Well, you have to admire a staggered PR plan. Monzo, the U.K. challenger bank that just announced £85 million in Series E funding and its entrance into the fintech unicorn club, is rolling out a new feature today. The banking upstart is adding interest-earning savings accounts as an upgrade to its existing “Pots” functionality that launched last November.

The new “Savings Pots” feature is being offered in partnership with third-party bank Investec Corporate & Investment Banking and lets you earn 1 percent interest on the money you specifically allocate to a Savings Pot. It is the first time Monzo customers have been able to earn interest on their savings through the Monzo app, and is part of a wider “marketplace banking” strategy that will see Monzo increasingly offer various financial products via third-party fintech startups or incumbent providers.

The idea behind Pots is to let you set money aside for specific things, such as a planned holiday, preparing for Christmas or simply saving for a rainy day. You can create up to 10 Pots, each with their own name, and then add money to them manually, schedule payments in and out or round up your day-to-day transactions to the nearest pound and add the additional change to a Pot, piggy bank style.

To that end, you’ll need a minimum of £1,000 to open a Savings Pot, and above this can put as much money as you want in a Savings Pot. The savings accounts are flexible, so you can take money out of your Savings Pots at any time, where it will arrive back in your main Monzo account the next working day. Investec will hold the money in your Savings Pots and pay the 1 percent interest.

Savings Pots are covered by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS), meaning up to £85,000 of customers’ savings are protected (i.e. £85,000 across all of your Savings Pots as well as any other money you’ve deposited with Investec). Money you have banked with Monzo outside of Savings Pots is protected by the FSCS separately, again up to £85,000.

Monzo says it will be gradually rolling out the feature to its more than one million customers, and that the bank will email customers once they’re able to start using Savings Pots. I had the feature from yesterday and it is pretty self-explanatory to use.

Source: Tech Crunch Startups | Monzo launches interest-earning savings accounts

Shape Security, a fraud-fighting cybersecurity company, has closed a $26 million round of Series E funding.

This will be the fifth round of funding — more than $130 million — since the Mountain View, Calif.-based company was founded in 2011. This latest round was led by Norwest Venture Partners, Kleiner Perkins, Allegis Capital and others — including JetBlue Ventures and Singtel.

Shape Security said the addition of JetBlue’s investment was because it has benefited first-hand from its fraud-fighting technology.

The company’s primary focus is on preventing imitation attacks — such as when hackers use stolen logins or malware to walk in through the front door. Shape’s enterprise defense technology protects web and mobile apps against automated attacks by utilizing artificial intelligence to differentiate ordinary customers from hackers. Using its massive trove of data, including geolocation and even mouse movements, combined with Shape’s machine learning technology, the company says it can shut down suspicious activity and attacks in real time. The company’s flagship service Blackfish also protects against credential stuffing — where attackers use your stolen credentials to break into other sites.

In total, Shape says it protects 150 million logins each day, and covers one-fifth of the consumer brands in the Fortune 500.

With its $26 million cash injection, Shape said it plans a greater international expansion across the U.K., Europe and the Middle East and Asia to support its growing user base — about half of its customers are located outside of the U.S. And, the company will be bolstering its product development work with new products set to be announced down the pike.

Shape declined to say what it was valued at, but PitchBook puts the company’s valuation now at $495 million.

Source: Tech Crunch Startups | Anti-fraud startup Shape Security raises M in Series E round to drive global expansion

Exactly one year to the day since it launched its line of men’s health products, Hims is announcing its foray into women’s wellness.

The company is using its mountain of venture capital to support the new brand, called Hers. In September, Hims raised another $50 million in a round led by IVP.  The financing valued the startup, which has brought in $97 million to date, at $500 million, according to PitchBook.

“Our goal is to help women make the most informed choices about their health at every stage of their healthcare journey,” Hers brand lead Hilary Coles told TechCrunch.

Upon launch, Hers is offering three categories of products: sexual wellness, skin care and hair loss treatments. Its line of sexual health products includes a prescription-based birth control pill and Addyi, the only FDA-approved medication for women with hypoactive sexual desire disorder.

“We thought it was offensive really that there have been 26 options out there for men to get hard and this is the first thing offered for women,” Coles said, referring to Addyi — the “female Viagra.” “It’s another area that has been super stigmatized.”

Hers will also sell a hair, skin and nails vitamin supplement and shampoo & conditioner that protects against damaged hair that sheds. For the skin, Hers will offer a prescription topical cream to treat acne, an anti-aging cream and a melasma corrector for hyperpigmentation.

The company will also begin selling women Minoxidil, a treatment for hair thinning usually prescribed to men, in January. With the exception of birth control and Addyi, the products range from $15 to $75 per month.

Hims is known for selling erectile dysfunction medication, oral hygiene and skin care products to men. Founded in 2017, the San Francisco-based company is backed by Founders Fund, Redpoint Ventures, Forerunner Ventures, SV Angel, 8VC and more.

2018 is a record year for funding in the femtech space, which has included fundings for fertility and birth control startups like Nurx, Future Family and Maven. North of $400 million is expected to be funneled into the sector this year — a more than 10 percent increase than the $354 million raised by femtech startups in 2017.

Source: Tech Crunch Startups | Men’s wellness startup Hims has launched a line of women’s health products called Hers

VICIS has closed its Series B on $28.5 million, with participation from NFL quarterback Aaron Rodgers via Rx3 Ventures. Rodgers joins a list of other pro footballers to back the helmet startup, including Roger Staubach, Jerry Rice, Russell Wilson and Doug Baldwin.

VICIS is known for its $950 Zero1 football helmet designed for adult players. The company spent $20 million over the course of three years collaborating with athletes, engineers and neuroscientists to design and finetune the high-tech head shield, which protects against impact forces and mitigates the effects of collisions through a soft outer shell and several underlying protective layers.

With the fresh funding, which brings total investment in the company to $84 million, VICIS is bringing its youth helmet to market. Founded in 2013, the Seattle-based company says its mission from the get-go was to protect kids and teens playing football.

“There are 2 million kids in the U.S. playing youth football and they deserve the best possible protection,” VICIS co-founder and chief executive officer Dave Marver told TechCrunch. “To be able to offer this technology to kids; it’s our mission fully realized.”

The youth helmet, which retails at $495, is the first-ever to be designed for kids. Most youth helmets are miniaturized versions of adult helmets and fail to take into account the specific needs of a youth player.

VICIS’ youth helmet is tuned for the impact velocities expected in youth play; its the lightest helmet available for kids at uner 4 pounds; and it has the widest field of view of any kids’ helmet currently available.

“We feel like we have the opportunity to catalyze innovation in the youth space,” Marver said.

According to the National SAFE KIDS Campaign and the American Academy of Pediatrics, sports are the cause of 21 percent of traumatic brain injuries per year. Football, in particular, is responsible for the majority of the between 1.6 million and 3.8 million sports-related concussions found annually.

Research linking football to CTE, a degenerative brain disease, has proven that the sport can, in fact, be deadly, yet millions flock to the field every year. VICIS’ smart, tech-enabled helmets could help usher in a new era for safety in the popular sport.

VICIS plans to bring its technology to other sports in the future. It’s also recently inked a contract with the U.S. Army, with plans to provide the Army and Marine Corps a version of its helmet, tailored specifically for combat.

Source: Tech Crunch Startups | VICIS completes .5M Series B and launches its first youth helmet