In the Press

Nomi Health, the direct healthcare company rewiring how healthcare is paid for and delivered, has partnered with RIP Medical Debt to eradicate more than $225 million in overdue medical bills. Nomi’s near $2 million contribution to purchase the outstanding debt relieves more than 176,000 Americans across Utah, Florida, Colorado and Nebraska of their debt loads. The money owed had accumulated from surprise billing and high healthcare costs before the pandemic—and for some has led to wage garnishment, liens, and other burdensome debt collection tactics. The debt Nomi absolved is for individuals who meet RIP’s criteria of living at two times or below the poverty line, or those whose debts are 5 percent or more of their annual income.

Cryptocurrencies platform Abra has raised $55 million in a Series C funding round, as competition for users heats up across the industry. The funding round takes Abra’s valuation to around half a billion dollars. Users can trade more than 100 different cryptocurrencies, earn interest and borrow dollars against holdings. Its revenues have increased more than 10-fold in the past year.

2C2P, a global payments platform, today announced a partnership with Atome, a leading ‘Buy Now Pay Later’ (BNPL) brand in Asia, to facilitate BNPL acceptance among businesses within the region. This partnership enables 2C2P’s extensive network of online and offline merchants across the region to offer BNPL as an alternative payment method to their customers.

Israel-based insurtech company Planck has entered a collaboration with Sompo, Japan’s second-largest insurance company. As part of the collaboration, Planck will help Sompo automate commercial insurance underwriting for its 30 million customers. It is understood that the AI-based solution provided by Planck will reduce the effort of manually filling in questionnaires, allowing Sompo to improve quote to submission time and increase accuracy.

PayPal Holdings, Inc. today announced that it has agreed to acquire Paidy, a leading two-sided payments platform and provider of Buy Now, Pay Later solutions in Japan, for ¥300 billion or approximately US$2.7 billion, principally in cash. The acquisition will expand PayPal's capabilities, distribution and relevance in the domestic payments market in Japan, the third largest e-commerce market in the world, complementing the company's existing cross-border e-commerce business in the country.

Russell Cummer was a credit trader at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. in Tokyo when he tried and failed to get a credit card. It’s a common tale in Japan, especially for young people with no credit history. Cummer ended up forming a business to give people an alternative to cards. Paidy Inc. is now one of the country’s handful of unicorns, unlisted startups with a valuation of at least $1 billion. It’s among the largest players in Japan’s “buy now, pay later” sector, a business model that’s enjoying a moment globally.