Hello TWIF UK & Europe friends,

We are excited to be hosting a meetup in Paris for fintech folks based there alongside our friends at Element Ventures and Balderton. You can sign up to the event here!

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

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In the "Future of fintech in Africa 2023" report, Kora and Finextra compile expert insights from a range of firms, including Cloud Africa, Data Scientists Network, JUMO, Mojaloop Foundation, TymeBank, and Yoco, and provide predictions for the future of fintech in Africa. Get the report

Tweet of the week 🦉🏆

Funding 💸

Highlights below of deals since the last post in the fintech space across the UK & Europe. Deal data powered by Dealroom.

🇪🇺Corporate spend provider Moss raised €50m in debt from HSBC.

🇪🇺 Earned wage access firm Payflow raised €20m in debt with BBVA Spark.

🇪🇺 Business finance for entrepreneurs Xolo raised $150k from Capitalia.

🇪🇺 SMB insurtech Kayna raised €1m from Middlegame Ventures, Delta Partners, InsurTech Fund and Aperature.

🇪🇺Cyber insurtech Stoik raised a €10m round from a16z, Munich Re Ventures, Opera Tech Ventures and Alven.

🇬🇧Alternative lender ThinCats raised £700m in debt with Citi, Barclays and supported by the British Business Bank.

🇬🇧 Business bank Wamo raised a $1.5m seed extension led by Finberg.

🇬🇧SMB lender Fleximize secured a £136m debt facility from Goldman Sachs and Citi.

🇬🇧 Fasanara Capital launches a $1bn fund to buy receivables from B2B ecommerce, supported by credit risk underwriting from Allianz.

🇬🇧 Digital wallet Curve raised a £58m Series C extension from Britannia, IDC Ventures, Cercano and Outward VC.

₿ Blockchain Capital raised $580m for two new crypto funds.

Challenger Banking 🚀

🇪🇺Ireland's fintechs lack funding for innovation and growth a recent survey has found.

🇪🇺Neobroker Trade Republic has added government and corporate bonds to its investment options.

🇬🇧 Revolut has received permission to delay filing its 2022 accounts. It has also not yet filed for a US banking licence and continues to operate via a partnership with Metropolitan Commercial Bank. Revolut Business launched an instant and free payment ecosystem 'RevTag'. It is also hiring someone to work on a mortgages product.

🇬🇧 B2B BNPL provider Hokodo has become a customer of AI transaction analytics firm Fuse for credit risk and income verification.

🇬🇧 John Lewis's finance unit has hired a new director, hired from TransUnion, as the company looks to shake up its credit and banking products.

🇬🇧 Business neobank Cashplus had its first profitable year, reaching £5.5m in profits.

🌍 The Information reports that Goldman Sachs has fixed a number of withdrawal issues with Apple Savings.

Digital Assets ₿

🇪🇺eToro has received a Crypto Asset Service Provider licence from the Cyprus SEC.

🌍 Citi Securities Service has joined BondbloX Bond Exchange, a fractional bond exchange, as the first digital custodian.

🌍 The SEC has accused Binance.US of not cooperating with one of its investigations.

🌍 A former Celsius executive pleads guilty and will cooperate against Celsius founder Alex Mashinsky.

🌍 Coinbase has so far not returned $1m it earned from gas fees for validating a block that was part of the $73m Curve exploit in July. It is also stepping up its grassroots advocacy campaign.

🌍 FTX is suing the parents of founder SBF for misappropriated funds. Stanford University is to return millions received from FTX.

🌍 Former crypto exchange Mt Gox has pushed back its creditor repayment deadline by 12 months to October 2024.

Traditional Banking 🏦

🇪🇺Santander is committing €67m to a €100m venture debt fund to support Spanish startups.

🇪🇺 Deutsche Bank has been reprimanded by regulator Bafin for disruptions to its Postbank unit after its integration from the 2008 acquisition was completed in July this year.

🇬🇧HSBC has partnered with cross-border credit bureau Nova Credit to enable immigrants to use their international credit history when applying for a credit card. The bank also released a trade finance tool that is document free and announced $1bn in financing for climate tech companies.

🇬🇧The FCA has found no proof that politicians bank accounts have been closed due to their political views after the recent issue of NatWest closing former MP Nigel Farage's account, resulting in its CEO losing her job.

Fintech Infrastructure 🚧

🇪🇺Mastercard and Saxo Bank have partnered to facilitate account top ups via open banking payments.

🇪🇺Core bank software provider Tuum and issuer processor Paymentology have partnered to provide a single solution for card payment processing and core ledger.

🇬🇧Wise has partnered with financial messaging solution Swift to allow financial institutions to route Swift payment messages through Wise.

🇬🇧Lloyds have formed a partnership with document digitization solution Enigio for trade finance.

🌍 BaaS provider Solid faked revenue numbers according to Jason Mikula.

🌍 Treasury Prime has partnered with payments infrastructure provider Astra to enable real-time payments for customers.

Payments 💰

🇪🇺B2B payment provider Mondu launches a Digital Trade account to enable businesses to offer trade accounts to their customers to consolidate purchases into a single statement.

🇬🇧 Payment solution Paysend has extended its partnership with Visa for its Visa Direct product for another five years.

🇬🇧Rapyd is to offer its card acquiring services in Singapore

🇬🇧 The owner of Trans-Fast Remittance, a payments business regulated by the FCA is alleged to have help a drug kingpin and faces criminal charges in Belgium.

🌍 An SEC filing by Square announced that its CEO will be leaving on October 2nd. It follows a recent outage at the company that impacted customers.

🌍 Stripe has added new payment methods and the ability to A/B test capabilities to its checkout products.

🌍 Visa is to use Swift's Pre-validation to check payments on its B2B Connect payments, to catch errors before payments are initiated.

🌍 BNPL provider Sezzle has partnered with WooCommerce to enable merchants to integrate BNPL payment option at checkout.

🌍 Affirm is considering launching a subscription service which would guarantee 0% APR on purchases up to $2,500 as well as higher interest rates on savings.

Sponsored Content 

In the "Future of fintech in Africa 2023" report, Kora and Finextra compile expert insights from a range of firms, including Cloud Africa, Data Scientists Network, JUMO, Mojaloop Foundation, TymeBank, and Yoco, and provide predictions for the future of fintech in Africa. Get the report

Longer reads 📜

• Signals Fintech Founders: Finix's Richie Serna - Dez, TWIF
• No other investor has a life story quite as unbelievable as Li Lu - Eleanor Olcott, FT
• The UK Is a Fintech Regulatory Superpower - Simon Taylor and a16z

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See you next week!