Hello Fintech Friends,

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The crossover between public and private market interest in fintech is deepening. In the news this week, investors including Ribbit wrote a $558M PIPE into Verb and Jared Kushner's Affinity is reportedly acquiring an 8% stake in privately-held UK lender OakNorth, last valued at close to $3B.

And interesting group called Absolute Financial also launched with £115M in new funding in the UK to roll up independent financial advisory businesses (and, presumably, to add AI).

We were heartened to be able to share news from Fintech Fund portfolio companies Confido, an AI-driven financial operating system that modernized accounting, reconciliation, trade spend, and forecasting for CPG brands, which announced its $20M Series A this week, and Mesh, a crypto-payments infrastructure provider that added PayPal and Coinbase to its Series B.

We're always looking to connect with great early-stage fintech founders (even before they've become founders!)

If you know anyone at the start of their founder journey, send them our way.

Please find another week of fintech financing events below.

Have feedback for us? Let us know. Find me at @nikmilanovic, @twifintech, and @ndm

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Stat of the Week

As a % of total homebuyers in 2025, there are more buyers from 70-78 years old than younger millennials, and more buyers over 79 years old than Gen Z homebuyers.

UK fintech investment also hit $7.2 billion in the first half of the year, down 5% from 2024.

Venture Financing

• VERB Technology Company, a publicly listed social shopping and e-commerce company that specializes in business-focused interactive video webinars, CRM, sales, and marketing applications, raised a $558 million private placement which it plans to use to acquire $TON, which will serve as its primary treasury reserve asset.
• Mesh* secured additional capital towards its $130 million Series B to advance its crypto-payments infrastructure that enables seamless user payments across 100+ wallets and real-time asset conversion via its SmartFunding engine.
• Absolute Financial Group launched with an equity commitment of £115 million to position itself as a UK independent-financial-advice consolidator building scale through flexible acquisition structures.
• Appcharge raised $58 million in a Series B to scale its direct-to-consumer platform for mobile game publishers—enabling branded web stores, global payments, SDKs, and more.
• Tether acquired a minority stake in Bit2Me and led a funding round of €30 million to back Bit2Me’s expansion across the EU and Latin America as a MiCA-licensed digital asset platform.
• Mesa added a $24 million strategic investment in debt and equity to its membership platform that helps homeowners access rewards and loyalty benefits for owning homes.
• Confido* raised $20 million to build an AI-driven financial operating system that modernized accounting, reconciliation, trade spend, and forecasting for CPG brands.
• Casap raised $25 million to use AI in helping banks automate and resolve credit- and debit-card disputes more efficiently.
• Zodia Markets raised $18.25 million in a Series A round to support its digital asset platform—backed by Standard Chartered—that enables institutional capital to move via stablecoins for real-time wholesale trading, settlement, and cross-border transfers.
• Transak secured $16 million from Tether and IDG Capital to expand its compliant fiat-to-crypto stablecoin payment infrastructure into emerging markets such as the Middle East, Latin America, and Southeast Asia.
• Cache raised $12.5 million in Series A funding led by First Round Capital to scale its brokerage-based exchange fund that helps tech employees diversify company stock positions without triggering capital gains taxes.
• Bumper raised $11 million in a Series B extension to scale its BNPL (buy-now-pay-later) service across Europe, enabling drivers to split unexpected car repair bills into interest-free payments via dealer and garage partners.
• Drivepoint secured $9 million total financing—including a $7 million Series A—to accelerate its AI-powered strategic finance platform that helps consumer brands forecast, model, and plan in real time.
• Translucent AI raised $7 million in an oversubscribed seed round to launch its AI financial analyst platform tailored for healthcare operators, aimed at automating insights, reporting, and strategic decision-making.
• Inclined Technologies raised $8 million in Series B funding to scale its insurtech platform that enables policyholders to borrow against whole-life insurance via a revolving line of credit (“iLOC”)—bringing previously exclusive financial flexibility to more consumers.
• Coverd.us, a platform to gamify financial wellness, raised $7.8 million in seed funding.
• HoneyCoin raised $4.9 million in seed funding to expand its stablecoin-powered cross-border payment rails that connect directly to banks, mobile money networks, and global partners across Africa, Latin America, and Asia.
• Riva Money raised $3 million in a pre-seed round led by Project A (with angels from Revolut, Monzo, and J.P. Morgan) to scale its blockchain-based payments infrastructure—leveraging stablecoins and traditional rails—for international money movement.
• Aviva secured $1.5 million from IDB Lab to scale its AI-powered kiosk network that enables underserved communities across Mexico to access fast, paperless loans between $100 and $1,000.
• Affinity Partners signed a deal to acquire an 8% stake in UK lender OakNorth, which was last valued at $2.8 billion in 2019.