This Week in Fintech UK & Europe (10/10)

Hello TWIF UK & Europe friends,

Please find another week of fintech news, financings and exits below.

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Tweet of the week 🦉🏆

Funding 💸

Highlights below of deals since the last post in the fintech space across the UK & Europe.

🇪🇺 Business payments startup NoFrixion raised a €3.6m round led by Delta Partners and Middlegame Venture.

🇪🇺 Neobank for the wealthy Yomoni raised a €25m round from Credit Mutuel Arkea.

🇪🇺 Open banking platform Enable Banking raised a €600k seed round from Wellstreet and Forward Venture Capital.

🇪🇺 SME lender Flowpay raised a €150k convertible note from DEPO Ventures.

🇪🇺 AI predictor for investment managers Axyon AI raised a €1.6m round from CDP Venture Capital, ING Group, Unicredit EVO and others.

🇬🇧 Railsr (fka Railsbank) raised $26m in equity and $20m of debt in a Series C round led by Anthos Capital.

🇬🇧 Sky News reported that challenger bank Zopa is seeking to raise $100m.

🇬🇧 Plum raised £5m in debt from Silicon Valley Bank and is now launching a crowdfunding campaign.

🌍 HSBC invested $4m into Bizbaz’s seed round.

🌍 Credit card debt repayment fintech Tally raises an $80m Series D led by Sway Ventures.

₿ web3 platform Juno raised a $18m Series A, led by Mac Private Equity, to expand products and launch a tokenised loyalty program.

₿ Former Coinbase employees raised a $5.3m seed round for Scale3 Labs, an infrastructure startup focused on blockchain node operators.

Challenger Banking 🚀

🇪🇺 Neobroker Shares has welcomed tennis champions Venus and Serena Williams as investors and brand ambassadors.

🇬🇧 US insurtech Lemonade has launched in the UK through a partnership with Aviva, starting with contents insurance.

🇬🇧 SME lender Bank North is closing down after it failed to secure new investment.

🇬🇧 Expense management company Payhawk is launching a business credit card in the UK.

🇬🇧 Just days after announcing it hit 1m customers and $10bn deposits, Chase UK suffered from a 24hr outage.

Digital Assets ₿

🇪🇺 The appeal of Tornado Cash developer Alexey Pertsev was rejected by a Dutch Judge.

🇪🇺 Bitpanda reported revenues of €478m in 2021 with profits languished at just €52m.

🇪🇺 Swift has successfully implemented a framework to link tokenisation systems between CSD’s and global custodian’s to ensure interoperability for tokenised assets for issuance, DvP and redemption.

🇪🇺The European Banking Authority is tendering for blockchain analytics services and market data.

🌍 Crypto lender Nexo has received actions against it from eight states as they seek to stop its interest-bearing accounts,

🌍 Kim Kardashian has been fined $1.26m by the SEC for promoting a crypto security without disclosing she was paid for the promotion.

🌍 Both Coinbase and Solana suffered outrages at the beginning of the week.  Coinbase users with US bank accounts were unable to conduct transactions while Solana suffered an outage due to a misconfigured node.

🌍 Former CEO of Celsius Network withdrew $10m just weeks before the lender froze customer accounts. Chief Strategy Officer Daniel Leon has also resigned amidst reports he and CTO Nuke Goldstein also withdrew $32m in May.

🌍 Circle is working on a cross-chain transfer protocol to enable USDC transfers across different blockchains natively.

🌍 Mastercard has launched Crypto Secure to help issuers assess the risk of crypto purchases using technology from CipherTrace.

🌍 South Korean prosecutors have seized nearly $40m in BTC reportedly owned by Do Kwon as well as invalidating his passport.

🌍 MakerDao is diversifying its treasury and allocating $500m to traditional assets using Sygnum bank.

Traditional Banking 🏦

🇪🇺 ABN Amro is bundling together a digital ID solution with payment functionality to allow users to store their ID securely and make payments with “ID & pay”.

🇪🇺 Nord/LB has improved the speed at which it makes lending decisions for receivable finance clients using Trade Ledger technology.

🇪🇺 Rabobank is partnering with Dutch SME Bizcuit to integrate its invoice financing technology

🇬🇧 Tyl by NatWest has introduced a new payments terminal and pricing scheme for SME’s.

🇬🇧 Lloyds Bank has launched Smart Start, a spending and savings account for children aged 11 to 15.

🇬🇧 Santander launched My Home Manager in the UK to help customers manage different aspects of their home including energy performance and repairs.

Fintech Infrastructure 🚧

🇪🇺 Adyen and Tink are partnering to allow Adyen’s customers to use Tink’s payment initiation services, building on their existing use of the Account Check service.

Payments 💰

🇪🇺 The European Payments Council has submitted its proposal to standardise the QR codes for mobile credit transfers.

🇬🇧 Barclaycard has said that 73% of retailers have seen a decline in online payment fraud in the 200 days since SCA came into force in the UK.

🇬🇧 Visa and Mastercard are facing a class action lawsuit in the UK from businesses charged MIF fees for corporate cards

🇬🇧 Trade bodies representing over 240,000 businesses in the UK are demanding the end to the “£5bn stealth tax” paid to the card networks.

🌍 The Federal Reserve is ending network exclusivity on debit cards, now requiring all debit card issuers to enable merchants to pick from at least two unaffiliated card networks from July 2023 and includes online payments and other CNP transactions.

🌍 EMVCo has updated specifications to unify POS terminal infrastructure to simplify contactless payments

Regulatory Corner 🔎

🌍 The Retirement Savings Modernization Act has been introduced to expand the asset classes that citizens can add to their retirement accounts to include alternative assets and digital assets.

🌍 The CFPB has filed a lawsuit against MoneyLion due to violations with the Military Lending Act and USDAAP. Check out Jason Mikula’s breakdown.

🌍 Senator Warren released a report heavily criticising Zelle for its rampant fraud problems and lack of bank action.

Longer reads 📜

• Makers vs Takers - Marc Rubinstein
• Markets in Power - Patrick McKenzie
• Why the Durbin Amendment isn't as scary for fintechs as you might think - Samir Rao
• A Simple Tale: To found or not to found - Shamir Karkal
• CFPB Releases Report on Buy Now, Pay Later - CFPB
• Why Web3’s Shared Data Across Applications Doesn’t Matter - Liron Shapira

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See you next week!