Hello TWIF UK & Europe friends,

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

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Funding 💸

Highlights below of deals since the last post in the fintech space across the UK & Europe. Deal data powered by Dealroom.

🇪🇺Decentralised stablecoin platform Mento Labs raised a $10m round from Hashkey Capital, Flori Ventures, W3, Limit Holdings and more.

🇪🇺 Neobank Unitplus raised a €4.7m round from Remind.me and SeedX.

🇬🇧 BNPL provider Zilch raised a £50m securitisation facility.

🇬🇧 Payments app VibePay raised £5m in funding.

🇬🇧 Data science for financial services solution Auquan raised a $4.5m round from Neotribe and Peak XV Partners.

🌍 Bahrain payment provider Arab Financial Services raised $50m.

Challenger Banking 🚀

🇪🇺 Neobroker Bux, owned by ABN Amro, is to provide retail investors access to IPOs using technology from PrimaryBid.

🇪🇺 B2B lender Levenue is to provide financing through a partnership with spend management solution Spendbase.

🇪🇺 Neobank Lunar has signed Saldo Bank as a customer for its payment infrastructure.

🇬🇧 Revolut has launched a grant program to support women in engineering.

🇬🇧 B2B lender YouLend has signed payment provider Dojo as a customer to distribute financing to SMEs.

🇬🇧 Neobank Starling has launched a in-app tool to combat bank impersonation, following in the footsteps of Monzo.

🌍 SMB lender Kapitus has acquired Ten Oaks Commercial Capital, as it expands into the equipment financing business.

Digital Assets ₿

🇪🇺BitStamp has secured a MiFID MTF licence.

🇪🇺 Franklin Templeton received approval from the Luxembourg regulator to launch a fully tokenised UCITS fund.

🇪🇺Boerse Stuttgart Digital, the digital asset arm of the European exchange, is to leverage Elwood's digital asset infrastructure solution.

🇪🇺 The Netherlands has launched a consultation on a proposed bill requiring crypto service providers to share their users data with tax authorities.

🌍 Payment provider Shift4 has launched Pay with Crypto powered by Mesh.

🌍 Crypto derivatives exchange Deribit is launching a hybrid custody solution to accelerate onboarding.

🌍 Wall Street firm Lazard plans to create a tokenized fund with Bitfinex.

🌍 US prosecutors are investigating Tether for breaking AML rules.

🌍 Crypto.com has overtaken Coinbase for spot volumes in North America.

🌍 Coinbase is integrating Visa Direct to enable real-time account funding. ITs shares slumped after its Q3 earnings missed. It also announced share buybacks.

🌍 Gemini receives preliminary approval for an MPI licence in Singapore.

🌍 Tokenization platform Securitize has crossed $1bn in tokenized onchain assets and launched a fund administration service.

🌍 Tokenised money market fund issuer Superstate has introduced real-time continuous pricing for its USTB fund.

🌍 Tether reported $2.5bn in profits in Q3 and announced it holds $100bn of US treasuries.

Traditional Banking 🏦

🇪🇺Deutsche Bank has partnered with Paysafe to enable the bank's customers to deposit and withdraw cash at retailers in Germany.

🇬🇧 Lloyds has launched Link Pay on its mobile app to request money from friends and family.

🇬🇧 Santander is to cut 1,400 jobs in the UK in favour of automation.

🌍 JP Morgan is suing customers over a viral "money glitch".

🌍 Citi has signed a multi0year cloud and AI deal with Google Cloud.

🌍 Bank of America has disclosed regulators are probing its AML and compliance programs for Zelle.

🌍 Capital One and Worldpay are partnering to improve fraud decisioning.

🌍 Wells Fargo has rolled out Paze to its customers.

Fintech Infrastructure 🚧

🇪🇺Neobroker infrastructure provider DriveWealth secured a European Brokerage Licence from the Bank of Lithuania.

🇬🇧 BaaS provider ClearBank is partnering with Visa to collaborate on card issuance and Visa Direct.

🌍 Card issuing platform Marqeta has launched Marqeta Flex, a BNPL solution that can be embedded in apps.

🌍 Bank software provider Array acquired debt infrastructure solution Payitoff.

Payments 💰

🇪🇺 A Klarna investor has had its valuation increased to $14.6bn by an investor. It also signed a deal with WorldPay to become a default payment offering to merchants.

🇪🇺 Adyen's Tap to Pay on iPhone solution has gone live in new European markets; Sweden, Austria, Czech Republic, Ireland and Romania.

🇬🇧 Wise CEO was fined £350,000 by the FCA for failing to report tax issues.

🇬🇧 Payment infrastructure provider OpenPayd secured digital asset firm B2C2 as a customer.

🇬🇧 PSP Online Payment Platform secured a UK EMI licence.

🇬🇧 Cross-border payment solution Thunes is working with stablecoin issuer Circle to support stablecoin transactions.

🇬🇧 Square is launching its business card product in the UK, the first market outside of North America to provide SMBs with instant access to funds.

Longer reads/listens 📜

• Could Harris win? And 25 closing thoughts - Tangle
• Reflections on Palantir - Nabeel S. Qureshi
• Inside the Secret School for the World’s Best Founders - Mario Gabriele
• Fintech Meets Telecom: How Neobanks Are Unlocking the Power of eSIM - Nyca Partners
• Why did Stripe spend $1.1bn on a Series A Stablecoin startup? - Simon Taylor
• They Want Dollars, Not Dogecoins - Dave Birch
• Patch Perfect - Samir Desai
• The Rise of Digitally Native Vertical Payment Processors (DNVP) and Finix’s Plan of Attack - Jareau Wade

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See you next week!