Hello TWIF UK & Europe friends,

With the announcement that a16z is opening an office in London and PM Rishi Sunak welcoming them on Twitter (above)  combined with a new Financial Services and Markets Bill which provides sensible crypto frameworks, as Simon Taylor said in his latest post in the long reads section, UK fintech is back!

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.

🇪🇺SMB cash management app Trezy raised a €3m seed round led by Seedcamp and Playfair Capital.

🇪🇺Medical payment solution Nelly raised a €15m Series A led by Lakestar and included Motive Partners, b2venture and Arc Investors.

🇪🇺 Business insurance platform Thinksurance raised a €22m Series B led by Viewpoint Ventures, Segenia Capital and MTech Capital.

🇪🇺 Migrant digital banking platform Majority raised a ¢9.8m Series B led by Valar Ventures and Heartcore Capital.

🇪🇺Money management app Fintonic raised $5m in equity from ING Ventures and Squareone Capital as well as €13.5m in debt.

🇪🇺 Health insurance provider Santexpat raised a €3m Series A from Bpifrance, BNP Paribas, Swiss Life and others.

🇬🇧Crypto app BoomFi raised a $3.8m Seed round led by White Star Capital and included Passion Capital, Mantle Network, Kraken Ventures and more.

🇬🇧SMB supplier invoicing platform Apron raised a $5.5m seed round from Bessemer Venture Partners.

Challenger Banking 🚀

🇪🇺Alternative lending platform ID Finance is crowdfunding.

🇬🇧 A new report from Taktile found that 47% of lenders are focused on increasing profitability and 57% were focused on adding new data sources.

🇬🇧 UK ministers will not intervene on Revolut's behalf to help it secure a UK banking licence. Venture firm Molten Ventures has written down its holding in Revolut by 40%.

🇬🇧Lending data solution Knowledge Bank has created a flag to alert brokers about vulnerable clients ahead of the new Consumer Duty guidance.

🇬🇧 Neobroker Freetrade is crowdfunding at a £225m valuation, 65% lower than its last round.

🌍 Walmart owned ONE is offering consumers 5% yield on its savings account on amounts up to $100,000.

🌍 Money Ave, a fintech customer of Evolve Bank and Synapse received an FDIC cease and desist over misleading claims on deposit insurance.

Digital Assets ₿

🇪🇺 Binance is under investigation in France for illegal provision of crypto services and AML issues. It is also pulling out of the Netherlands after failing to register as a VASP.

🇬🇧A16z is to open an office in the UK dedicated to crypto and web3 and was welcome by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.

🌍 Binance US has suspended USD deposits and will transition to a crypto-only exchange after pressure from US regulators. A federal judge ruled in its favour and stopped a SEC case to freeze its asset and press both parties to negotiate. Binance has also lost access to Binance US's crypto.

🌍 Crypto custody provider Prime Trust is being acquired by competitor BitGo.

🌍 Robinhood is to stop selling three tokens, Cardano, Polygon and Solana due to the SEC considering the securities.eToro is also delisting Algorand, Decentraland, Dash and Polygon for US customers.

🌍 House Republicans have filed new legislation that changes the way the SEC works after their disagreement with how SEC chair Gensler is attempting to regulate crypto.

🌍 Crypto payment provider BCB Group is to pull out its deal to acquire Sutor Bank with mutual agreement.

🌍 Asset manager BlackRock is to file an application for a bitcoin ETF which would use Coinbase Custody as a service provider.

🌍 Tether issued $11.6bn of loans at its peak between June 2019 and May 2021, mostly with bitcoin as collateral. It also used Chinese commercial paper as backing for its USDT.

Traditional Banking 🏦

🇬🇧TSB has pointed the finger at Meta as one culprit of rising levels of fraud and that they should do more.

🌍 Australian bank Westpac is to issue cards for customer who are visually impaired.

🌍 A real-time payment system in Canada is being delayed due to a second review being needed by Payments Canada.

🌍 PE firms are circling Goldman Sachs's GreenSky unit they are looking to offload at a discount.

Fintech Infrastructure 🚧

🇪🇺Card issuer Enfuce has signed Icelandic bank Kvika Bank as a customer.

🇪🇺Digital banking software provider Backbase acquired digital wealth platform Nucoro.

🇬🇧 Payment orchestrator CellPoint Digital signed Brazilian airline GOL as a customer

🇬🇧Experian is rolling out a new tool to help financial institutions identify and close bank accounts that hold funds obtained fraudulently.

🌍 Plaid and Yodlee have signed data sharing agreements with American Express.

🌍 Payment provider FIS is to acquire BaaS platform Bond.

🌍 Financial exchange Nasdaq is acquiring risk management software Adenza for $10.5bn from Thoma Bravo.

🌍 The CFPB has outlined its upcoming open banking rules will not be impacted by the desires of dominant payment players and financial institutions.

🌍 Jack Henry is to finish phasing out screen scraping connections by the end of summer in its digital banking platform Banno.

🌍 Synapse is cutting 20% of staff.

Payments 💰

🇬🇧 Payments fintech GoCardless is cutting 17% of staff.

🇬🇧 Open banking payment provider Volt is partnering with Shopify to offer merchants in Europe, UK and Brazil a "Pay by Bank" solution at checkout.

🌍 POS provider for restaurants Toast is partnering with payment gateway FreedomPay to allow Toast to move upmarket to enterprise customers with new functionality.

🌍 CFPB has criticised banks as acting too slowly in relation to P2P scams in a hearing with the Senate Banking Committee.

🌍 Worldine has created a payment tool for the EV charging market.

Longer reads 📜

• Fintech 🧠 Food - UK Fintech is Back! - Simon Taylor
• Subtle Differentiation (or why there are no 10x products in fintech) - Ayokunle Omojola
• JPM Chase: Paragon of Innovation and Migration - Akash Bajwa

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See you next week!