Hello TWIF UK & Europe friends,

Thank you TrueLayer for sponsoring a great fintech happy hour on Thursday. This was the last happy hour of the year and it was a great turnout. Check out the pictures here.

Don’t forget there is a happy hour in Berlin on Tuesday (23/11), sponsored by Plaid. Sign up here.

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Please find another week of fintech 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.

Tweet of the week 🦉🏆

brantly.eth @BrantlyMillegan

you were not airdropped free money, you were airdropped responsibility

Mengxi Lu @mengxilu

The year is 2030, people connect to 50+ crypto wallets so they can send money and shop online in web3

Funding 💸

There were 13 deals in the fintech space across the UK and Europe since the last post, with a total investment of $34m. Some highlights are below.

🇪🇺 Mon Petit Placement raised €6m from Bpifrance, Aonia Vventures, HUB612, LeFonds, Mandalore Partners, Weaving Invest and others.

🇪🇺 Female Invest raised a ¢4.5m seed deal led by Green Visor Capital and included Jeppe Christiansen, New Theory Ventures and others.

🇬🇧 Pomelo Pay raised a $10m Series A led by Inference Partners and included Force Over Mass Capital.

🌍 Consensys raised a $200m round from Coinbase Ventures, Dragonfly Capital, HSBC, Marshall Wace, Parafi Capital, Third Point and more.

🌍 Payments platform AirWallex raised a $100m Series E extension from Lone Pine Capital and existing investors.

🌍 Crypto platform Gemini raised $400m at a $7.1bn valuation.

Challenger Banking 🚀

🇪🇺 Berlin insurtech Wefox has bought Assona, a special insurance broker.

🇪🇺 Neobank N26 has put a hold on its global expansion plans and is withdrawing from the US to focus on domestic and French markets.

🙌🏻 TWIF Take - The US is a tough market to crack for European neobanks with Monzo and Revolut also struggling to get traction. The size of market and level of interchange are very tempting but a lack of product differentiation and innovative G2M strategy compared to local players make it difficult.

🇪🇺 Climate fintech Amplify has launched in Ireland and the UK.

🇬🇧 Neobroker Freetrade is heading back to the crowdfunding markets for a seventh time.

🇬🇧 Neobank Starling has bought a mortgage book of £1bn from Kensington Mortgages.

🇬🇧 NewDay has launched an instant digital credit account with flexible repayment conditions to counter the popularity of BNPL.

Sharon O'Dea @sharonodea

Quelle surprise they’ve found a way to make this even more condescending than it already was. (CC @LizLum @TheScribbleBug @ninamohanty @LedaGlyptis @SarahKocianski )

Sharon O'Dea @sharonodea

I can only assume no one involved in the concept and production of this patronising guff has been near an actual vagina since their own birth. https://t.co/dB1jfKURCq

🇬🇧 Revolut has received strong backlash over its menstruation campaign which has been criticised as being condescending and offensive

🌍 SMB bank provider Airwallex is looking to double its European headcount next year after the above mentioned funding round.

Digital Assets ₿

🇬🇧 A London Assembly Member has called for a ban on crypto ads on public transport after a recent ad for meme coin Floki Inu.

🇬🇧 After an influx of crypto firms wanting to register with the FCA, the registration deadline has been moved back to March 2022 with law firms advising crypto businesses to target UK customers from overseas.

🇬🇧 Crypto analytics and compliance solution Elliptic has revealed that there was $12bn in losses for DeFi users due to fraud and theft.

🇬🇧 Mode is extending its crypto cashback offering to 40+ merchants but seemingly without their approval.

🌍 Discord sparked outrage this week among its core users as it teased deeper crypto integrations.

🌍 Paradigm has closed the largest crypto fund to date with a $2.5bn fund.

🌍 Binance and Ripple have both shared their perspective on crypto regulation in the US in what seems to be a concerted effort to push aside the SEC. a16z and Coinbase have previously shared their views as well with a similar theme.

🌍 The Staples Center in LA is going to be renamed Crypto.com Arena in a $700m 20 year deal.

Fintech Infrastructure 🚧

🇬🇧 Yapily has officially launched in Spain and covers 95% of the 52 largest banks,

🌍 Data aggregators Plaid, Flinks and MX have set up Open Finance Data Security Standard (OFDSS) to strengthen consumer protection.

Payments 💰

🇪🇺 The European Payments Initiative (EPI) is looking for outside funding to get the project up and running with retailers and banks unwilling to cover the full cost.

🇪🇺 Klarna is looking to acquire discount offers extension Piggy in a similar move to PayPal who last year acquired Honey.

🇬🇧 The introduction of Variable Recurring Payments (VRP) has been delayed from January 2022 by six months.

🇬🇧 Amazon will stop accepting Visa credit card payments from 19 January due to high credit card fees and is rumoured to be looking at dropping its US Visa co-branded card.

🌍 Visa is working with The Salvation Army to enable contactless donations.

Regulatory Corner 🔎

In collaboration with Kat Cloud

🇪🇺 Digital Euro Campaign - Despite the fact that the Digital Euro is unlikely to be around anytime soon, the European Central bank has been pressed into more rapidly developing its prospective plans, writes Bjarke Smith-Meyer. Tech giants, who are developing new payment methods with digital assets have provoked the ECB into acting.

🇪🇺 The EU Commission has drafted a reform of the European Financial Market Regulation (Mifir) which includes a ban on Payment for Order Flow, which Trade Republic replies on for a lot of its revenues.

🇬🇧 HMT Future Regulatory Framework (FRF) Review: Proposals for Reform - HM Treasury published a document setting out the government’s response to the feedback received on the previous consultation on the Future Regulatory Framework (FRF). It makes a series of proposals to deliver the intended outcomes of the FRF Review, building on the strengths of the UK’s existing framework. The consultation will remain open until 9 February 2022.

🇬🇧 Payment Systems Regulator: Proposal for APP Fraud - The Payment Systems Regulator (PSR) has set out various proposals in a consultation on authorised push payment fraud. The proposals look at issues such as publishing data and reimbursements for consumers.

🌍 The Keep Innovation in America Act is set to be introduced to restrict the IRS definition of digital asset broker to counter the effects of the new definitions that were part of the infrastructure bill.

🌍 US banks are now required to report any “significant” security incident within 36 hours to their primary federal regulator.

🌍 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 📜

Financial innovation is actually happening - Patrick McKenzie
What Apple's Secret DMV Contracts Tell Us - Jason Mikula
Intent matters in product development - Alex Johnson
Embedded Fintech: Which financial services should be embedded? (Part II) - Emily Man
How to move money in the 21st Century - Seema Amble and David Haber
Tiger Global: How to win - The Generalist
iBuy, iRent, iLose - Marc Rubinstein
The Celebrity-Backed Green “Fintech” Company That Isn’t as Green as It Seems -Carson Kessler, ProPublica

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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See you next week!

This Week in Fintech

This Week in Fintech UK & Europe (22/11)