REPORT
Crypto assets have grown massively over the past few years, and are becoming increasingly interlinked with the regulated financial markets. Global use of crypto has skyrocketed in recent years, by almost 400% between 2020 and 2022.
👀 NEWS HIGHLIGHT
Adyen broadens its partnership with FREE NOW to power new Visa corporate travel cards.
The company aims to streamline mobility benefits on behalf of its enterprise customers, who will be able to provide corporate cards to employees as an all-encompassing transport benefit.
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📰 ARTICLE
Plum has expanded its commission-free trading platform to 3,000 US stocks.
Plum’s customers in both the UK and EU will have access to the new stocks which include the likes of Sony, Airbnb, Duolingo in what is its first major upgrade to its stock investing product since its launch in 2022.
🧐 ANALYSIS
US-to-Europe and Europe-to-US are popular corridors for fintech seeking to expand geographically due to:
👉 the huge size of the markets,
👉 regulatory uniformity with the region,
👉 cultural similarities,
👉 and market maturity levels.
NOW, ON TO THE SUMMARY OF LAST WEEK'S NEWS
🌎 FINTECH HIGHLIGHTS
⭐️ FIS announced plans to spin off merchant business.
⭐️ Alloy is making its way across the pond to launch in the UK.
⭐️ PayPal CEO Dan Schulman will retire and leave the online payments company at the end of 2023.
⭐️ Gemini, Genesis, and Digital Currency Group entered an agreement over earning program.
⭐️ Cushon has been acquired by NatWest for £144m.
⭐️ Marcus Braun rejected all charges at his trial connected to the collapse of the German payments giant.
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PAYMENTS
Atlantic Money is rolling out its international money transfer service to more markets and more platforms.
IBANX will be collaborating with Buckaroo to develop payment initiations for their clients.
Adyen plunged by 15% as investors took fright at plans to raise headcount during a global tech slowdown.
BNPL
UK Government launched its long-anticipated consultation on rules to crack down on the unregulated BNPL sector.
iwoca announced the integration of its B2B payment solution iwocaPay with Quickbooks’ leading accounting software package.
DIGITAL BANKING
The former Starling Bank co-founder and CTO Mark Hipperson announced on LinkedIn his resignation in Ziglu.
Omnio completed a 9m Euros equity funding and keep the round open for selected investors, targeting a total of 12m Euros.
CRYPTO
Capitual partnered with Azimut to expand its service offer to Europe.
Ramp rolled out its platform for transferring digital assets back into fiat currency, after receiving regulatory approval.
INVESTMENT
Moonfare capped the extension of its Series C financing round at c.a. $15 million, achieving a record valuation.
FNZ agreed to acquire International Fund Services & Asset Management SA a Luxembourg-based B2B fund platform.
Landytech secured $12 million in Series B funding, led by Aquiline Technology Growth and additional investment from existing investor Adelie Capital.
SOFTWARE SOLUTION
Wisor AI raised $8 million in a seed funding round led by Team8.
Kennek closed a $4.5m pre-seed funding round to scale-up its European operations.
Dotfile raised €2.5M in Seed funding.
Uniify raised €3 million from business angels and VCs.
Growblocks secured a whopping $6 million in seed funding during a round led by Project A Ventures.
INSURTECH
Companjon announced a partnership with bunq which brings bunq users an end-to-end embedded insurance solution that automatically compensates for the financial loss incurred.
FINTECH MAPS
If you are a fintech startup and have over 100 questions send me an email, maybe I can answer a few.