Happy New Year TWIF UK & Europe friends,
Please find another week of fintech news, financings and exits below.
Tweet of the week 🦉🏆
2023 is almost over. Time to visualize who I need to become to make 2024 a successful year. pic.twitter.com/ft0IyBzqZa— fintechjunkie (@fintechjunkie) December 30, 2023
before you make fun of a kid for believing in Santa, just remember you believed in 1-click checkout startups for awhile— Alex Cohen (@anothercohen) December 26, 2023
✔️ Block reported $2.6 billion in “Product development” expenses in the last 12 months
✔️ Which is comparable to JPMorgan’s $2.7 billion tech investment in its Consumer & Community Banking (CCB) business (see slide below)
✔️ ….but… https://t.co/MaufAcdZ8y pic.twitter.com/6FCGs5gtaO— Jevgenijs Kazanins (@jevgenijs) December 23, 2023
People often email me with big-sounding ideas (reinvent commerce, change the way people meet, transform scientific research), and the bigger the idea sounds, the less interested I am. Truly big ideas don't sound big initially.— Paul Graham (@paulg) December 20, 2023
Funding 💸
Highlights below of deals since the last post in the fintech space across the UK & Europe. Deal data powered by Dealroom.
🇪🇺 Private markets investment solution Crescenta raised a €3.5m pre-seed round from K Fund, FJ Labs and All Iron Ventures.
🇪🇺 Spanish neobank Myinvestor raised a €45m round from Nortia Capital, Arama Futuro Family Office.
🇪🇺 Payment operations fintech Formance raised a $6.6m round.
🇬🇧 Treasury solution Vitt raised $16m from SpeedInvest and BTV.
🇬🇧 Lender Updraft finalised a £250m forward flow arrangement with Jefferies and Santander as well as raising £22m in equity led by Quilam Capital.
🇬🇧 Crypto baas solution Fiat Republic raised a $7m seed round from Seedcamp, Speedinvest, Credo Ventures, Fabric Ventures and more.
🇬🇧 Car repair payment solution Bumper raised a £40m Series B.
🌍 MENA based BNPL solution Tamara raised $340m co-led by SNB Capital and Sanabil Investments.
🌍 MENA BNPL fintech Tabby raised a $700m debt round from JP Morgan and extended its Series D round by $50m.
🌍 Charley Ma (ex Ramp, Plaid and Alloy) and Mahdi Raza (ex Robinhood) launched Exponent Founders Capital.
Challenger Banking 🚀
🇬🇧 Dutch neobank Bunq is preparing for a launch in the UK. It also launched an AI chatbot.
🇬🇧 Neobank Revolut finally reported 2022 earnings which saw revenue +45% to $1.1bn but profits down 78% to £5.8m due to an increase in admin expenses. It is not immediately pursuing a US banking licence but will in the long-term.
🇬🇧 HSBC has increased the size of its "Growth Lending" fund b £100m due to high demand.
🇬🇧 Neobank Monese lost £30.5m in 2022 and has warned of its going concern.
🌍 PFM Monarch Money is expanding to Canada to capitalise on the shutting down of Mint.
🌍 Digital wallet Cash App has introduced Savings, a separate savings account and round ups.
Digital Assets ₿
🇪🇺 Circle has secured a Digital Asset Service Provider registration in France.
🇪🇺 The ECB is seeking vendors to provide services for a digital euro.
🇪🇺 The EBA is to study the impact of the crypto market and crypto companies on the banks it regulates.
🇪🇺 Ripple was approved as a Virtual Asset Service Provider in Ireland.
🇬🇧 Revolut is limiting its crypto buying functionality for UK business customers due to FCA guidelines on marketing of crypto.
🇬🇧 A Digital Securities Sandbox has received 19 applications from despite the exclusion of unbacked crypto assets.
🌍 The Financial Accounting Standards Board has changed its rules to allow corporations holding digital assets to recognise their "fair value", not just their impairment.
🌍 Representatives from BlackRock, Nasdaq and the SEC met to discuss spot bitcoin ETFs for a second time, increasing speculation of their approval. BlackRock also added Jane Street and JP Morgan as authorised participants.
