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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 (13/06)

This Week in Fintech UK & Europe (13/06)

Hello TWIF UK & Europe friends,

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Please find another week of fintech news, financings and exits below. If you are reading this but havenโ€™t already subscribed, you can click below ๐Ÿ™

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Tweet of the week ๐Ÿฆ‰๐Ÿ†


Funding ๐Ÿ’ธ

Highlights below of deals since the last post in the fintech space across the UK & Europe.

๐Ÿ‡ช๐Ÿ‡บ Crypto payment startup Fung raised a $2.7m pre-seed round from Kindred Capital and Global Founders Capital.

๐Ÿ‡ช๐Ÿ‡บ Institutional crypto audit provider Cryptio raised a $10m Series A.

๐Ÿ‡ช๐Ÿ‡บ E-commerce focused banking platform Juni raised a $206m Series B, $100m in equity led by Mubadala Capital and $106m in venture debt from TriplePoint Capital.

๐Ÿ‡ช๐Ÿ‡บ Banking software provider Backbase raised โ‚ฌ120m at a โ‚ฌ2.5bn valuation from Motive Partners.

๐Ÿ‡ช๐Ÿ‡บCrypto invoice and payments startup Request raised a $5.5m seed round from Balderton Capital, XAnge and more.

๐Ÿ‡ช๐Ÿ‡บEmbedded lender Defacto raised a โ‚ฌ15m Series A from Northzone, Global Founders Capital and others.

๐Ÿ‡ช๐Ÿ‡บTrade finance fintech Factris raised a โ‚ฌ10m round from NN Group.

๐Ÿ‡ฌ๐Ÿ‡ง Bud raised an $80m round from TDR Capital to fund is growth plans.

๐Ÿ‡ฌ๐Ÿ‡ง LHV UK raised โ‚ฌ35m in funding for its UK operation that is awaiting PRA approval.

๐Ÿ‡ฌ๐Ÿ‡ง Felix Capital have raised $600m for a new fund.

๐Ÿ‡ฌ๐Ÿ‡ง Financial infrastructure startup Codat raised a $100m round led by JPMorgan at $825m valuation, double that from its July round.

๐Ÿ‡ฌ๐Ÿ‡งWeb3 enabler Fiat Republic raised a $2.5m seed extension from Connect Ventures, Credo Ventures and Softbank.

๐Ÿ‡ฌ๐Ÿ‡งProperty investment platform Fruitful Homes raised a $25m Series A from Founders Fund, Lux Capital 8VC and angels including Elad Gil.

๐ŸŒ Crypto powered robo advisor Delphia raised a $60m Series A led by Multicoin Capital and also included Ribbit Capital, FTX Ventures and more.

Challenger Banking ๐Ÿš€

๐Ÿ‡ช๐Ÿ‡บ N26 has streamlined its account top up process to provide card and digital wallet options for customers in addition to SEPA, with the help of Stripe.

๐Ÿ‡ช๐Ÿ‡บ German neobank Nuri joined the list of companies making layoffs with 45 employees being laid off.

๐Ÿ‡ฌ๐Ÿ‡ง Revolut has partnered with Tink to use its PIS technology to improve the account funding process.

๐Ÿ‡ฌ๐Ÿ‡ง Neobank Allica is now live on Mambuโ€™s cloud based banking platform.

๐Ÿ‡ฌ๐Ÿ‡ง Starling Bank revealed at Money 20/20 that it was looking to buy a lending platform and was expanding its Dublin presence ahead of an expansion to Europe.

๐Ÿ‡ฌ๐Ÿ‡ง Zopa is entering the BNPL space and promises โ€œresponsible and sustainable BNPL lendingโ€.

Digital Assets โ‚ฟ

๐Ÿ‡ฌ๐Ÿ‡ง Crypto banking app Ziglu can now offer GBP accounts after partnering with ClearBank.

๐Ÿ‡ฌ๐Ÿ‡ง Crypto platform Zumo has received government funding to continue its work decarbonising crypto.

๐ŸŒ Coinbase is extending its hiring freeze and has reportedly cancelled job offers that had been accepted.

๐ŸŒ FTX overtook Coinbase in terms of market share of fiat exchange volumes in May, with 26.66% of the total $335.3bn. Uniswap V3 had nearly 50% of all DEV volume in May as well.

๐ŸŒ A bipartisan bill from Senatorโ€™s Lummis and Gillibrand could mean the CFTC becomes the sole regulator of the crypto spot market, in a slight to the SEC.

