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.

🇪🇺 Identity verification solution Meo raised €1.67m to expand its product.

🇪🇺 Whistleblower compliance software Formalize raised a $16m Series A from BlackFin Capital and West Hill Capital.

🇬🇧 Neobank Monzo raised £340m from led by CapitalG and included Google Ventures, HongShan Capital and existing investors Passion and Tencent.

🇬🇧 Crypto payment company Baanx raised a $20m Series A from Ledger, Tezos, Chiron and British Business Bank.

🇬🇧 Digital asset risk management solution Agio Ratings raised $4.6m from Portage Ventures, MS&AD Ventures and Superscrypt.

🇬🇧 AI fintech for investors Theia Insights raised a $6.5m round led by Unusual Ventures and included FISV and Clocktower Ventures.

🌍 BaaS provider Synctera raised a $18.6m Series A extension co-led by Lightspeed and Fin Capital.

🌍 Bank-to-bank loan marketplace Capstack raised investment from Citi Ventures.

🌍 Latam payment orchestrator Yuno raised a $25m Series A from Tiger Global, A16Z, DST Global, KaszeK Ventures and Monashees.

Challenger Banking 🚀

🇪🇺 German credit broker Smava is looking for a buyer for itself.

🇪🇺 Business banking provider Qonto is acquiring financial platform Regate.

🇬🇧 Digital pension provider PensionBee is expanding to the US.

🇬🇧 Cross-border corporate banking solution Ebury is mulling a £2bn London IPO

🇬🇧 Monzo is reportedly looking to expand in France and Germany as well as the US alongside its fundraise.

🌍 Embedded lending provider ChargeAfter launched a embedded POS lending solution for banks to white-label.

🌍 Latam lending infrastructure provider Ziff acquired revenue based property lending firm Arrenda.

🌍 Apple has partnered with YNAB, Copilot and Monarch to launch an API allowing developers to fetch transactions and balances from Apple Card, Apple Cash and Savings.

Digital Assets ₿

🇪🇺 German stock exchange Deutsche Borse has launched a crypto spot trading platform for institutions.

🇬🇧 Revolut has integrated MetaMask to enable customers to on-ramp to crypto from Revolut.

🌍 A US court has ruled that trading certain crypto assets on a secondary market are securities transactions.

🌍 The Hong Kong Monetary Authority kicked off a new CBDC project to support tokenisation.

🌍 Customers are BlockFi will receive nearly $1bn in claims against FTX and Alameda Research as part of its bankruptcy process.

Traditional Banking 🏦

🇪🇺 JP Morgan has joined French domestic payment network Cartes Bancaires.

🇪🇺 Santander has cut 3% of its US staff as it focuses more on digital banking.

🇪🇺 ABN Amro is working with Buckaroo to provide payment solutions for retailers.

🇪🇺 UniCredit has been fined €2.8m for a data breach.

🇬🇧 Lloyds Bank has joined the Open Property Data Association, a group trying to standardise how digital data is shared during the home buying journey.

🇬🇧 Nationwide is buying Virgin Money for £2.9bn.

🇬🇧 NatWest is shutting its BNPL service less than two years after it launched.

🌍 JP Morgan is reported to have considered a bid for Discover before it was snapped up by Capital One.

Fintech Infrastructure 🚧

🇪🇺 BaaS solution Solaris is losing technology rental portal Grover as a customer.

🇪🇺 Nordic open banking platform Neonomics has partnered with data enrichment provider Bislabs.

🇬🇧 Wise is to power cross-border payments for Hong-Kong's Mox.

🌍 Financial software provider TrueNorth and Brim Financial are creating a "credit-card-as-a-service" offering for banks, fintechs and brands in North America.

🌍 Financial infrastructure provider Galileo has expanded its relationship with Bancorp and will now have access to RTP Network.

🌍 Fiserv has signed up 200 banks for its FedNow system but are still looking for use cases.

🌍 Transaction intelligence fintech Prism Data launched CashScore FirstDetect product to stop first-party fraud.

Payments 💰

🇪🇺 Worldline is cutting 200 jobs in Germany.

🇪🇺 The Central Bank of Ireland has outlined a new payment strategy focused on consumers and businesses benefitting from payments innovation and interoperability in Europe and cash availability.

🇪🇺 The EU fined Apple $2bn for preventing rival music streaming services from telling iPhone users of cheaper ways to subscribe outside of the app store.

🇪🇺 PayPal has launched new payment processing tools for SMEs in the UK and Europe so they can offer a wider range of payment methods like Apple Pay, Google Pay and BNPL solutions.

🇪🇺 Payment solution Viva.com as launched a business lending solution in Europe called Merchant Advance.

🇬🇧 Stripe has expanded Tap to Pay iPhones in the UK.

🇬🇧 Payment verification provider SurePay has launched bulk Confirmation of Payee.

🌍 Indian regulators have fined payment provider Paytm $663,000 due to money laundering.

🌍 Consumer FI Synchrony completed the acquisition of POS financing business Ally Lending.

🌍 Zelle reported an 11% increase in volumes in Q4 vs Q2 2023, to $219bn.

🌍 American Express customers suffered a third-party data breach with account numbers and other card information having been potentially compromised.

🌍 Visa has partnered with Western Union for Visa Direct, enabling WU customers to send money to eligible Visa cards and bank accounts in 40 countries.

🌍 The RBI wants to prevent banks from signing exclusive deals with card networks as they do not offer consumers choice.

🌍 DailyPay has integrated Visa+ to give users more ways to manage their earnings.

🌍 PayPal has made Tap to Pay available for businesses using Venmo and Zettle in the US.

🌍 Payment platform Nuvei has added network tokenization features for its customers.

Regulatory Corner 🔎

🌍 The CFPB finalised a rule capping late fees on credit card payments to $8, down from an average of $32.

Longer reads 📜

• The Third Network - Marc Rubinstein
• Bilt Rewards and the Future of Loyalty - Simon Taylor
• PayPal Innovation Opportunity – “All In” on the Consumer - Tom Noyes
• The Definitive History of Private Credit - Van Spina
• The Fed Is Behind the Capital One/Discover Merger - Matt Stoller

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See you next week!