Hello TWIF UK & Europe friends,

London Fintech Week Canal Cruise - Set sail on our first event in London for 2024 with TWIF and Evervault on June 13. Spaces are limited, apply to attend here.

We have more events in the works so make sure you get notified about future events first!

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.

🇪🇺Digital wealth infrastructure provider Fundcraft raised a €5m Series A led by Aperture Capital and included SIX Fintech Ventures.

🇪🇺 Climate fintech Trine raised a €21m round from Chalmers Ventures and Gullspang Invest.

🇪🇺 SMB lending marketplace FinMatch raised a €1.5m seed round from MBG Baden-Wuerttemberg.

🇪🇺 Neobank Alpian raised a ¢83.7m Series C.

🇬🇧 Insurtech Eleos raised a €3.75m seed round led by Fuel Ventures and Indico Capital.

🇬🇧 SMB lender iwoca raised £270m in debt from Citibank, Insight Investment, Barcalys and Varde as the company expands further into Germany and the UK.

🇬🇧 Monzo raised another $190m at a $5.2b valuation.

🇬🇧 Investment strategy builder Stratiphy has secured a £1m grant from Innovate UK.

🇬🇧 Credit technology fintech Abound raised £160m in debt from Citi.

🌍 Insurtech CoverTree raised a $13m Series A led by Portage and included AV8, Distributed Ventures, Ludlow Ventures, Annox Capital and more.

Challenger Banking 🚀

🇬🇧 Business bank Redwood Bank has double its profit to £5.5m in 2023.

🇬🇧 Mass affluent neobank Monument is selling its tech to Ecology Building Society.

🇬🇧 The UK's much delayed Pensions Dashboard Program is delayed again due to digital skills shortages and incapacity.

🌍 Neobank Mercury is adding bill payments and spend management software on top of its bank accounts.

🌍 Lending platform SoFi was fined $1.1m by FINRA for failures with customer identification.

🌍 Neobank Chime is to pay $1.3m in redress to consumers and a $3.25m fine in a settlement with the CFPB.

🌍 Spend management platform Expensify is adding travel booking and management capabilities.

🌍 Latam neobank Nubank has hit 100 million customers.

Digital Assets ₿

🇪🇺 Crypto exchange Kraken is expanding into Europe through a partnership with DLT Finance.

🇪🇺 German bank KfW is to issue its first digital bond on the blockchain.

🇬🇧 Revolut has launched a dedicated crypto exchange for professional investors in the UK.

🌍 Robinhood's crypto unit has received a Wells Notice from the SEC indicating regulatory enforcement action could be coming its way. Its unit also saw a 224% increase in crypto trading volumes.

🌍 A report by Visa and Allium Labs has claimed only 10% of stablecoin volumes come from real users.

🌍 MetaMask has rolled out "Smart Transactions" to combat front-running.

🌍 FTX is to give 118% of allowed claims to 98% of creditors.

🌍FIs including Visa, JP Morgan, Mastercard and Citi are taking part in a project to explore the use of shared ledger technology run by SIFMA to settle tokenized commercial bank money, central bank money and US Treasury securities.

🌍 The SEC is pushing back on Ripple's attempts to lower its fine, insisting it should be close to $2bn.

🌍 Binance was fined $4.3m by Canadian regulators for "administrative violations" of financial regs.

Traditional Banking 🏦

🇪🇺 The Bank of Ireland is to invest €34m in improving its customer service operations.

🇬🇧 TSB is closing 36 branches and is cutting 250 jobs.

🌍 Chase announced new tools for SMBs which include invoice management, customer insights and ways to speed up payment. The company also launched IndexGPT, an AI tool to create thematic indices for investing.

🌍 KeyBank has launched a virtual account management solution.

🌍 Australian bank NAB has partnered with Banked to launch its Pay by Bank capability.

🌍 Wells Fargo has launched a new business credit card with Mastercard.

Fintech Infrastructure 🚧

🇪🇺 Belgium's Centre for Exchange and Clearing has selected SurePay to provide its Confirmation of Payee service.

🇪🇺 Core banking provider Tuum is integrating TransactionLink's KYC into its platform.

🇪🇺 AP matching solution Basware acquired invoice management and reconciliation solution AP Matching.

🇬🇧 Issuer processor Clowd9 selected Tell.money for its Confirmation of Payee service.

🌍 P2P payment service Zelle seems to be in the crosshairs of the US authorities as both Wells Fargo and JP Morgan reported investigations into complains about the service.

🌍 Fraud provider Unit21 has added features to mitigate payment risk with ACH.

🌍 FIS has launched an embedded finance platform.

Payments 💰

🇪🇺 Payment provider Adyen has signed Decathlon Hong Kong as a customer. It also signed insurtech Cover Genius.

🇪🇺 Payment processor Wordline is partnering with Google Cloud to improve its digital transformation.

🇪🇺 Rome is adding contactless payments for its transit scheme for UnionPay cardholders.

🇬🇧 Checkout.com has launched Flow, a modular payments product for global enterprises to improve conversion.

🇬🇧 The PSR is expanding its scam reimbursement policy to the Chaps transaction system.

🌍 JP Morgan was the official payments partner for the Miami F1 GP. The bank also partnered with Visa to offer Visa Direct.

🌍 Block has integrated Afterpay with the Cash App card, enabling BNPL solutions for customers. Square is introducing Kiosk, a software and hardware solution for QSR restaurants. Block CEO Jack Dorsey hit back at reports of a DOJ investigation into compliance violations.

🌍 Billing platform PayNearMe is to use Trustly for open banking payments.

🌍 New payment processor Fractal claims to offer 30% savings compared to competitors like Stripe for SaaS businesses taking payments.

🌍 Global money movement fintech Thunes has signed Latam credit provider Pomelo as a customer.

🌍 Visa announced a new card fraud solution called Visa Account Attack Intelligence (VAAI).

Regulatory Corner 🔎

🇬🇧 The FCA has received backlash from the finance industry for its proposed rules to disclose companies it is investigating.

🌍 JP Morgan is paying a $100m fine to US regulators over data deficiencies.

Longer reads/listens 📜

• The Private Equity Machine - Marc Rubinstein
• The business of wallets - Patrick McKenzie
• The new fintech stack is... open source? - Matt Brown
• Why we haven't seen a global Banking-as-a-Service provider. Yet. - Shaul David, The Paypers
• A Game of Take Rates - Samir Desai

👍 👎 Have feedback for us? Let us know

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See you next week!