Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation (SMBC) and its group companies offer a broad range of financial services centered on banking. They are also engaged in the leasing, securities, credit card, investment, mortgage securitization, venture capital and other credit related businesses. The following lists the activities of SMBC, its subsidiaries and affiliates in the various business segments.

SMBC Venture Capital

NEC Capital Solutions Limited provides financial services in Japan.  It's Main Business is Leasing for Information and Communication Equipment, Office Equipment, Industrial Equipment and Installment Sales, Business Loans, Factoring Services, Business Outsourcing and Sales of Used Equipment.

NEC Capital Solutions

BIP Systems is a provider of IT (information technology) development, support, and consolation.

Bip Systems

Archetype Ventures is a venture capital firm specializing in B2B Tech seed and early stage venture investments.

Archetype Ventures

Mitsubishi UFJ Capital is a venture capital firm focusing on life science, ICT, and high technology investments.

Mitsubishi UFJ Capital

IDEO is a global design and innovation  consultancy firm.  Some of their clients include Procter & Gamble, Pepsi, Microsoft , Nokia , Intel, Eli Lilly,  Samsung , and Steelcase.

IDEO

Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, is a Japanese bank holding / financial services company headquartered in Chiyoda, Tokyo, Japan. MUFG manages the affairs of its subsidiaries within the group and the business of the group as a whole along with all relevant ancillary business. The MUFG Group turned its eye toward the expected operating environment changes over the next decade, and launched the new medium-term business plan, which outlines the strategies that will be implemented over the first three years of this period. The new plan is designed to guide us as they strive to realize their corporate vision—“Be the world's most trusted financial group.” By accelerating initiatives that span across business entities, regions, and business groups, they will work to live up to the expectations of their customers, shareholders, employees, and other stakeholders. The MUFG Group aims to achieve stable and sustainable income growth through seeking diversified revenue bases especially in customer segment both domestically and abroad, and capital efficiency by improving productivity. In addition, they will enhance shareholder value by conducting capital management flexibly taking the balance of (1) enhancement of further shareholder returns, (2) maintenance of a solid capital base and (3) strategic investments for sustainable growth, into consideration.

Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group

Monex Ventures is a venture capital firm based in Japan that finances seed and early stage investments in startup companies.

Monex Ventures

Genuine Startups is a seed-stage focused venture fund backed by ex-PIMCO Japan head and experienced startup investor/accelerator.  The company's headquarters are in Shibuya Ward, Tokyo.

Genuine Startups

D4V (Design for Ventures) is a Tokyo-based early-stage venture capital firm that invests in disruptive, consumer, and enterprise technology startups. Partnering with the global design company IDEO, D4V provides both hands-on assistance and coaching to help startups create value via human-centered customer experiences and interactions.

Global Brain Corporation is a venture capital firm that invests in companies from seed or early to pre-IPO startups.  Global Brain has invested in 300+ startups from seed/early to pre-IPO startups and achieved 25 IPOs and 61 M&As as a result of providing hands-on support services and resources to its portfolio startups. Global Brain has managed a pure investment fund as well as multiple corporate venture capital funds partnered together with tier 1 public companies of telecom, real estate development, financial service, beverages, agriculture food, logistics, and electronic devices.

Global Brain Corporation

Berkeley Angel Network is a venture capital and private equity firm that specializes in the fields of finance and investment management. Its mission of the Berkeley Angel Network is to build an angel investor community among the alumni and faculty of UC Berkeley and to improve the collective skills and knowledge of this angel investor community through activities related to angel investing.

Berkeley Angel Network

Y Combinator is a startup accelerator that invests in a large number of startups twice a year. It created a new model for funding startups. Twice a year, the company invests a small amount of money ($150k) in a large number of startups. The startup accelerator works intensively with the companies for three months, to get them into the best possible shape and refine their pitch to investors. Each cycle culminates in Demo Day when the startups present their companies to a carefully selected, invite-only audience.

Y Combinator

Early stage fund providing strategic guidance to companies gathering unique data assets to be leveraged for varied commercial use cases

Gambit Ventures

Oyster Ventures is a venture capital firm investing in exceptional new-frontier technology companies. They target companies that bring liquidity and efficiency to antiquated industries, companies that enable globalization, with leverage to massively scale. It also specializes in early-stage investments in startups in fintech, with a focus on blockchain, crypto, E-commerce, market place, artificial intelligence, fintech, media tech, and SaaS companies.  Oyster Ventures was founded in 2016 and is headquartered in San Francisco, California, United States.

