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Thanks much! Now, onto today's newsletter. We’ve got a few super exciting events coming up

• August 21st - Edinburgh Fintech Drinks
  - Fintech meets festival vibes. Join us for relaxed drinks during the Fringe!
• September 21st - Fintech in the City with 13books
  - An unforgettable night of networking and celebration at Nobu, co-hosted with 13books.

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.

🇪🇺 Payments solution Handwave raised a $4.2m round,

🇪🇺 Digital asset platform Bit2Me raised a €30m round led by Tether.

🌍 Digital bank Grasshopper raised a $46m round.

🌍 Dispute platform Casap raised a $25m Series A from Lightspeed, Primary Venture Partners, SoFi and Emergence.

🌍 Open banking platform Trovata raised a $9m Series B from State Street and PNC.

Challenger Banking 🚀

🇪🇺 Neobroker BUX introduced actively managed ETF plans.

🇪🇺 German family finance app Bling acquired teen banking app Finstep.

🇪🇺European SME financial app Vivid has expanded its travel management tool for in-app flight booking.

🇪🇺 US spend management provider Brex is launching in the EU after securing a Payment Initiation licence.

🇬🇧 Business bank Tide has launched a cashback feature for SMBs using their Tide card.

🇬🇧 Insurtech Lemonade has launched buildings-only insurance.

🇬🇧 Monzo announced that it has hit 13 million customers, following strong business customer growth.

🇬🇧 BNPL provider Clearpay has introduced a spend cap feature.

🇬🇧 Starling Bank is to open a North America office as it explores a US IPO.

🇬🇧 Neobank Zempler (formerly Cashplus) hit its third consecutive year of profitability, reaching £5.2m in pre-tax profits.

Digital Assets ₿

🇪🇺Crypto platform Bitpanda doubled revenues in 2024 (to €393m) and generated a 30% EBITDA margin.

🇪🇺Crypto exchange Binance is partnering with BBVA to enable its clients to keep assets off-exchange when trading for additional security.

🇪🇺 Credit Agricole acquired a minority stake in tokenised SME exchange Kriptown.

🇪🇺 Backed Finance's tokenised stocks, xStocks, passed $2bn in trading volume.

🇬🇧 The FCA will soon allow retail investors to access crypto exchange traded notes.

🇬🇧Stablecoin infrastructure provider BVNK launched a real-time stablecoin operations solution to manage liquidity.

🌍 Crypto exchange Bullish is readying itself for a public listing.

🌍 Digital asset firm Ripple acquired Canadian stablecoin payment platform Rail for $200m.

🌍 Stablecoin issuance firm Paxos is paying a $48.5m fine for AML failures.

🌍 Coinbase shares tanked after reporting Q2 earnings which missed expectations. It also plans to raise $2bn from a private convertible note offering.

🌍 Ethena's USDe stablecoin market cap surged 75% in the past few weeks to nearly $10bn.

🌍Financial services firm Marex has integrated with JP Morgan's Kinexys Digital payments.

🌍 JP Morgan has launched onchain intraday repo through its Kinexys blockchain and partnership with HQLAx.

Traditional Banking 🏦

🇪🇺 UBS is to pay $300m to settle Credit Suisse's mortgage securities case with the US DoJ.

🌍 Wells Fargo is making an agentic AI push supported by Google Cloud.

Fintech Infrastructure 🚧

🇪🇺 Wealthtech Lemon.markets is to be acquired by Dwpbank.

🇬🇧 Payments infrastructure provider OpenPayd signed Kraken as a customer for virtual IBANs to for fiat onramp capabilities.

🇬🇧 Open banking provider Ordo is shutting down.

🌍 Open banking platform Plaid signed crypto exchange Crypto.com as a customer for instant asset transfers.

Payments 💰

🇪🇺 Klarna is eyeing a September IPO. It also announced an improved delinquency rate globally for its BNPL loans.

🇬🇧The FCA is to bring in new rules to protect consumers in the event of a payment firm with an EMI licence insolvency.

🇬🇧 Payment firm GoCardless is in talks to be acquired by Mollie.

🌍 JP Morgan Payments launched a supply chain finance solution with Oracle's ERP.

🌍 Cross-border transfer solution Remitly has launched a wallet for cross-border stablecoin payments.

🌍American Express has partnered with restaurant POS firm Toast.

🌍 Cross-border payment platform dLocal introduced recurring Pix payments.

Longer reads/listens 📜

• Retail Banking and Stablecoins - Tom Noyes
• Congress Accidentally Created a Federal Payments Charter with Stablecoins - Simon Taylor
• Why haven’t virtual cards lived up to their potential for B2B payments? - Tsys
• Inside Robinhood’s Crypto-Fueled Plan For World Domination - Forbes

👍 👎 Have feedback for us? Let us know

See you next week!