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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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This Week in Fintech UK & Europe (18/10)

This Week in Fintech UK & Europe (18/10)

Hello TWIF UK & Europe friends,

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


Editor’s Note: If you’re an early-stage startup founder raising equity or debt, I may be able to help - reach out to michael@thisweekinfintech.com.


Tweet of the week 🦉🏆


Funding 💸

There were 12 deals in the fintech space across the UK and Europe since the last post, with a total investment of $128m. Some highlights are below.

🇪🇺 N26 is rumoured to have raised €700m at an €8bn valuation from Third Point, Coatue and Dragoneer.

🇪🇺 Juni raised a $52m Series A extension led by EQT Ventures and included FJ Labs, DST Global, Felix Capital and Cherry Ventures.

🇪🇺 Grunfin raised €2m led by Norrsken VC and included angel investors.

🇬🇧 Elliptic raised a €51.8m Series C from Softbank, Octopus Ventures, SignalFire and Paladin Capital.

🇬🇧 Global Processing Services (GPS) raised $300m for an LBO from Advent International and Viking Global.

🇬🇧 9fin raised a £8m Series A led by Redalpine Ventures.

🇬🇧 Plum raised $14m in a yet to be closed Series A from dmg Ventures, Ventura Capital, 500 Startups and some angels.

🇬🇧 Sequence is rumoured to have raised $15m led by a16z.

Challenger Banking 🚀

🇪🇺 Lunar has acquired payment gateway Paylike.

🇬🇧 Goodlord has acquired acasa, a tenant fintech platform.

🇬🇧 Pleo is adding a free to further accelerate its growth.

🇬🇧 Monzo is making it easier for its business customers to get paid through a quick request payment link or invoice. It is also partnering with Freetrade to give its paying subscribers three free shares. Freetrade hit the 1m customer mark this past week.

🇬🇧 MVNO To The Moon has added a debit card to its product offering alongside its sim-only product.

🇬🇧 Equifax research found 55% of UK credit providers will integrate Open Banking in their underwriting to increased accuracy, fairness and speed.

🇬🇧 Starling reported little demand for the new £100 contactless limit that customers can set.

🇬🇧 Female financial literacy platform Juno launched. Read about it here.

🇬🇧 Credit Kudos is launching Signal, an open banking powered credit score for lenders.

Digital Assets ₿

🇬🇧 Ex-Chancellor Philip Hammond has become an advisor to Copper, the crypto custody platform.

🇬🇧 Blockchain payment platform Ivno has been snapped up by New York’s R3.

🇬🇧 Digital Pound Foundation has launched with backing from Accenture, CGI Group and Ripple to advocate for a UK CBDC. The BoE is also looking into the risks of DeFi as deputy governor warned crypto could spark a global financial crisis.

🌍 Two of Facebook’s crypto engineers who co-created its Novi digital wallet have left to join a16z.

🌍 Stripe is hiring a team of 4 crypto engineers to work on crypto payments.

🌍 Coinbase is launching an NFT marketplace.

🌍 MakerDAO is considering incorporating and paying taxes.

🌍 Polkadot announced its parachain auctions and its DOT token surged above $42.

🌍 Tether was fined $42m on false claims USDT was fully backed by fiat.

🌍 A bitcoin futures ETF is finally set to launch.

Traditional Banking 🏦

🇪🇺 Societe Generale is merging with its Credit du Nord unit to create a new retail bank in France.

🇬🇧 A report by Lloyds Bank shows UK financial institutions are targeting fintechs for acquisitions and partnerships to better position themselves post-pandemic.

🇬🇧 Seven banks from the UK and US participated in a POC with Swift, EBA and TCH on real-time cross-border payment messaging initiative called Immediate Cross-Border Payments (IXB).

🇬🇧 Standard Chartered is making its supplier finance program easier to access with a new platform created with Demica. It is also looking to generate 50% of income from digital.

🇬🇧 Barclays has opened a technology hub in Glasgow.

🇬🇧 NatWest is committing £100bn to climate and sustainable funding and financing.

🇬🇧 Nationwide is taking a van and touring the UK to help people switch to digital banking.

🌍 JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon said on a call that bitcoin is “worthless”.

Fintech Infrastructure 🚧

🇬🇧 Open finance platform mmob has added PensionBee, Upside and Glint Pay to its platform to become a “superapp-as-a-Service”.

🇬🇧 Railsbank is moving to a new global HQ in Broadgate.

Payments 💰

🇪🇺 UniCredit and JP Morgan are utilising Swift Go for payments between EU and US.

🇪🇺 Berlin based Billie is focusing on BNPL (who isn’t these days) and is teaming up with Klarna to offer its merchants the ability to integrate payments from Billie.

🇪🇺 A Klarna browser extension has been launched, enabling pay-in-4 for any online purchase. h/t to Jason Mikula.

🇪🇺 Nexpay partnered with Ondato to for its compliance infrastructure.

🇬🇧 Fidel API launches Reimbursements and expands its leadership team with executives from Visa, Google Pay and Talkdesk.

🇬🇧 Fintech venteral Anthony Thomson (founder or Metro Bank and Atom Bank) is the new chair of Zip UK.

🇬🇧 SumUp has launched in the US through the acquisition of Fivestars.

Regulatory Corner 🔎

🇬🇧 Trouble at the FCA with staff in uproar over planned pay cuts under Nikhil Rathi’s transformation plans.

🌍 International

Don’t forget to subscribe to TWIF US & Global by Nik Milanovic and TWIF India & SEA by Osborne Saldanha.


Longer reads 📜


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