Hello TWIF UK & Europe friends,

Please find another week of fintech news, financings and exits below. If you are reading this but haven’t already subscribed, you can click below 🙏

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Funding 💸

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

🇪🇺 BaaS startup BKN301 raised a €15m Series A led by Abalone Group.

🇪🇺 DeFi bridge Silta Finance raised a pre-seed round from Cerulean Ventures.

🇪🇺 Liquor investment platform Spiritory raised a pre-seed round.

🇪🇺Fraud and compliance startup Lucinity raised a $17m Series B led by Keen Venture Partners.

🇪🇺 Crypto trading platform Thalex raised a €7.5m Series A  from Wintermute, QCP Capital, IMC Financial Markets, Flow Traders, Bitfinex and Bitstamp.

🇪🇺Business insurance startup Orus raised a €5m round from Partech Ventures, Portage Ventures and others.

🇬🇧 Agricultural bank Oxbury raised a further £20m.

🇬🇧Electronics subscription startup Raylo raised a €7.5m round from Octopus Ventures, Macquarie Group and Wayra.

🇬🇧Overdraft banking solution Fiinu launched on the AIM with a £53m valuation.

🇬🇧BaaS solution Griffin raised a €15m round from Notion Capital, EQT Ventures and included Plaid co-founder and Column founder William Hockey.

🇬🇧Blockchain startup Blackfridge raised a seed round from Gate Ventures and FunFair Ventures.

🇬🇧Wealth manager Rosecut raised a seed round from InReach Ventures.

🇬🇧 B2B financing fintech Sonovate secured a £165m securitisation deal with BNP Paribas and M&G Investments.

🇬🇧 Insurtech company YuLife raised a $120m Series C led by Dai-ichi Life Insurance.

Challenger Banking 🚀

🇪🇺 Neobank Bunq narrowed losses to €13.4m (from €16m in 2020) and reported deposits of €1.1bn at the end of 2021.  User fee income was €32.7m.

🇪🇺 Irish fintech Money Jar is hiring 100 people over the next two years.

🇪🇺 EToro’s SPAC acquisition has fallen through.

🇬🇧 Credit card Yonder has added travel insurance for its members.

🇬🇧 Tide has launched prepaid cards for Indian SMEs.

🇬🇧 Revolut announced Revolut Reader, a POS for businesses who want to take in-person payments. Pricing rumoured to be 0.8% + £0.02.

🇬🇧Savings app Chip is to use Truelayer to streamline the savings experience for its users.

🇬🇧 Savings app Plum is working with Railsr to launch a degradable debit card.

🇬🇧 Revolut will use Stripe for its payment infrastructure in new international markets that the neobank is looking to expand into, which includes Brazil and Mexico.

🇬🇧Starling Bank has launched Bills Manager, a way for SMBs to manage their budgets.

Digital Assets ₿

🇪🇺 Coinbase is expanding across Europe to Switzerland as well as France, Italy, Spain and Netherlands.

🌍 The Lido community voted against scaling back its staking dominance of Ethereum 2.0.

🌍 BlockFi announced they secured a $400m credit line and an option to be acquired for up to $240m by FTX.

🌍 Meta is officially closing its digital wallet business, Novi.

🌍 Crypto lender Nexo has signed a term sheet to acquired the troubled Singapore firm Vauld.

🌍 Compound Finance released its v3 code, Comet, as it looks to go multi-chain.

Traditional Banking 🏦

🇬🇧 Lloyds Bank is hiring for a head of data ethics.

Fintech Infrastructure 🚧

🇪🇺 Mambu is partnering with Visa to use its debit processing capabilities which will enable Mambu to offer end to end card issuing processes.

🇬🇧 Finastra have launched an embedded lending solution for consumers when purchasing higher value items.

🇬🇧 Virgin Money have praised debt management software provider Flexys for helping it delivery the government’s loan schemes.

🇬🇧 The UK has taken the top spot for open banking adoption in Europe according to Yapily.

Payments 💰

🇪🇺 Worldline bought a 80% stake in Eurobank’s Merchant Acquiring business in Greece.

🇪🇺 Ecommerce payments provider Paytrail and Mastercard’s open banking platform Aiia are enabling 1m open banking payments each month.

🇬🇧 BNPL provider Payl8r is calling for open banking to be required for credit assessment to ensure safer lending.

🇬🇧 Card issuer and processor Paysafe is integrating Mastercard Send into its platform.

🇬🇧 A third of UK shoppers have not completed an ecommerce transaction due to new SCA rules.

🌍 One-click checkout provider Bolt has settled its suit with one of its largest customers, Authentic Brands Group, with ABG receiving an equity stake in Bolt.

🌍 India is making its UPI and Aadhaar identity service available to other countries via API.

🌍 The FSB published its recommended KPIs to monitor progress of its goal of improving cross-border payments.

Regulatory Corner 🔎

🇪🇺 Plaid published its comments to the the review of PSD2 that the European Commission is calling for, highlighting the challenges for TPPs.

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Longer reads 📜

• Inside the Three Arrows Capital money machine - The Block
• How a fake job offer took down the world’s most popular crypto game - Ryan Weeks, The Block
• The alchemy of deposits - Patrick McKenzie
• Beware of powerful and ambitious Tigers amongst Big VCs - Efi Pylarinou
• The Money Issue - MIT Technology Review

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See you next week!