Happy Easter 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.

🇪🇺Compliance fintech Fourthline raised €50m in funding from Finch Capital.

🇪🇺 Private banking startup Kashet raised a £5.4m round

🇪🇺 Payments company TerraPay raised a $80m Series B from Partech and Prime Ventures and $20m in debt.

🇪🇺 Financial management app Finanzguru raised a €13m round led by Scor Ventures and PayPal Ventures.

🇪🇺 Embedded finance fintech Finto raised a $500k round from Y Combinator.

🇪🇺 Invoice management startup Invopop raised a $500k round from Y Combinator.

🇪🇺 Lending software FIS.Solutions raised a €250k seed round from Expansion Capital.

🇬🇧 Blockchain mortgage platform Acre raised £6.5m from Founders Factory, Aviva Ventures and McPike Global Family Office.

🇬🇧 Fraud fintech Quantexa raised a $129m Series E from AlbionVC, British Patient Capital, GIC, Evolution Equity Partners, ABN Ambro, Dawn Capital and Warburg Pincus.

🌍 Rewards platform for gig workers Salt Labs raised a $10m pre-seed round from Fin Capital and Anthem Venture Partners.

🌍 South African payments firm Peach Payments raised a $31m round led by Apis.

🌍 Malaysian mPOS provider Soft Space raised a $31.5 Series B.

Challenger Banking 🚀

🇪🇺Neobank Bunq has applied for a US banking licence in New York as it looks to expand its horizons.

🇪🇺 Danish neobank Lunar is selling its P2P business to Sweden's SaveLend Group.

🇪🇺 Due to its auditing work on failed payments company Wirecard, accounting firm EY has been banned from taking on new customers in Germany that are "of pubic interest".

🇬🇧 GoHenry, a money management app focused on kids, has been acquired by US savings and investment app Acorns as they look to enter the European market.

🇬🇧 Revolut's gender pay gap increased from 22.7% to 25.4% on an hourly pay gab basis although its mean bonus gap fell from 95.8% to 57.5%.  Women make up 35% of its workforce as of 2022, up from 32%.

🇬🇧 Tandem Bank has acquired money sharing app Loop Money.

🇬🇧 ClearBank saw its net income double last year to just under £60m, narrowing its losses by 65% yoy.

🌍 LGBQT+ focused neobank Daylight was accused of fabrications, inappropriate behaviour and facing lawsuits in a NY Magazine article.

🌍 The founders of EWA DailyPay have launched Salt Labs, a rewards platform for gig workers.

🌍 The founder of Frank, a college planning platform sold to JPMorgan, has been charged with fraud by the SEC.

🌍 FinFit and Salary Finance US are merging to better serve the needs of employees.

🌍 Google is to ban apps that offer personal loans using sensitive data such as users photos and contacts.

Digital Assets ₿

🌍 The Japan Financial Services Agency (FSA) warned four crypto exchanges, ByBit, BitGet, MEXC Global and Bitforex that they do not have licence to operate in the country and had to cease operating until they could obtain the correct ones.

🌍 The price of Dogecoin surged after Twitter replaced its bird icon with that of the Shiba Inu dog.

🌍 Binance market share has plummeted from 70% to 54% according to research firm Kaiko.

🌍 Latam bank BTG Pactual has issued a stablecoin through its crypto platform Mynt.

🌍 Binance has had its derivatives licence in Australia cancelled due to issues in classifying retail and wholesale clients.

Traditional Banking 🏦

🇪🇺 Santander has partnered with Microsoft and the Oxentia Foundation to create an AI challenge for entrepreneurs.

🇬🇧 Lloyds Bank is partnering with Enigio to bring the blockchain to its trade finance documentation.

🇬🇧 The UK government has pushed back plans to sell NatWest shares to August 2025.  It currently has a 15% stake in the group.

Fintech Infrastructure 🚧

🇬🇧 Railsr has appointed a new CEO following its emergency sale. Coming from blockchain firm Setl, Philippe Morel will be taking over.

🌍 Equifax has launched a new consumer credit scoring model that uses alternative data, called OneScore.

Payments 💰

🇪🇺 Viva Wallet is launching a payments platform for e-commerce and marketplaces that will support 24 countries in Europe.

🇬🇧Payments provider SaltPay has relaunched as Teya, aiming to provide a one stop shop payments solution for European SMBs.

🇬🇧Checkout.com has seen six senior executives leave in the last nine months as well as staff in legal, risk, compliance, customer service, underwriting, marketing and commercial. Headcount has fallen from over 2,000 to 1,840.

🌍 PhonePe has squashed its plans to acquire BNPL provider ZestMoney.

🌍 Mastercard has pledged to ditch plastic in its cards starting from 2028.

Longer reads 📜

• Deposit insurance maximization as a service - Patrick McKenzie
• Closing the Silicon Valley Bank chapter - Deciphering the rise and fall of the storied firm and what comes next? - Sid Singh
• UPI Lite: Filling the Gaps in UPI (#61) - Prince Jain
• The Thesis Driving M13's Fintech Investment Strategy - M13

👍 👎 Have feedback for us? Let us know!

See you next week!