Hello Fintech Friends,

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Payments are hot again.

Each week, stablecoin funding is propelling fintech and crypto venture capital to new heights. This week began with a $104 million mega-round announced by Zerohash (disclaimer: investor) at a $1 billion valuation, and ended with news that Tether, the largest global stablecoin issuer which has been famously resistant to raising venture, is considering a $20 billion fundraise at a $500 billion valuation.

The question remains: when your business throws off $10B+ in annual operating profit, why raise?

In more traditional payment financing news, Checkout announced on Friday that it will conduct an employee share buyback plan that values the company at $12 billion. (30% higher than the $9.35 billion internal valuation it had set in June of 2023.) Mary Ann covered the news here:

Checkout.com Reveals New $12B Internal Valuation, Says ‘No Plans to Go Public’

Checkout.com announced on Friday an employee share buyback plan that values the company at $12 billion. Notably, this represents a 70% decrease from the $40 billion valuation the London-based global payments processor achieved when it raised a $1 billion Series D round in January 2022. But it is higher

This Week in FintechMary Ann Azevedo

PSA: For all of our readers who've been waiting for an excuse to bust out the black tie, we're excited to take the wraps off early tickets for our fifth annual Fintech Formal! For a limited time, you can buy your Formal tickest for $100. Don't miss the fifth anniversary of Fintech's Met Gala.

Please find another week of fintech financing events below.

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

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Stat of the Week

UK dominates European fintech funding

The UK accounted for more than half of European fintech venture funding in the first half of 2025, as the sector reached a point of maturity following a difficult couple of years, according to a Finch Capital report.

FinextraEditorial Team

Venture Financing

• Tether, the largest global stablecoin issuer, is evaluating a $15–$20 billion raise at a $500 billion valuation to scale and cement its market dominance.
• AppZen, a finance-compliance SaaS provider, raised $180 million to expand globally.
• Fnality, a UK blockchain startup building institutional settlement infrastructure, raised $136 million to accelerate development of its blockchain-based financial utility.
• Triver, a credit platform for SMEs, landed £100 million to scale its invoice-financing offering.
• ZeroHash*, a crypto infrastructure startup backed by institutional firms, raised $104 million to bolster its crypto custody and trading platform.
• WeTravel, a payments and travel-financial services provider, raised $92 million in its Series C to broaden its payments product for travel groups.
• Cardless, which offers embedded credit-card APIs, raised $60 million in a Series C round to expand its card-issuing infrastructure.
• Numeral, an AI-driven sales tax automation startup, raised $35 million to further automate multi-jurisdictional sales tax.
• Light (a finance-tech company replacing legacy systems via AI), raised $30 million to modernize legacy finance systems with its AI-native platform.
• Zilo, a WealthTech provider of transfer agency and asset servicing software, secured $27 million to scale within wealth and asset management.
• Finary, a Paris-based fintech offering AI-powered wealth tools, landed €25 million to expand across Europe and enhance its AI wealth platform.
• Circuit & Chisel, which builds payments and AI tools, launched with $19.2 million to build new products in payments and crypto to target next-generation fintech workloads.
• Grvt, a privacy-first on-chain finance infrastructure startup, raised $19 million to pioneer privacy-centric DeFi infrastructure.
• Defacto, a French fintech, raised €16 million to support its digital banking solutions.
• Raiku, a Solana-based project, secured $13.5 million in funding to advance development in the Solana ecosystem.
• Goodvest, a fintech focused on economic/social impact investing, raised €12 million to expand its impact investing platform.
• Sunhat, an AI financial reporting platform, raised a €9.2 million Series A to further build its AI reporting tools.
• Tilt, an AI-powered direct indexing platform, raised $7.1 million in seed funding to launch its platform.
• Divine, a stablecoin lender, raised ~$6.6 million (seed round led by Paradigm) to expand lending services in crypto.
• Stablecorp, behind a Canadian stablecoin initiative, secured $5 million to accelerate rollout of Canada’s first stablecoin.
• Shield, a crypto payments infrastructure startup backed by a16z Crypto, raised $5 million to enable global B2B crypto payments.
• Predicti, a predictive AI for finance startup, closed $4.2 million to scale its AI models in financial services.
• Pillar, which builds financial management tools for construction companies, closed €3.2 million to expand its platform.
• Seapoint, an AI business account for European startups, raised a $3 million pre-seed.
• Rekord, a credit decisioning tech startup, raised $2.1 million to enhance its AI-driven credit scoring.
• PayPal invested into Stable, a layer-1 blockchain, to deepen its crypto infrastructure exposure.
• Crossmint, a Web3 payments infrastructure company, won a strategic investment from Circle Ventures to scale its payments rails.
• Argyle, a provider of open finance verification infrastructure, secured funding from Mastercard to accelerate its platform for consumer verification in open finance.
• SkySparc, a Sweden-based provider of digital transformation solutions for treasury and finance organizations, received a majority growth investment from Bregal Milestone to scale operations.
• Moove, an African mobility-fintech backed by Uber, is raising capital in a funding round valuing the company at $2 billion to grow its mobility financing operations.