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.

🇪🇺Payments platform NomuPay raised $53.6m Series A from Finch Capital, Neuberger Berman Group and Outpost Ventures.

🇪🇺Open banking payment solution Fabrick raised €40m from Mastercard.

🇪🇺 SMB payment solution Klearly raised a €2.1m pre-seed round led by Global PayTech Ventures and Antler.

🇬🇧Carbon removal market making platform CUR8 raised a £5.3m pre-seed round led by Google Ventures.

🇬🇧Crypto onramp Transak raised a $20m Series A from investors.

🌍 Rent reporting solution Boom raised a $4.5m seed round led by Starting Line and included Clocktower, Company Ventures, Gilgamesh Ventures and angels.

₿ Digital wallet provider Magic raised a $52m round led by PayPal Ventures and included KX, Northzone, Volt Capital, Cherubic and Synchrony.

Challenger Banking 🚀

🇬🇧Savings and investment app Chip had a profitable month in May on the back of higher interest rates.  Deposits have reached £2bn.

🇬🇧 LendInvest co-founder Christian Faes has set up Faes & Co in LA, a firm to focus on building and investing in direct lending businesses alongside a new private credit fund.

🇬🇧 Monzo hit profitability early in 2023 as revenue surged 2.3x to £356m, customers reached 7.4m and deposits topped £6bn. Loss provisions significantly increased from £14m to just over £100m as lending increased from £500m to £760m.

🇬🇧 Tandem Bank is to report full year profits for 2022 on the back of increased lending.  Income for 2022 was £71m with a £4.5m operating profit as deposits hit £1.75bn and lending increased 175% to £1.2bn.

🇬🇧 Revolut has hit 30m retail customers worldwide, with 6.8m in the UK. It also mentioned its customers make 400m transactions per month.

🌍 Google is to upgrade its digital wallet to include health insurance information as well as state identification and corporate passes for buildings.

🌍 Customers are reporting challenges in withdrawing and transferring money from their Apple savings account according to the WSJ.

🌍 Brex reported two of its products, Empower and its business accounts, have each hit $100m in ARR.

Digital Assets ₿

🇪🇺PKO Bank Polski is running a jobs fair in the metaverse to search for new technical talent.

🇪🇺 The ECB has finalised its designs for a digital euro ahead of a decision this year to green light its development.

🇪🇺Binance has delisted three privacy coins (Monero, Dash and Zcash) in France, Italy, Spain and Poland due to regulatory requirements.

🌍 Crypto conglomerate Digital Currency Group (DCG) is closing its institutional trade execution and prime brokerage business, TradeBlock.

🌍 Crypto investor Paradigm is broadening its investment focus to include AI and "frontier" technologies.

🌍 A 30% tax on crypto mining has been blocked by the new US debt ceiling deal.

🌍 Crypto exchange Bybit is exiting Canada due to incoming regulatory changes. Kraken has been a big beneficiary of other exchanges departing the country.  Binance is being investigated by the Canadian securities regulator about trying to circumvent local rules.

🌍 Stablecoin issuer Circle has sold off all US Treasury bonds and moved into repo agreements through The Circle Reserve Fund, managed by BlackRock.

🌍 Blockchain analytics firm Nansen is laying off 30% of its staff due to the crypto market slowdown.

🌍 A vulnerability with Tron that put $500m at risk has been resolved.

Traditional Banking 🏦

🇪🇺BNY Mellon is investing €8m into a digital research hub in Dublin focused on AI and data analytics.

🇬🇧 A third of UK banking customers, according to consulting firm Kearney, still prefer a physical interaction for banking purchases. The research found consumers want an "omnichannel" experience.

🇬🇧 SVB UK is no more with HSBC set to rename the group "HSBC Innovation Banking". HSBC is also working with Quantinuum to explore uses of quantum computing in finance.

🌍 JPMorgan Chase has cut 500 jobs in its technology and operations unit.

🌍 US banks overdraft revenue fell nearly 50% in Q4 2022 as a number of banks end the fees.

Fintech Infrastructure 🚧

🇪🇺 BIS research has found that a behavioural analysis approach to combining payment data, privacy technology, AI and cooperation is a more effective approach to detecting money laundering than its rules-based approach.

🇪🇺Visa owned Tink has partnered with Ecolytiq to plug in sustainability services such as consumer tracking of carbon footprints.

🇬🇧 Embedded finance provider Weavr is partnering with Visa to accelerate adoption of embedded finance solutions in B2B.

🇬🇧 Virtual IBAN provider Monneo has entered special administration and is insolvent.

🌍 Card issuing platform Marqeta is shutting its Australian operations as part of a broader cost-cutting plan.

🌍 The Monetary Authority of Singapore is to explore the use of generative AI with Google Cloud.

🌍 Experian has partnered with IDVerse to improve digital onboarding.

Payments 💰

🇪🇺 Bank of Lithuania has revoked the EMI licence of Transactive Systems, a Middle Eastern payment firm due to AML infringements.  Transactive has been fined €280,000.

🇪🇺 Adyen has launched Payout Services, offering its customers a quick solution to payout acquired funds, removing unnecessary delays.

🇪🇺 Spend management provider Pleo has partnered with JP Morgan Payments to power its auto-top up feature for business accounts.

🇪🇺 Payment orchestrator Numeral has partnered with payment provider BPCE to create the first full-API gateway across all SEPA schemes.

🇬🇧Research from Lloyds Bank reported that two thirds of online shopping scams started on Facebook and Instagram with consumers being tricked into paying for goods and services via Faster Payments that don't exist.

🇬🇧The UK governments National Savings & Investments (NS&I) organisation is offering open banking payments powered by Ecospend for making deposits.

🌍 The rule requiring multiple debit networks be available for routing for transactions, including ecommerce, comes into effect on 1st July.  Executives on all sides suggest that it is a positive for their business.

🌍 Affirm reported Q1 2023 earnings which saw GMV +18%, active consumers +26% but a massive increase in funding costs of +223%. The BNPL provider also partnered with Worldpay to enable the payment solutions merchants access to its services.

🌍 US credit card debt is at $1trn as consumer spending continues to rise.

🌍 Mastercard has agreed to an FTC consent order that it unlawfully forced merchants to route debit payments through its network against the rules of the Durbin Amendment to give merchants the choice of two unaffiliated networks.

Longer reads 📜

• BaaS Banks Outperform Regionals in Deposit Fight - Kate Drew
• NatWest's Digital ID innovation and BAaaS (Banking Authentication-as-a-Service) - Jas Shah

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See you next week!