Hello TWIF UK & Europe friends,

We had a blast at the latest London Fintech Happy Hour, check it out here!  Thanks to all that came out and a special thanks to ComplyAdvantage (Kanisha Patel & Charlie Delingpole) and Clocktower Technology Ventures (Kaniska Narayan) for helping make it happen.

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 🙏

Don’t forget to also share with colleagues and friends!

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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.

🇪🇺 Cross border payments company TransferMate raised $70m from Rapilen at a $1bn valuation.

🇪🇺 Revenue based financing company Bloom raised $300m in a round led by Credo Capital and included Fortress Group.

🇪🇺 Crop financing and analytics platform CropSafe raised a $3m seed round from Foundation Capital, Global Founders Capital, Josh Browder and Charlie Songhurst.

🇪🇺 Pet insurer Lassie raised a €11m Series A from Passion Capital, Inventure and Felix Capital.

🇬🇧 Neobroker Freetrade raised £30m in debt financing.

🇬🇧 Invoicing platform Previse raised a $18m Series B led by Tencent.

🇬🇧 Agriculture insurance company Stable raised a $60m Series B led by Acrew Capital.

🇬🇧 Tax credit finder Adsum raised a $5m round from Episode 1, Digital Horizon and Double Down Fund.

🇬🇧 Insurance provider Urban Jungle raised a £16.5m Series A led by Intact Ventures.

🇬🇧 Lender Creditspring raised £48m to expand loans to its customers.

🌍 Southeast Asian payments fintech Xendit closed a $300m funding round.

🌍 StarkWare, a Ethereum scaling project, raised a $100m Series D.

Challenger Banking 🚀

🇬🇧 Neobank Atom Bank is considering a New York listing via a SPAC at a valuation of $700m.

🇬🇧 Revolut has rolled out an expense management product for its business customers.

🇬🇧 Neobank Zopa is allowing its employees to work abroad for four months per year.

🇬🇧 Carbon tracking neobank Tred reached its £600k crowdfunding goal within ten minutes of going live on Crowdcube.

🇬🇧 Asset Tribe has launched a digital alternative asset investment platform, starting with wine.

Digital Assets ₿

🇪🇺 The ECB is calling for action to combat the risk of contagion from crypto assets which are emerging as a financial stability risk.

🇬🇧 Binance UK has partnered with Fintech Founders group, a influential network of fintech executives that support the UK’s advancement for fintech companies.

🌍  Blockchain analytics platform Nansen acquired Ape Board, an NFT and DeFi tracking dashboard.

🌍  A South Korean law firm are suing Terra founders Do Kwon and Daniel Shin on behalf of investors to try and recoup losses.

🌍 SEC Chair Gary Gensler said it has jurisdiction over a lot of cryptocurrencies but probably not bitcoin, which is a commodity token, and should be overseen by the CFTC.

🌍 Swift and CapGemini are working together to explore linking domestic CBDC networks for seamless cross-border payments.

Traditional Banking 🏦

🇪🇺 CaixaBank have released a Visa card with braille for their visually impaired customers.

🇪🇺 UBS is rolling out UBS key4, a completely digital product line for customers that want to bank from their smartphones.

🇬🇧 Chase has secured 500,000 customers and $10bn in deposits since it launched.

🇬🇧 Bank of England warns banks could face a 15% hit to profits due to climate change.

🇬🇧 NatWest has launched a kid’s app, following its acquisition of Rooster Money, for their pocket money. They are also working with Accenture and Microsoft on a new customer engagement platform to replace legacy architecture.

🌍 Wells Fargo has reduced the limit for its robo-advisory product to $500 to attract younger investors.

Fintech Infrastructure 🚧

🇪🇺 Deutsche Bank has partnered with FinLync to allow corporate treasury teams to connect and incorporate bank data into ERP platforms.

🇬🇧 Yapily has partnered with BNPL startup Two, to allow merchants to offer BNPL services to their business customers at checkout and use open banking data for verification and fraud analysis.

🇬🇧 Core banking provider Thought Machine signed up US super-app M1 as its latest client.

🇬🇧 Digital investment provider WealthKernel has partnered with Alpher, a female-first investment platform, to provide its core investing infrastructure.

🇬🇧 LHV Group is opening up a second office in Leeds for its engineering team.

🌍 CCG’s annual US bank survey found many US bank executives are interested in pursuing BaaS options.

Payments 💰

🇪🇺 BNPL fintech Scalapay partnered with Twig, a web3 payment platform, to allow customers to resell apparel purchased via Scalapay and receive payments immediately by Twig.

🇬🇧 Klarna is to cut its staff headcount by 10% during the market downturn and as news of its valuation crunch.

🇬🇧 Payments infrastructure provider Paddle acquired US subscription software ProfitWell, for $200m.

🇬🇧 NatWest is the first bank to offer VRP for use cases that don’t involve sweeping, with the first payments made by bank customers to charities.

🌍 Stripe has launched Stripe Apps and the Stripe App Marketplace, a place for developers to build and publish apps to its business customers.

🌍 One-click checkout Bolt is sacking a third of its workers, totalling 250 people.

Sponsored Content 

Identity verification plays a critical role in fraud detection, customer acquisition and regulatory compliance. The Onfido Real Identity Platform makes it simple. It’s an end-to-end identity verification solution featuring a comprehensive library of checks and signals and powerful no-code workflow builder. See it in action at Money20/20 Europe.

Longer reads 📜

• Where do crypto yields come from and will they last? - JP
• Sweatcoin and the rise of move-to-earn - Liza Tetley
• Privacy and Security in the Metaverse - Frances Zelazny
• The Three-Body Problem - Frank Rotman, QED
• Crypto Might Have an Insider Trading Problem - Ben Foldy and Caitlin Ostroff
• The Compromises and Benefits of Ethereum switching to a Proof of Stake network - Max Shannon

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See you next week!