Hello TWIF UK & Europe friends,
A belated Happy Thanksgiving for all the US readers! I hope you have enjoyed the holidays and found time to relax.
Please find another week of fintech news, financings and exits below.
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Funding 💸
There were 18 deals in the fintech space across the UK and Europe since the last post, with a total investment of $693m. Some highlights are below.
🇪🇺 Payments provider SaltPay raised $344m from undisclosed investors.
🇪🇺 Insurtech Leocare raised a $116m Series B led by Eight Roads and included Daphni, Felix Capital and Ventech.
🇬🇧 Payhawk raised a $112m Series B led by Greenoaks Capital and included QED Investors, Earlybird and Eleven Ventures.
🇬🇧 Rental deposit fintech Fronted raised £20m in debt and equity led by Fasanara Capital.
🇬🇧 Freetrade raised £8m in its first day on Crowdcube.
🇬🇧 SME bank Allica raised a £110m Series B led by Atalaya Capital.
🇬🇧 Fundraising infrastructure platform Vauban raised $6.3m co-led by Pentech and Outward and also included 7percent Ventures and angels.
🌍 Crypto onramp MoonPay raised a $555m Series A led by Tiger Global and Coatue at a $3.4bn valuation.
Challenger Banking 🚀
🇬🇧 Revolut is to partner with regtech provider Cube for regulatory intelligence and also acquired Nobly POS, a hospitality tech provider.
🇬🇧 Monzo Flex has begun to filter its way to customers who can check their eligibility via the Monzo app. It also comes with a virtual card.
🇬🇧 The Deloitte UK Fast 50 winner was ClearBank with Airtime Rewards and Paysend rounding out the podium places. Zego and Fidel API were also in the top 5 of fintechs, a sector which made up nearly 25% of entries.
🇬🇧 Atom Bank is embracing the four-day week for its 400+ employees with NO reduction in pay. Please form an orderly queue.
🇬🇧 Allica Bank is buying the £600m SMB loan book of Allied Irish Bank.
🇬🇧 Fronted introduced a new ‘Lifetime Deposit” product which is a bridge financing product for renters who need to pay out a new rent deposit before receiving the old one back.
Digital Assets ₿
🇪🇺 French neobank Lydia is to offer crypto trading to its users through a white label partnership with crypto exchange Bitpanda.
🇬🇧 Mode, which launched a crypto cashback scheme last week with 40+ retailers, has seen its retailers back out of its program.
🇬🇧 The FCA is looking for a blockchain data analytics provider and is tendering for its £500,000 contract over two years.
🙌🏻 TWIF Take -Contract value seems low for what is going to be a real shift in financial services. It would have been great to see real investment in the space to get ahead of the curve.
🌍 74 Japanese firms are testing a private sector digital yen
🌍 Binance is seeking investment from sovereign wealth funds.
Traditional Banking 🏦
🇪🇺 Four of Ireland’s banks are investing €5m into Synch, to create a multibank payment app rival to Revolut and other neobanks.
🇪🇺 The ECB have found EU banks are failing to cover their exposure to climate-related risks
🇪🇺 SocGen is looking to transition to become a data-driven bank with a focus on AI and data in areas like start-up applications, biometric recognition and automatic credit ratings.
🇪🇺 Deutsche Bank are rolling out payee verification from Swift so account details can be checked before international payments are made to
Payments 💰
🇪🇺 The BIS is looking to extend the operating hours of payment systems to improve cross-border payments and has launched a consultation.
🇪🇺 Klarna has launched its Pay Now and Klarna Card in the US.
🇬🇧 Stripe’s POS terminal is now available in UK, Ireland, France, Germany and Netherlands. One of its co-founders said the company has no “immediate” plans to go public.
🇬🇧 Fintech Volume has launched a one-click account-to-account payment for ecommerce.
🙌🏻 TWIF Take - With payment initiation slowly taking off it was only a matter of time before someone combined it with one-click checkout technology. The Volume solution allows merchants to cut out costs of card payments. The team has a depth of experience from WorldRemit, Mastercard and HSBC. One to watch.
🇬🇧 Industry body UK Finance released its future strategy for open banking payments which looks at addressing some of the issues facing open banking payments.
🙌🏻 TWIF Take - One of the challenges is that PSD2 doesn’t require banks to inform PISPs that the payment has been executed. Another is the lack of more information sent to banks with the payment request for them to assess risk. Annex 1 has a comprehensive overview of issues with open banking payments.
🇬🇧 BNPL provider Zip has released its virtual card for UK shoppers.
🌍 BNPL provider Afterpay is targeting the global subscription market, which is worth $1.5trn, to give US customers instalment options for subscriptions.
🌍 Shares in Australian listed BNPL companies, of which there are 12, plunged after Zip announced $653m in losses, up from $20m last year.
Regulatory Corner 🔎
In collaboration with Kat Cloud
🇪🇺 The ECB has extended the oversight of electronic payments to include stablecoins and crypto assets
🇪🇺 The EU Commission is launching a public consultation on the Mortgage Credit Directive review to ensure consumers are not being exploited.
🌍 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 📜
Coinbase Investment Memo - Hayden Capital
Incentives - How will Visa Amazon play out - Tom Noyes
10 Epic Bitcoin Mining Photos - Anthony Pompliano
Payments in Japan - Patrick McKenzie
Buy the Constitution’ Aftermath - Jordan Pearson & Jason Koebler
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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