Happy holidays TWIF UK & Europe friends,

I hope you are all taking so much needed time off over the festive season and spending time with friends, family and loved ones.

As we head into the last week of the year, I wanted to provide a summary of funding for UK & Europe fintech’s for the 2021, courtesy of data provided by Dealroom.

UK & Europe fintech’s have raised a record amount in 2021, nearly $30bn across nearly 1,250 deals which is a fantastic achievement. This amount however was not evenly spread, with the UK is still the dominant fintech ecosystem in Europe. European fintechs did maintained their share of global fintech investment which has averaged ~23% over the past 3 years.

In terms of fintech hubs within Europe, as mentioned, UK fintech’s raised nearly $14bn, almost half of the total, with Germany next ($4.2bn) followed by France ($2.9bn) then Sweden ($2.1bn). The UK also had the largest number of deals with over almost 500, followed again by Germany (153) and France (105). Payments remained the hot sub sector taking in $9bn followed by Banking ($8bn). European crypto fintech’s received $3.1bn in funding.

As the European fintech ecosystem develops, it is not just in terms of increases in total funding, but also in the funding of larger deals. In 2020 there were only 3 deals of $250m+ and 10 more than $100m-$250m but in 2021 these increased to 29 and 41 respectively, showing that UK & Europe fintech’s are maturing and raising larger rounds. Also of note for the ecosystem is the increasing presence of US VCs investing in European fintechs, which accelerated more than 3x in 2021.

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

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Funding 💸

There were 19 deals in the fintech space across the UK and Europe since the last post, with a total investment of $156m. Some highlights are below.

🇪🇺 Cross-chain protocol Multichain raised a$60m seed round led by Binance Labs.

🇪🇺 Payment operations company Numeral raised a EUR 13m seed round led by Balderton and also included Monzo co-founder Tom Blomfield.

🇪🇺 Corporate credit card provider Pliant raised a EUR 12.5m seed round led by Alstin Capital.

🇬🇧 Remittance platform Taptap Send raised a $65m Series B from Canaan Partners, Flourish Ventures, Slow Ventures,Unbound, Spark Capital and Reid Hoffman.

🇬🇧 Global payments infrastructure provider Rvvup raised a $7.5m seed round led by HV Capital.

🌍 Indian banking platform Razorpay raised a $375m Series F valuing the fintech at $7.5bn.

Challenger Banking 🚀

🇬🇧 Neobank Monese has acquired Trezo, an income smoothing product for self-employed workers.

🇬🇧 Revolut has been granted a full EU banking license through the Bank of Lithuania.

Digital Assets ₿

🇪🇺 German group Siemens is the first client of JPMorgan’s Onyx blockchain and will use the technology to transfer and verify USD payments between its accounts.

🇪🇺 Deutsche Telekom purchased a large amount of DOT as it seeks to provide node-running infrastructure.

🇬🇧 The BoE plans to accelerate international talks about a regulatory regime for crypto as it seeks more information on institutional exposure.

🇬🇧 Arsenal’s ad for its fan token has been deemed “irresponsible and misleading” according to the ASA, the continuation of a common theme in the UK of the advertising regulator taking a touch approach to crypto ads.

🌍 Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri said that they are “actively exploring” NFTs.

🌍 Web3 wars broke out this week with Elon Musk and Jack Dorsey suggesting Web3 is being centralised by investors and VCs, specifically calling out a16z.

🌍Swift, the cross-border banking cooperative is looking into the development of the tokenised asset market.

Traditional Banking 🏦

🇬🇧 Lloyds transformation director Nick Williams has said the banks on-site technology is not “fit for purpose” during an internal meeting. Internal project Voyager is focused on moving its old tech to the cloud.

🇬🇧 Nationwide customers faced a glitch with Faster Payments in the run up to Christmas.

Fintech Infrastructure 🚧

🇬🇧 Payments platform Finastra are partnering with consulting firm SIA Partners to run Finance and Innovation for Good, a competition for students to develop sustainable finance projects with cash prizes.

🇬🇧 Visa has closed its acquisition of Currencycloud that it announced in July this year.

Payments 💰

🇪🇺 Approval of the European Payment Initiative (EPI) has been delayed again as German banks and Spanish banks fight.

🇪🇺 German fuel station payments provider PACE is partnering with PayPal to bring mobile payments to fuel pumps in Europe.

🇬🇧 PollenPay is entering the BNPL space to give its customers greater cash flow management.

🌍Community banking association Alloy Labs Alliance is creating a new open instant payment network called CHUCK through a partnership with Payrailz, to rival Zelle which is owned by the largest banks.

🌍Mastercard is acquiring Dynamic Yield, a personalised experience platform, from McDonald’s

Regulatory Corner 🔎

In collaboration with Kat Cloud

🌍The Secret Service has assigned a special agent to recover the nearly $100bn that was stolen from pandemic relief funds.

🌍 The CFPB has forced LendUp to stop issuing loans as well as collecting outstanding ones due to deceptive marketing complaints.

2022 Predictions

• Big ideas that fintech will tackle in 2022 - Andreessen Horowitz
• 2022 Predictions - Paul Veradittakit, Pantera Capital

Longer reads 📜

• The ISA industry goes back to school - Tomio Geron
• 2032: Financial Tales from planet Earth - Giorgio Giuliani
• With fraud growing, Robinhood becomes latest fintech to block customers from transferring money from certain banks - Jeff Kauflin and Eliza Haverstock
• This banker is minting money in the fintech boom - Peter Rudegeair and Liz Hoffman, WSJ
• DST Global: The Quiet Conqueror - The Generalist
• How to solve the payments privacy paradox - Dave Birch
• Chicago’s Last Black-Owned Bank Got Millions in Government Deposits — Then Had to Give Them Back - ProPublica

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See you next week!