Hello TWIF UK & Europe friends,

Exciting times as fintech is going mainstream with a Netflix show about the Wirecard scandal.

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

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Funding 💸

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

🇪🇺 Equity management platform Ledgy raised a $22m Series B round led by NEA and included Sequoia and others.

🇪🇺 Turkish neobank Turan raised TRY 45m.

🇪🇺 Business payments fintech Julaya raised a $5m seed round led by Speedinvest.

🇪🇺Neobank Lunar raised €28.5m from investors.

🇪🇺Embedded insurance provider hakuna raised a €4m seed round from Earlybird Ventures and others.

🇬🇧 Monese has secured $35m of investment from HSBC to support the formers moved into BaaS.

🇬🇧 Impact Investing platform Vested raised a €25k pre-seed round from Impact Shakers.

🇬🇧 Lender Porthos & Co raised a £104k seed round from Techstars.

🇬🇧 B2B payments provider Sequence raised a €19m seed round led by a16z, Passion Capital, Salesforce Ventures, Fin Venture Capital and others.

🇬🇧 Digital mortgage platform Habito raised £5m from SBI Investment, Augmentum and Voluton Ventures.

🇬🇧 Collaborative tax platform LocTax raised a $12m Series A from Index Ventures, Seedcamp and others.

🌍 Fraud and compliance platform Sardine raised a $51.5m Series B led by a16z.

🌍 Cross-border money transfer platform for freelancers Higlobe raised a $14m from investors including Battery Ventures, Raptor Ventures, Digital Currency Group and more.

🌍 Capital markets risk provider AccessFintech raised a $60m Series C led by WestCap and included big banks BNY Mellon and BofA.

₿ FTX is seeking to raise $1bn from investors at a $32bn valuation.

Challenger Banking 🚀

🇬🇧 Revolut has suffered a data breach, with 50,000 customer worldwide impacted. It also launched its BNPL product in Ireland and Revolut Pro, a set of business management tools for freelancers and self-employed.

🇬🇧 Starling Bank investor Jupiter Fund Management is to sell its 7% stake at a significant discount to its recent £2.5bn valuation.

🌍 Shares in Robinhood jumped 9% on news the SEC has scrapped plans to restrict PFOF.

Digital Assets ₿

🇪🇺 Norway is to use the Ethereum as the technology for its CBDC sandbox.

🇪🇺 The ECB is to partner with Amazon, CaixaBank and others to develop a digital euro prototype.

🇬🇧 The FCA has told consumers that FTX is operating in the country without proper authorisation.

🌍 The White House has put together a framework for the “reasonable development” of digital assets with a focus on tackling fraud.

🌍 OFAC has issued new guidelines clarifying rules around usage of Tornado Cash that make not all transactions to be illegal.

🌍 Coinbase and Lido Protocol have been responsible for 40% of the Ethereum networks new blocks in the post-merge proof of stake blockchain, raising concerns over centralisation. SEC Chair Gensler has hinted ether may now be a security.

🌍 The SEC and Ripple have called for an immediate decision on whether sales of XRP violated securities law.

🌍 Crypto market maker Wintermute has been hacked and suffered losses of $160m.

🌍 The Hong Kong Monetary Authority has committed to rolling out a retail CBDC.

🌍 Latest draft legislation on a proposed bill to regulate crypto would ban algorithmic stablecoins like TerraUSD for two years while a study is undertaken.

🌍 Kraken CEO Jesse Powell is stepping down and will be replaced by current COO, David Ripley.

🌍 Digital asset intelligence company Inca Digital has secured a government contract from DARPA.

Traditional Banking 🏦

🇪🇺 Goldman Sachs is opening its Transaction Banking platform to its corporate customers in Europe.

🇪🇺 German credit specialist SWK Bank is partnering with Mambu to create a a BaaS offering to rival Solarisbank, as the incumbent BaaS provider switches strategies to card instead of account.

🇪🇺 Deutsche Bank is using AI to fraud risk score individual transactions for merchants.

🇬🇧 Citi is closing its UK retail operations and will focus on wealth management.

🇬🇧 Barclays Rise program will shift focus to supporting fintech talent that have recently been laid off.

🇬🇧 Insurer Aviva has invested $10m into Anthemis Female Innovators Lab fund, a VC fund to back female fintech founders.

🌍 American Express is hiring 1,500 tech workers by the end of 2022.

Fintech Infrastructure 🚧

🇪🇺 Open banking platform Nordigen has partnered with NeteraPay, a Czech fintech, to improve their KYC processes.

🇪🇺 Solaris has secured the ADAC credit card portfolio of 1.3m cards for the automobile club.

🇪🇺 Finastra and Visa are working on a BaaS collaboration to expand push payment product Visa Direct for faster cross border payouts.

🇬🇧 Open banking platform TrueLayer announced its cutting 10% of staff

🇬🇧 Fintech infrastructure providers Plaid, Truelayer and Yapily have launched a non-profit trade associated called Open Finance Association pushing for open finance in the UK and Europe.

🌍 Open banking platform MX has rolled out product updates including broadening connectivity, adding a budgeting tool and a new SDK to allow developers to build a mobile banking app on top of its API platform.

Payments 💰

🇪🇺 The European Commission has stopped a merger between Finland mobile payments app Pivo and MobilePay and Vipps to create one of the largest payments app in the Nordics due to competition concerns.

🇪🇺 Adyen is to launch Cash App Pay as a payment method to their US customers, the first time Square’s payment method has been available outside of the Square ecosystem.

🇪🇺 Munich payments company Dock Financial has acquired a 10% stake in SME financing platform Compeon through a secondary sale.

🇬🇧 PPRO has integrated BNPL provider Zip into its platform to grown their presence in the Australian e-commerce sector.

🇬🇧 Checkout.com has launched “Integrated Platforms” a solution for marketplaces to build custom payment flows through APIs.

🌍 Travel industry software platform Amadeus has partnered with BNPL provider Uplift to offer travellers new ways to pay.

🌍 Zelle was a target for lawmakers for its fraud and scam issues.

Longer reads 📜

• Siting bank branches - Patrick McKenzie
• The Case for UK Banks - Marc Rubinstein
• CFPB's Buy Now, Pay Later Report Dropped. Now What? - Jason Mikula
• Here’s What’s In the White House’s Crypto Reports - Nikhilesh De, CoinDesk
• Everything is Broken - Packy McCormick
• How Wise built the world’s first cloud-based card processing - Valentin Kravtsov

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