🌍 3AC founders have had $1.1bn in assets frozen by a court in the British Virgin Islands.
🌍 Digital Currency Group (DCG) CEO Barry Silbert has resigned as chairman of Grayscale, the asset management portco of DCG.
🌍 Visa has partnered with SmartMedia Technologies to create a web3 loyalty offering for brands to enable consumers to earn digital rewards.
🌍 US asset manager Fidelity filed a registration with the SEC for a spot bitcoin ETF.
🌍 India banned 9 crypto exchanges including Binance and Kraken.
🌍 Paxos has received approval to expand to the Solana exchange.
Traditional Banking 🏦
🇪🇺 Banco Santander is attempting to combat Facebook Marketplace scams with a custom scam warning and asking if they have seen the item in person and the payment not made if they haven't.
🇬🇧 HSBC is to launch Zing, a money transfer service to take on Wise. The bank is also among the companies interested in Tesco's banking unit.
🇬🇧 JP Morgan's UK neobank Chase is aiming to be profitable in 2025.
Fintech Infrastructure 🚧
🇪🇺 Core banking software provider Mambu is integrating payment solution Numeral's product into its offering to its customers.
🇬🇧 Open banking service provider D*One, a unit of ClearScore, is to power the consumer underwriting of lender Salad Money.
🌍 Lending software solution nCino has deepened its partnership with Salesforce.
🌍 Non-profit industry body Financial Data Exchange (FDX) has updated its API version to v6 to include two way fraud notifications, a account opening use case and an endpoint for sending employment and income data.
Banks starting to give their thoughts on the CFPBs new open banking rules .. 👇
💡 Increased data protection safeguards to apple to all third parties (TPPs) and aggregators
💡 Ban on screen scraping if bank has an API
💡 TPPs and aggregators to supervise their customers data…— Michael Jenkins (@MJenkins88) January 4, 2024
🌍 The CFPB is being urged to increase data protection in its new open banking rules by industry groups The Clearing House Association and Bank Policy Institute.
🌍 Card of file update solution Knot API partnered with Astra to make it easier to manage switching cards.
Payments 💰
🇪🇺 EPI has completed its first A2A instant payment POC from a German bank to a French bank.
🇬🇧 Phase 1 of the rollout of non-sweeping VRP is to occur in Q3 2024.
🇬🇧 New PSR rules on APP fraud protections will come into force in October this year which include a potential £100 excess for consumers and the cost of reimbursement split 50:50 between sending and receiving firms.
🇬🇧 25% of UK BNPL users were charged a late fee according to research.
🇬🇧 The UK Government released its Future of Payments review. Check out my highlights 👇
In November 2023 the UK Government dropped a early xmas present to fintech nerds ... the Future of Payments Review.https://t.co/LyYP8zsmhb
After a busy festive period, I finally had the chance to give it a read.
Here are some takeaways 👇— Michael Jenkins (@MJenkins88) January 7, 2024
🌍 Visa has acquired a majority stake in Mexican payment processor Prosa.
🌍 Apple, Visa and Mastercard have been accused of limiting competition in the POS market.
🌍 Affirm is extending its partnership with Walmart which will see the BNPL solution offered at self-checkout kiosks in 4,500 stores.
🌍 The CFPB is turning its attention to card acceptance costs and wants to see more competition to drive down costs.
🌍 PayPal is making its unbranded checkout, powered by its Braintree platform, a "strategic imperative".
🌍 Uber's business arm has partnered with both Brex and Ramp to help automated matching of Uber receipts.
💡
Have a thought/question/comment about anything we covered?
Start a discussion in the comments section below!
Longer reads 📜
The state of BaaS in UK & Europe - Whitesight
Scaling Human's with Financial AI - Naré Vardanyan, Fintech Brain Food
Build, Buy, or Borrow - Capital Gains
The Long Shadow of Checks - Patrick McKenzie
Fintech Brainfood's 2023 in Review - Simon Taylor
👍 👎 Have feedback for us? Let us know
