Hello TWIF UK & Europe friends,
I've spent the past week in Taipei, Taiwan, where 7-Eleven stores are ubiquitous.
There's one on almost every street corner. Sometimes I've even seen multiple stores on the same street. The card machines in 7-Eleven say "Tap to Pay Only", and with most transactions sub $10 there's little need to enter a PIN. (The contactless limit in Taiwan is NT$3,000, which is around $94.)
It got me thinking that despite all the hype we hear about agentic commerce and stablecoins, the workhorse of global payments in the UK, Europe, and much of the world is still the contactless payment card. UK Finance, a trade association, recently reported that 67% of credit and 76% of debit card transactions are now contactless.
With billions of transactions each month, tapping our cards as a means to pay has become second nature to millions of us.
But what’s the right limit for a contactless payment? At what point should a user have to insert their card and enter their PIN number to verify the transaction?
In the past week UK banks decided to hold the contactless payment limit at the level of £100 per transaction. Regulators had said that banks could increase the limit — or remove the limit entirely — but banks have, for now, opted to keep the existing limit in place, citing a lack of consumer demand.
Some banks maintain cumulative limits — such as enter your PIN every five transactions, or once a total level of spend is hit. But such limits can be bypassed altogether by using Apple Pay or Google Pay (verification comes from the on-device biometric, therefore a PIN is not needed).
In reality, lifting the limit would mean more risk at the card issuer level. For the time being you'll need to enter your PIN if you go over £100 on any single transaction. Not such a big deal, but this story reminded me of just how central contactless is in the world of payments.
As I've found out in Taipei, even on the other side of the world it's possible to "Tap to Pay", here with the added choice of paying with card brands such as China UnionPay and JCB. The UX is global. Whether in a 7-Eleven in Asia, or at a supermarket in London, contactless is everywhere.
Please find another week of fintech news, financings and exits below!
Matt Jones
📰 If you have stories for next week's edition you can contact us via email here.
Funding 💸
Highlights below of deals since the last post in the fintech space across the UK & Europe. Deal data powered by Dealroom.
Upvest, the Berlin-based wealth tech start up, has raised a $125m funding round to support European expansion — the round was led by Sapphie Ventures and Tencent
Cleafy raised €12m for it’s bank specific cyber-security products — the round was co-led by United Ventures and eCAPITAL
Kayna raised a €1.5m seed funding round led by Delta Partners — the company specialises in embedded insurance for platforms
Belin-based finperks raised a $4m pre-seed round to develop its API infrastructure for gift and pre-paid — the round was led by Motive Partners and seed+speed Ventures
Banking 🏛️
🇬🇧 Metro Bank partnered with Equals Money to launch FX Forwards — a solution which allows customers to lock in exchange rates to hedge against rate volatility
🇬🇧 UK Banks have rejected the chance to remove the contactless payment limit, which is currently set at £100 per transactions
🇬🇧 As Revolut receives a full UK banking licence, what do the public think of the fintech company?
🇬🇧 🇪🇺 Visa launched an “agentic ready” programme for banks in the UK and Europe — focused on getting banks and other issuing partners ready for the growth in agentic commerce
Digital Assets ₿
🌍 Paradigm and Stripe launched a new Payment Standard for AI Agents — known as MPP, short for “Machine Payments Protocol”
🌍 Thunes is bringing stablecoins to banks via its Pay-to-Stablecoin-Wallets solution via existing Swift connectivity
🌍 Mastercard announced they are to acquire stablecoin infrastructure providor BVNK in a deal worth up to $1.8bn
🌍 PayPal is bringing its PYUSD stablecoin to millions of users and merchants in 70 markets worldwide
Payments 💰
🇬🇧 Currensea launched the United Airlines debit card, which is the first ever debit card offered by a US airline in the UK
🇬🇧 🇪🇺 J.P. Morgan Payments rolled out virtual B2B cards in Europe — in partnership with Mastercard
🌍 Google has upgraded its Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) for agentic payments — adding identity linking as well as other new capabilities
Regulatory Corner 🔎
🇪🇺 Sweden’s central bank is strongly encouraging banks to offer more instant payment services
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Longer Reads 📜
More! More! More! Tech Workers Max Out Their A.I. Use. - The New York Times
