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 📜

• UK Open Banking is at a crossroads - AltFi
• The “Sailing Ship Effect” in Financial Services - David Birch
• Tax admin and risk trap for platforms - Kevin Sefton (h/t to Paul Loberman)
• What if Central Banks issued a digital currency? - Ajay Mookerjee, HBR
• Open Source is finally coming to financial services - a16z
• Anyone seen Tether’s billions? - Zeke Faux
• Layer 1 vs Layer 2 - Petro Wallace
• How to win the Future - a16z
• Why do businesses need crypto? - Fintech Across The Pond

Want to be a This Week in Fintech - UK & Europe sponsor? Reach out to me at michael@thisweekinfintech.com or find me on Twitter.

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See you next week!