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.

🇪🇺 Financial automation platform Dost raised a £6m Series A led by Octopus Ventures.

🇪🇺 Invoice reconciliation fintech Donnerstag.ai raised a €4.3m round from SpeedInvest, QED Investors and Crestone Venture Capital.

🇪🇺 Crypto wallet and bank account solution Deblock raised a €30m Series A from SpeedInvest, CommerzVentures, Headline, Chalfen Ventures and more.

🇪🇺 SME tax solution Integral raised a €5.6m round from General Catalyst, Cheery Ventures and Puzzle Ventures.

🇬🇧 Lender Capital on Tap raised a £500m funding package.

🇬🇧 Lending platform SAPI raised a $5m round from Hudson Cove Capital and angels.

🌍 Spend management solution Ramp raised a $300m round at a $32m valuation.

₿ Crypto exchange Kraken raised $800m at a $20bn valuation from investors including Citadel and also filed for an IPO.

Challenger Banking 🚀

🇪🇺 Accounting software Pennylane launches in Germany.

🇬🇧 Revolut has applied for a South African banking licence. It also expanded its partnership with Booking.com for payments.

🇬🇧 Spend management fintech Pleo has partnered with accounting provider FreeAgent to streamline expense management for SMEs.

🇬🇧 Zopa Bank is launching investments in partnership with Upvest.

🇬🇧 Neobroker eToro has launched cash ISA's in a partnership with Moneyfarm.

🌍 Cash App is trialing a real-time financial health score.

Digital Assets ₿

🇪🇺 UBS has entered into a partnership with Ant International to partner on blockchain-based cross-border payment settlement.

🇪🇺 Deutsche Borse is to embed SocGen's EUR and USD CoinVertible stablecoin into its infrastructure. The bank also issued its first US digital bond with support from Broadridge.

🇬🇧 Kraken has listed Tokenised GBP, an GBP stablecoin issued by FCA regulated BCP Technologies.

🇬🇧 Revolut is launching stablecoin remittances in the UK and EEA with Polygon.

🌍 Figment, OpenTrade and Crypto.com have partnered to offer enhanced yield on stablecoins.

🌍 DeF protocol Aave is launching a high-yield savings app with $1m insurance-backed protection.

🌍 Citi and Swift had concluded their digital asset trial which demonstrated interoperability between crypto ledger.

🌍 Stablecoin issuer Tether has made a strategic investment into lender Ledn.

🌍 The OCC has said banks can hold certain cryptocurrencies needed to pay gas fees.

🌍 Coinbase has partnered with Morpho to enable ETH-backed loans.

Traditional Banking 🏦

🇬🇧 Lloyds is facing Curve shareholder rebellion of its £120m acquisition.

🌍 JPMorgan Chase is expanding in Dubai. It is also launching the largest fraud and scam prevention initiative in the banks history.

🌍 Bank of America is launching digital 401(k) and retirement planning.

🌍 US Bank has released a cash forecasting tool for corporate treasury.

🌍 Capital One has joined FedNow.

Fintech Infrastructure 🚧

🌍 JPMorgan has reached deals with more open banking providers including Yodlee, Morningstar and Akoya on fees for data access.

🌍 Open banking platform Plaid signed FICO as a customer for real-time cash flow data.

🌍 Card-scheme rule setting body EMVCo is looking into specifications for AI agentic payments.

Payments 💰

🇪🇺 Klarna is selling $6.5bn in loans to hedge fund Elliott Investment Management.

🇪🇺 European digital wallet Wero has gone live in Germany for e-commerce.

🇬🇧 Visa completed its first A2A payment in the UK using VRP.

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See you next week!