The US Consumer Financial Protection Bureau plans to start regulating BNPL companies, such as Klarna and Affirm, and will release guidance in the future (Hannah Lang/Reuters)

Lauren Goode / Wired:
An interview with Max Levchin on Affirm, the US CFPB’s inquiry into BNPL services, problems with credit cards, the current economic environment, and more  —  The PayPal cofounder on why his “buy now, pay later” company Affirm is a healthier way to borrow, what caused the techlash, and Elon Musk’s Twitter.

Eric Johansson / Verdict:
London-based buy now, pay later startup Tymit raised a £23M Series A led by retailer Frasers Group  —  Late fees and a white label credit card are two of the things that make Tymit stand out in the increasingly crowded buy-now-pay-later market.  —  The buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) industry has had a really bad 2022.

Aisha S Gani / Bloomberg:
Seeking to diversify its revenue streams, Klarna launches a price comparison tool in the US, UK, and Nordics; Klarna acquired PriceRunner for ~$125M in 2022  —  Klarna has rolled out a search and compare tool in the UK and Nordics as the fintech looks to diversify its revenue away from buy-now …

Callan Quinn / The Block:
Binance shares addresses for its wallets and details its holdings: 475K BTC, 4.8M ETH, 17.6B USDT, 21.7B BUSD, 601M USDC, 58M BNB, and a $1B SAFU fund  —  – Binance has released the addresses of its hot and cold wallets.  — It provided a snapshot of its current holdings.

Hasan Chowdhury / Insider:
Northzone, the European VC firm that backed Spotify and Klarna, has raised a €1B fund, its largest to date, and will allocate ~40% to later-stage investments  —  – Northzone has raised over 1 billion euros (around $1 billion) for a fresh new fund.  — The new fund will be used …

TechCrunch:
BrandTotal and Unimania agreed to a permanent injunction banning them from using and scraping Facebook and Instagram, and will pay a “significant financial sum”  —  Facebook parent Meta has settled a lawsuit in the U.S. against two companies that had engaged in data scraping operations …