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Champ Titles Raised $18M from Point72 Ventures
Champ Titles Raised $18M from Point72 Ventures

Architect Partners was the exclusive Financial Advisor to Champ Titles.

Transaction Overview

On March 27, 2024, Cleveland-based digital title and registration platform Champ Titles announced an $18 million Series C equity round led by Point72 Ventures with participation by existing investors.

Company Description

Champ Titles provides a digital title and registration suite to streamline the vehicle titling process. Their platform enables the creation of legal, digital titles for easy transfer and verification, serving insurance carriers, lenders, state governments, auto dealers, and owners. Stakeholders, including state motor vehicle departments, lenders, and vehicle owners, benefit from a unified and transparent system, where all information is readily accessible and transaction times are markedly reduced. The governance of the digital platform is established through clear guidelines, ensuring all parties adhere to the updated processes and regulations.

Champ Titles’ success is measured by the elimination of more than 5 million pieces of paper annually on average per state; a reduction in processing time from 40-60 days to a matter of hours; increased productivity of DMV title clerks processing more than five times as many titles per day; and the improved experience for consumers in each state that has adopted Champ Titles’ solutions. Over the last twelve months, the company has successfully onboarded new states including New Jersey, Kentucky, and Illinois, and expanded its relationship with West Virginia by creating the first National Digital Titling Clearinghouse (NDTC). Through these efforts, the company has grown rapidly with revenue increasing by more than 300% year over year. 

Founded in 2018 by CEO, Shane Bigelow, the company now has 63 employees and is headquartered in Cleveland, Ohio. 

Funding

In this Series C funding round, Champ Titles raised $18M from Point72 Ventures and existing investors including W.R. Berkley Corporation, Eos Venture Partners, Guidewire Software, and Rev1 Ventures, bringing the total amount raised since inception to $45M. 

In the prior Series B round, Champ Titles raised $13M from Guidewire Software, Eos Venture Partners, and Ally Ventures.

Before that, Champ Titles raised $13.5M in 2021 in a Series A. Emergents, now Architect Partners, served as the exclusive Financial Advisor for that financing. 

Competition

Champ Titles’ biggest competitors are existing state DMVs deciding to be a software company and developing solutions on their own or via large systems developers.  However, they also compete with other digital title networks such as Cario and Oxhead Alpha/Tezos. In addition, technology-enabled DMV solutions such as Fast Enterprises are seen as competitive but don’t offer the same efficacy.

 

Architect Partners’ Perspective

Champ Titles’ SaaS-based solutions present a compelling example of blockchain-enabled infrastructure solving real-world problems.  By focusing on the needs and pain points of legacy auto title, registration, and lien processing, Champ has leveraged the power of blockchain to transform critical government services.  The result is exponentially accelerated processing time for DMV constituents, with improved accuracy and reduced cost.  Yet Champ’s solutions capture many key benefits of on-chain data processing – which include trust, transparency, data integrity, security, and efficiency – without users even being aware of their blockchain foundations.  

While much attention is focused on recent resilience in crypto asset prices, we believe 2024 will see significant growth in non-speculative enterprise applications for distributed ledger technology.  Champ’s successful raise demonstrates investor interest in practical and scalable solutions to real-world problems.

Crypto Public Companies Snapshot

Crypto Public Companies Snapshot

Elliot Chun
April 12, 2024
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In the last two months, I’ve been to Dubai, Vegas, Denver, London, New York and I am just getting back from Paris Blockchain Week, and all I need is this plastic card to pay for everything.

 

While “credit” has been around since the invention of banks, the modern credit card is rumored to have been invented in the 1940s with the modern debit card following in the 1960s. Fast forward 7 decades and these cards are used for the vast majority of today’s payments, both in-person and online. Mastercard in 2023 had over $9T in Gross Dollar Volume; Visa had $12T in payments volume.

 

For this convenience, card issuers generally charge about 3% to individuals and businesses (payers) and 3%+ to merchants (payees), who typically receive their payment days later. But both participants of this transaction are ok with this fee because these plastic cards are trusted, easy to use, and there isn’t a better option that is universally adopted. It’s one of the best business models in human society.

 

We are not there yet, but we are getting close to having a form of payment that is as trusted, as easy, and as universally adopted … with instant settlement and fewer fees.

 

This week, Mastercard (MA) announced a partnership with 1inch and Baanx in providing a crypto-backed debit card.

 

Since 2017, many in our industry have been pioneers in allowing crypto assets to be an asset that backs a plastic card.

 

One of the fascinating things about this week’s announcement is that 1inch, a decentralized exchange (DEX) aggregator, is providing its users with the ability to make plastic card payments with balances in their 1inch account. It’s hard for me to even draw a comparison to this, but I’ll go with using your brokerage account as the reference account that backs the plastic card payment.

 

Baanx is providing the Fiat to crypto on/off-ramps and Mastercard is providing their verified payment network.

 

This is one example of many (call it ~100) that seek to make crypto a mainstream asset that can be used to back everyday payments.

 

The funny thing is that in April of 2024, crypto and the rails the asset is built on allows for instantly settled transfer of asset values at fractions of today’s ~6% all-in transaction fee. 

 

Using a crypto-backed plastic card is a necessary step towards broader payment adoption similar to how the ETF is a necessary step toward broader investment adoption.

 

For certain, we are a decade (not plural) away from native crypto (no plastic card) being used as a global, mainstream payment option. This will happen in conjunction with humans no longer having a physical wallet in their pockets / bags.

 

Crypto-backed payments will have a significant, and arguably transformative, effect on every publicly traded company that generates revenues from payments. All of them.

 

And when will the 3.375 in x 2.125 plastic card become the floppy disk logo on our computers?

 

We will address the digital version of everything else in our wallet, as well as other forms of crypto payments (Stablecoins, CBDCs) in future Perspectives.