Hello TWIF UK & Europe friends,
Please find another week of fintech news, financings and exits below.
Funding 💸
Highlights below of deals since the last post in the fintech space across the UK & Europe. Deal data powered by Dealroom.
🇪🇺 SpeedInvest closed its fourth fund of €350m.
🇪🇺 Payroll data access solution Bankflip raised a €2.6m round.
🇪🇺 Cross-chain liquidity provider Squid raised a ¢4m round.
🇪🇺 FinOps solution Qvalia raised a €4m round from Spiltan and Stella Capital.
🇪🇺 Carbon credit insurance solution CarbonPool raised ¢12m from Heartcore Capital, HCS Capital, Vorwerk Ventures and Revent Capital.
🇬🇧 B2B payment fintech Kriya raised a £50m debt facility from Viola Ventures.
🌍 Digital asset embedded finance solution Mesh received a $6.5m investment which included $5m from PayPal in the form of its PYUSD stablecoin.
🌍 BNPL provider Sunbit secured a $310m debt facility from Citi and Ares Management.
Challenger Banking 🚀
🇪🇺 Trade Republic had 1 million people register interest in their new "Saveback" card.
🇪🇺 N26 is reportedly closing accounts of Italian customers without warning.
🇬🇧 Dutch neobank Bunq has applied for a UK EMI licence and has achieved a full year of profitability.
🇬🇧 Starling is to be the sponsor of the bike hire scheme in Manchester.
🇬🇧 Fintech super-app Paysme is closing down after failing to gain traction.
🇬🇧 Embedded finance lender YouLend has completed a private securitisation transaction with JP Morgan enabling it to lend an additional £4bn to SMEs.
🇬🇧 Circular economy fintech Twig is shutting down.
🌍 Spend management solution Ramp has expanded its procurement capabilities through acquiring Venue and launched Ramp Procurement.
🌍 Amazon is partnering with embedded lending solution SellersFi to provide Amazon sellers with access to credit lines of up to $10m.
Digital Assets ₿
🇪🇺 BitPanda has launched "Wealth" a solution for family offices and asset managers to invest and manage their crypto assets and diversify.
🇬🇧 British police have uncovered nearly $2bn of bitcoin linked to an investment fraud in China.
🇬🇧 Crypto exchange Binance is struggling to find an authorised third party to satisfy the FCA so it can re-enter the market.
🌍 The US government is selling nearly $120m of BTC into the market that it seized from users of the Silk Road.
🌍 Think tank The Atlantic Council has said that the US is falling behind other countries on CBDCs.
🌍 Chinese asset manager Harvest Global Investments has applied to launch a spot bitcoin ETF with the Hong Kong SFC.
🌍 The DOJ charged two people for operating a near $2bn crypto fraud scheme called HyperFund.
🌍 Binance has allowed its large liquidity providers to keep assets outside of its custodial partner Ceffu, adding Sygnum and FlowBank as options.
🌍 Crypto payments company Transak is to use Visa Direct for crypto withdrawals.
🌍 The personal accounts of the Ripple co-founder were hacked for $120m. Binance froze $4.2m worth of XRP linked to the hacking.
🌍 Bankrupt crypto lender Celsius is to distribute $3bn to creditors via Coinbase and PayPal.
🌍 FTX has said that it expects to fully repay customers. Three individuals were also charged with operating a $400m sim-swapping hack that targeted FTX.
🌍 Coinbase has appointed former UK Chancellor George Osborne to its advisory council. It also announced USDC to USD conversion fee of 0.1% for amounts over $75m to institutional investors.
Traditional Banking 🏦
🇪🇺 Société Générale is looking to sell Shine, the neobank it bought in 2020.
🇪🇺 Bank of Ireland is investing €60m into ATMs to ensure each branch has one.
🇪🇺 Deutsche Bank is cutting 3,500 jobs to improve efficiency.
🇬🇧 HSBC has been fined nearly £60m by the PRA for failing to log accounts eligible for FSCS compensation.
🇬🇧 NatWest have reported that businesses using open banking payments save 150 hours each year on operations.
🇬🇧 TSB is cutting jobs and branches in order to save costs.
🌍 CIBC Innovation Banking invested in AI-powered OCR solution Rossum.
🌍 Citibank is being sued by the New York AG for failing to protect customers from scams online and refusing reimbursement.
🌍 US Bank has launched consumer originated RTP payments.
Fintech Infrastructure 🚧
🇬🇧 The UK's Labour party has announced its fintech plans which include delivery of the next phase of open banking, to embrace securities tokenisation and a digital pound.
🌍 Payroll solution Pinwheel is partnering with bank software platform Jack Henry to make its deposit switching solution available to community and regional banks.
Payments 💰
🇪🇺 Klarna is bringing back Money Story, a feature that encourages consumers to review their personal spend over the past year and nudges users to money management tools in its app.
🇪🇺 Over 30 payment firms got in touch with MessageBird whose CEO posted they wanted to acquire a company with an EMI or PI licence.
🇪🇺 Biometric card solution Zwipe is pulling back from card payments and focusing on biometric access control.
🇪🇺 Adyen is partnering with SMB finops platform BILL to provide acquiring and issuing services for its AP/AR solution.
🇬🇧 Payment solution Worldpay has extended its partnership with embedded finance solution Liberis.
🇬🇧 Visa has said that in the UK one in three consumers are victims of APP fraud.
🇬🇧 Real-time payment solution Volt is bringing open banking payments to car dealerships with Bumper.
🇬🇧 Open banking payment solution Kikapay is winding down.
🇬🇧 Open banking payments company Ecospend has signed wealth manager Hargreaves Lansdown for its Pay-by-bank solution.
🌍 New York Governor promised legislation to requirements of BNPL providers with that of other consumer credit products including a requirement to assess affordability and maintain accurate data for credit reporting.
🌍 PayPal is cutting 9% of its workforce, some 2,500 jobs.
🌍 Block is laying off 1,000 employees across Square and Cash App. Block has also integrated Cash App with PSP Nuvei allowing merchants to easily adopt Cash App Pay at checkout.
🌍 The Reserve Bank of India has halted the ability of PSP Paytm to take on new deposits and its wallet services and is considering cancelling its bank permit.
🌍 Mastercard has launched a new AI model to detect fraud that they claim improves detection rates by 300%.
🌍 Apple released stats for its Apple Card; 12m cardholders, $1bn earned in cash back and $10bn in Savings accounts.
💡
Have a thought/question/comment about anything we covered?
Start a discussion in the comments section below!
Longer reads 📜
Dark software - Matt Brown
Affinity Marketing and the Latino American Fintech Opportunity - Francisco Arceo
FinTech Investment Landscape 2023 - Innovate Finance
👍 👎 Have feedback for us? Let us know
