This Week in Fintech

Share this post
This Week in Fintech UK & Europe (20/12)
thisweekinfintech.substack.com
UK & Europe

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

Michael Jenkins
Dec 20, 2021
Share this post
This Week in Fintech UK & Europe (20/12)
thisweekinfintech.substack.com

Hello TWIF UK & Europe friends,

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


Sponsored Content 

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


Tweet of the week ๐Ÿฆ‰๐Ÿ†

Twitter avatar for @noyescltTom 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.

December 13th 2021

1 Retweet21 Likes
Twitter avatar for @alongsidefiAlongside @alongsidefi
1/ gm ๐Ÿ‘‹ 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 โ†“

December 13th 2021

23 Retweets126 Likes
Twitter avatar for @monzoMonzo @monzo
Introducing: Monzo's Very Important 2021 Data Thing Throughout the week weโ€™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"

December 13th 2021

50 Retweets662 Likes

Funding ๐Ÿ’ธ

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.

๐Ÿ‡ช๐Ÿ‡บ B2B payment startup topi raised a $4.5m pre-seed round co-led by Index Ventures and Creandum.

๐Ÿ‡ช๐Ÿ‡บ N26 raised more than the reported โ‚ฌ900m and will be doing a second close of itโ€™s most recent round.

๐Ÿ‡ช๐Ÿ‡บ Advanced financing platform re:cap raised a $112m seed round from Entree Capital, Felix Capital and Project A.

๐Ÿ‡ช๐Ÿ‡บ VAT compliance platform Taxdoo raised a $64m Series B led by Tiger and included Accel.

๐Ÿ‡ช๐Ÿ‡บ Payments fintech Silverflow raised a $17m Series A led by Coatue and included Crane Venture Partners

๐Ÿ‡ฌ๐Ÿ‡ง BNPL for car repairs fintech Bumper raised a $12m Series A led by Autotech Ventures and included InMotion Ventures.

๐Ÿ‡ฌ๐Ÿ‡ง Crypto on-ramp Ramp raised $52.7m in a round led by Balderton.

๐ŸŒ NYDIG has raised $1bn at a $7bn valuation.

๐ŸŒ MoneyLion is buying Even Financial, an embedded finance marketplace.

Challenger Banking ๐Ÿš€

๐Ÿ‡ฌ๐Ÿ‡ง Freelance booking app Coconut is to stop offering its current accounts and focus on integrating with customers existing accounts through Open banking.

๐Ÿ‡ฌ๐Ÿ‡ง SME lender OakNorth acquired Fluidly, a cash flow forecasting app.

๐ŸŒ Cover Genius and Ryanair have teamed up to embed travel protection into the flight booking flow.

Digital Assets โ‚ฟ

๐Ÿ‡ช๐Ÿ‡บ 100 year old German partner bank Sutor Bank is being taken over by crypto payment provider BCB Group.

๐Ÿ‡ฌ๐Ÿ‡ง Canadian firm Nuvei is rolling out crypto-friendly debit cards in the UK and Europe.

๐Ÿ‡ฌ๐Ÿ‡ง Blockchain payments consortium Fnality is expected to reduce banks liquidity requirements by 70% through a โ€œsingle pool of liquidityโ€ rather than across many different accounts and instruments.

๐Ÿ‡ฌ๐Ÿ‡ง Crypto firms are facing a crackdown by the Advertising Standard Authority over misleading and irresponsible ads, with Coinbase and eToro impacted.

๐Ÿ‡ฌ๐Ÿ‡ง 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.

๐ŸŒ Nike has acquired NFT and fashion startup RTFKT.

๐ŸŒ Crypto investors lost $2.8bn to โ€œrug pullsโ€ 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.

๐ŸŒ Michael Jordan and his son Jeffrey are launching HEIR, a Solana based fan engagement platform.

Traditional Banking ๐Ÿฆ

๐Ÿ‡ช๐Ÿ‡บ Germanyโ€™s savings backs are rumoured to be working on their own crypto wallet.

๐Ÿ‡ฌ๐Ÿ‡ง HSBC and Wells Fargo have completed an interbank Payment vs Payment (PvP) settlement using a distributed ledger. HSBC was also fined ยฃ64m for AML failings.

๐Ÿ‡ฌ๐Ÿ‡ง JPMorgan are hiring more staff for its new UK digital bank Chase, taking its employee count to over 1,000 in 2022.

๐Ÿ‡ฌ๐Ÿ‡ง Major UK banks have come together and agreed to operate a collection of shared banking hubs to maintain access to cash for vulnerable people.

๐Ÿ‡ฌ๐Ÿ‡ง NatWest lost the CEO of its SME banking app Mettle to blockchain foundation Near.

๐ŸŒ Regulated institutions clocked up $2.2bn in fines for AML failings in 2020, 5x higher than in 2019.

๐ŸŒ 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 ๐Ÿšง

๐Ÿ‡ช๐Ÿ‡บ 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.

๐Ÿ‡ช๐Ÿ‡บ Irish bank AIB signed a three year deal with IBM to transition to a hybrid cloud environment.

๐Ÿ‡ช๐Ÿ‡บ The EBA is proposing SCA of only 180 days for simple account retrieval and no shorter to help combat customer frustrations.

๐Ÿ‡ฌ๐Ÿ‡ง Finextra and APImetrics have partnered to create a dashboard to monitor the performance of fintech, open banking, PSD2 payments and crypto APIs.

๐Ÿ‡ฌ๐Ÿ‡ง TrueLayer and NatWest partnered to conduct the first live Variable Recurring Payments transaction.

๐Ÿ‡ฌ๐Ÿ‡ง Nationwide is moving its online banking to the cloud with the help of Microsoftโ€™s Azure platform.

๐Ÿ‡ฌ๐Ÿ‡ง Starling Bank is to take its BaaS product global.

๐ŸŒ The BIS is setting up a team to work in improving cross border payments, a priority of the organisation.

Payments ๐Ÿ’ฐ

๐Ÿ‡ช๐Ÿ‡บ Klarna is partnering with GoCardless to power its โ€œPay in 4โ€ offering in the US, allowing payments to be debited from customers account with their permission.

๐Ÿ‡ฌ๐Ÿ‡ง 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.

๐Ÿ‡ฌ๐Ÿ‡ง 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.

๐ŸŒ H&R Block filed a trademark infringement suit against Square and its new name โ€œBlockโ€.

๐ŸŒ BNPL providers Zip Co and Sezzle have held merger talks as the sector looks to consolidate.

Regulatory Corner ๐Ÿ”Ž

In collaboration with Kat Cloud

๐ŸŒ 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.


Longer reads ๐Ÿ“œ

  • Whatโ€™s not going to change - Alex Johnson

  • What the next phase of embedded finance looks like - Nigel Verdon

  • Inside Wall Street's culture war with Gen Z - Reed Alexander

  • Crypto is eating fintech - Wally Hansen


Your feedback is a gift, please give below ๐Ÿ™

Goodย ||ย Badย ||ย Needs Improving

See you next week!

Share this post
This Week in Fintech UK & Europe (20/12)
thisweekinfintech.substack.com
Comments

Create your profile

0 subscriptions will be displayed on your profile (edit)

Skip for now

Only paid subscribers can comment on this post

Already a paid subscriber? Sign in

Check your email

For your security, we need to re-authenticate you.

Click the link we sent to , or click here to sign in.

TopNew

No posts

Ready for more?

ยฉ 2022 Nik Milanoviฤ‡
Privacy โˆ™ Terms โˆ™ Collection notice
Publish on Substack Get the app
Substackย is the home for great writing