Hello TWIF UK & Europe friends,

The British Bank Awards 2023 happened this week with Chase winning "Best British Bank", "Best savings provider" and "Best Current Account provider". So the best British bank is actually not really British at all.

Monzo picked up "Best banking app" and "Best credit card provider" for their BNPL Flex account with Starling collecting "Best business banking provider".

Congrats to all the winners. Check out all the winners here.

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

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Tweet of the week 🦉🏆

Funding 💸

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

🇪🇺 Fraud detection fintech ThreatFabric raised an €11.5m seed round led by ABN Amro.

🇪🇺 Business lender Viceversa raised a €10m round from CDP Venture Capital.

🇪🇺German BaaS startup Paydora came out of stealth with a €1m seed round from Dock Financial.

🇪🇺 Payroll fintech Penzilla raised a €2.5m seed round from Motive Partners, Wenvest Capital and angels.

🇬🇧 Financial crime fintech Cable raised an $11m Series A from Stage 2 Capital and Jump Capital.

🌍 Consumer and business banking hybrid for entrepreneurs Slash raised a $19m round led by NEA.

🌍 Diagram Ventures closed a $100m CAD fund to invest in fintech.

🌍 US fintech investors Better Tomorrow Ventures has launched a fintech accelerator, The Mint.

🌍 US credit card startup Petal raised a $35m led by Valar Ventures and included Story Ventures, Core Innovation Capital and RiverPark Ventures. It also spun off its B2B subsidiary Prism Data.

Challenger Banking 🚀

🇬🇧 Business bank Tide is calling for taxes on social media and telecos to help combat  fraud.

🇬🇧 UK fintech Revolut has claimed that recent banking crises are responsible for the delay in getting ints UK banking licence. It is also adding 100 ETFs through a partnership with Upvest. The neobanks CFO has also quit for "personal reasons". Revolut will also offer credit products at the end of May in France.

🇬🇧 Wise CEO is taking a three month sabbatical.

🌍 Chinese fintech Ant Group is rumoured to be selling a stake in its Hong Kong.

Digital Assets ₿

🇪🇺 A paper prepared for the European Parliament has cautioned the risks of a roll out of a digital euro currently outweigh the benefits.

🇪🇺 DeFi startup Unstoppable Finance is building a fully regulated DeFi native bank along with a euro stablecoin.

🇪🇺 Crypto payment solution Nilos has launched virtual IBANs.

🇬🇧 The FCA have continued to target crypto ATMs with the help of regional police support.

🌍 Coinbase reported earnings that beat expectations with shares trading up 8% after hours.  Q1 revenue was $773m.

🌍 Binance has had 190 accounts seized by Israel due to their alleged links to terrorist organisation. The exchange also temporarily paused withdrawals due to network congestion last weekend. It also has lost market share after removing fee free trading on certain pairs. Senior Binance execs complained about a "very difficult" regulatory environment in US.

🌍 Sam Bankman-Fried is seeking to get the majority of charges against him thrown out. The IRS also filed claims worth $44bn against the FTX estate for unpaid tax.

🌍 The New York Attorney General is looking to tackle fraud in the crypto space with a new law that requires independent public audits of exchanges to prevent conflicts of interest.

🌍 A number of high profile financial institutions including BNP Paribas and Goldman Sachs are partnering to create the Canton Network, an interoperable blockchain network for institutional asset trading.

🌍 Crypto exchange Bittrex has filed for bankruptcy in the US after being hit with charges by the SEC.

🌍 Market makers Jane Street and Jump Trading are retreating from crypto market making due to the regulatory crackdown in the US.

🌍 Franklin Templeton is to add a second blockchain fund to its platform.  The Blockchain Fund II will be a private equity fund with a minimum investment of $100,000.

🌍 Stablecoin operator Tether reported Q1 profit of $1.5bn as it increased holdings of USTs. Stablecoin competitor Circle has refused to hold longer-dated Treasury's due to concern about the US debt ceiling and a potential default.

🌍 A judge has ruled that BlockFi customers who are trying to reclaim $300m in crypto do not have legal rights to the digital assets.

