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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.

🇪🇺 Spend management solution Pliant extended it's Series A by €8m from Molten Ventures and closed a €100m in debt facility from Varengold Bank.

🇪🇺 Dutch BNPL company Billink raised €29.5m of debt from Varengold Bank.

🇪🇺 Institutional staking firm Kiln raised a $17m round.

🇪🇺 Digital asset trading infrastructure solution Flowdesk raised a $50m Series B from SpeedInvest, Eurazeo and others.

🇬🇧 Car financing startup Carmoola raised $15.5m from QED Investors, VentureFriends, InMotion Ventures, U.ventures and AlleyCorp.

🇬🇧 Core banking solution 10x raised $50m from Blackstone and JPMorgan Chase.

🇬🇧 Employee financial wellness solution Maji raised a £500k seed round from Veridian Ventures.

🇬🇧 SaaS purchasing platform Vertice raised a €23m Series B from Bessemer and 83North.

🌍 Latam payments company Pomelo raised a $40m Series B led by VC Kaszek.

🌍 Payroll lender Kashable raised a $25.6m Series B.

🌍 Payroll lender DailyPay raised $75m in equity and $100m in debt from Citi.

Challenger Banking 🚀

🇪🇺 Neobroker Lemon Markets receives a licence from Bafin.

🇪🇺 Neobank N26 has released in-app stock trading through a partnership with Upvest.

🇪🇺 Insurtech Qover is launching an embedded insurance solution for car manufacturers to offer digital insurance plans to their customers.

🇬🇧 Complaints at neobanks Monzo, Starling and Revolut declined in 2023 according to data from the Financial Ombudsman Service.

🇬🇧 Money transfer service Wise released a trading update that active customers +30% yoy, revenue +23% and volume increased +16%. It also reported findings from a study of hidden exchange rate fees charged by high street banks, with the highest fee 3.7% by HSBC.

🇬🇧 Payment solution SumUp announced new products to support SMBs.

🇬🇧 Money management app Plum has added a Spend Tracker tool to help consumers with budgeting.

🇬🇧 LHV Bank have launched a savings account with a 2% interest rate.

🌍 South African neobank TymeBank is now profitable.

🌍 US neobank Current is offering customers an embedded tax filing experience through a partnership with Column Tax.

🌍 Consumer finance company SoFi has introduced a marketplace for small business lending.

Digital Assets ₿

🇪🇺 Cryptocurrency firms in the EU are set to face stricter AML rules.

🌍 Genesis is to cease operations in New York and surrender its BitLicence.

🌍 BlackRock CEO Larry Fink has said he would support a Ethereum ETF.

🌍 Venezuela is to end its Petro cryptocurrency after five years.

🌍 The trading volume of recently launched spot bitcoin ETFs crossed $10bn since they launched last week.

Traditional Banking 🏦

🇪🇺 Banco Santander recruited 4,500 tech talent in 2023 as it seeks to overhaul its digital offerings.

🇬🇧 NatWest has launched a tool to help SMEs save on their energy costs.

🇬🇧 Barclays has highlighted it is to close 20 more branches this year.

🇬🇧 Sainsbury's is taking a leaf out of competitors Tesco's books and is also winding down its banking business. It has 1.9 million customers.

🇬🇧 TSB has found over a third of the posts on Facebook Marketplace it tested were scams.

🌍 JPMorgan reported that the number of hacking attempts on its system doubled to 45bn per day in the past year.

Fintech Infrastructure 🚧

🇪🇺 KYB solution CoorpID has been acquired by KYC solution Encompass.

🇪🇺 Payment provider Worldline is to utilise Google Cloud for its digital transformation.

🇬🇧 Rental data reporting company CreditLadder is working with Digital ID to help customers report rent payments to credit agencies.

🌍 Microsoft is to work with Vodafone on AI collaboration that will see African payment solution M-Pesa move to its Azure cloud.

🌍 Open banking platform Akoya has recommended that the CFPB's new rules ban screen scraping and promote tokenized account numbers as well as require aggregators to adhere to industry standards.

🌍 Payroll infrastructure solution Pinwheel is now available through Jack Henry's digital banking platform.

🌍 Cross border credit bureau Nova Credit partnered with Creditinfo Bridge to provide access to financial services for Ukrainians.

Payments 💰

🇪🇺 Spanish cross-border payments company NEO has reached profitability after launching three years ago.

🇪🇺 Apple is offering third parties access to its NFC chip in Europe for 10 years in an attempt to resolve an EU antitrust case from 2022. The EU is soliciting comments.

🇬🇧 Payment orchestrator CellPoint Digital has secured Virgin Atlantic as a customer.

🌍 Fiserv has requested a "merchant acquirer limited purpose bank charter" in Georgia as it seeks to cut out bank partners.

🌍 Stripe has acquired billing platform Octane.

🌍 Payment service provider WePay, owned by JP Morgan, has offloaded some customers.

🌍 Amazon and VC firm Andreessen Horowitz have asked the CFPB to exempt Amazon Pay and digital assets respectively from its proposed rule to oversee digital wallet and payment companies.

🌍 Visa announced it completed its acquisition of Latam issuer processor Pismo.

🌍 Payment solution Brightwell is to use Visa Direct for payouts.

🌍 Apple is to allow app developers to use external payment solutions and will collect a lower take rate of 27%. Epic Games CEO said he would go back to court over it.

🌍 Consumer credit card provider Synchrony is testing a browser extension that would prompt cardholders at checkout to use their Synchrony card and provide a virtual card for the purchase.

🌍 Card network Discover reported a 30-day delinquency rate of 3.9% on its credit card book.

Regulatory Corner 🔎

🌍 The CFPB is proposing to bring overdrafts under its consumer protection laws, closing a loophole that may signal the end of overdraft fees.

Longer reads 📜

• Fintech from first principles - Matt Brown
• Business of Payments January 2024 - Geoffrey Barraclough
• The role of US open banking in catalyzing the adoption of A2A payments - McKinsey
• 💰 The (Unlikely) End of the FICO Score - Alex Johnson
• LTCM: 25 Years On and The Capital Cycle Hits Payments - Marc Rubinstein

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See you next week!