FinTech Europe | 2023 #20

Weekly news up to Tuesday, 16th of May 2023

Happy Tuesday Fellow FinTech Fanatic,

Let's start today's newsletter with 🔥 HOT off the press 🔥 The Ultimate FinTech Influencer Guide 2023! 👇

To all of you FinTech Fanatics out there; enjoy and follow these creators!

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WEEKLY FUNDRAISING ACTIVITY

Last week we spotted 7 European FinTech Funding deals for a total amount of €36.3m;

🚀FinTech Funding Alert🚀

Let’s dive into the data for European FinTech Funding rounds in April👇

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REPORT

European Crypto Regulation: A Summary of Law by Country presented by CMS

Europe established itself as a leading center for crypto innovation when anti-money laundering regulation arrived in 2019. The survey provides an overview of European crypto-asset regulation, focussing on 28 European jurisdictions (the UK included).

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👀 NEWS HIGHLIGHT

Numeral and BNP Paribas were selected by Alma to automate billion of euros of payments per year. The collaboration arrives as merchants adopt new payment options in their shopping experience.

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📰 ARTICLE

A major driver in Paypal’s growth is interest rates, which help the company earn more than users leave in their PayPal and Venmo accounts. This trend helped propel revenue growth to 10.4% year-over-year, adjusting for currency fluctuations, in Q1.

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NOW, ON TO THE SUMMARY OF LAST WEEK'S NEWS

🌎 FINTECH HIGHLIGHTS

⭐️ ABN Amro co-led an €11.5 mil seed round in ThreatFabric to support its growth.

⭐️ Tiger Global is exploring options to cash in a piece of its more than $40 billion portfolio of privately held companies.

⭐️ TerraPay announced a strategic equity investment from Visa.

⭐️ Firmbase raised $12 million in funding for its FP&A platform.

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PAYMENTS

Hands In Bags completed a $550,000 funding round to accelerate the commercialization of its group payment services.

Yonder partners with Transact Payments for its new rewards-based credit card. The partnership will provide access to payment services and the MasterCard network.

Guavapay and Discover Global Network signed a strategic agreement on acquiring and issuing with processing coming over the next months.

Banking Circle joined the UK Faster Payments Service, allowing its clients to have access to real-time direct clearing and settlement for both EUR and GBP.

DIGITAL BANKING

Nordea completed the acquisition of Advinans, following receipt of the regulatory approvals.

Viceversa raised a €10m Series A funding round. The round saw CDP Venture Capital as the lead investor.

After reaching an interest rate of 3.33 percent in March, Kroo announced its current account will pay 3.6 percent from 1 June.

Revolut partners with Upvest to offer fractional trading for ETFs and EU stocks. Its chief financial officer Mikko Salovaara resigned for “personal reasons” after just over two years at the neobank.

OPEN BANKING

Bud Financial harnesses AI and transactional data to offer tailored advice to banking customers and assess risk across an institution's portfolio.

SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT

Taktile announced the launch of its Data Marketplace as part of its mission to revolutionize how FinTechs and banks harness data to make decisions.

Kyckr integrates with Experian, allowing its global corporate clients to gain access to up-to-date corporate verification data on over 120 million companies globally.

CRYPTO

ETH is now available to stake on Bitpanda, bringing the total number of staking assets to 28 coins and tokens that generate rewards. The company’s CEO Eric Demuth says that European fintechs are clinging on to price tags of many times what they’re actually worth — including his own.

Bitpanda invests $10 million in AI to “revolutionize” wealth creation. The new platform will focus on creating and delivering new AI-driven products and investing features.

BLOCKCHAIN / DEFI

Unstoppable Finance is preparing to build Europe's "first fully regulated DeFi-native bank" alongside a fiat-backed Euro stablecoin.

INVESTMENT

Odin picked up a $3m seed round. 220 angels were involved in the deal — almost all of them from Odin’s own community of investors.

SmartPension raised $95 million in a funding round led by Aquiline Capital Partners. The new investment will fuel the company’s ongoing global expansion initiatives.

INSURTECH

ITAS Assicurazioni continues its strategic path of digital transformation and launches ITAS Pay with the support of Nexi Group.

FRAUD PREVENTION

Cable raises $11 million from Stage 2 Capital and Jump Capital to automate effectiveness testing of financial crime controls.

Just days after the UK unveiled a new Fraud Strategy to combat the massive growth in financial scams, Tide criticized the government for not going far enough.

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MOVERS & SHAKERS

Fourthline announced the appointment of Peter Grausgruber as its Chief Financial Officer.

PayU has appointed Shiri Schneider as its new Chief Technology Officer.

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If you are a fintech startup and have over 100 questions send me an email, maybe I can answer a few.