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.

🇪🇺 Mortgage solution Pretto raised a €12.2m round from Alven, Eurazeo, Serena, Orange Ventures, BlackFin Capital and Kernel.

🇪🇺 Wealthtech Axyon AI raised €2.1m from Green Sands Equity.

🇪🇺 Cybertech Stoik raised a €25m Series B from Anthemis, a16z, Munich Re, Opera Tech Ventures, Alven and Tokio Marine HCC.

🇪🇺 Payment solution for the hospitality sector Tebi raised a €20m Series A from Index Ventures.

🇬🇧 Payment firm Acquired.com raised £4m.

🇬🇧 Fintech angel fund Rerail closed a $20m funding target.

🇬🇧 Insurtech Diesta raised a $3.8m seed round from Commerce Ventures, SixThirty Ventures, Fintech Collective and Restive Ventures.

Challenger Banking 🚀

🇪🇺 Neobank N26 is expanding its brokerage service to 12 new markets.

🇬🇧 Revolut released a new POS Terminal designed for larger businesses in the UK and Ireland. It also launched eSims in New Zealand and topped the fraud leaderboard among UK banks.

🇬🇧 Liberis launched a multi-product financial platform for SMBs.

🇬🇧 Neobank Monzo launched Team, a new business plan for larger SMBs alongside hitting 500,000 business customers. Former Monzo employees are also petitioning the board to be included in the secondary share sale for existing employees.

🇬🇧 Business bank Tide has become a customer of Adyen to provide SMBs with Tap to Pay on iPhone.

🇬🇧 John Lewis is to offer personal loans to its customers powered by Zopa Bank.

🇬🇧 UK retailer Currys released a new BNPL credit product, Flexpay.

🇬🇧 Marketplace lender Storfund integrates with payment infrastructure provider Mangopay for embedded wallets and FX.

🌍 Spend management platform Brex and travel management solution Navan have launched a joint solution.

Digital Assets ₿

🇪🇺 Bitpanda is to make security tokens available to retail investors in Europe.

🇪🇺 MiCA compliant stablecoins are taking market share in Europe.

🇬🇧 Crypto firm Ziglu has acquired the retail arm of crypto payment firm Damex.

🇬🇧 Payment infrastructure provider BVNK is partnering with Circle to expand the use of USDC for business payments.

🌍 Digital asset custodian Copper appointed a former SEC advisor and former Goldman Sachs MD as its new CEO.

🌍 Presidential candidate Kamala Harris announced she supports a regulatory framework for crypto.

🌍 Tether's CEO has said they are exploring commodities trading and tradfi opportunities.

🌍 On-chain digital asset manager Hashnote launched its yield-bearing coin USYC on the Canton Network.

🌍 Ripple is preparing to launch its US stablecoin, RLUSD and is partnering with exchanges Bitstamp, Bitso and Bullish.

🌍 DTCC has created a digital asset sandbox.

🌍 Payments giant Stripe is in talks to acquire stablecoin platform Bridge. The payment giant is utilising Paxos stablecoin payment plaform.

🌍 Coinbase's Base L2 Ethereum network has become the largest rollup in terms of TVL. The exchange is also seeking a court to rule on an FOIA case to get documents from the SEC.

🌍 Digital asset issuer Securitize and crypto infrastructure provider Zero Hash have enabled USDC to USD conversion for BlackRock's BUIDL fund.

Traditional Banking 🏦

🇪🇺 Italian bank Banca Sella became the first European bank to launch a QR code for the visually impaired.

🇪🇺 Deutsche Bank launched dbX, a next generation correspondent banking solution.

🇬🇧 Barclays has taken over from Goldman Sachs as the issuer of two GM credit cards in the US.

🇬🇧 Metro Bank partnered with engagement banking provider BankiFi.

🇬🇧 HSBC is to accept overseas credit history for UK mortgage applications.

🌍 Capital One turns debit and credit cards into authentication methods.

Fintech Infrastructure 🚧

🇪🇺 Open banking platform Neonomics released a PFM app.

🇪🇺 BaaS provider Solaris is to cut a third of its workforce, the majority hitting its Contis business in the UK.

🇪🇺 BaaS provider Tuum announced neobank Zenus has gone live on its platform.

🇬🇧 BaaS provider ClearBank onboarded its first clients, OpenPayd, Pay Perform and Transact Payments, to it connection to Eurosystem's T2 payment rail.

🇬🇧 Open banking credit bureau AperiData introduced a real-time open banking credit score.

🌍 Credit bureau Experian partnered with fraud provider Sardine.

🌍 Credit bureau Nova Credit and fintech SoFi have expanded their relationship to use cashflow underwriting.

🌍 Origination and decisioning solution Amount launched a unified account opening and loan origination solution.

🌍 Payments infrastructure provider Treasury Prime 🌍 compliance solution Greenlite to its Partner Marketplace.

🌍 Open banking platform Plaid launched a new fraud calibration and Trust index features for its Identify Verification product.

Payments 💰

🇪🇺 Spanish A2A payment scheme Bizum has launched Bizum Pay, a contactless payment solution using NFC.

🇪🇺 Klarna's Cashback product has driven $100m worth of sales in six weeks. It also sold £30bn of its loans to hedge fund Elliott. Klarna is now available at checkout in Apple Pay.

🇪🇺 Romania has launched an instant mobile payment system, RoPay.

🇪🇺 Payment provider Worldline is launching its A2A service in Europe.

🇬🇧A2A infrastructure provider Token.io signed Santander as a customer.

🇬🇧 The UK government is forging ahead with new rules for BNPL products.

🌍 Payment provider Stripe officially launched Pay-by-Bank in Stripe Link.

Longer reads/listens 📜

• TCH RfP is Live (for Consumers) - Tom Noyes
• ‘King of the geeks’: how Alex Gerko built a British trading titan - Nikou Asgari
• RTP and Pay By Bank Challenges - Tom Noyes
• ‘I’m motivated by the puzzle’: how Courtney Dauwalter became ultrarunning’s GOAT - Andy Cochrane, The Guardian
• The Changing Face of Finance - Marc Rubinstein
• Elon Dreams and Bitter Lessons - Ben Thompson, Stratechery

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See you next week!