Hello TWIF UK & Europe friends,

Thanks to everyone that came out for London Fintech Happy Hour last Monday, sponsored by Minna Technologies.  It was a great event and an awesome way to round out the first day of IFGS 2022!

For our German based friends, we have a Berlin Happy Hour coming up in May as well.

Please find another week of fintech news, financings and exits below. If you are reading this but haven’t already subscribed, you can click below 🙏

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Come find your place on the team at the most inspiring fintech startups! Browse open roles on This Week in Fintech’s job board.

Funding 💸

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

🇪🇺 Credit scoring fintech Qred raised a €10m round from Nordic Capital.

🇪🇺 Embedded stock trading fintech lemon.markets raised €15m in a round co-led by Lakestar and Lightspeed.

🇪🇺 Insurance fintech Insurely raised a €19m Series A

🇬🇧 Digital wealth manager Moneybox raised a $46m Series D led by FISV.

🇬🇧 Fidel API raised a $65m Series B led by Bain Capital Ventures.

🌍 Ellevest raised a $53m Series B from female-led investors.

Challenger Banking 🚀

🇪🇺 Sanctioned Russian oligarch Oleg Boyko is selling his stake in german fintechs Vexcash, Cashcape and Spotcap.

🇪🇺 Digital private bank Alpian secured a licence and is set to launch this year after also raising CHF 19m in a Series B.

🇬🇧 Neobank Zopa has reached profitability for the first time, 21 months after receiving its bank license, and is on track to have AUM of £2bn by end of 2022.

🇬🇧 Revolut is partnering with Allianz to bring travel insurance to Premium and Metal account holders.

Digital Assets ₿

🇪🇺 The EU Commission issued a “call for ideas” to help regulators about legislative changes needed for a digital euro.

🇬🇧 Secretary to the Treasury John Glen announced incoming legislation to bring stablecoins into the UK payment framework at IFGS2022.

🇬🇧 UK Chancellor Rishi Sunak has asked the Royal Mint to create an NFT as he urges the country to become a hub for crypto.

🇬🇧 Checkout.com found that 40% of global consumers intend to use crypto as a form of payment in 2022.

🇬🇧 Executives from Circle have been in the UK meeting with regulators and government officials.

🌍  Citi say the metaverse economy could be worth $13trn by 2030.

🌍  Axie Infinity owner, Sky Mavis, raised $150m to reimburse impacted users of last week’s $625m hack.

🌍 One-click checkout company Bolt is buying crypto infrastructure provider Wyre for $1.5bn.

🌍 Binance has appointed an FCA official as its new global director of regulatory policy.

🌍 Payment app Strike is partnering with Shopify, Blackhawk Network and POS provider NCR to allow merchants to receive dollars when users pay with crypto.

Traditional Banking 🏦

🇪🇺 Danske Bank is facing a criminal complaint for GDPR violations by the Danish Data Protection Agency.

🇪🇺 Bank of Ireland was fined €463,000 by the Data Protection Commission for data breaches.

🇪🇺 CaixaBank’s digital financial unit Imagin has opened up a site in the metaverse.

🇬🇧 NatWest is working with Bottomline to try and stop Authorised Push Payment (APP) fraud with the latter’s confirmation of payee solution.

🌍 US banks that own Zelle want to take on Visa and Mastercard at the checkout but are split amongst themselves.

Fintech Infrastructure 🚧

🇬🇧 London Stock Exchange acquired digital ID fintech Global Data Consortium.

🌍 Some US banks have joined together with Early Warning with a service called Authentify that lets users verify their identity with their bank login details when on participating businesses sites or apps.

Payments 💰

🇪🇺 Payment provider Ratepay is PayPal’s exclusive invoice partner for its PayPal Checkout solution in Germany.

🇪🇺 Klarna is looking to turn Priceline, the comparison shopping service it acquired, into an alternative for merchants to Amazon, Google and Facebook.

🇬🇧 BNPL provider Zilch is to start reporting credit data to Experian.

🌍 Visa is partnering with PopID to bring facial verified payments to the Middle East.

🌍 Much hyped one-click checkout startup Fast announced it is shutting down.

🌍 Worldpay is to offer merchants the ability to receive USDC directly for payment settlements.

🌍 PayPal has refreshed its credit card to now give users 3% cash back when they check out using PayPal and 2% otherwise.

Regulatory Corner 🔎

🌍 The FDIC has reached out to the banks it supervises asking them to report their crypto activities due to concerts around stability.

Longer reads 📜

• Authentify - Bank ID Service - Tom Noyes
• One HDFC - Marc Rubinstein
• Network Effects in Fintech - Aika Ussenova & Giorgio Giuliani

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See you next week!