Hello TWIF UK & Europe friends,

Don't forget to join us tomorrow for London FinTech Breakfast, AI Edition. Your morning dose of coffee, connections, and cutting-edge ideas.

This edition, we’ll be joined by the excellent team at Gradient Labs, and as always, our fantastic partners CMS. Don’t miss out!

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.

🇪🇺 Payment and shipping platform REasy raised a $1.8m seed round from Ingressive Capital, Techmind VC and others.

🇪🇺 Green investment platform Keenest raised a €10m round.

🇪🇺 Bitcoin treasury AMBTS raised a €30m round.

🇬🇧 Stablecoin infrastructure provider BVNK secured strategic investment from Citi Ventures.

🌍 Prediction market platform Kalshi raised a $300m round at a $5bn valuation from Andreessen Horowitz and Sequoia.

🌍 Web3 payments solution Coinflow raised a $25m Series from Pantera Capital, Reciprocal Ventures, Coinbase Ventures, Jump Capital and CMT Digital Ventures.

Challenger Banking 🚀

🇬🇧 Monzo is considering reapplying for a US banking licence.

🇬🇧 Australian business banking fintech Zeller is targeting a UK launch.

🇬🇧 Spend management solution Pleo is launching multi-currency accounts.

🇬🇧 Revolut is to launch its payments platform in India later in 2025.

🇬🇧 The Investment Association opened up applications for its 9th cohort of its fintech accelerator program.

🇬🇧 Personal financial management fintech Pointo launched, leveraging Apple's new FinanceKit API, to help points collectors maximise rewards and optimise spending.

🇬🇧 Cross-border transfer fintech Wise is launching a travel card in India.

🌍 OpenAI has acquired personal investing app Roi.

🌍 Spend management provider Ramp has added AI agents to its Bill Pay platform.

Digital Assets ₿

🇪🇺 The regulation of crypto firms, exchanges and clearing houses in Europe is moving to ESMA.

🇪🇺 Deutsche Bank signed crypto exchange Bullish as a customer for deposit and withdrawal services for its HK and German businesses,

🇬🇧 The FCA has removed the retail ban on crypto ETNs.

🇬🇧Stablecoin infrastructure provider BVNK is being courted by both Coinbase and Mastercard.

🇬🇧 The Bank of England is planning exemptions to its stablecoin cap.

🇬🇧 The UK is to appoint a "digital markets champion" to lead tokenization efforts.

🌍 Coinbase has applied for a national trust charter.

🌍 Payment provider Square has introduced Square Bitcoin, an integrated payments and wallet solution for local businesses.

🌍 Walmart backed OnePay is adding crypto trading and custody through a partnership with Zerohash.

🌍 Digital asset trading software Talos is integrating into BlackRock's Aladdin portfolio management system.

🌍 The owner of the New York Stock Exchange, ICE, will invest $2bn in prediction market platform Polymarket, at a $9bn post-money valuation.

🌍 BNY Mellon is weighing up using tokenized deposits for payments.

🌍 Morgan Stanley is to allow clients to access crypto in their retirement accounts.

🌍 Tokenization platform Securitize is exploring a public listing via SPAC with Cantor Fitzgerald.

Traditional Banking 🏦

🇬🇧 Lloyds barcode cash deposit feature has already seen £3m paid in at PayPoint locations since its August launch.

🌍 Fifth Third Bank is to acquire Comerica for nearly $11bn.

🌍 JPMorgan is requiring employees to register their biometric data to access its new HQ.

🌍 Bank of America is rolling out an AI payments assistant.

Fintech Infrastructure 🚧

🇬🇧 Banking data provider Bud Financial launched an MCP server for AI-driven banking.

🇬🇧 The LSE and Crowdcube have partnered to provide retail investors access to private markets.

🇬🇧 BaaS provider ClearBank signed payroll provide PayCaptain as a customer.

🇬🇧 Open banking provider Yapily has signed Google as a customer for bank account verification for businesses in Europe.

🌍 Card issuer Synchrony is acquiring the consumer credit business of Versatile Credit.

Payments 💰

🇪🇺 Klarna signed up as a customer for Google Could's full AI stack.

🇬🇧 Payments firm GoCardless reported its first adjusted EBITDA positive quarter for Q2 2025

🇬🇧 Checkout.com launched a one-click solution for global payments.

🌍 PayPal is offering 5% cash rebates with for consumers using its BNPL solution.

🌍 BNPL provider Affirm is to support Google's Agent Payments Protocol.

👍 👎 Have feedback for us? Let us know

See you next week!