WEEKLY FUNDRAISING ACTIVITY
👀 NEWS HIGHLIGHT
Founded in 1999, MSP is one of the leading payment service providers in the Netherlands / Belgium / Luxembourg (Benelux region) targeted at the SME and lower-end enterprise market.
Through this acquisition, Ant will bolster its global capabilities in the Netherlands and across Europe.
With the business processing volumes from Alibaba’s existing businesses, such as AliExpress through the MultiSafepay platform, Ant will bolster its global capabilities in the Netherlands and across Europe.
NOW, ON TO THE SUMMARY OF LAST WEEK'S NEWS
🌎 FINTECH HIGHLIGHTS
⭐️ Driffle selects Mangopay to level-up digital gaming product platform.
⭐️ Amazon Pay will soon be discontinued for Shopify shops in Germany.
⭐️ UK Finance Releases Dedicated Card and Payment Crime Unit Report.
⭐️ Banco Desio chooses open finance from Fabrick to digitize billing services.
PAYMENTS
Apple has launched Tap to Pay on iPhone in Germany, enabling millions of merchants to use their iPhones for seamless and secure contactless payment processing in-store.
Wearable paytech provider MuchBetter has launched a contactless payments ring in Italy that is free - as long as users load it with €100 through the associated app. On receipt, they hold the ring near an NFC-enabled smartphone to pair it with the MuchBetter wallet app.
EU payment gateway Computop is calling on merchants to join pilot trials of the bank-backed European Payments Initiative's wero wallet scheme. The wero digital wallet will be rolled out in phases, initially to support account-to-account based instant P2P and consumer-to-business payments.
Gr4vy, a cloud-native payment orchestration platform (POP), is extending its partnership with Trustly, a FinTech in open banking payments, to launch in Europe. The partnership allows Gr4vy’s online merchants to include Trustly as a payment option, offering greater flexibility and convenience to customers.
Amsterdam’s FinTech unicorn Mollie launches Mollie Invoicing to strengthen business services. According to Mollie, customer feedback revealed a need for a proprietary invoicing solution. Consequently, the development of Mollie Invoicing is a step in enhancing services for B2B companies.
Trust Payments powers Freepay PayOut service in the Nordics. With the new agreement, Freepay will enable its customers to process fast and secure payouts with Visa and Mastercard via the TRU Connect Gateway.
OPEN BANKING
Nuapay Joins UK Public Sector Open Banking Framework. The CCS Open Banking DPS serves as a centralised hub for public sector organisations to access a range of Open Banking services.
Open Banking Excellence (OBE) Launches First of its Kind Open Banking in a Box Programme to Drive UK Ecosystem Expansion Abroad. The programme gives access to invaluable insights, expertise and practical advice honed from the UK’s experience in creating the blueprint for open banking.
DIGITAL BANKING
Qonto signs with Wise Plaform. With the integration of Wise Platform, Qonto’s customers will now be able to pay their partners faster, in more countries, and with a more transparent and reliable platform.
CRYPTO
Bitpanda, the Vienna-based cryptocurrency broker and FinTech unicorn, announced that its user base has surpassed 5 million retail investors. After taking five years to reach its first million users, Bitpanda has added another million in just the past 12 months, reflecting surging interest in digital asset trading across Europe.
DONEDEAL
FinTech firm MiddleGame Ventures raises €55m of targeted €150m fund. The Luxembourg-based firm is raising a FinTech-specific fund amid declining investor appetite for the sector
Augmentum FinTech has made a £2.6 million investment in London-based peer-to-peer FX trading platform LoopFX. The platform enables traders to match, in real-time, with other asset managers and banks without information leakage and at a mid-market rate, reducing trading costs and improving best execution processes.
Italian FinTech Banca AideXa, a digital lender specialising in providing credit to micro and small businesses, has secured €16 million in fresh capital. The funding, which brings the company’s total capital raised to €96 million, sees the company add Italy’s largest business association, ConfCommercio, to its roster of investors.
Viio raises over €3.3 million from notable investors to tackle unnecessary software spend. According to research firm Gartner, 30 percent of SaaS spending is wasted. Therefore, there is great potential in managing SaaS agreements.
French FinTech Hero secures €11.3M to enhance financial solutions for SMEs. The company raised €7M in 2022 and announced that it has raised €11.3M from Valar Ventures, a VC firm backed by Peter Thiel, and SquareOne Venture Capital, who have supported the company since the first round.
Bank of America backs London FinTech Simply’s lending to small businesses. The Wall Street giant has agreed a new loan facility with Simply worth up to £120m in what the specialist lender hailed as a “milestone”. The initial facility is for £60m, with an accordion feature to increase it to £120m.
Family FinTech app Bling raises $12M Series A funding. The company aims to improve the financial and media literacy of families by using simple visualisations and educational information in the app and on social media.
M&As
Global Payments acquires UK’s Takepayments for undisclosed sum. Founded in 1995, Takepayments provides card machines, point-of-sale (POS) systems and online payment solutions to over 75,000 businesses in the UK.
MOVERS & SHAKERS
Solaris hires Michael Bonacker to lead supervisory board. Bonacker will chair a supervisory board consisting of Solaris founding investor and former chairman Ramin Niroumand, audit expert Burkhard Eckes, SBI Group executive Tomoyuki Nii, and new appointee James Freis.