The flat-rate real estate startup that's got big players worried and BNPL’s turning a corner

Welcome to TechCrunch Fintech! This week, we’re looking at a new real estate startup that’s making big waves with its offering, Klarna and Affirm’s financials, a neobank focused on immigrants that’s growing fast, and more!

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The big story

Flat-fee real estate

There’s a whole lot of fintech in the real estate world. And last week, I got the scoop on a new startup called Landian that emerged from stealth to take advantage of recent rule changes related to real estate commissions. In fact, one of its co-founders is also one of the people who successfully sued the National Association of Realtors (NAR) to help facilitate those changes. Buyers have the option to pay à la carte for Landian’s offering: $49 for each home tour and $199 for an offer prep session or they can commit to paying a flat fee of $1,799 for up to five home tours and two offer prep sessions. Digital brokerage Redfin had some thoughts about the flat fee model, which you can read about here.

Analysis of the week

BNPL on fire

Buy now, pay later players Klarna and Affirm shared their latest financials last week, and both had pretty impressive results. Affirm blew away analysts’ expectations of a loss per share of 51 cents by notching a loss of 14 cents per share. Its revenue was up 48% year-over-year to $659 million U.S., which was also above analysts’ estimates. Its stock surged on the performance, closing August 30 at $44.01 a share, up significantly from the $31.58 it had closed just two days prior. Meanwhile, Klarna told TechCrunch its revenue increased 27% in the first half of 2024 while adjusted operating expenses remained flat. In other Klarna news, Klarna’s board is mulling over the removal of Mikael Walther, “a confidant of founding partner Victor Jacobsson,” according to the Financial Times.

Dollars and cents

Digital bank for immigrants raises big

Comun, a digital bank focused on serving immigrants in the United States, has raised $21.5 million in a Series A funding round less than nine months after announcing a $4.5 million raise, TechCrunch was the first to report. The company is growing fast and says its valuation is up 50%. The startup released its first product in October 2022 using BaaS (banking-as-a-service) middleware. But the co-founders decided that it made more sense to own their own infrastructure and decided to build it out. By November 2023, Comun had launched a new program with Community Federal Savings Bank as a partner.

Read more here.

What else we’re seeing

Carta finds a sale

Stock-trading startup Public has acquired the brokerage accounts of Carta’s secondaries business, TechCrunch confirmed. Carta, best known for its cap table management software, sits on a stockpile of data. It tried to expand into the bubbling hot secondary marketplace brokerage business, but in January, a startup customer publicly accused Carta of using the startup’s private cap table data to approach its shareholders in order to broker a sale without the startup’s knowledge. That allegation went viral and scared many of Carta’s customers, who threatened to leave. Days later, Carta announced that it was abandoning this business. In an emailed statement to TechCrunch, Public said the customers of Carta Capital Markets who it acquired have a right to opt out. Meanwhile, Carta says it isn’t out of the secondaries business altogether. More here.

The Bolt saga continues. One of Bolt’s proposed new backers, The London Fund, has been scrubbing its web page. Head here to learn why.

And even more Bolt news here.

High-interest headlines

MoneyThumb acquired, Ryan Campbell takes over as CEO, and what to expect

Synctera partners with Marqeta to introduce Fleet Cards

PayPal joins group investing $15M in Brazilian startup

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