flow deal.

New here? Subscribe here to get our newsletter each Sunday. For even more updates, follow us on LinkedIn.

Retail Sales Drop

As was widely expected, the Fed held rates steady at 4.25% to 4.5% at last week’s FOMC meeting. The central bank continues to expect two rate cuts this year, pointing to somewhat diminished economic uncertainty. Fed officials lowered their estimates for economic growth this year, while increasing forecasts for future inflation and unemployment. The Fed now expects inflation to end the year at 3%, up from a prior forecast of 2.7%, and economic growth to clock in at 1.4%, down from 1.7%.

Despite the Fed’s inflation projections, consumer sentiment improved in June, driven by consumers’ expectations of slowing price increases. Consumers expect prices to increase by 5.1% over the next year, down from 6.6% in May. The University of Michigan’s sentiment index came in at 60.5, an increase of 8.3 points compared to the month prior. Still, retail sales dropped for the second month in a row in May, suggesting consumers may be more cautious about opening their wallets. The 0.9% drop in May follows a downwardly revised 0.1% decrease in April, making the first back-to-back decline since 2023.

Ramp Valuation Jumps to $16Bn

Expense management and corporate card startup Ramp raised a fresh $200Mn in funding, increasing its valuation to $16Bn, Bloomberg is reporting. Peter Thiels’ Founders Fund is said to have led the round. The company was most recently valued at about $13Bn in a secondary share sale and had raised funding from investors at a $5.8Bn valuation in 2023.

PostHog Raises Series D Led by Stripe

PostHog, a product analytics and customer data infrastructure platform, announced it has raised a $70Mn Series D. The round was led by payments company Stripe, with participation from GV, Y Combinator, and Formus Capital. The investment puts PostHog’s valuation within spitting distance of “unicorn” territory, with the company now worth $920Mn. The deal reportedly came about after Stripe cofounder and CEO Patrick Collison tweeted about the company, which PostHog cofounder and CEO James Hawkins leveraged into a meeting. Stripe confirmed the investment in PostHog, though declined to comment on the terms of the deal.

GrailPay Bags $6.7Mn In New Funding

Risk and data analytics platform GrailPay announced it has raised $6.7Mn to continue building its risk and intelligence platform for bank payments. The round was led by Construct Capital, with participation from Broadhaven Ventures, Soma Capital, Grasshopper Bank, Commerce Ventures, and others. GrailPay’s platform offers a suite of capabilities to detect and mitigate risk in ACH payments. Although ACH is decades old, it remains the backbone of the U.S. interbank payment system, moving more than $86Tr last year alone. On the fundraise, GrailPay cofounder and CEO Will Messina said, “Credit cards have seen decades of innovation—fraud tooling, risk engines, analytics. But the same hasn’t happened for bank payments. We’re building the modern intelligence layer to unlock the next growth wave of payments tied to a bank account.”

Juniper Square Raises $130Mn to Build “JunieAI” Offering

Private market software maker Juniper Square announced it has raised a fresh $130Mn in funding. The Series D round was led by Ribbit Capital, with participation from Blow Owl Capital, Redpoint Ventures, HighSage Ventures, Fifth Wall, and others. The transaction values Juniper Square at $1.1Bn. Juniper Square’s software facilitates investor reporting, fund administration, and fundraising. The company plans to use the additional capital to build its JunieAI offering, which it describes as the “first enterprise-grade AI built specifically for the needs of private markets GPs.”

Payabli Announces $28Mn Series B

Embedded payments startup Payabli announced it has raised a $28Mn Series B. The round was led by QED Investors and Fika Ventures, with participation from TTV Capital and Bling Capital. Payabli offers developers an integrated API for creating and managing nearly any kind of payments experience. The company said it has grown revenue by 7x year over year and now serves more than 50,000 merchants through its platform. Payabli cofounder and co-CEO Joseph Elias Phillips said of the news, “We’re fortunate to be experiencing rapid growth at a time when AI is poised to revolutionize the financial services industry. When our investors approached us about doubling down on Payabli, we saw a clear opportunity to go on the offensive by accelerating AI enablement across our platform and organization to drive further growth and bring groundbreaking new products and capabilities to market faster.”