Oyster Ventures

Canaan is an early stage venture capital firm that invests in entrepreneurs with visionary ideas. With $5B under management, a diversified fund and over 190 exits to date, Canaan has invested in some of the world's leading technology and healthcare companies over the past 30 years. Canaan’s focus areas include fintech, enterprise/cloud, marketplaces, frontier tech, biopharma, digital health, and medtech.

Canaan Partners

Correlation Ventures is a new breed of venture capital firm, leveraging world-class analytics to offer entrepreneurs and other venture capitalists a dramatically better option when they are seeking additional capital to complete a financing round.

Correlation Ventures

Lightspeed Venture Partners is a venture capital firm that engages in consumer, enterprise, technology, and cleantech markets. It focuses on seed, early-stage, later-stage, expansion-stage, start-ups, growth companies, and incubation, and specializes in debt financing for start-ups and growth companies. Lightspeed Venture Partners invests in various sectors that include enterprise, consumer, big data, bitcoin, enterprise technology, cleantech, mobile, internet, financial technology, cloud solutions, e-commerce, storage, media, networking, energy, and software, software-as-a-service, information technology, biotechnology, and social. It mainly invests in countries such as the United States, Europe, Israel, China, and India.

Lightspeed Venture Partners

Alumni Ventures Group provides high-quality, diversified venture portfolios to individual investors who previously haven't had access to VC. It helps accredited alums from top entrepreneurial schools invest together in the ventures of fellow alums. The firm backs companies with an alumni connection and an institutional lead investor with expertise in the space. AVG also offers focused funds that allow any accredited investor access to a venture portfolio, diversified by type, sector, stage, and geography. Beth Obermiller, Michael Madden, and Mike Collins co-founded the firm in Manchester, New Hampshire in 2013.

Alumni Ventures

Castor Ventures is an investment firm. Castor Ventures invests in a broad range of venture-backed companies to build diversified venture portfolios invested alongside established venture firms.

Castor Ventures

SBI Group aims to become a corporate entity that provides a variety of one-stop financial services over the Internet now that two major events, the Financial Big Bang resulting from deregulation, and the Internet Revolution resulting from IT innovation, have radically transformed the financial industry.

SBI Group

Spark Capital is an early-stage venture capital firm that invests in exceptional products and the creative individuals behind them. Known for embracing risk and a unique approach, Spark Capital has backed companies like Twitter, Discord, Anthropic, Cruise, Niantic, Oculus, Warby Parker, and Tumblr. Recognizing that there are no set playbooks or formulas for success, the firm supports founders in achieving success on their own terms. Spark Capital invests across all sectors and stages, operating out of San Francisco, Boston, and New York City.

Spark Capital

Social Leverage is a Venture Capital firm which specializes in early-stage and seed-stage investments in the Software, Consumer, and Fintech industries.   Their investment selection process combines fundamental business evaluation, supported by two decades of domain experience building, valuing, and selling companies, with a strong deal flow pipeline consisting of top-ranked VC / PE funds, exceptional entrepreneurs and innovative management teams.  Social Leverage uses these value drivers to invest in the best capital light companies with a viable product, serving a large addressable market, and solving a known pain point.  Notable investments include Robinhood, Kustomer, Angellist, Wag, EToro, and Ticketfly.

Social Leverage

Zillionize is a seed round startup investor. We focus on early-stage investing in founders who see the future and startups that create the future. We are self funded experienced operators. Our team live and breath enterprise software on a day to day basis and are equally as passionate about other areas of technology.

Zillionize

Portage Ventures is a global fintech-focused venture capital investor. The firm makes early-stage investments in promising Canadian financial tech companies that have potential for global impact.

Portage Ventures

Fathom Capital is an early-stage VC firm focusing on enterprise applications and IT infrastructure.

Fathom Capital

Abstract Ventures is a sector agnostic venture investor in pre-seed, seed, Series A and B startup companies. It serves as pavers for founders, making vital connections for fundraising, talent, customers, and advice. The firm is a dot connector, counting the world’s most visionary investors, founders, and industry leaders as our allies.

Abstract Ventures

Tribe Capital is a top-quartile venture capital firm focused on capturing a perpetual edge in venture and crypto using data science. The team is made up of investors, engineers and scientists who use artificial intelligence (“AI”) and data science to model venture-backed private companies. Beyond investment capital, Tribe deploys these AI tools to separate signal from noise, helping our companies understand their businesses better.  Our data-informed strategy includes an underwriting infrastructure and a quantitative analysis tool called the “Magic 8-ball.” We leverage these tools to provide deep insight on factors driving growth and how to accelerate sustainable growth, honed through years of developing similar products at major tech and finance players like Lyft, Yahoo, Facebook, and Bridgewater Associates.   Our team uses these tools to measure quantitative product-market fit, so we can more effectively assess and accelerate what Tribe refers to as “N-of-1” companies - companies with the potential to be 10-100x growth opportunities, while minimizing loss ratio by a large degree.  Tribe Capital has $1.6 billion in assets under management and has made notable investments in Apollo.io, Carta, Docker, Kraken, Instabase, Relativity Space, and Shiprocket.

