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.

🇪🇺 SME lender Teylor received a €275m credit line from Barclays and M&G.

🇪🇺 Payment operations solution Payrails raised a $14.4m seed extension led by EQT Ventures.

🇪🇺 Insurtech Insify raised a €10m Series A led by Munich Re Ventures and included Frontline Ventures and Accel.

🇪🇺 B2B payment provider Tilta raised a €4m seed round from 10x Founders, Dreamcraft Ventures and ff Venture Capital.

🇪🇺 Life insurtech Life5 raised a €10m Series A from Mundi Ventures, Sony Financial Ventures and Singular.

🇪🇺 Web3 self-sovereign identity solution Truvity raised a €8m round from Artek Group.

🇪🇺 Invoice factoring lender 4Trans Factoring raised a €845k seed round from Zero Gravity Capital.

🇪🇺 Insurance claim management solution Insurello raised a $2.7m round from Schibsted Growth and Nordstjernan.

🇬🇧 BaaS bank Griffin raised a $13.5m Series A led by MassMutual Ventures and included Seedcamp, Notion Capital and EQT Ventures.

🇬🇧Open banking payment solution Atoa raised a $6.5m seed round led by Valar Ventures and included Passion Capital and Leo Capital.

🌍 Cross border payment solution Thunes raised a $60m Series C led by Marshall Wace.

Challenger Banking 🚀

🇪🇺Bunq, having recently hit quarterly profitability, has forecast profitability for the entirety of 2023.

🇬🇧 ClearBank is to become the payment rails and account infrastructure provider for Allica Bank.

🇬🇧 Digital wealth solution Plum is offer customers the ability to hold their money in government-backed assets to offer an "interest" like savings product with higher rates than most easy access savings accounts.

🌍 The CFPB has advised Americans to transfer money stored with payment apps to insured banks and credit unions that have deposit insurance. Payment apps cover services like Venmo and Cash App. It has also received complaints from consumers frustrated with AI chatbots.

🌍 Nubank is making layoffs, cutting headcount by nearly 300.

🌍 The State of Connecticut has mandated that "Tips" and "memberships" costs are financial charges and must be included in the APR calculation. H/t to Jason Mikula.

Digital Assets ₿

🇪🇺 Swiss tokenised asset platform Taurus is to integrate with polygon to allow institutions to "issue, book and service" tokenised assets.

🇪🇺 Payment solution for crypto companies Januar has launched a instant payment network to pick up business after the closure of Sivergate Exchange Network.

🇬🇧 UK MPs and Lords are calling for urgent crypto regulation.

🇬🇧 The FCA is to introduce stricter rules for crypto marketing banning "refer a friend" schemes, provide a cooling off period for new users and have clear risk warnings.

🌍 A bill from House Republicans could mean crypto tokens are considered commodities in a challenge to the SEC if adopted.

🌍 JP Morgan is to test a blockchain dollar settlement service with six Indian financial services institutions.

🌍 Coinbase and Binance have both been sued by the SEC for operating unlicensed crypto exchanges.  Binance and CEO CZ are also being sued by the SEC for violating federal securities laws for mishandling funds. The SEC is attempting to freeze Binance.US assets after accusing it of stealing $12bn of customer funds. Coinbase is going to continue to operate its staking service.

🌍 The mediation period between bankrupt crypto lender Genesis and creditors was extended.

🌍 Stablecoin issuer Circle has obtained a Major Payment Institution licence in Singapore, allowing it to offer digital token services and domestic and cross-border payments.

🌍 After the SEC crackdown on crypto, Robinhood is reviewing its crypto products.

Traditional Banking 🏦

🇪🇺 Italian bank Sella is to create an incubation program for startups working at the intersection of AI and finance.

🇪🇺Spanish bank Globalcaja confirmed it is a victim of ransomware attack by Play.

🇪🇺 Silicon Valley Bank's German unit is to be sold.

🇬🇧 NatWest is investing £2m to create a center for banking innovation with the University of Edinburgh.

🇬🇧 Barclays is exploring strategic options for its payments business which could include a merger or joint venture.

🌍 JP Morgan has launched its Payment Partner Network, a digital marketplace to connect merchants and corporate clients to third parties to solve their payment challenges.  The marketplace is powered by Salesforce.

