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

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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.

🇪🇺 Wealthtech RockFi raised a $18m Series A from Partech and angels.

🇪🇺 Alternative investment platform Openstone raised a €2m seed round.

🇬🇧 Lender Level raised a £105m combined debt and equity round from Capricorn Capital and Pollen Street Capital.

🇬🇧Wealthtech Firenze raised a £2.5m seed round led by Outward VC.

🇬🇧 Consumer lender Abound raised a £250m debt facility from Deutsche Bank.

🇬🇧 Payment solution Burbank raised £5m from Anthemis Group, Mouro Capital and Portfolio Ventures.

🇬🇧 AI agent payments solution Paid AI raised a €10m seed round from Sequoia and EQT Ventures.

🌍 Card issuing platform Rain raised a $24.5m round led by Norwest Venture Partners.

🌍 Business neobank Mercury raised a $300m Series C.

Challenger Banking 🚀

🇪🇺 B2B lender Liberis has partnered with payment provider Teya to offer SME funding in Czech Republic and Slovakia.

🇪🇺 Neobroker eToro has publicly filed to IPO.

🇪🇺 Insurance provider AXA has partnered with neobroker Shares.

🇬🇧 Neobank Monzo introduced a split payments feature.

🇬🇧 Experian has launched an open banking powered Cashflow Score.

🌍 US neobank Chime has launched Instant Loans.

🌍 Neobroker Robinhood has launched wealth management services.

Digital Assets ₿

🇪🇺 BlackRock is launching a bitcoin ETP in Europe.

🇬🇧 Revolut launched a mobile crypto exchange app, Revolut X, for UK and EU users.

🌍 Crypto exchange Kraken is considering a $1bn debt raise ahead of a potential IPO.

🌍 BlackRock and tokenization platform Securitize have expanded its tokenised money market fund BUIDL to Solana.

🌍 Custodia Bank and Vantage Bank completed the tokenization of U.S. dollar deposits on the Ethereum.

🌍 Latam neobank NuBank has expanded its crypto platform's portfolio.

🌍 Fidelity Investments is rolling out a stablecoin.

🌍 Exchange parent group ICE is exploring how it can use Circle's USDC and tokenised money market funds.

🌍 Interactive Brokers expands crypto trading to include SOL, XRP, ADA and DOGE.

Traditional Banking 🏦

🇬🇧 Lloyds Banking Group has extended its partnership with Oracle to push its multi-cloud strategy. It also partnered with Taulia for virtual cards.

🌍 JPMorgan Chase and Walmart have partnered to provider the retailers marketplace sellers with banking services.

Fintech Infrastructure 🚧

🇬🇧 Debt capital markets analytics provider 9fin acquired Bond Radar.

🇬🇧 Wealthtech infrastructure provider WealthKernel partnered with Round Treasury to automate treasury and banking.

🌍 Private company marketplaces EquityZen and Forge Global are partnering with Yahoo to launch a private market hun.

Payments 💰

🇪🇺 Klarna signed food delivery platform DoorDash as a customer for its payment options.

🇪🇺 Open banking payment provider Trustly introduced biometric log-ins.

🇬🇧 Open banking provider Noda launched offline QR code payments.

🇬🇧 Payment provider myPOS acquired UTP Group.

🇬🇧 Payment orchestrator Primer has integrated JPMorgan Payments into its platform.

🇬🇧 Open banking payment provider Atoa integrated with Xero.

🌍 Visa and World Network, Sam Altman's crypto project, are discussing a stablecoin payment wallet.

🌍 Affirm is deepening is agreement with JPMorgan Payments and will see Affirm's solutions be made available to JPMorgan's Payments network.

Longer reads/listens 📜

• The Kill-or-Be-Killed Fight for Crypto’s Future - Angus Berwick, WSJ
• The Death of Crypto and the Beginning of Onchain Finance - Simon Taylor
• Gimme Credit - Oaktree
• The Long Shadow of LTCM: An Interview with Eric Rosenfeld - Marc Rubinstein
• The value of technological progress - Matt Clancy, Works in Progress
• Is Polymarket Legal? How Shayne Coplan’s Bet Is Paying Off. - Jen Wieczner
• How Airbus took off - Alex Chalmers, Works in Progress
• How to break the Planning and Infrastructure bill - Sam Dumitriu, Notes on Growth

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See you next week!