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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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Licence to Pay - TWIF UK & Europe (06/11)

TWIF UK & Europe - The latest fintech news across the UK and Europe

Licence to Pay - TWIF UK & Europe (06/11)

Hello TWIF UK & Europe friends,

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

πŸ‘ πŸ‘Ž Have feedback or news to share? Let me know on Twitter and LinkedIn.

Quick programming note, there will be no TWIF UK & Europe for the next couple of weeks.


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Funding πŸ’Έ

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

πŸ‡ͺπŸ‡Ί Checkout abandonment solution Fero raised a $3m round from Volta Ventures, Coatue Management and Antler.

πŸ‡¬πŸ‡§ BNPL solution Zilch raised money from eBay at a $2bn valuation.

πŸ‡¬πŸ‡§ Atom Bank raised Β£100m from BBVA, Toscafund Asset Management and Infinity Investment Partners.

πŸ‡¬πŸ‡§ Insurtech Eleos raised Β£615k from Fuel Ventures, APX, Magic Fund and Indico Capital Partners.

πŸ‡¬πŸ‡§ Institutional digital asset platform Avantgarde Finance raised a $5.5m Series A from Jump Capital, Acrew Capital, Coinshares Ventures and Blockchange Ventures.

πŸ‡¬πŸ‡§ Insurtech Sprout.ai raised a Β£5.4m round from Amadeus Capital, Playfair Capital, Octopus Ventures, Techstars and more.

🌍 Middle East BNPL solution Tabby secured a $200m Series D at a $1.5bn valuation.

🌍 Latam BaaS solution QI Tech raised a $200m Series B led by General Atlantic.

🌍 Banking solution for the over 60s Charlie raised a $16m Series A and $7m in debt financing led by TTV Capital.

Challenger Banking πŸš€

πŸ‡¬πŸ‡§ Revolut has hired a new CEO for Revolut NewCo, the entity it has prepared for when it receives its UK banking licence.

πŸ‡¬πŸ‡§ Neobank Kroo launched a crowdfunding campaign.

πŸ‡¬πŸ‡§ Business lender Funding Circle received an SBA licence in the US.

🌍 Financial wellness solution Bloom Credit launched a credit reporting service for rent payments.

🌍 Intuit is reportedly shutting down Mint and pushing users to use Credit Karma that it acquired in 2020.

🌍 Nubank has reached 90m customers in Latam.

Digital Assets β‚Ώ

πŸ‡¬πŸ‡§ The government released results of its digital asset consultation and proposes a regulatory framework starting next year.

πŸ‡¬πŸ‡§ Ziglu founder Mark Hipperson has rejoined the company after resigning last year.

πŸ‡¬πŸ‡§ HSBC has tested a tokenised deposit platform for intra-company treasury transactions. It has also tokenised gold.

πŸ‡¬πŸ‡§ PayPal has been approved by the FCA as a crypto service provider.

🌍 Gemini has filed a complaint against bankrupt lender Genesis over shares in GBTC worth $1.6bn.

🌍 Kraken is to begin sharing user information with the IRS this month after receiving a court order. They have to share user info who have conducted $20,000 or more in a single year between 2016 and 2020.

🌍 Students in Australia have been piloting the use of CBDCs to pay for goods at on-campus vendors.

🌍 Circle is to phase out support of consumer accounts minting USDC and EURC.

🌍 BlackRock's bitcoin ETF has secured liquidity from trading firms including Jane Street, Virtu Financial, Jump Trading and Hudson River Trading.

🌍 Visa successfully piloted the use of tokenised deposits for B2B payments with HSBC and Hang Seng Bank in Hong Kong as part of an e-HK CBSC program.

🌍 Zodia Custody, the digital asset custody provider owned by Standard Chartered has expanded its services in Hong Kong.

🌍 PayPal has been subpoenaed by the SEC about its USD stablecoin.

Traditional Banking 🏦

πŸ‡ͺπŸ‡Ί Allied Irish Bank has apologised for a recent glitch in its online banking.

πŸ‡ͺπŸ‡Ί Deutsche Bank is closing 250 of its Postbank branches.

πŸ‡¬πŸ‡§ TSB, Santander and Metro Bank topped the PSRs list of banks with the most amount of APP fraud sent per Β£m of transactions.

🌍 DBS has been prevented from acquiring new business ventures or reducing its branch or ATM network by regulators as it tackles the fallout from its digital banking outages.

Fintech Infrastructure 🚧

🌍 Plaid partnered with payment provider Adyen to offer Pay-by-bank functionality in the US.

🌍 Payment provider Dwolla has launched Dwolla Connect, a service for customers to transfer open finance data to Dwolla to enable bank verification through third parties.

🌍 Treasury Prime launched OneKey, an instant payment rail allowing fintechs to transfer money between banks in milliseconds.

Payments πŸ’°

πŸ‡ͺπŸ‡Ί Payment acquiring firm Ingenico is partnering with embedded lending provider Jifiti to allow its customers to offer lending solutions at the POS.

πŸ‡ͺπŸ‡ΊUS payment processor Shift4 has acquired payment solution Finaro to expand into Europe.

πŸ‡ͺπŸ‡Ί EPI has closed its acquisition of iDeal and Payconiq.

πŸ‡ͺπŸ‡Ί Mollie has received a Payment Institution licence from the FCA.

πŸ‡ͺπŸ‡Ί Klarna is cutting 500 jobs and outsourcing them to a partner.

πŸ‡¬πŸ‡§ Wise has secured Payhawk as a customer for its global payment capabilities.

πŸ‡¬πŸ‡§ The PSR released performance of APP scams which showed AIB and Danske Bank as the two banks with the lowest refunded APP fraud by value.

πŸ‡¬πŸ‡§ The FCA found that more than 25% of Brit's used BNPL during a six-month period.

πŸ‡¬πŸ‡§ Mangopay has secured an UK EMI licence.

πŸ‡¬πŸ‡§ TrueLayer is to power account funding and payouts for gambling operator William Hill.

πŸ‡¬πŸ‡§ Tribe Payments solutions are available on Temenos partner ecosystem.

πŸ‡¬πŸ‡§ Payment orchestrator BR-DGE partnered with fraud provider Sift to increase fraud protection for merchants,

🌍 Fleet payment solution Wex is to acquire software provider Payzer for $250m.

🌍 PayPal is selling its Happy Returns unit to UPS.

🌍 Payment solution Payoneer has partnered with Etsy as the marketplace expands into emerging markets.

🌍 Airbnb is expanding its Pay Over Time product with Klarna to Australia.

🌍 Singapore is testing a single interoperable QR code scheme that would combine multiple QR codes in a single label.

🌍 Remittance provider Sendwave received a $1.5m penalty from the CFPB for deceiving users.


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