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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.

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

🇪🇺 Nordic AI and fintech investor Luminar Ventures closed its second fund.

🇪🇺 KYC solution TransactionLink raised €5m from White Star Capital and Target Global.

🇪🇺 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.

🇪🇺 Kodex AI, an LLM for financial services, raised funds from Deutsche Bank.

🇪🇺 Estonian P2P payments firm Cino raised a €1.4m round.

🇪🇺 Invoice financing solution Invoier raised a SEK 682m round from the European Investment Fund.

🇪🇺 Insurtech Orus raised a €11m Series A from Partech, Notion, Portage and angels.

🇪🇺 ESG data solution Impaakt raised an $8m seed round.

🇪🇺 Climate investing platform Carbon Equity raised a €6m Series A from BlackFin Capital Partners.

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

🇪🇺 ESG reporting platform Wequity raised a €1.1m seed round from angels.

🇪🇺 Pension solution Dyno raised a €1.5m seed round from LEA Partners, 468 Capital, Match VC and angels.

🇬🇧 Decentralised exchange for real-world assets Ostium Labs raised $3.5m from investors including General Catalyst, LocalGlobe and others.

🇬🇧 SaaS lending tool Kennek raised a $12.5m round led by HV Capital and included AlbionVC, Plug & Play and others.

🇬🇧 On-chain private credit infrastructure provider Untangled Finance raised $13.5m from Fasanara Capital.

🇬🇧 POS solution Lopay raised a £6m round from BackedVC, Portage and The Venture Collective.

🇬🇧 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 🚀

🇪🇺 Insurtech Wefox is closing its own insurance business

🇬🇧 BuildMyCreditScore, a solution to help consumers boost their credit scores, has launched and is powered by open banking.

🇬🇧 Starling Bank is waiving its monthly fee for its kids app.

🇬🇧 Shares of Wise have jumped nearly 3.5% over the past five days after positive income guidance.

🇬🇧 Invoice financing solution Sonovate announced it has increased its securitisation to £240m from a financial commitment from Lloyds Bank.

Digital Assets ₿

🇪🇺 Bitpanda saw sales collapse to just €80m last year.

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

🇪🇺 Bitstamp is talking with three European banks to help them offer crypto services in Q1 2024

🇬🇧 Digital asset custodian Komainu, a joint venture between Nomura, Coinshares and Ledger, secured an FCA crypto registration.

🇬🇧 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 🏦

🇬🇧 As part of an on-going effort to digitise trade finance, Lloyds Bank has launched "paperless guarantees"

🇬🇧 Nationwide has become the bank with the largest number of branches in the UK.

🇬🇧 Metro Bank has plugged a capital hole after talks with investors.

🇬🇧 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.

🇬🇧 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 🚧

🇪🇺BaaS 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 💰

🇪🇺 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.

🇬🇧 Travel BNPL solution Fly Now Pay Later has stopped lending and onboarding new customers.

🇬🇧Iwoca has integrated its B2B payment solution with Shopify, allowing Shopify merchants to use iwoca's trade credit solution.

🇬🇧 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.

Longer reads 📜

• Tech entrepreneur Niklas Zennström: ‘Let’s break the Silicon Valley monopoly’ - John Thornhill, FT
• The Tower of Babel and B2B Payments - Claire Greene, Atlanta Fed
• FedNow’s legal terms contain a game changer for digital wallets and payment apps - Jess Cheng
• Money Stuff: FTX Had Many Bad Spreadsheets - Matt Levine
• Instant is Coming, but with a Catch - Shamir Karkal
• The Trouble With Charles Schwab - Last Bear Standing
• A brief guide to building your first lending product - Rohit Mittal
• Why I Changed My Mind About Online ID Verification - Mark Weinstein, WSJ
• US debit has become more competitive for CNP merchants - The Paypers

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See you next week!