Fierce Gets $10M to Fund Super App Ambitions

New York FinTech Fierce has raised $10 million for what it calls an “all-in-one” financial app.

The company, co-founded by former Gemini Chief Technology Officer Rob Cornish, announced the app and the financing Wednesday (Feb. 8), saying the funding would help it expand its team and acquire more customers.

“Today’s financial market is abundant with solutions, but navigating through various opportunities can feel disjointed and overwhelming for the average person,” Fierce said in a news release.

The company says it reduces friction for consumers by letting them navigate their finances from a single platform. Fierce’s offerings include a checking account, the ability to purchase shares of stocks and ETFs and — eventually — engage in regulated crypto trading.

The app — available on iOS, with an Android launch due this year — also includes a news feed that lets users track updates about their portfolios and interests, as well as the ability to track their wealth by linking all of their existing financial accounts to Fierce.

PYMNTS research has shown there’s a great deal of interest in a super app, especially among younger consumers. The report, “Super Apps For the Super Connected,” a PayPal and PYMNTS collaboration, shows that a substantial set of activities is already being done online.

Of the more than 9,900 consumers surveyed for the report, more than 70% said they purchase groceries online every month. Meanwhile, 48% track health data and 38% purchase local transportation through digital channels.

“The technology is firmly in place to help them springboard to a super app: Respondents own a median of 6.5 ‘connected’ devices,” PYMNTS wrote last year.

As for the appeal of the super app across all age groups: 4 out of 10 millennials say they are very or extremely interested in using super apps. And more than two-thirds of the overall sample have shown similar levels of interest.

Overall, the research found that 96 million consumers across the U.S., the U.K Australia and Germany said they were “highly interested” in a super app that offered digital infrastructure support for their day-to-day lives.

So far, however, an American version of the digital one-stop-shop has not taken off the way apps like WeChat and AliPay have in Asia.

But as noted here last month, there are signs that the U.S. may not be all that far behind. For example, PYMNTS research found that digital wallets are catching on in popularity, according to the report “The Mobile Wallet Challenge: Replacing Physical With Digital.”

“Within this increasingly mobile realm, an all-in-one ecosystem has the potential to be a highly attractive, captive commerce environment,” PYMNTS wrote in January.