Hello TWIF UK & Europe friends,

A quick favour

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Join us tomorrow for the next edition of our ever-popular London Fintech Breakfast, this time at Techspace with our friends at Vanta and CMS!
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Please find another week of fintech news, financings and exits below.

Funding

Highlights below of deals since the last post in the fintech space across the UK & Europe. Deal data powered by Dealroom.

• Payments infrastructure provider Polar raised a $10m seed round from Accel and angel investors.
• Wealthtech NaroIQ raised a $6.5m seed round from General Catalyst, Redstone, Angel Invest, Discovery Ventures and 14Peaks Capital.
• Retail investing solution Realist raised a €1.5m pre-seed.
• Payment provider Icon Solutions received investment from UBS.
• Spend management provider Ramp raised a $200m Series E at a $16bn valuation.
• Stablecoin redemption infrastructure provider Ubyx raised a $10m round.

Challenger Banking

• Neobank Revolut has said it is close to launching an AI financial assistant.
• Immigrant credit service Pillar has been acquired by US fintech LemFi.
• Digital wealth platform Sidekick has officially launched.
• Wise has signed Nordic neobank Lunar as a customer for its cross-border transfer platform.
• Nubank has rolled out automated recurring bill payments via Pix.

Digital Assets

• Crypto exchange OKX has opened in Germany and Poland.
• Crypto exchanges Gemini and Coinbase are set to gain EU MiCA licences according to a report from Reuters.
• Coinbase is to launch Coinbase Businesses, a platform for SMEs to manage their finances using crypto. It is also seeking SEC approval for tokenised equities and launched a stablecoin payments service.
• JPMorgan has launched its own deposit token, JPMD on Coinbase's Base chain.
• Crypto exchange Kraken has launched Bitcoin staking with Babylon.
• Walmart and Amazon are both considering issuing stablecoins.
• The US Senate passed the Genius Act.

Traditional Banking

• Metro Bank shares have been rising on speculation of a takeover by Pollen Street.
• Banco Sabadell is mulling the sale of its UK subsidiary TSB.

Fintech Infrastructure

• Stablecoin payments infrastructure company BVNK signed card issuer Highnote as a customer.
• Plaid launched Protect, a real-time fraud intelligence system drawing signals from across the Plaid network.

Payments

• Klarna has launched a mobile phone plan.
• Stripe has launched 15 new capabilities in France.
• Payment provider Mollie has launched Tap, its payment terminal.
• Payment provider Paddle received a $5m fine by FTC over deceptive telemarketing practices five years ago.

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See you next week!