Hello TWIF UK & Europe friends,
Please find another week of fintech news, financings and exits below.
Quick programming note, there will be no TWIF UK & Europe for the next couple of weeks.
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Tweet of the week 🦉🏆
At SpaceX, Elon Musk created an “idiot index” to locate areas in rocket construction where laziness and out-of-date assumptions were keeping costs unreasonably high.
A similar exercise is needed in small business lending in order to unlock the access to capital that…— Alex Johnson (@AlexH_Johnson) November 1, 2023
Why did Payments company Worldline's stock drop by 70%? After Adyen's drop, is the whole Fintech payments sector screwed? No. Huge differences exist. The market can't tell Apples 🍎from Oranges 🍊. Why? 👇
📰 The news: Payments company Worldline stock dropped 70% after it cut… pic.twitter.com/vIj7LXfKlc— Simon Taylor (@sytaylor) October 30, 2023
Funding 💸
Highlights below of deals since the last post in the fintech space across the UK & Europe. Deal data powered by Dealroom.
🇪🇺 Checkout abandonment solution Fero raised a $3m round from Volta Ventures, Coatue Management and Antler.
🇬🇧 BNPL solution Zilch raised money from eBay at a $2bn valuation.
🇬🇧 Atom Bank raised £100m from BBVA, Toscafund Asset Management and Infinity Investment Partners.
🇬🇧 Insurtech Eleos raised £615k from Fuel Ventures, APX, Magic Fund and Indico Capital Partners.
🇬🇧 Institutional digital asset platform Avantgarde Finance raised a $5.5m Series A from Jump Capital, Acrew Capital, Coinshares Ventures and Blockchange Ventures.
🇬🇧 Insurtech Sprout.ai raised a £5.4m round from Amadeus Capital, Playfair Capital, Octopus Ventures, Techstars and more.
🌍 Middle East BNPL solution Tabby secured a $200m Series D at a $1.5bn valuation.
🌍 Latam BaaS solution QI Tech raised a $200m Series B led by General Atlantic.
🌍 Banking solution for the over 60s Charlie raised a $16m Series A and $7m in debt financing led by TTV Capital.
Challenger Banking 🚀
🇬🇧 Revolut has hired a new CEO for Revolut NewCo, the entity it has prepared for when it receives its UK banking licence.
🇬🇧 Neobank Kroo launched a crowdfunding campaign.
🇬🇧 Business lender Funding Circle received an SBA licence in the US.
🌍 Financial wellness solution Bloom Credit launched a credit reporting service for rent payments.
🌍 Intuit is reportedly shutting down Mint and pushing users to use Credit Karma that it acquired in 2020.
🌍 Nubank has reached 90m customers in Latam.
Digital Assets ₿
🇬🇧 The government released results of its digital asset consultation and proposes a regulatory framework starting next year.
🇬🇧 Ziglu founder Mark Hipperson has rejoined the company after resigning last year.
🇬🇧 HSBC has tested a tokenised deposit platform for intra-company treasury transactions. It has also tokenised gold.
🇬🇧 PayPal has been approved by the FCA as a crypto service provider.
🌍 Gemini has filed a complaint against bankrupt lender Genesis over shares in GBTC worth $1.6bn.
🌍 Kraken is to begin sharing user information with the IRS this month after receiving a court order. They have to share user info who have conducted $20,000 or more in a single year between 2016 and 2020.
🌍 Students in Australia have been piloting the use of CBDCs to pay for goods at on-campus vendors.
🌍 Circle is to phase out support of consumer accounts minting USDC and EURC.
🌍 BlackRock's bitcoin ETF has secured liquidity from trading firms including Jane Street, Virtu Financial, Jump Trading and Hudson River Trading.
🌍 Visa successfully piloted the use of tokenised deposits for B2B payments with HSBC and Hang Seng Bank in Hong Kong as part of an e-HK CBSC program.
🌍 Zodia Custody, the digital asset custody provider owned by Standard Chartered has expanded its services in Hong Kong.
🌍 PayPal has been subpoenaed by the SEC about its USD stablecoin.
Traditional Banking 🏦
🇪🇺 Allied Irish Bank has apologised for a recent glitch in its online banking.
🇪🇺 Deutsche Bank is closing 250 of its Postbank branches.
🇬🇧 TSB, Santander and Metro Bank topped the PSRs list of banks with the most amount of APP fraud sent per £m of transactions.
🌍 DBS has been prevented from acquiring new business ventures or reducing its branch or ATM network by regulators as it tackles the fallout from its digital banking outages.
Fintech Infrastructure 🚧
🌍 Plaid partnered with payment provider Adyen to offer Pay-by-bank functionality in the US.
🌍 Payment provider Dwolla has launched Dwolla Connect, a service for customers to transfer open finance data to Dwolla to enable bank verification through third parties.
🌍 Treasury Prime launched OneKey, an instant payment rail allowing fintechs to transfer money between banks in milliseconds.
Payments 💰
🇪🇺 Payment acquiring firm Ingenico is partnering with embedded lending provider Jifiti to allow its customers to offer lending solutions at the POS.
🇪🇺US payment processor Shift4 has acquired payment solution Finaro to expand into Europe.
🇪🇺 EPI has closed its acquisition of iDeal and Payconiq.
🇪🇺 Mollie has received a Payment Institution licence from the FCA.
🇪🇺 Klarna is cutting 500 jobs and outsourcing them to a partner.
🇬🇧 Wise has secured Payhawk as a customer for its global payment capabilities.
🇬🇧 The PSR released performance of APP scams which showed AIB and Danske Bank as the two banks with the lowest refunded APP fraud by value.
🇬🇧 The FCA found that more than 25% of Brit's used BNPL during a six-month period.
🇬🇧 Mangopay has secured an UK EMI licence.
🇬🇧 TrueLayer is to power account funding and payouts for gambling operator William Hill.
🇬🇧 Tribe Payments solutions are available on Temenos partner ecosystem.
🇬🇧 Payment orchestrator BR-DGE partnered with fraud provider Sift to increase fraud protection for merchants,
🌍 Fleet payment solution Wex is to acquire software provider Payzer for $250m.
🌍 PayPal is selling its Happy Returns unit to UPS.
🌍 Payment solution Payoneer has partnered with Etsy as the marketplace expands into emerging markets.
🌍 Airbnb is expanding its Pay Over Time product with Klarna to Australia.
🌍 Singapore is testing a single interoperable QR code scheme that would combine multiple QR codes in a single label.
🌍 Remittance provider Sendwave received a $1.5m penalty from the CFPB for deceiving users.
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Have a thought/question/comment about anything we covered?
Start a discussion in the comments section below!
Longer reads 📜
A first principles look at small business lending - Alex Johnson
Elon Musk and the Twitter Jerk Circuit - Jareau Wade
Banking as a Service (BaaS) Unpacked - Chris Dean
Caroline Ellison Was Supposed to Shock the SBF Trial. Instead, the Defense Team Has - Katie Baker, The Ringer
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