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.

🇪🇺 Fincrime startup Cleafy raised a €10m round led by United Ventures.

🇪🇺BaaS platform Swan raised a €37m equity raise led by Lakestar.

🇪🇺 Digital asset treasury solution Fipto raised a €15m seed round from Serena and Motier Ventures.

🇪🇺 Web3 analytics startup Blockmates raised a €1.5m seed round.

🇬🇧 Neobank Zopa raised £75m in T2 capital.

🇬🇧 Payment provider Form3 has received an undisclosed investment from Visa.

🇬🇧 Digital payment app Hyperjar raised a $24m Series A.

🌍 USD-based infrastructure fintech Caliza raised a $5.3m seed round led by BTV and Abstract Ventures and included Valor Capital, QED and Quona.

🌍 Embedded fixed income trading fintech Moment raised a $17m Series A led by a16z, Venrock, The Fintech Fund* and more.

🌍 Indian credit underwriting solution Perfios raised a $229m Series D.

🌍 Wealth transfer platform Alix raised a $5.5m seed round from Initialized Capital, Magnify, Alumni Ventures and American Family Ventures.

Challenger Banking 🚀

🇪🇺Business super-app Rauva is acquiring bank Banco Empresas Montepio.

🇬🇧 Monzo has launched an investment product through a partnership with BlackRock.

🌍 Australian home loan marketplace Joust has laid off staff and is looking to sell itself.

🌍 Spend management solution Emburse has added AI receipt scanning to its capabilities.

🌍 Intuit is launching Quickbooks Money, an all-in-one payment solution, a replacement for its partnership with Bill.com, which will also see its API access cut off.

Digital Assets ₿

🇪🇺Deutsche Bank is working with crypto infrastructure provider Taurus to manage its institutional customers digital assets and to look into tokenization.

🇬🇧 Crypto exchange Luno is to begin to stop serving some UK clients due to new FCA regulations. PayPal will stop crypto purchases until 2024 in response to the new regulations as well.

🇬🇧Open banking payment solution Noda is partnering with BVNK to meet demand for stablecoin payments.

🌍 The CFTC is advocating for a regulatory sandbox to trial digital asset regulation.

🌍 Coinbase is focusing on EU, UK, Canada, Brazil, Singapore and Australia for international expansion and will begin to acquire licences.

🌍 The co-CEO of FTX's Bahamas entity has pleaded guilty to criminal charges relating to political donations and operating an unlicensed money-transfer business and could forfeit $1.5bn if he does not hand over $6m before March.

🌍 Ripple is to acquire crypto custodian Fortress Trust and its Nevada licence.

🌍 JP Morgan is reportedly looking to use a blockchain digital deposit token for cross-border payments.

🌍 Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin's Twitter account was hacked with resulted in the hackers stealing nearly $700,000 in NFTs.

🌍 Financial messaging platform SWIFT is to beta test the linking of CBDCs from three central banks.

🌍 The head of Binance.US has reportedly resigned and the company is laying off a third of its staff.

🌍 The Stoner Cats NFT project has settled with the SEC for $1m.

🌍 FTX has been given the green light to sell crypto holdings to repay creditors, causing an overhang on the altcoin market given the size of upcoming sales.

Traditional Banking 🏦

🇪🇺ING is selling an 85% stake in its Cobase unit to Alpha Group.

🇪🇺9 banks from six countries are working together on a fraud tool for instant payments, having been brought together by EBA Clearing.

🇬🇧NatWest's open banking payment platform Payit has launched payment links, enabling businesses to easily make payments without needed the recipients account details for refunds, deposit returns etc.

🇬🇧HSBC has launched a online portal where businesses can open accounts for multiple entities in multiple markets.

🇬🇧 Co-operative Bank is looking to sell itself.

🌍 BNY Mellon has become a customer of Trustly to launch A2A payments through a product called "Bankify".

🌍 Citi has sold its SMB lending platform to Foro Holdings.

🌍 JP Morgan Chase is to offer payroll services through a partnership with Gusto.

Fintech Infrastructure 🚧

🇪🇺 Digital lending technology provider Crosslend is in trouble over indebtedness.

🇬🇧Financial software provider Finastra has partnered with Fincom and ThetaRay to create a Compliance-as-a-service package to screen instant payments.

🇬🇧 Embedded banking provider ClearBank reported H1 2023 results which included revenue +144%. deposits +80% and payment volumes +39%. It expects to achieve profitability for the current year.

Payments 💰

🇪🇺Danish cross-border payment firm Inpay has partnered with the Red Cross in Denmark to support emergency funding across more countries.

🇪🇺 Italian payment firm Nexi is again looking for a buyer for its German BNPL unit Ratepay after a failed attempt was made at the end of 2021.

🇬🇧 Payment orchestrator Primer has signed BNPL provider Zip as a customer who is looking to expand their share of the US BNPL market.

🇬🇧Payment fintech Paysend and Mastercard have expanded their cross-border payment partnership to enable SMBs to send and receive payments across borders 24/7.

🌍 The CFPB has criticized Apple for restricting its access to it NFC chip which is preventing other developing payment apps on Apple devices.

🌍 Enabled by UPI, India has hit its 80% financial inclusion target in just six years, 41 years ahead of schedule.

🌍 Square and Cash App suffered a major outage last week leaving seller without the ability to process payments for 12 hours caused by a DNS error.

🌍 The CEO of restaurant POS provider Toast has resigned in the wake of its U-turn on its previous decision to impose a $0.99 online order fee.

🌍 Affirm is partnering with Booking.com to provide travellers with new payment options.

🌍 Meta is enabling donations on Facebook and Instagram in US, UK, Canada and Australia through PayPal.

🌍 Xbox has partnered with Barclays US consumer unit to launch a no-fee credit card with rewards that can be redeemed for games and Xbox add-ons.

🌍 Visa has launched a global cross-border money movement service for banks, fintechs, FX brokers and other payment providers built on top of its Currencycloud acquisition.

🌍 Uber is to continue to use PayPal's Braintree for card processing and its Hyperwallet solution for payouts to drivers,

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Longer reads 📜

• Why BaaS still represents huge opportunity - Samir
• Is payments a race to the bottom? - Simon Taylor

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See you next week!