Tribe Capital

Horizons Ventures focuses on investing in disruptive and technology-focused start-ups. The firm was founded in 1999 and is based in Hong Kong. Some of the latest exits are Skype, Siri, Facebook, Summly, and Waze.

Horizons Ventures

Eldridge Industries invests across insurance, asset management, technology, mobility, sports & gaming, media & music, real estate, and consumer industries. The firm seeks to build and grow businesses led by proven management teams that have demonstrated leadership and experience to scale an enterprise.  Eldridge Industries is headquartered in Greenwich, Connecticut, with additional offices across the United States and London.

Eldridge Industries

Positive Sum is a venture capital and private equity firm that helps teams build extraordinary businesses.

Positive Sum

Four Cities Capital is a global seed and series A investor. It feels strongly that the impact of technology and software on the global economy remains in its early stages. Major global industries and significant portions of humanity remain structurally unaffected by the digital revolution and the recent emergence of massively disruptive technologies based on biology, new materials, and artificial intelligence/unmanned systems.

Four Cities Capital

Unbound is building and backing the next generation of 100-year companies. We invest in fast growing technology companies operating in the growth stage (Series B onwards). The firm invests globally across both developed and emerging markets.

Unbound

Alpaca

Alpaca is a developer-first embedded financial technologies platform that’s raised over $100m in funding. Alpaca offers crypto and stock investing, real-time market data, and end-to-end brokerage infrastructure through modern APIs. Alpaca supports hundreds of apps and businesses across the globe and is actively used by tens of thousands of enthusiastic developers. Alpaca is backed by top investors in the industry globally, including Portage Ventures, Spark Capital, Social Leverage, Tribe Capital, Horizons Ventures, Unbound, Eldridge, Positive Sum, Elefund, and Y Combinator.

Alpaca is a stock trading API platform which enables FinTechs to build apps that embed stock brokering. The platform does not charge commissions on trades, instead, it generates revenue by routing order flow through specific market makers. This means an increase in the trading volume diverted through its platform translates to an increase in revenue.

Democratizing financial technology with a suite of API-based solutions

FinTech Infrastructure

Alpaca Real Estate and Hope Street Recapitalize Trophy Residential Asset

Alpaca is a stock trading API platform which enables FinTechs to build apps that embed stock brokering. The platform does not charge commissions on trades, instead, it generates revenue by routing order flow through specific market makers. This means an increase in the trading volume diverted through its platform translates to an increase in revenue.Alpaca’s platform provides developers a range of integrations with several apps including Slack, IFTTT, Streak, and Alexa, and began securing tech partners at the beginning of 2021.<a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/11707">Alpaca acquired AlpacaJapan </a>, a Japanese licensed broker-dealer, for an undisclosed sum in July 2022. Through the acquisition, Alpaca will offer brokerage and trading APIs in Japan, allowing Japanese financial advisors, traders, and developers to enable their customers to invest in the US stock market.As of October 2023, the platform supported businesses in 30 countries including Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, Thailand, and India with over 150 businesses operating through its API-based brokerage platform serving over 5 million end-users.Key customers and partnershipsIn October 2023, Alpaca <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/22695">partnered with SBI Group </a>, a Japanese financial services firm, to support its business expansion plans and facilitate financial institutions on the clearing and trade execution of US securities in Asia. Alpaca partnered with financial media outlet Benzinga, in March 2022, to enable Alpaca users to provide end users with access to real-time news and data. Leveraging Benzinga’s APIs, Alpaca developers can offer news notifications, widgets, and breaking headlines, into their apps, while algorithmic traders can access historical news data, for backtesting and sentiment analysis.Funding and financialsIn October 2023, Alpaca raised USD 15 million in <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/22695">convertible note financing </a>from SBI Group. The company earmarked the funds to pursue growth plans with collaborative business development efforts from SBI Group and introduce innovative products in Asia.Alpaca noted that its monthly trading volume rose around 10x year-over-year (YoY) to USD 2 billion in September 2020. In August 2021, the company reported that the number of brokerage accounts handled by the platform increased 1,500% year-to-date to over 100,000 accounts.

