Hello TWIF UK & Europe friends,

This week seems to be procurement/accounts payable week with Ramp, Brex and Rho all launching new solutions to help companies with their procurement. These companies are quickly expanding beyond their spend management foundations and adding more features companies need and creating stickier customers.

US based spend management platforms seem to have a very high product velocity compared to European counterparts but it will only be a matter of time before Moss, Pleo, Sendesk, Soldo et al head down the same path.

Please find another week of fintech news, financings and exits below.

Note: there will be no TWIF UK & Europe next Monday. Normal service will resume on Monday 21st.

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Funding 💸

Highlights below of deals since the last post in the fintech space across the UK & Europe.

🇪🇺Supply chain finance solution Tradeshift raised $75m from investors led by HSBC who will also enter into a joint venture.

🇪🇺Property micro investing platform Investown raised a $915k seed round.

🇪🇺Danish tax fintech Tax Helper raised a DKK 5.2m round from angels.

🇪🇺 Sustainable crowdfunding platform Ener2Crowd raised a€1.2m round from Credit Agricole Italia.

🇬🇧 Prepaid card and account provider Pockit raised $10m led by Puma Private Equity.

🇬🇧Crypto payment platform Orbital Group raised a £5m round from investors including GSR Ventures, New Form Capital, Psalion VC and more.

🌍 Card of file updater Knot API raised a $10m Series A from Plaid, Amex Ventures and Nava Ventures.

🌍 Insurtech Lula raised a $35.5m Series B.

Challenger Banking 🚀

🇪🇺Greek fintech Viva Wallet, 49% owned by JP Morgan, has come in the crosshairs of regulators in Europe.

🇪🇺 Climate fintech HeavyFinance has originated €40m in agricultural loans.

🇬🇧 Savings app Snoop has been acquired by Vanquis Banking Group.

🇬🇧 Open banking lender Koyo Loans failed to raise funding and is closing.

🌍 Brazilian neobank Nubank is partnering with travel solution Hopper to launch "Travel Portal".

🌍 Bluevine launched an accounts payable solution to automate the AP process for its business customers.

🌍 SoFi reported strong earnings with deposits +26% yoy and loans originated +51% yoy.

🌍 SMB neobank Novo launched a working capital lending solution.

🌍 Ramp launched a procurement product and signed Shopify as a customer.

🌍 Brex launched an AI-powered accounts payable solution.

🌍 Apple's savings account product has hit $10bn in deposits since launching in April.

🌍 Robinhood reported a profitable quarter for the first time but also reported crypto revenues had fallen to $31m and they lost 1m MAUs.

🌍 Cashflow management platform Settle announced a new procurement suite.

Digital Assets ₿

🇪🇺 eToro has been approved as a virtual asset exchange in Spain. The investment platform was also sued by the Australian regulator for failure to act honestly with marketing of its CFD product.

🇬🇧The Bank of England completed a POC with Ripple to test the synchronised movement of two different currencies across different settlement systems using Interledger Protocol.

🌍 Grayscale Investments is urging the SEC to approve all spot ETFs in order to treat all parties equally.

🌍 The launch of Worldcoin has hit snags in France and been suspended in Kenya.

🌍 Binance is seeking to have its charges brought the CFTC dropped. The WSJ also reported that despite being banned, China is its largest market with $90bn of transactions from the country. It could also face fraud charges from the DOJ.

🌍 FTX has come to an agreement with Genesis to resolve a legal dispute concerning missing funds.

🌍 Coinbase CEO told the Financial Times that the SEC had asked it to stop trading all cryptocurrencies other than bitcoin prior to suing the exchange. The exchange is also looking to integrate Lightning Network for payments and reported strong Q2 revenues.

🌍 Defi protocol Curve Finance was exploited for $24m.

🌍 The SEC has sued the founder of Hex for defrauding investors.

🌍 Asset managers including Bitwise, VanEck, Roundhill, Proshares and Grayscale have filed applications with the SEC for ether futures ETFs.

🌍 Crypto exchange HashKey secured the first crypto exchange licence in Hong Kong.

🌍 The IRS has said that staking rewards count as income and are therefore taxable.

🌍 Blockchain software provider Consensys has been accused of stealing the idea from MetaMask by an entrepreneur.

Traditional Banking 🏦

🌍 BlackRock is being investigated by the US government for fuelling investment into Chinese firms.

Fintech Infrastructure 🚧

🇪🇺 Klarna have folded its open banking brand Kosma into it's main corporate brand.

🇪🇺Tink is partnering with Sepaexpress, an A2A provider which will allow it to offer Tink's open banking products alongside its payment solutions.

🇪🇺 Deutsche Borse Group has acquired the remaining stake in distributed ledger technology firm FundsDLT it didn't already own.

🇬🇧TrueLayer has signed trading platform CMC Markets as a customer for its payment products.

🌍Fiserv reported it has "a number of clients in the pipeline" for its pay-by-bank service. It also partnered with Amazon to allow its card members to spend their reward points at the e-commerce giant.

🌍 BaaS platform Treasury Prime is working with Academy Bank to provide its customers with access to Academy's deposit services.

🌍 Global Payments has added a hybrid payfac service to its product suite to help legacy payment processors compete with Stripe and Adyen.

🌍 FedNow competitor RTP Network has expanded its Request for Payment functionality.

🌍 Stripe has launched Stripe Tax for platforms to help them with cross-border sales.

Payments 💰

🇪🇺 German e-commerce store Zalando partnered with Savrr, a "save now buy later" solution.

🇪🇺 Italian payments firm Nexi acquired a 30% stake in German payment processor Computop.

🇪🇺Payment firm PayU GPO investor Prosus sold a major stake to Rapyd for $610m.

🌍 Payment volumes going through Mastercard's Click to Pay SRC product surged 70% yoy.

🌍 Visa disclosed that it has been asked to provide additional documentation about its debit card practices to the DOJ.

🌍 Payment platform Checkbook has integrated Zelle as a payout option.

🌍 Payment firm Melio is launching a lending solution for SMBs called Pay Over Time.

🌍 PayPal reported Q2 earnings which saw TPV +11% driven by Venmo TPV which was +8%.

🌍 Payment firm Shift4 cut 150 employees in Q2.

🌍 Amex has partnered with Skipify, a checkout solution, to create a frictionless checkout experience by linking eligible cards using just an email address.

Regulatory Corner 🔎

🇬🇧 The FCA is using its new Consumer Duty rules to boost cash savings rates for consumers.

Longer reads 📜

• Troubles at Barclays Prompt a Shake-Up—and Banker Exits - Josh Mitchell, WSJ
• Heavy credit-card users are key in the Fed’s inflation battle - Brendan Greeley, FT
• Can Starling Bank make tech its business? - Siddharth Venkataramakrishnan, Emma Dunkley and Akila Quinio, FT
• How Silicon Valley is helping the Pentagon in the AI arms race - Tabby Kinder, FT

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See you next week!