UK & Europe

This Week in Fintech UK & Europe (28/02)

Hello TWIF UK & Europe friends,

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

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Funding 💸

There were 14 deals in the fintech space across the UK and Europe since the last post, with a total investment of $740m. Some highlights are below.

🇪🇺 Investment tracking fintech Finary has raised a €8m Series A from Speedinvest, Y Combinator and angels.

🇪🇺 BNPL fintech Scalapay raised a $497m Series B co-led by Tencent and Willoughby Capital.

🇪🇺 Embedded finance startup Hubuc raised a $10m seed co-led by Runa Capital and WndrCo.

🇬🇧 Investment platform PrimaryBid raised a $190m Series C led by SoftBank.

🇬🇧 Embedded banking platform Weavr raised a $40m Series A led by Tiger Global.

🇬🇧 Embedded finance and automation platform Monite raised a $5m round led by Point72 Ventures.

🌍 Lender SoFi is buying core banking platform Technisys for $1.1bn.

🌍 Indian neobank Niyo raised a $100m Series C led by Accel and Lightrock India.

Challenger Banking 🚀

🇬🇧 New Flux CEO Veronique Barbosa has criticised the lack of female leaders within the fintech industry.

🇬🇧 Moneybox is adding ETFs as investment options for its customers.

🇬🇧 Zopa is launching a hybrid savings account as it targets £2bn in deposits.

🇬🇧 Revolut is bringing fractional share trading of US stocks to its Australian users.

🇬🇧 LHV Bank has applied for a UK licence.

Digital Assets ₿

🇪🇺 N26 is partnering with exchange Bitpanda for the launch of its crypto project. Bitpanda has also acquired custody provider Trustology.

🌍 The FBI is setting up a specific cryptocurrency unit.

🌍 A Canadian court has ruled that crypto platforms need to freeze assets related to the “freedom convoy” protest.

🌍 A small handful of OpenSea users reported that some of their NFTs had been stolen in a phishing attack to the tune of $1.8m.

🌍 Christine Moy, the head of JP Morgan’s crypto and blockchain activities has left.

🌍 Crypto banking platform hi has partnered with Contis to issue a card that allows users to spend their crypto assets as well as use BNPL functionality.

🌍 The Luna Foundation Guard sold $1bn in LUNA to create a BTC reserve for UST.

Traditional Banking 🏦

🇪🇺 Credit Suisse have recruited experts to try and find the whistleblower who leaked account details of clients involved in torture, drugs, money laundering and corruption.

🇬🇧 Investment platform Hargreaves Lansdown announced it will cut its dividend until 2024 in favour of investing £175m into its digital strategy to redefine wealth management.

🇬🇧 TSB has integrated with Onfido to reduce its onboarding time to 10 minutes.

🇬🇧 Lloyds is to spend £1bn over three years on a digital strategy designed to move 20% of apps to the cloud by 2024 and increase digitally active customers by 10% to 24m+.

🇬🇧 The CMA has given the banks under its purview a deadline of July to implement variable recurring payments.

🌍 US Bank has selected Microsoft Azure as the cloud provider for its applications.

Payments 💰

🇪🇺 Nexi is set to sell its merchant payments business to BPER.

🇬🇧 Klarna is launching a rewards program in the UK, giving shoppers points each time they make repayments which can be redeemed at merchants.

🇬🇧 International transfer companies Wise and Europe based Paysera are restricting exchanges to Russia.

🇬🇧 Efforts are underway by the UK to exclude Russia from the Swift payments system.

🌍 Delta Airlines has launched a BNPL option with American Express.

Regulatory Corner 🔎

🇬🇧 The FCA has authorised Viola Money, a neobank, whilst its owner was under investigation for money laundering.

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