Traditional Banking 🏦

🇬🇧 Barclays is working with payments infrastructure provider Transfermate to allow the banks customers to invoice customers in many currencies but receive GBP.

🌍 Canada's TD Bank blamed regulators for cancelling its purchase of US bank First Horizon due to AML practices.

🌍 US Federal authorities are looking into Goldman Sachs advisory work with SVB before its collapse to ensure the firm acted in an arms length advisory capacity.

🌍 A court has ordered JP Morgan to pay the legal fees for the founder of Frank, the fintech it acquired that it is now suing.

🌍 The Monetary Authority of Singapore has imposed stricter capital requirements on DBS after it suffered from outages in March.

Fintech Infrastructure 🚧

🇪🇺 Currency exchange machines have been installed across Europe that uses facial recognition technology to try and reduce money laundering.

🇪🇺 Credit decision automation platform Taktile launched a global Data Marketplace to give customers easy access to leading data providers.

🇪🇺 Tink has signed rental platform Goodlord as a customer to streamline the tenancy referencing process.

🌍 Card issuing platform Marqeta is cutting 15% of staff, some 150 employees.

🌍 Experian has launched a fraud data network to give participants more visibility into borrower activity across the fintech industry by data sharing in real-time.

🌍 Affirm is partnering with FICO to create a credit scoring model that more effectively utilises BNPL data.

🌍 Sardine, fresh from its 314b designation is creating a new fraud consortium for fintechs and banks.

Payments 💰

🇪🇺 The European Commission is seeking information about Apple Pay from different retailers as part of its antitrust hearing against Apple.

🇪🇺 Payment operations fintech Numeral secured BNPL provider Alma as a customer.

🇪🇺 Nordic open banking solution Neonomics has launched Checkout, an A2A solution.

🇬🇧 Push to card payment provider Paysend has partnered with Spanish content company TelevisaUnivision to access the US Hispanic market.

🇬🇧 Payment orchestrator BR-DGE has partnered with American Express to provide the the latter's Pay with Bank Transfer product for merchants.

🌍 Brex has expanded its Empower platform internationally to allow companies to issue cards and do reimbursements locally across Europe, Brazil, Canada, Israel, Japan, Mexico, Singapore, Philippines and South Africa.

🌍 Stripe has launched a customised Android smart reader to allow for customised branding, custom apps, loyalty programs and other ways to take customer information. Stripe has also partnered with Whatsapp in Singapore to enable both consumers and businesses to buy and sell directly in the messaging app.

🌍 PayPal reported earnings with TPV +12%, P2P volumes +2%, and quarterly TPV for its BNPL product was $6bn, up 70%.

🌍 Block, parent company of Square posted earnings with Cash App GPV +24% yoy and MAUs +17% yoy to 53 million.

🌍 Starbucks is testing Amazon's biometric payment system.

🌍 Visa and BNPL provider Splitit have partnered to offer Visa Instalments to merchants. The card network also partnered with Prove to speed up onboarding and verification.

🌍 Mastercard has created a digital account opening tool that integrates with open banking for customer verification.

🌍 Revenue based financing provider Capchase has entered the BNPL space launching Capchase Pay, allowing SaaS companies to collect the full contract value for their software whilst giving customers flexible terms.

Regulatory Corner 🔎

🇬🇧 The FCA has proposing new rules to govern listings to make it more compelling for companies considering going public.

🇬🇧 Financial fraud in the UK declined 8% in 2022 led by a decline 17% decline in APP fraud.

Longer reads 📜

• Deposit franchises as natural hedges - Patrick McKenzie
• Should BaaS Change Its Stripes? - Shaul David
• Bank runs are different now - Robert Armstrong, FT
• Financial Services Will Embrace Generative AI Faster Than You Think - a16z
• Doom Loop - Marc Rubinstein
• 64 software bugs, complex union rules and a $15.8 million mistake: Why S.F. can’t pay its teachers on time - Bilal Mahmood, SF Chronicle
• Do we need narrower banks? - Simon Taylor, Fintech Brain Food

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See you next week!