Cross River Bank provides a white-label banking-as-a-service (BaaS) platform for enterprises, combining banking services, payments, and marketplace lending infrastructure to build fintechs. Its solutions comprise demand deposits, savings accounts, credit and debit cards, and payment clearing services, including automated clearing house (ACH) and real-time payments. The company also provides banking and payment infrastructure for the crypto industry, including risk management services for its crypto clients. Key customers and partnerships As of December 2020, the company had over 400 employees, and had entered into more than 30 partnerships. Moreover, as of March 2021, the platform had been used to support over 375,000 small businesses through the paycheck protection program (PPP).Cross River Bank teamed up with UK-based BaaS provider <a href="https://sp-edge.com/companies/421515">Railsr </a>in January 2019 to launch a common API for their platforms to be used globally. As of April 2022, Cross River had over 80 clients including lenders such as Affirm, Best Egg, and Upstart, neobanks such as <a href="https://sp-edge.com/companies/220119">Revolut </a>, and blockchain-based payment processing platform GreenBox. The platform reportedly originated over USD 24 billion in loans per annum, around 10x the value of loans it originated in 2015. Cross River Bank has expanded its operations by acquiring Betterfin, a platform offering lending-as-a-service (LaaS) solutions, in November 2021. Through the acquisition, Cross River Bank leveraged Betterfin’s software to digitize parts of the small-business lending process (such as origination and underwriting).The company partnered with <a href="https://sp-edge.com/companies/1643">American Express </a>(Amex) to enable FinTechs to issue credit cards through Cross River Bank, on the Amex network, while also providing select Amex benefits to the FinTechs.Funding and financials The company <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/9458">raised USD 620 million in funding </a>co-led by Eldridge and a16z, at a valuation of over USD 3 billion, to invest in product developments, recruitment, international expansion, and boosting strategic partnerships.

Cross River Bank

Synctera was co-founded in 2020 by Peter Hazlehurst, the former head of Uber Money, who previously led the development of Google Wallet. The company offers an API-based infrastructure platform for community and regional banks to find and partner with FinTechs. This enables FinTechs to leverage the former’s licenses to embed FDIC-insured mobile checking, debit cards, savings accounts, and payment innovations, among other features. The API platform offered to the banks will then be sold to the FinTechs to code on. Although the end customers interact with the FinTechs, they legally belong to the bank.<a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/8117">Synctera mainly charges the banks </a>based on the interchange fees they earn (half of the interchange fees, as of January 2022) from the services provided. It does not charge them an initial amount to use the platform. Moreover, the platform also embeds fraud-as-a-service and charges FinTechs on a per transaction basis (4 cents per transaction) should they choose to use it. It subsequently shares that revenue 50/50 with the banks.The company launched the “t-minus10” project in January 2022, which offers a live sandbox for FinTechs to build apps, test, and go to market, enhancing their access to banking partners. It subsequently launched a “Smart Charge Card” (APIs to build, launch, and issue charge cards) and “White-label Banking App” (a codebase for developers to build embedded banking products or neobank apps) infrastructure in October 2022.Key customers and partnershipsIn February 2022, Lineage Bank (a community bank in Tennessee) and GoGetr (FinTech aiming to promote health and wealth management) became the first companies to launch a banking solution using the Synctera platform. As of March 2023, the platform was working with around 50 fintechs, of which 14 were live (including Wayapay and Float). Synctera reportedly had over 20 implementations set for launch in the following two months.Synctera announced a new card issuing and management infrastructure offering (Card-as-a-Service), in July 2021, which it developed in partnership with Mastercard and leading card issuing infrastructure disruptor, <a href="https://sp-edge.com/companies/64287">Marqeta</a>.Funding and financialsIn March 2024, Synctera raised USD 18.6 million in <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/27244">Series A1 extension</a> co-led by Lightspeed and Fin Capital. The company earmarked the funds to support business growth by facilitating more complex use cases across the US and international markets. The company also <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/16980?industryIds=53">raised USD 15 million</a> in funding led by NAventures in March 2023, to invest in expanding the platform’s use cases and broadening its geographic footprint beyond the US (including expanding to Canada). Meanwhile, Synctera has also partnered with the National Bank of Canada to enable companies to launch FinTech apps and embedded banking products in Canada.

