Mary Ann Azevedo

A group of senators has banded together to urge Synapse’s owners and bank and fintech partners to “immediately restore customers’ access to their money.” As part of their demands, the senators implicated both the partners and investors of the company as being responsible for missing customer funds. In a letter shared publicly on Monday, U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH), Chairman of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, along with Senators Ron Wyden

Ali Rathod-Papier has stepped down from her role as global head of compliance at corporate card expense management startup Brex to join venture firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) as a partner and compliance officer, TechCrunch has exclusively learned. Rathod-Papier and a16z declined to comment on the move. According to her LinkedIn profile, Rathod-Papier now “oversees a16z’s foreign expansion and policy efforts, supporting the government affairs team, managing financial crime and national security risk, as well as

Gynger, a platform that lends capital to companies for technology purchases, has raised $20 million in a Series A round led by PayPal Ventures, it told TechCrunch exclusively. The financing brings the New York-based startup’s total venture capital raised to $31.7 million and included participation from Gradient Ventures (Google’s AI-focused venture fund), Velvet Sea Ventures, BAG Ventures and Deciens Capital. In addition to the equity raise, Gynger has secured a debt facility from CIM (Community

Since fintech startup Brex’s inception in 2017, its two co-founders Henrique Dubugras and Pedro Franceschi have run the company as co-CEOs. But starting today, the pair told TechCrunch in an exclusive interview, the San Francisco-based corporate credit card and expense management company is shifting to a more traditional — and what they say should be a more agile — model of just one CEO at the helm. Franceschi will become the sole CEO while Dubugras

Welcome to TechCrunch Fintech! This week, we’re looking at the long-term implications of Synapse’s bankruptcy on the fintech sector, Majority’s impressive ARR milestone, and more!  To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important fintech stories delivered to your inbox every Tuesday at 7:00 a.m. PT, subscribe here.  The big story Last week, we reported on how Copper Banking, a digital banking service aimed at teens, abruptly discontinued its bank deposit accounts and debit

Last year, the fintech startup world — star of the 2021 venture capital heydays — began to unravel as VC funding grew tight. As we step into mid-2024, large chunks of the sector today are a downright mess, especially the banking-as-a-service area which, ironically enough, experts last year told us was the bright spot.  The bankruptcy of banking-as-a-service (BaaS) fintech Synapse is, perhaps, the most dramatic thing going on now. Though certainly not the only

Another fintech startup, and its customers, has been gravely impacted by the implosion of banking-as-a-service startup Synapse. Copper Banking, a digital banking service aimed at teens, notified its customers on May 12 that it would be discontinuing bank deposit accounts and debit cards on May 13. In a letter to customers, CEO and co-founder Eddie Behringer said the company had learned the previous week that the banking middleware provider they used, Synapse, was sunsetting its

The prospects for troubled banking-as-a-service startup Synapse have gone from bad to worse this week after a United States Trustee filed an emergency motion on Wednesday.  The trustee is asking to convert the company’s debt reorganization Chapter 11 bankruptcy into a liquidation Chapter 7, according to court documents. The trustee wrote that the need for Chapter 7 resulted from Synapse “grossly” mismanaging its estate so that losses were continuing with little “reasonable likelihood of reorganization”

There’s apparently a lot of demand for an on-demand handyperson. Khosla Ventures and Pear VC have just tripled down on their investment in Honey Homes, which offers up a dedicated handyman to take care of all the random tasks on a homeowner’s to-do list. The company raised $9 million last June in a Series A round of funding. Era Ventures led the startup’s latest raise, a $9.25 million extension financing that CEO and co-founder Vishwas