Mangopay Announced It's New VP For Global Sales: Tristan Torres
Weekly news up to Tuesday, 20th of August 2024
👀 NEWS HIGHLIGHT
The UK continues to dominate the European FinTech market with 40% of the top 10 deals in Q2.
Other Key European FinTech Investment Stats:
European deal activity dropped by almost 75% in Q2 2024 in comparison to the same period last year.
UK was the only country to be featured in the top 10 deals for Q2 2023 and Q2 2024.
Alpian secured the largest FinTech deal in Europe outside the UK during the second quarter, with a Series C funding round of $84m.
🎤 PODCAST
In this episode of FinTech Insider Insights, host Kate Moody delves into the intriguing intersection of financial services and sports. Joining the discussion are Suresh Balaji, CMO at Lloyds Banking Group; Steven Watson, Global Head of Brand & Content at Airwallex; and Paul Stoddart, President at GoCardless. Tune in for insights from these top experts. Listen to the full podcast episode!
NOW, ON TO THE SUMMARY OF LAST WEEK'S NEWS
🌎 FINTECH HIGHLIGHTS
⭐️ Tencent-backed Airwallex hits $500 million annualized sales, aims to get IPO-ready by 2026.
⭐️ Mangopay announced it's new VP for Global Sales: Tristan Torres.
⭐️ Klarna takes on banking with new savings, cash-back offerings.
⭐️ Apple opens up NFC transactions to developers, but says there will be ‘associated fees’.
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FINTECH
GoCardless and Future Ticketing join forces to enhance ticket affordability in the UK and Ireland. The collaboration aims to simplify and reduce the cost of purchasing tickets and memberships for consumers across the two countries. The core of this partnership revolves around making event attendance more affordable.
Paymentology achieves Mastercard’s Cloud Edge certification. The new certification aligns with Paymentology’s cloud-first approach. Mastercard’s Cloud Edge allows customers to connect to Mastercard from cloud providers of their choice and supports multiple hybrid connectivity patterns.
Trustly UK surpasses £13bn in first half of 2024, outpacing 2023’s total and marking rapid growth in Open Banking adoption, with Trustly enabling organisations to enhance services for the country’s consumers. Read more
Unlimit and Unicâmbio join forces to transform digital transactions with enhanced Unimoney Wallet. Customers of Portugal’s oldest and largest foreign exchange bureau can expect newly streamlined digital transactions and an even more seamless currency exchange experience.
PAYMENTS
D24 partners with Yuno to drive cross-border ecommerce. UK-based payment solutions provider D24 has joined forces with payments orchestrator Yuno to drive digital payments for cross-border businesses in LATAM, Asia, and Africa.
BLIK Code Payments on Worldline Tap on Mobile. The launch of BLIK code payments on Tap on Mobile is another step in the development of the app, which offers its users ever more options. This partnership brings Worldline one more step closer toward creating a universal solution for mobile payments.
Cardstream partners with PayPoint. The partnership sees PayPoint integrating Cardstream’s Gateway Connectivity into their MultiPay digital payments platform, which will allow it to continue to build a robust and scalable solution for clients.
IDEX Biometrics and TaluCard bring inclusive biometric payment solutions to market in Europe. This initiative is set to transform payment solutions with a strong focus on accessibility and security for all users, including those with visual impairments and members of the aging community.
Paddle, a payments infrastructure provider, has opened applications for its third AI Launchpad, offering 75 ambitious AI founders the chance to participate in a 6-week program to help them build, launch and scale their AI-powered business ideas.
PSR sets out next steps on expanding VRPs in the UK. On 15 August 2024, the Payment Systems Regulator (PSR) published the response to its December 2023 call for views which set out initial proposals on how to expand variable recurring payments (VRPs) into new use cases, through a Phase 1 roll-out.
OPEN BANKING
Finance app Cheddar unveils spending tracker tool. Users of Cheddar will be able to allocate funds to upcoming purchases with a “prepaid format” that aims to help individuals maintain budgets and track their spending.
Abound partners with D•One for open banking services. Abound will take open banking data for prospective borrowers from D•One so that it can use that data to assess affordability for ClearScore users as soon as they search for a loan.
Serbia amends payment services regulations to allow open banking services. The Serbian Parliament has approved the amendments to the Payment Services Act (“PSA“) which are meant to mirror PSD2 and introduce open banking driven services to Serbian market. The amendments will begin to apply from 6 May 2025.
DIGITAL BANKING
Fincluded introduces PINCARD, the payment account for migrant workers. With PINCARD, Fincluded provides a solution with a simplified signup process and documentation requirements, enabling migrant workers to quickly and easily access a Dutch payment account and participate in the payment system.
UK start-up Sync Savings to make market debut next month. The UK-founded start-up aims to provide banks, building societies and credit unions with a solution to embed their savings accounts into untapped third-party channels. More here
CRYPTO
MetaMask, Mastercard, and Baanx (Crypto Life) have launched the pilot of MetaMask Card. Eligible users can now make everyday purchases with their crypto anywhere Mastercard is accepted. This pilot is available to a limited group of users in the EU and UK only.
Crypto.com has secured a global sponsorship agreement with UEFA to become the Champions League’s first cryptocurrency partner. The multi-year partnership will see Crypto com and UEFA collaborate on bringing unique experiences to fans with an aim to drive fan engagement by bringing the worlds of crypto and football together.
Crypto exchanges flocking towards Turkey: Coinbase, KuCoin apply for licence. A total of 76 companies have been included in the list published by the country's Capital Markets Board. The names appeared when cryptocurrency regulations in Turkey were in a state of flux.
DONEDEAL
Sling Money raises $15 million series A to transform global payments. With Sling Money, users can easily send money instantly across 50+ countries across Europe and Africa to other users, between their own accounts, or even to non-Sling users with a Sling Link.
Fulfin receives a bolt-on investment of €6.6 million. The provider of B2B financing solutions for online SMBs, has secured a total of 6.6 million euros with two capital raises in December 2023 and July 2024. Read the full piece
Czech company Patron GO has raised a total of 25 million CZK (approx 1 Million euros) in its fourth investment round, with a significant portion coming from the Slovak fund Venture to Future Fund. The startup plans to expand into Poland and grow its team by 50 new members.
European investing App Peaks has raised €1.38 Million on Republic Europe topping its initial goal of €1,000,000. According to the offering page, Peaks was selling equity at a pre-money valuation of €52 million. Investors in the securities offering numbered 2128, acquiring a 2.55% equity stake in the early stage firm.
M&A
Bitwise makes European play with ETC Group acquisition. The acquisition brings Bitwise’s total assets under management above $4.5 billion and comes in a busy year for the firm, which was one of 10 firms to get the green light to launch a Bitcoin ETF in the US.