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The Front Page of Global Fintech

The the largest fintech community in the world. Subscribe to our newsletter to stay up to date on the latest in news opinions, and all things financial technology.

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Credit Suisse: to the window or to the wall? - (20/03)

Credit Suisse: to the window or to the wall? - (20/03)

Hello TWIF UK & Europe friends,

It has been a rollercoaster of a week with too much being written and tweeted about ย SVB. ย Real companies and real people, including staff at SVB and SVB UK have been impacted and my thoughts go out to them all. Some informative posts written by people who actually understand what went on are included in the long reads section.

In other news, we are hosting our next happy hour in London during UK for Fintech Week alongside Simon Taylor of Fintech Brain Food and sponsored by Element Ventures. If that wasn't enough to get you to attend, TWIF's illustrious founder Nik will also be there. Check it out here!

Fintech investment in Italy grew 41% last year, to a record $805m across 55 deals whilst Spanish investment dropped over 60% to $336m according to FinTech Global Research.

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


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Funding ๐Ÿ’ธ

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

๐Ÿ‡ช๐Ÿ‡บ Digital financial advisor platform Kalfa raised a TRY 15m seed round led by Bogazici Ventures.

๐Ÿ‡ช๐Ÿ‡บDigital banking app Turan raised a TRY20m seed round.

๐Ÿ‡ช๐Ÿ‡บAlternative asset platform Cashlink raised a Series A from TX Ventures.

๐Ÿ‡ช๐Ÿ‡บ Neobroker Capex raised a $40m convertible note.

๐Ÿ‡ช๐Ÿ‡บ Digital accounting solution Finmatics raised a โ‚ฌ6m Series A from Mangrove Capital Partners and eQventure.

๐Ÿ‡ช๐Ÿ‡บ Payments solution Glaze raised a $1.1m round from Brunnur Ventures.

๐Ÿ‡ช๐Ÿ‡บ Web3 identity infrastructure provider Violet raised a $15m round from Balderton, Brevan Howard, BlueYard Capital, Fintech Collective, Coinbase and Ethereal Ventures.

๐Ÿ‡ฌ๐Ÿ‡ง Payment orchestrator Apexx Global raised a $25m Series B from Forward Partners, MMC and Alliance Ventures.

๐Ÿ‡ฌ๐Ÿ‡งProperty fintech Jrny raised a pre-seed round led by Tenity.

๐Ÿ‡ฌ๐Ÿ‡งPersonal financial management app SmartPurse raised a seed round led by Tenity.

๐ŸŒ Consumer insights platform Monnai raised a $6.5m Series A led by Tiger Global.

๐ŸŒ Stripe has raised $6.5bn at a $50bn valuation from GIC, Goldman Sachs, Temasek and existing investors.

โ‚ฟ Web3 wallet and payment solution for web2 companies Tweed raised a $4m seed led by Accel.

โ‚ฟ Web3 metaverse payments platform Tilia raised a $22m round from JPMorgan and Dunamu.

Challenger Banking ๐Ÿš€

๐Ÿ‡ฌ๐Ÿ‡ง Fintech lender Sonovate lent out more than ยฃ1bn in 2022 for the first time, a 58% increase from 2021.

๐Ÿ‡ฌ๐Ÿ‡ง Scottish neobank for SMEs Alba has secured authorisation from the PRA and FCA, with restrictions (AwR)

๐ŸŒ Personalised consumer engagement platform Dynamic Yield has partnered with Mastercard to launch Element for hyper personalisation in eComm and banking.

Digital Assets โ‚ฟ

๐Ÿ‡ฌ๐Ÿ‡ง Crypto payment provider Wirex is launching its multi-currency card in Australia.

๐Ÿ‡ฌ๐Ÿ‡ง Binance has been cut off by payments partner Paysafe and has halted sterling deposits and withdrawals.

