TWIF UK & EU - Unsettlement Cycles 27/05

Hello Fintech Friends & welcome to the latest edition of TWIF UK & EU.

This week saw a continuance of EU Leaders  sounding off on ensuring economic independence from a US payment systems. Wero, the Pan-European payments system is to be integrated with local payment rails such as Bancomat in Italy, Bizum in Spain, MB Way in Portugal, and Vipps and MobilePay in the Nordic countries.
It looks as though a central integration will need to exist for these. The EU originally thought it had an ace up it sleeve in OpenBanking until somebody pointed out that Vocalink runs that network, and last we checked, that is yet again an American company.

Running to stand still alongside such efforts is the UK and Europe’s material outsourcing guidance and DORA respectively. These efforts aim to shore up supply chain risk across the continent to avoid critical infrastructure being made vulnerable to attacks. The key risk as ever for fintech is to ensure that the power to innovate is not suffocated by the power to regulate. But fear not, we have Stablecoins for that right? Well, perhaps not, The EU seems not to follow in the footsteps of the US on the GENIUS act, citing fear of loss of control on monetary policy by proxy value issuance through Stablecoins.

A counterpoint to my doom and gloom above relates to the Bank of England proposing to extend real time payments over the weekends via its RTGS and CHAPs systems. This would in theory help and hurt Stablecoin adoption. My thoughts are two-fold. If Stablecoins can do it, Fiat should be able to support it. My second thoughts are, if Fiat can do it, whats the point in stablecoin. A key value-add right now for stablecoins is liquidity supplement. Markets cant exchange on weekend’s because of fiat rails. Stablecoins fill an effective IOU gap for institutional liquidity here. Its why small fintechs can barely afford to launch cards - worst case liquidity scenarios have to be accommodated by issuers and so 5 days of settlement is usually the minimum ask. Deleting weekends from this calculation will free up huge amounts of dead capital. (although second order affects of banks having more flighty deposits I can’t account for just yet!)

But my takeaway here is, if Fiat can do it, its one less reason to need Stablecoins. And whilst this excerpt from the BoE may seem pro innovation:

“Extending settlement hours is an important part of delivering our vision of a safe and resilient multi-money ecosystem in which different forms of money – including central bank money, commercial bank money, tokenised deposits and stablecoins – can coexist and interoperate across both conventional and distributed ledger infrastructure. In that future landscape, central bank money remains the ultimate risk-free settlement asset and an essential anchor for the singleness of money.”

…It really isn’t. Coexistence isn’t really of interest here. Relevance is. The subtext is obvious, unless fiat can move as freely as crypto, fiat will become irrelevant. And if a central bank’s relevance fades, then that - dear reader - is a problem in the eye of the beholder.

There is a lot at stake here in how start ups and innovation are fostered in the age of AI. But I for one, have a sinking feeling that the incumbents entrench further into the critical infrastructure of financial services. More on that in the following weeks!

Continue on below for the week’s financing’s / exits / regulatory news / product launches!

Have feedback for us? Let us know. Find me at @danielcronin, @twifintech, and @ndm

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AI for Procurement Start- Up Pivot announces $40M Series B to replace legacy procurement software with an enterprise AI Operating System

NeoBank Mercury raised $200m Series D at a $5.2bn valuation to scale

Farther raised $150m Series D led by , cementing its unicorn status having surpassed $23bn in recruited assets and will use the round to expand platform capabilities for advisors.

UK payments orchestrator Primer raised $100m Series C, to deepen AI capabilities and expand in the US.

AI operating system Moment raised $78m for its investment management is now used by firms overseeing more than $10tn in client assets.

Socket has raised $60m Series C at a $1bn valuation, led by Thrive Capital, as AI-assisted software development increases enterprise exposure to open-source supply chain risk.

AI-native fund ops infra bunch raised $35m Series B to scale ops in new territories

Equipifi brings in $34m to scale bank-native BNPL embedded inside banks and credit unions.

Ocean emerged from stealth with $28m in funding to build agentic email security for enterprises facing AI-driven fraud and impersonation attacks.

Sardine raised a $25m extension led by National Bank of Canada, alongside a multi-year partnership to deploy Sardine’s device intelligence and real-time risk scoring across the bank’s retail, commercial and wealth operations.

Stitch raised $25m Series A marking a16z’s first investment in the GCC. The company is building an operating system for modern financial institutions.

Eisen raised $18.5m, comprising a $10m Series A and previously undisclosed $8.5m seed, to address dormant-account compliance for banks, fintechs and digital asset platforms.

HR Tool, RemotePass raised $17.4m Series B to expand its global employment, payroll and spend platform across Europe and the US.

Quantum Bridge raised $8m to scale quantum-safe cryptographic infrastructure for financial institutions, telecoms, governments and defence users.

Aryze raised €3.5m pre-Series A to scale stablecoin and tokenised real-world asset infrastructure for licensed issuers.

Klarna launched an AI-powered Shopping Search app in ChatGPT, giving users real-time product discovery, pricing, availability. For merchants, this turns AI chat into a new high-intent acquisition channel.

Treasury Prime launches Prime Cash, powered by Green Dot Network, enabling users to deposit cash at more than 90,000 US retail locations including Walmart, CVS, Walgreens and 7-Eleven.

Programmable credit infra Grove launches Basin, offering up to $1bn in daily liquidity for tokenized real-world assets.

Norm Ai launched a compliance agent for Microsoft 365 Copilot, aimed at helping regulated firms operationalise compliance directly inside day-to-day workplace tools.

National Bank of Canada selected Sardine’s agentic risk platform to strengthen digital banking security and fraud operations efficiency.

Qivalis, EU backed euro stablecoin project, added 25 banks, taking the consortium to 37 institutions across 15 countries. New backers include ABN Amro, Sabadell, Rabobank, Bankinter, Bank of Ireland, Handelsbanken and Nordea.

Coinbase partner/invest in Centrifuge and named it a preferred tokenization infrastructure platform, with Centrifuge building on Base to bring institutional-grade, compliant assets on-chain for eligible non-US users.

Pharos Network partnered with licensed payments provider KUN to tokenize supply-chain credit and enable real cross-border payments on-chain.

Vida announced the listing of tokenized equity, VIDAx, on Payward’s xStocks,

The Bank of England proposed extending RTGS and CHAPS settlement hours to Sundays and some bank holidays, initially from 1:30am to 6pm, no earlier than 2029, as part of a longer-term push toward near-24/7 settlement and support for tokenised deposits and stablecoins.

The European Commission launched two consultations on the review of MiCA, both closing on 31 August 2026. Important because MiCA is now the core EU framework for crypto-asset issuers and crypto-asset service providers.

This weeks Puzzle:

Last Edition’s Answers:

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