๐ŸŒ PayPal has enabled crypto withdrawals to non-custodial wallets as well as between other PayPal accounts.

๐ŸŒ The NY State Department of Financial Services has set out guidance for segregated, reserve requirements for USD-backed stablecoins issued in the state and have approved redemption policies.

๐ŸŒ Mastercard is working with NFT marketplaces, such as Immutable X, Candy Digital, The Sandbox, Nifty Gateway and Moonpay, to make it easier to buy NFTs with cards.

Traditional Banking ๐Ÿฆ

๐Ÿ‡ช๐Ÿ‡บ It appears that the Federal Association of German banks received warnings from Verifone back in 2019 that its H5000 terminal, the most common POS terminal in Germany and that is still suffering outages, no longer met standards and would be at the end of its product lifecycle in 2022.

๐Ÿ‡ช๐Ÿ‡บ More than 12 banks connected to Swish are set to test the pan-Nordic payment platform P27 in the next six months.

๐Ÿ‡ฌ๐Ÿ‡ง Metro Bank is being sued by a software company over allegations it planned to steal its coin counting technology.

๐Ÿ‡ฌ๐Ÿ‡ง Nationwide have pledged not to leave any town or city where it currently has a branch without one until 2024, bucking the trend of other major banks.

๐Ÿ‡ฌ๐Ÿ‡ง Lloyds Bank is offering its invoice financing product through partnerships with Sage and Satago.

Fintech Infrastructure ๐Ÿšง

๐Ÿ‡ช๐Ÿ‡บ Fraud prevention startup SEON announced a new ML update to enhance its anti-fraud solution.

๐Ÿ‡ช๐Ÿ‡บ Stripe has released a new delegated authentication feature to improve conversation rates in Europe, with Wise its first customer. Stripe customers can allow their customers to authenticate purchases inside a checkout flow rather than kicking out to an issuer app.

๐Ÿ‡ช๐Ÿ‡บ Open banking platform Aiia, owned by Mastercard, released โ€œPay by linkโ€, a way to make payments by email, PDF, SMS etc.

๐Ÿ‡ฌ๐Ÿ‡ง US based automated cash management startup Trovata is heading to the UK and Europe after a $27m funding round.

๐Ÿ‡ฌ๐Ÿ‡ง TrueLayer signed trading platforms CMC Markets as a customer to enhance the latterโ€™s customer onboarding and payments. TrueLayer also signed Curve for its VRP product.

๐Ÿ‡ฌ๐Ÿ‡ง Thought Machine launched Vault Payments, a cloud-native cards and payments processing platform.

๐Ÿ‡ฌ๐Ÿ‡ง Contis is set to increase its headcount by 33% across the UK, Lithuania and India.

๐Ÿ‡ฌ๐Ÿ‡งThe Investing and Saving Alliance (Tisa) is to move to a live pilot of its digital ID program for financial services this summer.

๐Ÿ‡ฌ๐Ÿ‡งRailsbank has become Railsr.

Payments ๐Ÿ’ฐ

๐Ÿ‡ช๐Ÿ‡บ Spanish payment system Bizum has joined the European payment network (EMPSA), a group of 16 national payment solutions that aims to create a Europe wide QR code based platform.

๐Ÿ‡ฌ๐Ÿ‡ง Payments orchestration platform BR-DGE has partnered with Trust Payments to allow the formerโ€™s customers access to the latterโ€™s โ€œConverged Commerceโ€ offering and its all-in-one payment platform.

๐Ÿ‡ฌ๐Ÿ‡ง Citizens Advice found 2 in 5 BNPL customers borrowed money to make repayments.

๐ŸŒ Apple joined the BNPL craze with the launch of Apple Pay Later, allowing users to split Apple Pay purchases into four instalments over six weeks without interest or late fees, starting in the US only for now.

๐ŸŒ Marqeta is partnering with Western Union to allow remittance funds to be paid out to a physical or virtual card.

๐ŸŒ Payments standards body announced global EMV chip cards hit 12bn in circulation, with 68% of cards issued having an EMV chip.

Regulatory Corner ๐Ÿ”Ž

๐Ÿ‡ฌ๐Ÿ‡ง UK regulators are being given powers to test resilience of cloud providers that are increasingly being used by financial institutions.

๐ŸŒ SEC Chair Gensler has suggested the use of auctions to ensure the best prices for stocks, which could mean the PFOF business model would be no more.


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