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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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All about that BaaS - TWIF UK & Europe (16/10)

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

All about that BaaS - TWIF UK & Europe (16/10)

Hello TWIF UK & Europe friends,

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


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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 Sales commission payment solution Qobra raised a €10m Series A from Singular, Breega and Revenue Syndicate.

πŸ‡ͺπŸ‡Ί Nordic AI and fintech investor Luminar Ventures closed its second fund.

πŸ‡ͺπŸ‡Ί KYC solution TransactionLink raised €5m from White Star Capital and Target Global.

πŸ‡ͺπŸ‡Ί Investment infrastructure provider Upvest raised €30m from investors including Bessemer Venture Partners, Earlybird Venture Capital, HV Capital, Partech, Notion Capital, BlackRock, ABN AMRO Ventures and 10X Capital.

πŸ‡ͺπŸ‡Ί Kodex AI, an LLM for financial services, raised funds from Deutsche Bank.

πŸ‡ͺπŸ‡Ί Estonian P2P payments firm Cino raised a €1.4m round.

πŸ‡ͺπŸ‡Ί Invoice financing solution Invoier raised a SEK 682m round from the European Investment Fund.

πŸ‡ͺπŸ‡Ί Insurtech Orus raised a €11m Series A from Partech, Notion, Portage and angels.

πŸ‡ͺπŸ‡Ί ESG data solution Impaakt raised an $8m seed round.

πŸ‡ͺπŸ‡Ί Climate investing platform Carbon Equity raised a €6m Series A from BlackFin Capital Partners.

πŸ‡ͺπŸ‡Ί Life insurance provider ViteSicure raised a €2m seed round from Intesa Sanpaolo, Digital Magics, CDP Venture Capital and Reale Group.

πŸ‡ͺπŸ‡Ί ESG reporting platform Wequity raised a €1.1m seed round from angels.

πŸ‡ͺπŸ‡Ί Pension solution Dyno raised a €1.5m seed round from LEA Partners, 468 Capital, Match VC and angels.

πŸ‡¬πŸ‡§ Decentralised exchange for real-world assets Ostium Labs raised $3.5m from investors including General Catalyst, LocalGlobe and others.

πŸ‡¬πŸ‡§ SaaS lending tool Kennek raised a $12.5m round led by HV Capital and included AlbionVC, Plug & Play and others.

πŸ‡¬πŸ‡§ On-chain private credit infrastructure provider Untangled Finance raised $13.5m from Fasanara Capital.

πŸ‡¬πŸ‡§ POS solution Lopay raised a Β£6m round from BackedVC, Portage and The Venture Collective.

πŸ‡¬πŸ‡§ FX hedging platform ALT21 raised a $21m pre-seed round.

🌍 AI-powered invoice management solution Stampli raised a $61m Series D.

🌍 Financial safety platform for older Americans Carefull raised a $16.5m Series A from Bessemer, Fin Capital and more.

🌍 Stock trading app Alpaca raised a $15m convertible note from SBI Group.

🌍 Loan management service Canopy Servicing raised a $15.2m Series A1 from Foundation Capital and Infinity Ventures.

Challenger Banking πŸš€

πŸ‡ͺπŸ‡Ί Insurtech Wefox is closing its own insurance business

πŸ‡¬πŸ‡§ BuildMyCreditScore, a solution to help consumers boost their credit scores, has launched and is powered by open banking.

πŸ‡¬πŸ‡§ Starling Bank is waiving its monthly fee for its kids app.

πŸ‡¬πŸ‡§ Shares of Wise have jumped nearly 3.5% over the past five days after positive income guidance.

πŸ‡¬πŸ‡§ Invoice financing solution Sonovate announced it has increased its securitisation to Β£240m from a financial commitment from Lloyds Bank.

Digital Assets β‚Ώ

πŸ‡ͺπŸ‡Ί Bitpanda saw sales collapse to just €80m last year.

πŸ‡ͺπŸ‡Ί Spanish banks ran a POC to test the use of existing payment infrastructure with a digital euro and concluded that it is indeed possible.

πŸ‡ͺπŸ‡Ί Bitstamp is talking with three European banks to help them offer crypto services in Q1 2024

πŸ‡¬πŸ‡§ Digital asset custodian Komainu, a joint venture between Nomura, Coinshares and Ledger, secured an FCA crypto registration.

πŸ‡¬πŸ‡§ The FCA issued 146 alerts about crypto asset promotions on the first day of its new crypto promotion rules coming into force.

🌍 Yuga Labs, the company behind the Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT collection has restructured and laid off some US employees.

🌍 Tokenization company Backed Finance expanded its US Treasury offering to Coinbase's Base blockchain.

🌍 Binance's $1bn Industry Recovery Initiative has only deployed $30m according to Bloomberg.

🌍 JP Morgan used blockchain technology to tokenize money market fund shares for a trade between BlackRock and Barclays.

🌍 Binance is working with Israeli police to stop and seize crypto assets linked to Hamas.

Traditional Banking 🏦

πŸ‡¬πŸ‡§ As part of an on-going effort to digitise trade finance, Lloyds Bank has launched "paperless guarantees"

πŸ‡¬πŸ‡§ Nationwide has become the bank with the largest number of branches in the UK.

πŸ‡¬πŸ‡§ Metro Bank has plugged a capital hole after talks with investors.

πŸ‡¬πŸ‡§ Consumer champion Which? has put six UK banks, JPMorgan Chase, Santander, Barclays, HSBC, NatWest and Lloyds, on a red warning over their financing and policy of fossil fuels.

πŸ‡¬πŸ‡§ HSBC has acquired Citi's $3.6bn consumer wealth portfolio in China.

🌍 Emirates NBD has launched a new digital wealth offering for its customers to trade stocks and ETFs.

🌍 Wells Fargo is making its digital wealth platform available to all consumers.

Fintech Infrastructure 🚧

πŸ‡ͺπŸ‡ΊBaaS solution Dock Financial is acquiring competitor Paydora.

🌍 Jason Mikula broke news that Synapse accounts at partner bank Evolve have a "deficit" of $13m and the BaaS providers largest client, Mercury, is not renewing its contract and will work directly with Evolve. Synapse laid off 40% of staff.

🌍 Payment processor Fiserv acquired Brazilian payment firm Skytef.

Payments πŸ’°

πŸ‡ͺπŸ‡Ί Shares in SumUp are being sold among existing investors at a valuation of $4.1bn, around half of its $8.5bn peak in June 2022.

πŸ‡¬πŸ‡§ Travel BNPL solution Fly Now Pay Later has stopped lending and onboarding new customers.

πŸ‡¬πŸ‡§Iwoca has integrated its B2B payment solution with Shopify, allowing Shopify merchants to use iwoca's trade credit solution.

πŸ‡¬πŸ‡§ PSPs see a lack of education and a framework as a key obstacle for progress with Variable Recurring Payments and Request to Pay.

🌍 Block is making cuts to its workforce.

🌍 BNPL solution for medical expenses PayZen has rolled out a debit card.

🌍 Orum have launched a account verification service built on top of FedNow.

🌍 Nuvei has launched an upgraded B2B payment solution in Canada.

🌍 TD Bank now supports NFC payments in Google Wallet.


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