Hello TWIF UK & Europe friends,

Don’t miss out on our London FinTech Breakfast: AI Edition. Your morning dose of coffee, connections, and cutting-edge ideas.

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.

🇪🇺 AI compliance platform Sunhat raised a €9.2m Series A led by CommerzVentures.

🇪🇺 Construction fintech Pillar raised a €3.2m round led by Emblem.

🇪🇺 Lender Defacto raised a €16m Series B led by Citi Ventures and La Maison Partners.

🇪🇺 Savings solution Goodvest raised a €12m Series B from Serena, AG2R La Mondiale, Ring Capital and more.

🇪🇺 Cross-border credit firm Pillar raised a €3.2m round from Eden Ventures, Kima Ventures, Plug and Play and B Heroes.

🇪🇺 Insurtech Insify raised a €16.3m Series B from Accel, Frontline Ventures, Munich Re Ventures and more.

🇬🇧 Business financial management platform Tide raised a £$120m round from TPG at a unicorn valuation.

🇬🇧 Blockchain payments network Fnality raised a $136m round.

🇬🇧 SME lender Triver secured a £100m debt and £14m Series A from Axeleo Capital, Stride.VC, AlleyCorp and Inkberry Ventures.

🇬🇧 Blockchain analytics firm Elliptic secured strategic investment from HSBC.

🇬🇧 Wealthtech Accelex raised a £1.3m round.

🇬🇧 Business management fintech Omega raised a £1.3m round.

🇬🇧 Multinational financial management fintech Light raised a €25m Series A from Atomico, Balderton Capital, Seedcamp, Entree Capital and Cherry Ventures.

🌍 Embedded credit card platform Cardless raised a $60m Series C led by Spark Capital.

🌍 Agentic payment startup Circuit & Chisel raised a $19.2m round.

₿ Layer 1 blockchain Stable received investment from PayPal Ventures.

₿ Crypto infrastructure provider Zerohash raised a $104m round.

₿ Crypto exchange Kraken closed a $500m round.

Challenger Banking 🚀

🇬🇧 Revolut pledges a £3bn investment in the UK, creating 1,000 jobs. It also confirmed its active intentions to acquire a US bank or apply for a licence.

🇬🇧 Spend management provider Pleo has launched real-time financial intelligence within its platform

🌍 Spend management platform Navan is preparing to IPO.

Digital Assets ₿

🇪🇺 Boerse Stuttgart Digital is opening a new office in Madrid.

🇪🇺 Neobank Bunq is launching staking for its customers.

🇪🇺 A group of European banks are collaborating to launch a euro stablecoin.

🇬🇧HSBC has expanded its tokenized deposit service to include cross-border transactions.

🇬🇧 The US and UK have set up a transatlantic crypto and capital market taskforce to explore digital assets collaboration.

🇬🇧 HSBC, Barclays, Lloyds, NatWest, Nationwide and Santander are conducting a live pilot of tokenized sterling deposits following calls from the Bank of England to focus on tokenization instead of a stablecoin.

🌍 New payments L1 blockchain Tempo announced design partners.

🌍 Ripple's stablecoin is now an offramp for BlackRock and VanEck tokenised funds.

🌍 Morgan Stanley is to offer crypto trading services through its E*Trade platform after participating in Zerohash's recent funding round.

🌍 Crypto exchange Crypto.com suffered an unreported cyber attack that leaked users personal data.

🌍 Stablecoin issuer Tether is rumoured to exploring a fundraise at a $500bn valuation.

🌍 Stablecoin issuer Circle is exploring ways to reverse transactions to counter fraud.

Traditional Banking 🏦

🇬🇧 NatWest is looking to offload its 85% stake in pension app Cushon.

🌍 Bank of America is paying £5.6m to settle market manipulation claims.

🌍 Citi is to boost staff productivity with agentic AI.

🌍 JPMorgan's Private Client Experience is coming to select JPMorgan branches.

Fintech Infrastructure 🚧

🇪🇺 The EU is excluding Big Tech firms from a new financial data sharing system which gives their parties access to financial institutions customer data.

🇪🇺 Core banking platform Mambu signed ABN Amro as a customer for its new neobank Buut.

🇬🇧 Savings platform Shawbrook signed wealth manager Hargreaves Lansdown as a customer and is powering their savings account product.

🇬🇧 Open banking provider TrueLayer reported its 2024 results which saw revenue +63% and reduced pre-tax losses and volumes for its pay by bank solution increased 5x.

Payments 💰

🇪🇺 Klarna announced it has seen 1 million Americans sign up for its debit card since its launch 11 weeks ago.

🇬🇧 Payments fintech Guavapay has suspended its serviced in the UK under an agreement with the FCA.

🇬🇧 Payments firm GoCardless is opening a new office in Leeds.

🌍 PayPal is selling $7bn in BNPL loans to alternative asset manager Blue Owl.

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See you next week!