Synctera

Based in the UK, Weavr, formerly known as Open Payments Cloud, was spun out of payment provider Ixaris in 2019. Weavr offers the infrastructure for enterprises to embed banking services across various industries, including education, fitness, logistics, etc. Weavr’s “Meta” platform combines multiple banking and payments partners in one platform through application programming interfaces (APIs). Using the APIs, enterprises can embed virtual banking services such as card payments, fund transfers, and international banking accounts.Weavr expanded its operations to Singapore in November 2022, as part of its global expansion plans.Key customers and partnershipsAs of July 2021, Weavr’s customers included Finway, Thanks Ben, and MySkillCamp, among others.In October 2019, Weavr partnered with payment service providers Global Processing Services (GPS), Paynetics, and iDenfy to enable developers to create and run sophisticated and streamlined payment experiences for their European customers through Weavr.Funding and financialsWeavr <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/8647?industryIds=53">raised USD 40 million </a>in Series A funding in February 2022, led by Tiger Global, less than a year after <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/4166">raising GBP 4 million (USD 5.5 million) </a>in seed funding in July. The funds were earmarked for business development and recruitment to support Weavr’s expansion to the US market, while also supporting its continued expansion in the UK and Europe.

Weavr

MX offers an open finance portal, data connectivity application programming interface (API), and MX platform API for banks, credit unions, and other financial service providers. The company’s solutions allow its clients to utilize financial data to reduce fraud, approve loans faster, and improve their customer experiences. In addition to APIs and connections, MX also offers a range of capabilities, including data aggregation, analytics, financial feed insights, wealth and investment services, and verification services. MX looks to enable banks and financial institutions to launch next-generation services and apps that automate and personalize financial experiences. As of January 2021, the company noted that it worked with more than 2,000 banks, credit unions, and FinTech companies, and its platform reached over 200 million end-users. Moreover, it also powered 43 of the top 50 digital banks as of the same period. In <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/8753?industryIds=53">February 2022, MX partnered </a>with <a href="https://sp-edge.com/companies/361160">Rize </a>, to enable users to access Rize’s banking infrastructure to build, launch, and scale financial products through a single API, thereby reducing the development time and cost. In January 2021, MX raised USD 300 million in a Series C funding round led by TPG Capital, at a valuation of USD 1.9 billion. The newly raised funds are to be invested in improving MX’s capabilities, expanding its global presence, and increasing its workforce. In January 2021, MX noted that its headcount tripled over the past two years, reaching 550 staff members. The company appointed Shane Evans as interim chief executive officer (CEO) in January 2022, to prepare the company for an IPO or sale (at a valuation of over USD 5 billion) and oversee its growth.

Bankable is a banking-as-a-service (BaaS) infrastructure provider allowing financial institutions and corporations to utilize its API to integrate banking services. It provides a platform for its enterprise customers to offer modular banking services, including ledger management (process data from multiple banks to support cash management for global corporate affairs), digital banking, payment cards, and e-wallets. The company expanded its platform by <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/19662">acquiring Arex Markets </a>in June 2023, to embed working capital solutions (such as flexible invoice financing, corporate credit cards, lodged cars, and revolving credit). The company has a global presence, with operations spanning from the US to the Middle East as of January 2021. Bankable noted that the expansion of its global footprint also helps its European and US FinTech clients expand their operations internationally. Key customers and partnerships In January 2020, the company partnered with the diversified FinTech infrastructure provider <a href="https://sp-edge.com/companies/85350">Plaid </a>, which enabled Bankable’s customers to use Plaid’s tech to connect to more than 15,000 banks in the US and Europe. Funding and financialsIn April 2019, <a href="https://sp-edge.com/companies/13061">Visa </a>invested an undisclosed sum in Bankable and entered a partnership with the startup. Through the partnership, Visa members obtained access to Bankable’s platform, while Bankable used VisaNet (Visa’s electronic global payments network) to extend its international payment and banking solutions.

Bankable

Platforms that allow FinTechs to integrate banking services such as opening and maintaining accounts, facilitating card payments, etc.


Platforms that enable FinTechs to integrate a range of payment-related services such as one-time payments, subscriptions, and receipt management for domestic and cross-border transactions.


Companies that enable organizations to embed anti-money laundering (AML), identity verification, and know-your-customer (KYC) solutions.


Platforms that allow FinTechs to integrate lending services,  by typically applying AI/ML technology to a spending analysis to analyze creditworthiness.

Companies providing APIs and integrations for FinTechs to access securities markets, facilitate transactions and clearing, and provide insights to help end-users manage their finances.

May specialize in promoting inclusiveness in financial services, primarily in the investment and lending spaces

AI/ML can improve the quality of their offerings, such as using AI/ML to reduce biases

Used for payment completions, accessing banking and transaction data, and providing financial insights, among others

Alpaca

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