Hello TWIF UK & Europe friends,

I am very excited to announce that the TWIF UK & Europe team has expanded! We have added three new people to the team in the past couple of months.

• Amber (ex Plaid, Taktile) - Head of UK & EU Events
• Marilena (ex Plaid) - UK & EU Events Coordinator
• Caelum (Plaid, ex GoCardless, Navro) - Partnerships Lead

We have an exciting schedule of events and partnerships coming up so make sure you are on our distribution list.

The first of which is, we are excited to partner with Rise by Barclays to co-host the monthly Fintech Coffee Club. The first coffee club event details will be out soon.

If you want to work with us on an event or partner with us in the newsletter, get in touch!

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

👍 👎 Have feedback or news to share? Let me know on Twitter and LinkedIn.

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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.

🇪🇺 Danish accounting provider Ageras raised €82m as it looks for acquisitions.

🇪🇺 Danish neobank Lunar has raised €24.1m.

🇪🇺 Spend management platform Pleo raised €40m in debt from HSBC Innovation Banking.

🇬🇧 SME lender Capify has secured a £100m credit facility from Pollen Street Capital.

🇬🇧 Monzo is set to raise an additional £500m with support from Hedosophia.

🇬🇧 POS provider SumUp raised €1.5bn credit facility led by Goldman Sachs.

🇬🇧 Crypto exchange X10 raised a $6.5m round led by Tioga Capital and included Semantic Ventures, Cherry Ventures, Starkware and Cyber Fund.

🇬🇧 Insurtech Urban Jungle raised $14m from existing investors.

🇬🇧 Card payment price comparison service Tuza raised a £4m seed round from Connect Ventures, Northzone, EF, Triple Point and angels.

🌍 Brazilian financial infrastructure provider QI Tech raised a Series B from General Atlantic and Across Capital.

🌍 Wallet-as-a-service provider Ansa raised a $14m Series A led by Renegade Partners and included Bain, BoxGroup and Wischoff Ventures.

🌍 Digital lending platform Blend raised $150m from Haveli Investments.

₿ Tokenization firm Securitize raised a $47m round led by BlackRock.

Challenger Banking 🚀

🇪🇺 Neobank Qred is offering the highest savings interest rate in Sweden.

🇬🇧 Spend management provider PayHawk has integrated with Amex to enable customers to issue virtual Amex cards with spend controls and Amex rewards.

🇬🇧 Invoice financing lender Accelerated Payments has partnered with creator management platform Inflverse to provide credit to creators.

🇬🇧 Business bank Allica Bank has lent over £500m in asset finance in the past year.

🇬🇧 Spend management provider Soldo has partnered with B2B lender Triver to provide access to capital to SMEs.

🇬🇧 Consumer lender Abound has reached profitability and is looking to expand its team in London.

🇬🇧 Neobank Zopa Bank has reached £4bn in deposits in the four years since it got its bank licence.

🇬🇧 Consumer lender Plend and credit eligibility platform Monevo have partnered to enable credit providers and banks to manage re-qualified credit offers.

🇬🇧 Leading SMB credit card provider Capital on Tap securitised £350m of loans raising additional funds to support SMBs.

🇬🇧 Neobank Monese has split its business in two, with Monese continuing its B2C offering and XYB becoming a separate company for its B2B core bank platform.

🇬🇧 Mass affluent neobank Monument has hit £2bn in deposits.

🇬🇧 Wealth investment strategy builder Stratiphy has received approval from the FCA.

🇬🇧 Business neobank Tide is partnering with Adyen to expand into Germany and provide SEPA payments.

🌍 Nubank has released Nubank+ to give cash back and free streaming with Max.

🌍 Franklin Templeton is collaborating with Microsoft to build a personalised financial AI platform.

Digital Assets ₿

🇪🇺 The EU passed broader AML rules that enforce stricter KYC processes at financial institutions which now includes Crypto Asset Service Providers.

🇪🇺 Crypto banking provider BCB Group received a Digital Asset Services Provider and EMI licence in France.

🇬🇧 UK law enforcement will be able to more easily seize crypto due to new rules.

🌍 B2B blockchain payment provider Paystand has acquired spend management solution Teampay.

🌍 Binance founder CZ was sentenced to four months in prison for violating AML requirements.

🌍 Another person who was involved in the OneCoin scandal has been arrested.

🌍 Morgan Stanley is exploring allowing its brokers to recommend bitcoin ETFs.

🌍 The SEC has delayed deciding on proposals to allow options on spot bitcoin ETFs.

