Hello TWIF UK & Europe friends,

Please find another week of fintech news, financings and exits below.

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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.

Longer reads 📜

• Dark software - Matt Brown
• What if ACH had attachments? - Ayo
• Affinity Marketing and the Latino American Fintech Opportunity - Francisco Arceo
• The importance of categorized data in financial analysis - Inscribe
• FinTech Investment Landscape 2023 - Innovate Finance

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See you next week!