🌍 The WSJ reported that regulators are set to increase capital requirements for large US banks by 20%.  Banks say this could stifle lending.

Fintech Infrastructure 🚧

🇪🇺 Co-founder and CEO of core banking provider Mambu has resigned immediately for "personal reasons".

🇪🇺 Open banking platform Lunar has opened up its payment infrastructure to partners, with Trustly being the first customer.

🇪🇺 Card issuer Enfuce is partnered with BaaS provider SEB Embedded to distribute its card issuing capabilities.

🇪🇺 Financial crime solution Lucinity has launched an AI copilot to increase productivity of compliance teams.

🇬🇧Financial infrastructure software FintechOS reported a 70% increase in revenue in 2022.

🇬🇧 Open banking platform Truelayer has launched Payments Platform Program, a solution for PSPs to offer open banking payments to their customers.

🇬🇧 US merchant risk provider Coris is expanding to the UK, Canada and Australia.

🇬🇧 Embedded lending provider Liberis has signed Teya as a customer, allowing the payment provider to offer revenue-based finance.

🌍 Stripe has added a charge card to its Issuing products, dipping its foot into the "credit" space for the first time.

🌍 Customers of Chase suffered from duplicate transfers caused by a Zelle bug.  Some impacted customers reported going into negative balances.

🌍 Australia is attempting to ban paper checks by 2030.

🌍 SMB insight platform Brightflow AI acquired CircleUp, a lender that uses ML to underwrite consumer brands.

🌍 Bank regulators have provided much anticipated guidance on relationships between financial institutions and third-parties such as fintech and BaaS providers.

🌍 Plaid introduced "one click identity", a solution for consumers to passport their Plaid Identity from one Plaid-powered app to another.

Payments 💰

🇪🇺 Checkout.com cut its internal valuation by another 15% after previously cutting it over 70% at the end of last year. Its internal valuation now stands $9.35bn, down from $40bn.

🇪🇺The Netherlands is the first country to offer a nationwide fully contactless public transport system.

🇬🇧 Open banking payment provider Volt is partnering with Worldpay to provide the latter's merchant customers with the former's pay by bank product.

🇬🇧 The UK's PSR published requirements for the reimbursing of victims of APP fraud.  It requires payment firms to reimburse "in-scope customers" with the cost of reimbursement split 50/50 between sending and receiving payment firms. It will come into force in 2024.

🇬🇧B2B cross-border payments company CAB Payments is looking to list on the LSE.

🇬🇧 B2B BNPL payment provider Hokodo has acquired a Lithuanian payment business, securing it a European payments licence.

🇬🇧 Cross-border payments firm Universal Partners is working with Muse Finance, an embedded finance provider to offer its clients invoice and trade finance.

🌍 Payment infrastructure provider Gr4vy has launched a cloud storage solution for tokenised card data.

🌍 A study by PYMNTS and Nuvei found 41% of consumers are interested in a "Pay by bank" solution.

🌍 Amazon Pay has integrated with Affirm so US merchants can offer consumers from BNPL instalment payment options.

🌍 Apple is adding recurring payments to its Apple Cash digital card to allow consumers to set up weekly, biweekly or monthly payments.

🌍 Stripe has added support for Cash App Pay in the US.

Regulatory Corner 🔎

🌍 US lawmakers have reintroduced a new bill aimed at cutting Mastercard and Visa fees on card payments.

Longer reads 📜

• The SEC comes from crypto - Matt Levine
• Creating a Monster - Marc Rubinstein
• The Convergence of Crypto and AI: Four Key Intersections - Kyle Samani, Multicoin Capital
• The Impact Of ChatGPT And Open Banking Cannot Be Underestimated - Dave Birch
• We asked GPT4 to categorize our financial data. A glance into the future of transaction enrichment - Ilia Zintchenko, Ntropy *
• Generative AI is Coming for Insurance - Joe Schmidt, Sumeet Singh, Seema Amble, a16z fintech team
• When Is a Token Not a Security? - Matt Levine
• Trade Finance is the end boss of Fintech - Simon Taylor
• Four kinds of fraud that you may be able to avoid by using Link Money - Link Money
• The AI era of risk management is a win for financial inclusivity and stability - TechCrunch

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See you next week!

*I currently work at Ntropy