🌍 Ethereum developer Consensys has filed a lawsuit against the SEC for "unlawful seizure of authority".

🌍 Australia could be next to approve spot bitcoin ETFs by the end of the year.

🌍 Defi exchange Uniswap has enabled users to buy crypto from their Robinhood account.

🌍 MoonPay has integrated with PayPal to make it easier to buy and sell crypto.

🌍 Tether is to use Chainalysis for transaction surveillance.

🌍 Coinbase reported Q1 earnings with revenue +72% to $1.6bn and $1bn in EBITDA.

Traditional Banking 🏦

🇪🇺 Trading exchange Deutsche Borse has backed Forge, a marketplace for trading shares in private companies.

🇪🇺 Spanish bank BBVA, the owner of TSB, is looking to acquire rival Sabadell.

🇬🇧 NatWest has become the first UK bank to issue a loan backed by Intellectual Property. It has also partnered with the Federation of Small Businesses to be its official payments partner.

🇬🇧 Nottingham Building Society has partnered with cross-border credit bureau Nova Credit to offer mortgages to foreign nationals in the UK.

🌍 Goldman Sachs is close to exiting its General Motors credit card businesses and selling it to Barclays.

Fintech Infrastructure 🚧

🇪🇺 Visa owned open banking platform Tink has officially launched in the US.

🇪🇺Payment provider Elavon is expanding its partnership with Freedom Pay to build commerce solutions for hospitality and retail in Europe.

🇪🇺 Payment provider Viva.com is partnering with Satispay to expand its market.

🇪🇺 SoftPOS provider Phos and payment processor Silverflow are collaborating to enable contactless payments on mobile devices.

🇬🇧 The Bank of London has launched an AI code assistant to help developers build products and services quicker.

🇬🇧 Financial infrastructure provider Fidel API has sold its loyalty business to Enigmatic Smile and has rebranded the remaining business as Astrada.

🇬🇧 Financial services software marketplace Finastra has launched a Next Gen Mobile Banking solution. It has also announced its Confirmation of Payee service with ScotPayments.

🇬🇧 Digital wealth infrastructure provider WealthKernel is partnering with buy-to-let property platform GetGround.

🌍 Accounting software provider Freshbooks has integrated with Stripe for payments.

🌍 US direct deposit switching service Atomic has secured Frost Bank as a customer.

🌍 Commerce platform WEX has become the preferred virtual card provider for Booking.com to streamline payments across borders.

🌍 Embattled BaaS provider Solid has reportedly resolved a dispute with its investor FTV Capital and is buying back the firms stake at a discount.

🌍 Card issuer Marqeta has expanded its partnership with Uber Eats.

🌍 Fraud provider Oscilar has integrated with device intelligence platform Fingerprint into their platform.

🌍 Payment infrastructure provider Orum has launched No Code Verify, a bank account verification service.

Payments 💰

🇪🇺 Payment provider Mollie reported +36% growth in revenue in 2023 to €99, with operating costs falling 30% to €127m so still made a loss.

🇪🇺 A2A provider Brite Payments has signed e-commerce platform Shopware as a customer.

🇪🇺 Outpayce, the travel payments business of travel software provider Amadeus has secured an EMI licence from the Bank of Spain.

🇬🇧 The Bank of England has warned payment firms that their preparations need to be accelerated to meet its new "operational resilience" standards.

🇬🇧 Cross border payments provider TransferGo has is to use Tink's Pay by Bank payment product.

🇬🇧 Checkout.com has launched its card issuing product and announced a partnership with Mastercard to provide OTA's with virtual cards.

🇬🇧 Payment provider Worldpay is offering merchants "Tap-to-Pay" on iPhone.

🌍 Visa has joined the AWS Partner Network to enable AWS customers to access and integrate Visa services more efficiently.

🌍 Joining a host of other retailers, Walmart is removing its self-checkout from some stores.

🌍 A recent settlement $30bn by Visa and Mastercard over interchange fees with merchants is being challenged by the National Retail Federation.

🌍 Mastercard has signed e-commerce provider PrestaShop as a customer for its Click to Pay solution.

🌍 Payment provider Paysafe has launched Pay By Bank for the gambling segment.

🌍 American Express has opened a state-of-the-art facility in India.

🌍 BNPL provider Sezzle is gamifying its payments to encourage on-time payments.

🌍 DailyPay is to provide EWA to SMBs in the US.

🌍 Block is facing an investigation by the DOJ into compliance failures at Cash App and Square.

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See you next week!