Klarna Progresses Debit Card, Will Offer Mobile Phone Service

Klarna may have postponed its IPO, but that doesn’t mean the buy now, pay later provider hasn’t been plenty busy. The company is readying the launch of a debit card in the U.S. market, together with issuing platform Marqeta. The card, which leverages Visa’s “flexible credential,” is already in a trial phase, with a broader rollout expected later this year. Klarna is also expanding into telcom, offering its 25Mn U.S. users unlimited talk, text, and data service for $40. Klarna tapped telephony infrastructure provider Gigs and will leverage AT&T’s network. And last but not least, users can now give live feedback to the company’s CEO, Sebastian Siemiatkowski – sort of. Klarna is rolling out an AI-powered avatar trained on Siemiatkowski’s insights, experiences, and voice. User feedback provided via the avatar will be analyzed using large language models and will populate an internal dashboard.

Happy Money Signs $500Mn Forward Flow Deal

Happy Money, which offers unsecured personal loans, announced it has entered into a $500Mn forward flow purchase agreement with Fortress and Edge Focus. The agreement will allow Happy Money to further scale its lending business, which borrowers typically tap to refinance higher-rate credit card debt. Happy Money CEO Matt Potere said of the transaction, “At Happy Money, we're on a mission to use lending as a force for good, and this funding agreement will increase our capacity to help even more people improve their financial well-being. Partnering with Fortress and Edge Focus strengthens our ability to meet the rising demand for responsible lending and expand access to debt consolidation solutions that put borrowers first.”

Disclaimers

All content is original and has been researched and produced by Cross River Bank (“Cross River”) unless otherwise stated herein. No part of this content may be reproduced in any form, or referred to in any other publication, without the express written consent of Cross River.

Cross River is not a broker-dealer or investment adviser and as such, this information should not be relied upon as research, investment advice, or a recommendation regarding any products, strategies, or any investment in particular. This material is strictly for illustrative, educational, or informational purposes and is subject to change. This content does not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to sell or buy any security in any jurisdiction where such an offer or solicitation would be illegal. There is not enough information contained in this content to make an investment decision and any information contained herein should not be used as a basis for this purpose.

This content does not constitute a recommendation or take into account the particular investment objectives, financial situations, or needs of investors.

Investors are not to construe this content as legal, tax or investment advice, and should consult their own advisors concerning an investment in any instrument. The price and value of assets referred to in this content and the income from them may fluctuate. Past performance is not indicative of the future performance of any instruments referred to herein. Fluctuations in exchange rates could have adverse effects on the value or price of, or income derived from, certain investments.

Certain of the statements contained herein may be statements of future expectations and other forward-looking statements that are based on Cross River’s views and assumptions and involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results, performance, or events to differ materially from those expressed or implied in such statements. In addition to statements that are forward-looking by reason of context, the words “may, will, should, could, can, expects, plans, intends, anticipates, believes, estimates, predicts, potential, projected, or continue” and similar expressions identify forward-looking statements. Cross River assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements contained herein and you should not place undue reliance on such statements, which speak only as of the date hereof.

Although Cross River has taken reasonable care to ensure that the information contained herein is accurate, no representation or warranty (including liability towards third parties), expressed or implied, is made by Cross River as to its accuracy, reliability, or completeness. You should not make any investment decisions based on these estimates and forward-looking statements.

There is no guarantee that the market conditions during the past period will be present in the future. Rather, it is most likely that the future market conditions will differ significantly from those of this past period, which could have a materially adverse impact on future returns.

NO REPRESENTATION IS BEING MADE THAT ANY INVESTOR WILL OR IS LIKELY TO ACHIEVE PROFITS OR LOSSES SIMILAR TO THOSE SHOWN. PAST PERFORMANCE IS NOT INDICATIVE OF FUTURE RESULTS. We selected the timeframe for our analysis because we believe it broadly constitutes the most complete historical dataset for the industry or company that we have chosen to analyze.