This Week in Fintech UK & Europe (20/12)

Dec 20, 2021

Hello TWIF UK & Europe friends,

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

Sponsored Content

Want to be a This Week in Fintech - UK & Europe sponsor? Reach out to me at michael@thisweekinfintech.com, find me on Twitter and see our sponsorship information here.

Tweet of the week 🦉🏆

Tom Noyes @noyesclt

Thought for the day. Debit card networks are hyper efficient and low cost "instant" payments (US ~$0.26, EU 130bps online). There is no room for "incentives" away from debit. Pain point? Retailers complain about the cost of credit .. and funding someone else's rewards scheme.

Alongside @alongsidefi

1/ gm 👋 Starting your web3 journey involves getting familiarized with wallets Simple, right? Public & private keys, seed phrases, cold/hot storage, horror stories of people losing millions So what's a wallet? How do they work? Are they secure enough? Let's dive in today ↓

Monzo @monzo

Introducing: Monzo's Very Important 2021 Data Thing Throughout the week we’ll be sharing data insights that tell the story of the year we've all had, along with the memes that made it. Sorry in advance. #MonzosVeryImportant2021DataThing

Bernie Sanders saying "We are once again showing you information about your spending that you do not want to see"

Funding 💸

There were 14 deals in the fintech space across the UK and Europe since the last post, with a total investment of $366m. Some highlights are below.

🇪🇺 B2B payment startup topi raised a $4.5m pre-seed round co-led by Index Ventures and Creandum.

🇪🇺 N26 raised more than the reported €900m and will be doing a second close of it’s most recent round.

🇪🇺 Advanced financing platform re:cap raised a $112m seed round from Entree Capital, Felix Capital and Project A.

🇪🇺 VAT compliance platform Taxdoo raised a $64m Series B led by Tiger and included Accel.

🇪🇺 Payments fintech Silverflow raised a $17m Series A led by Coatue and included Crane Venture Partners

🇬🇧 BNPL for car repairs fintech Bumper raised a $12m Series A led by Autotech Ventures and included InMotion Ventures.

🇬🇧 Crypto on-ramp Ramp raised $52.7m in a round led by Balderton.

🌍 NYDIG has raised $1bn at a $7bn valuation.

🌍 MoneyLion is buying Even Financial, an embedded finance marketplace.

Challenger Banking 🚀

🇬🇧 Freelance booking app Coconut is to stop offering its current accounts and focus on integrating with customers existing accounts through Open banking.

🇬🇧 SME lender OakNorth acquired Fluidly, a cash flow forecasting app.

🌍 Cover Genius and Ryanair have teamed up to embed travel protection into the flight booking flow.

Digital Assets ₿

🇪🇺 100 year old German partner bank Sutor Bank is being taken over by crypto payment provider BCB Group.

🇬🇧 Canadian firm Nuvei is rolling out crypto-friendly debit cards in the UK and Europe.

🇬🇧 Blockchain payments consortium Fnality is expected to reduce banks liquidity requirements by 70% through a “single pool of liquidity” rather than across many different accounts and instruments.

🇬🇧 Crypto firms are facing a crackdown by the Advertising Standard Authority over misleading and irresponsible ads, with Coinbase and eToro impacted.

🇬🇧 Bitcoin podcaster Peter McCormack bought Bedford FC, his hometown football club. Another group called WAGMI United, which includes NFT fanatic Gary Vaynerchuk, are seeking to take over Bradford City.

🌍 Nike has acquired NFT and fashion startup RTFKT.

🌍 Crypto investors lost $2.8bn to “rug pulls” in 2021 according to Chainalysis, where developers set up and promote a scam project and token to attract liquidity and then pulls the liquidity away and steals everything.

🌍 Michael Jordan and his son Jeffrey are launching HEIR, a Solana based fan engagement platform.

Traditional Banking 🏦

🇪🇺 Germany’s savings backs are rumoured to be working on their own crypto wallet.

🇬🇧 HSBC and Wells Fargo have completed an interbank Payment vs Payment (PvP) settlement using a distributed ledger. HSBC was also fined £64m for AML failings.

🇬🇧 JPMorgan are hiring more staff for its new UK digital bank Chase, taking its employee count to over 1,000 in 2022.

🇬🇧 Major UK banks have come together and agreed to operate a collection of shared banking hubs to maintain access to cash for vulnerable people.

🇬🇧 NatWest lost the CEO of its SME banking app Mettle to blockchain foundation Near.

🌍 Regulated institutions clocked up $2.2bn in fines for AML failings in 2020, 5x higher than in 2019.

🌍 JPMorgan is the latest bank to change its overdraft fees, giving consumers a full day to get back into the black before incurring charges whilst also allowing them to get direct deposit paychecks two days early. JPMorgan makes 1% of revenue from overdraft fees.

Fintech Infrastructure 🚧

🇪🇺 The first cross-border Confirmation of Payee service launched between France and Netherlands, enabling companies and banks to check account information entered matches the recipient.

🇪🇺 Irish bank AIB signed a three year deal with IBM to transition to a hybrid cloud environment.

🇪🇺 The EBA is proposing SCA of only 180 days for simple account retrieval and no shorter to help combat customer frustrations.

🇬🇧 Finextra and APImetrics have partnered to create a dashboard to monitor the performance of fintech, open banking, PSD2 payments and crypto APIs.

🇬🇧 TrueLayer and NatWest partnered to conduct the first live Variable Recurring Payments transaction.

🇬🇧 Nationwide is moving its online banking to the cloud with the help of Microsoft’s Azure platform.

🇬🇧 Starling Bank is to take its BaaS product global.

🌍 The BIS is setting up a team to work in improving cross border payments, a priority of the organisation.

Payments 💰

🇪🇺 Klarna is partnering with GoCardless to power its “Pay in 4” offering in the US, allowing payments to be debited from customers account with their permission.

🇬🇧 BNPL operator Butter is providing users of the Opera web browser with an extension to utilise its services to spread payments on any e-commerce purchase.

🇬🇧 Research from OpenMoney found those struggling with BNPL debts has risen from 38% to 43% this year, with 30% turning to friends and family for repayment help.

🌍 H&R Block filed a trademark infringement suit against Square and its new name “Block”.

🌍 BNPL providers Zip Co and Sezzle have held merger talks as the sector looks to consolidate.

Regulatory Corner 🔎

In collaboration with Kat Cloud

🌍 The CFPB has started an inquiry into the BNPL space by ordering Affirm, Afterpay, Klarna, PayPal and Zip for information on consumer behaviour, fees, loan performance and other information.