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.

🇪🇺 Core banking software solution Tuum raised a €25m Series B from SpeedInvest and CommerzVentures.

🇪🇺 Neobroker Pluto.markets raised a $2.6m round from Y Combinator, Nordic Makers VC and Magnetic.

🇪🇺 Accounting fintech Pennylane raised a €40m Series C from Sequoia and DST Global, becoming a unicorn in the process.

🇬🇧 Property lender Blend Network raised a £50m round.

🇬🇧 Payment solution AccessPay raised a £6.2m from NatWest.

🇬🇧 Insurtech Artificial Labs raised $5m from Augmentum.

🌍 Digital wealth solution Marstone raised a $8m Series B led by Mendon Ventures and South Rose Capital.

🌍 US T-bill wealth solution Finvest raised $2.7m from investors including Bayhouse Capital, YC, Fractal Ventures and more.

🌍 Charitable donation platform Overflow raised $20m.

🌍 SMB accounting fintech Finally raised $10m from Active Capital and PeakSpan Capital.

Challenger Banking 🚀

🇪🇺 Kinnevik, a Swedish VC company has written off its investment into neobank Monese.

🇬🇧 Virgin Money is to make more job cuts on top of the 150 job cuts in Q1.

🇬🇧 Revolut has reported that the majority of scams that customers reported started on Meta platforms.

Digital Assets ₿

🇪🇺 Kraken has secured a Virtual Asset Service Provider registration from Dutch Central Bank.

🌍 Bankrupt crypto lender Genesis is trying to get approval to sell $1.6bn BTC to sister company Grayscale

🌍 Ripple Labs has been ordered to produce financial statements and details about its institutional sale of XRP tokens to the SEC.

🌍 Solana experienced a major five hour outage.

🌍 Crypto wallet Metamask users can buy crypto through Robinhood.

🌍 BlackRock's bitcoin ETF has already become one of the top five ETFs based on inflows since it launched.

🌍 FTX is seeking permission to sell its 8% stake in Anthropic.

Traditional Banking 🏦

🇪🇺 Societe Generale is cutting costs by making 900 staff in France redundant.

🇬🇧 HSBC is installing 10 "Cash Pods", which are advanced ATMs, in towns with no branches to improve access to cash.

🇬🇧 NatWest has been confirmed as the first UK bank to become a supplier on the government's new Dynamic Purchasing System for open banking.

🇬🇧 HSBC is partnering with Google Cloud to offer venture debt financing to climate tech startups.

🇬🇧 Tesco has sold its Tesco Bank subsidiary to Barclays for £600m.

🌍 Citi Retail Services has partnered with embedded lending platform ChargeAfter to offer credit and instalment loans at its POS.

🌍 Bucking the trend of most traditional banks, JPMorgan Chase is to open 500 new branches over three years.

🌍 The CEO of Singaporean bank DBS is getting a 30% pay cut as a result of outages.

Fintech Infrastructure 🚧

🇬🇧 As part of the New Payment Architecture (NPA), Pay.UK is tendering the operations of Faster Payment systems, with Tata's TCS ahead in the running of existing operator Vocalink, a Mastercard company.

🇬🇧 10x Banking has signed Old Mutual as a customer as the banking infrastructure provider expands into Africa.

🇬🇧 ID verification solution Onfido is in talks to be acquired by payment security solution Entrust.

🌍 BNY Mellon is working with Microsoft on a cloud data platform for its clients.

🌍 FIS has launched an Open Access platform which includes Akoya, MX, Plaid and Yodlee.

🌍 Plaid has named a President as it gears up for an IPO.

Payments 💰

🇪🇺 France has become the first country in the EU to launch India's UPI payment system, allowing Indian tourists to pay via UPI at the Eiffel Tower.

🇪🇺 Worldline is to offer TrueLayer's payments products as part of its Payment Orchestration product for instant payouts and deposits. The payment company is also cutting 8% of staff, some 1,400 jobs.

🇪🇺 The EU adopted rules to ensure that instant transfers arrive within 10 seconds for both consumers and businesses.

🇪🇺 Adyen reported strong half-year results with +29% increase in processing volume and 23% increase in net revenues. Shares popped over 20%.

🇪🇺 PayPal is working on a new consumer app that will take advantage of the new EU DMA rules that require opening access to NFC technology in iPhones.

🇬🇧 Money transfer service Atlantic Money is to launch in the US, Canada and Australia.

🇬🇧 Payment solution Trustly has integrated MX's data enrichment services into its open banking suite.

🌍 Payments platform Airwallex has partnered with McLaren Formula 1 team to process its cross-border payments.

🌍 Australian payment infrastructure Fat Zebra has acquired open banking company Adatree.

🌍 Fleet card AtoB has switched to Mastercard from Visa as it seeks to compete with Wex and Fleetcor.

🌍 Payments giant Fiserv signed 17 large e-commerce merchants to its debit networks after the Fed's debit routing clarification came into effect last year. The also reported strong earnings with GPV +17%, Zelle volume +44% and Clover revenue +30%.

🌍 US payment processor Jack Henry reported +8% growth in revenue and +14% in net income.

🌍 Canadian payments company Nuvei has launched an omnichannel solution for merchants and platforms.

🌍 Indian authorities are cracking down on foreign UPI providers, targeting Google and Walmart-backed PhonePe after the RBI last week restricted Paytm whose shares dropped on the news.

Longer reads 📜

• Akoya - Short Blog - Tom Noyes
• BaaS Backlash: The Great Unbundling Under Scrutiny - Whitesight
• The business of check cashing - Patrick McKenzie
• The Next Great Consumer Fintech company - Simon Taylor
• Why is there so much idea recycling in fintech? - Nik Milanovic

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See you next week!