Hello TWIF UK & Europe friends,

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

Editor’s Note: If you’re an early-stage startup founder raising equity or debt, I may be able to help - reach out to michael@thisweekinfintech.com.

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Tweet of the week 🦉🏆

Alex Rampell @arampell

1/ Many areas of financial services have “stochastic margins” per widget, but hopefully (obviously!) positive margins for the whole batch of widgets sold - unlike most manufacturers, with fixed/declining COGS at scale. This means many things when you build a “financial” business

Chris Gledhill @cgledhill

Digital wallet transaction volumes to top US$10tn globally by 2025 nfcw.com/whats-new-in-p… #fintech

Funding 💸

There were 13 deals in the fintech space across the UK and Europe since the last post, with a total investment of $154m. Some highlights are below.

🇪🇺 Private equity investment platform Moonfare raised a $125m Series C led by Insight Partners and included FISV.

🇪🇺 French business bank Qonto is raising a €400m round led by Tiger Global at a $4.4bn valuation.

🇬🇧 Abrdn acquired Finimize

🇬🇧 Digital insurance provider Nimbla raised a $7m seed round led by Fin Venture Capital and included Barclays.

🇬🇧 Collective raised $10m from Prosus Ventures.

Challenger Banking 🚀

🇪🇺 Tech and gadget subscription platform Grover is partnering with BaaS platform Solarisbank to issue a Visa debit card for cashback and rewards.

🇬🇧 Neobank Starling has enabled recurring bills to be made from a “Savings Space”, i.e. a separate pot of money which users set aside for specific uses.

🇬🇧 Revolut is allowing cardholders to design their own card using images, texts and emojis. It is also hiring for a team to build a crypto exchange.

🇬🇧 Neobroker Freetrade has hit £1bn in AUM and is the second largest retail broker by volume on the LSE.

🇬🇧 Tred is launching its green debit card with Mastercard and enabled by Nium.

Digital Assets ₿

🇪🇺 France Fintech and Binance have launched a €100m initiative to accelerate the growth of the European crypto space.

🇪🇺 Vienna based crypto exchange Bitpanda announced €55.3m euros in sales last year with almost €13m in profit, making it the only unicorn fintech in the DACH region that is profitable.

🇬🇧 Crypto payments app Bottlepay has been acquired by digital investment company NYDIG for $290m.

🌍 A report on stablecoins from a Working Group on Financial Markets is calling for urgent legislation to regulate the space.

🌍 FTX, Lightspeed Ventures and Solana Ventures are investing $100m into Web3 gaming.

🌍 New NYC Mayor Eric Adams will receive his first three paychecks in Bitcoin and wants New York to rival Miami as a crypto hub.

Traditional Banking 🏦

🇪🇺 ING is shutting its card acquirer platform Payvision that it bought in 2018.

🇬🇧 HSBC has signed devops platform CloudBees to standardise its software delivery.

🇬🇧 Metro Bank has received a takeover approach from US private equity firm Carlyle.

🇬🇧 Barclays CEO Jes Staley has resigned following investigations into his ties to Jeffrey Epstein.

Fintech Infrastructure 🚧

🇪🇺 Dutch bank Triodos is targeting to reach net zero by 2035.

🇪🇺 German bak Raisin has launched a BaaS platform in collaboration with cloud banking provider Mambu.

🇬🇧 Financial infrastructure platform Railsbank has pivoted its strategy and marketing to focus on “experiences” of embedded finance, betting that this is the next phase of growth for embedded finance.

🙌🏻 TWIF Take - This is a seemingly logical next step, to focus a business and products around what can be built on top of them instead of the product itself. Consumers don’t want a bank account, they want to be able to save and spend money and positioning Railsbank as allowing businesses to build experiences, it makes it easier to understand.

🇬🇧 Fintech SaaS platform Toqio has partnered with Railsbank, Mastercard and HealRWorld to launch a corporate debit card that rewards sustainable businesses.

🌍 Amazon is looking to hire a Financial Services Specialist to develop digital asset capabilities.

🌍 Google has invested $1bn in derivatives exchange CME Group and secured a 10-year deal to move it on to its Cloud.

Payments 💰

🇪🇺 P27 has appointed Paula da Silva as CEO from SEB.

🇪🇺 Klarna has acquired price comparison company PriceRunner and also rolled out its in-app shopping feature globally, creating a one stop shop, as it hopes to play more in the discovery phase.

🙌🏻 TWIF Take - Most BNPL providers operate in the post-purchase decision space at the checkout but increasingly they are moving to the top of the funnel of a commerce decision to the discovery phase by funnelling users to their shopping apps. With this rollout they are also playing deeper in the B2C space (or at least B2B2C).

🇪🇺 An Irish coffee shop Bear Markets has created a payments and loyalty enabled reusable coffee cup.

🇬🇧 PayPal has launched an all-in-one POS Zettle Terminal in the UK which has a touchscreen and no longer needs to be paired with a second device.

🇬🇧 Virgin Money is entering the hot BNPL space through a collaboration with Global Payments, a commerce infrastructure platform.

🇬🇧 Payments platform Checkout has removed 6,500 tonnes of carbon to offset its total emissions since it was founded.

🇬🇧 Clearpay’s in-store BNPL solution is now available to UK customers.

🌍 Square released Q3 earnings, reporting total revenue +27% yoy and profit +43% yoy. Bitcoin revenue via Cash App was +115% yoy.

🌍 Facebook has found a way around Apple’s 30% take rate of in-app transactions.

Regulatory Corner 🔎

🇪🇺 Insurance provider Getsafe has received a license from BaFin, allowing it to enter the country and accelerate its geographical expansion.

🇬🇧 The UK Government is set to force financial institutions and listed companies to publish their net zero plans.

🙌🏻 TWIF Take - Hopefully by forcing companies to make their plans public, it will encourage consumers to put even more pressure on companies that are not acting quick enough and provide greater transparency on who is doing well and who isn’t, so those inclined can vote with their feet and move their business. Transparency is only the first step, we need action. I wrote more on this here.

🌍 The DOJ is looking into Visa’s relationships with large fintechs as part of its antitrust investigation according to the WSJ.

🌍 International

Don’t forget to subscribe to TWIF US & Global by Nik Milanovic, TWIF India & SEA by Osborne Saldanha and TWIF Latam by Christine Chang.

Longer reads 📜

Frontier Giants - Mario Gabriele, The Generalist
- 🙌🏻 TWIF Take - Mario is one of my favourite writers and he has pulled together some really interesting companies in emerging markets which are solving local problems with local solutions. A mind-expanding piece.
Affirm Debit+ is REVOLUTIONARY - Tom Noyes
The Rise of Alternative Payment Methods in Europe - Flagship Advisory Partners
Fancy a flutter - Marc Rubinstein
Do the maths on Mark Carney’s $130tn net zero pledge stack up? - FT
Gen Z focused fintech requires product differentiation and brand bdentity to succeed - Tanvi Lal
Balancing risk: Modern architecture’s role in the BNPL playbook - Matt Bivons
The Tether equation for investors: risk vs yield - Eva Szalay
How credit cards make money - Patrick McKenzie

Want to be a This Week in Fintech - UK & Europe sponsor? Reach out to me at michael@thisweekinfintech.com or find me on Twitter.

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This Week in Fintech

This Week in Fintech UK & Europe (08/11)