๐ŸŒ Payments provider Worldline is introducing a white-label shopping mall concept for firms wanting to expand into the metaverse.

๐ŸŒ Crypto exchange Huobi has created a $100m fund to protect its HT token with the help of Tron blockchain founder Justin Sun.

๐ŸŒ Kucoin is in the crosshairs of US authorities as New York State AG allegedly it has violated securities law.

๐ŸŒ Digital asset custody service Anchorage Digital is laying off 20% of staff.

๐ŸŒ The market cap of USDT is more than double that of USDC after the fallout of the SVB saga impacted the latter's.

๐ŸŒ Crypto bank Signature Bank was being investigated by DOJ for lax AML processes.

Traditional Banking ๐Ÿฆ

๐Ÿ‡ช๐Ÿ‡บ A deal to save Credit Suisse concluded over the weekend, with a $3.25bn deal from UBS. ย Shares of Credit Suisse dropped this week upon news that it found material weaknesses in its financial reporting process and a major investor ruled out further investment.

๐Ÿ‡ช๐Ÿ‡บDanish FI Sparxpres is partnering with core banking provider Tuum and Trifork, an IT provider, to create a card and financing platform.

๐Ÿ‡ฌ๐Ÿ‡ง Bank of Scotland is allowing its users to customise how much they spend on gambling using their debit card.

๐Ÿ‡ฌ๐Ÿ‡ง HSBC has acquired the UK arm of SVB for ยฃ1 and is to inject $2.1bn of liquidity into the entity.

๐ŸŒ Lawsuits have started to come in for the executives of SVB as a group of venture capital investors are working to reclaim parts of the bank.

๐ŸŒ 11 banks are depositing $30bn at First Republic as a statement of confidence in an attempt to stem its outflows. ย Bank of America, Citi, JP Morgan and Wells Fargo are each depositing $5bn with Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley each depositing $2.5bn.

Fintech Infrastructure ๐Ÿšง

๐Ÿ‡ฌ๐Ÿ‡ง Open finance could be a priority in a new Data Protection and Innovation Bill after the Department of Science, Innovation and Technology proposed a revision.

๐Ÿ‡ฌ๐Ÿ‡ง Bank of African UK has migrated its core infrastructure to Oracle Cloud.

๐Ÿ‡ฌ๐Ÿ‡ง Mastercard has been certified as a digital ID provider in the UK under the DIATF framework.

๐ŸŒ Nigeria's central bank approved an open banking framework modelled on PSD2.

๐ŸŒ Morgan Stanley's Wealth division and Stripe are both integrating GPT-4 into their respective services.

Payments ๐Ÿ’ฐ

๐Ÿ‡ช๐Ÿ‡บ Nexi has signed Carrefour Italia as a customer.

๐Ÿ‡ช๐Ÿ‡บ French payment providers Synalcom and Qori have merged to form Sylq to offer merchants a payments platform for all their needs.

๐Ÿ‡ฌ๐Ÿ‡ง B2B BNPL solution Hokodo is partnering with BNP Paribas to provide the banks invoice factoring business with a new way to pay.

๐Ÿ‡ฌ๐Ÿ‡ง 300 UK payment firms received a letter from the FCA this week warning them they would be shut down unless they addressed "unacceptable" risk to consumers due to lack of controls, safeguarding of money in insolvency and poor reconciliation processes.

๐ŸŒ A pushback from Republican lawmakers has meant card networks Visa, Mastercard, Discover and American Express have paused creating a new category for firearm merchants.

๐ŸŒ Payments provider Square has launched an accelerator program for Black and Latino retail entrepreneurs.

๐ŸŒ Payshap, a real-time interbank payment service for low value payments has launched in South Africa aimed at the underbanked category.

๐ŸŒ African payments fintech Chipper Cash is exploring a sale.


Longer reads ๐Ÿ“œ


๐Ÿ‘ ๐Ÿ‘Ž Have feedback for us? Let us know!

See you next week!