UK & Europe

This Week in Fintech UK & Europe (21/02)

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

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Come find your place on the team at the most inspiring fintech startups! Browse open roles on This Week in Fintech’s job board.

Funding 💸

There were 14 deals in the fintech space across the UK and Europe since the last post, with a total investment of $404m. Some highlights are below.

🇪🇺 Nordic neobank Lunar has received an investment from actor Will Ferrel.

🇪🇺 Swedish VC firm Wellstreet has launched a $40m fintech fund.

🇬🇧 Thought Machine has received a £40m investment from new customer Intesa Sanpaolo.

🇬🇧 Capital markets software provider Genesis raised a $200m Series C led by Tiger Global and included Accel, GV, Illuminate Salesforce and Insight.

🇬🇧 Securities lending startup Sharegain raised a $64m Series B led by Westcap and included Blumberg Capital, Citigroup and others.

🇬🇧 Sustainable fintech Novus has closed a $3m round via crowdfunding and is going live.

🇬🇧 A2A payments fintech Banked raised a $20m Series A led by Bank of America and Edenred Capital as it seems US expansion

🇬🇧 Crypto infrastructure bank Fiat Republic raised a $3.5m seed round from Breega, Credo, Kindred Capital, Seedcamp, Softbank and Speedinvest.

🇬🇧 Atom Bank has raised £75m as rumours of its impending IPO grow.

🌍 Payroll infrastructure provider Check has raised a $75m Series C led by Stripe.

🌍 South African API platform Stitch raised a $21m Series A led by The Spruce House and also included TrueLayer and PayPal.

🌍 3Box Labs* raised $30m to build out an interoperable data composability network called Ceramic, from Multicoin Capital, USV, Coinbase Ventures, Digital Currency Group and more.

🌍 Warren Buffet bought $1bn shares in Brazil neobank Nubank whilst reducing Visa and Mastercard shares.

🌍 African payments platform Flutterwave raised a $250m Series D at a $3bn valuation led by B Capital.

🌍 Circle has doubled its SPAC valuation to $9bn after renegotiating.

Challenger Banking 🚀

🇪🇺 Forget Finance, a financial literacy platform, is rumoured to be raising again.

🇪🇺 German lender Auxmoney has appointed a former Barclays exec as its chief growth officer.

🇬🇧 Paysafe hired a former Barclays and Amazon executives to strengthen its senior ranks in its digital wallet business.

🇬🇧 Revolut is looking to expand and has scooped up Arvog Forex, an Indian FX company as well as a credit license in Australia. It also has added payroll management to its business banking toolkit, providing another service that businesses require.

🇬🇧 Starling Bank is offsetting its 2021 emissions by investing in eight carbon capture projects.

🇬🇧 Revenue-based lender Capchase is expanding beyond the US to Europe with an office in London.

Digital Assets ₿

🇪🇺 VTB Bank and PSB have tested a transfer of a digital ruble using the Bank of Russia’s CBDC infrastructure.

🇬🇧 Alternative asset app Koia is launching asset-backed NFTs.

🇬🇧 27 UK firms who are temporarily registered to operate in the UK face a frantic countdown until the end of March to be approved by the FCA, who are backlogged.

🇬🇧 Binance has had its access to Faster Payments reinstated via a deal with US payments company Paysafe, despite FCA disapproval. The regulator has limited powers to stop it. Binance has also invested $200m in business media outlet Forbes.

🌍 The Superbowl turned into the CryptoBowl with FTX, Coinbase and Crypto.com all buying up expensive commercial time.

🌍 Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said the firm will “absolutely” accept crypto in the future but also spoke about transaction costs and climate concerns with the technology.

🌍 BlockFi is to pay $100m to settle its lawsuits that it failed to register interest-bearing accounts without registering them with the SEC. BlockFi positioned it as paving the way and providing regulatory clarity for the whole sector, maybe everyone in web3 should chip in!

🌍 JPMorgan has opened a lounge in Decentraland, a virtual world in the metaverse.

🌍 An association called Travel Rule Universal Solution Technology (TRUST), which includes Coinbase, Anchorage, Circle and Robinhood, is looking into a solution to allow crypto transactions to comply with the FinCEN Travel rule, which stipulates that you have to know who is sending money to whom.

Traditional Banking 🏦

🇪🇺 BBVA has invested $300m in Brazilian neobank Neon.

🇪🇺 Project Carbon, a blockchain marketplace where businesses can buy and sell carbon offsets, has gained three new members in the form of UBS, Standard Chartered and BNP Paribas.

🇬🇧 NatWest is providing SMEs with tools to manage their climate impact as part of its £100bn Climate and Sustainable Funding and Finance program. It is also closing another 32 branches.

🇬🇧 The CFO at Metro Bank quit eight days before the company released its financial results.

🇬🇧 TSB is partnering with Bankifi to provide SMEs a way to easily chase invoices a through Revenu, a new payments app.

Fintech Infrastructure 🚧

🇬🇧 Open Banking in the UK now counts 5m active users based on CMA9 data, growing from 4m only four months ago.

🇬🇧 Stripe Issuing is now available in the UK.

🌍 Payments software firm ACI Worldwide now offer a single solution for merchants to integrate more than 70 BNPL lenders.

🌍 Plaid and Marqeta have partnered to allow the latter’s customers to authenticate users bank accounts and more easily initiative ACH transactions.

Payments 💰

🇪🇺 80% of payments in the Nordics are contactless according to Next Gen Nordics.

🇪🇺 Worldline is selling its POS business to private equity firm Apollo for $2.3bn.

🇬🇧 A Klarna survey has found that no one they asked could calculate the interest cost of a credit card purchase and calls for an overhaul of the Consumer Credit Act. To counterpunch, Barclays is calling for stricter BNPL regulations.

🌍 Mastercard has attracted 16 technology companies, including Adyen, Checkout, PayPal, Stripe and TabaPay, to its Mastercard Send program which will is a multi-rail payment proposition for people and businesses. It is also expanding its consulting services to include open banking, open data, crypto, digital currency and ESG

🌍 Affirm’s results were released a day early on Twitter with shares declining 21% despite meeting or slightly beating expectations. Shares are down over 50% YTD.

🌍 Facebook will let US users split payments in its Messenger app.

Regulatory Corner 🔎

🇬🇧 The FCA is forcing BNPL firms to refund customers for charges that were unfair and unclear.

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