UK FinTech Job Vacancies Surge as Investors Flock Back to London
Weekly news up to Tuesday, 18th of Jun 2024
😎 SPONSORED CONTENT
👀 NEWS HIGHLIGHT
London is driving a surge in UK FinTech recruitment this year, data shared exclusively with City A.M. shows, as start-ups push for rapid growth amid a rebound in investment after a rough couple of years.
FinTech is the top performing category within UK financial services for job openings in 2024, according to a report by recruiter Morgan McKinley and data firm Vacancysoft.
It forecast that if the current pace of recruitment continues, the number of FinTech vacancies will be 37 per cent higher in 2024 than 2023.
💡INSIGHTS
The founder of FinTech firm Lanistar, Gurhan Kiziloz, and former UK defence secretary Sir Gavin Williamson make an unlikely pair.
While the FinTech firm was recruiting high-profile politicians, its owner was developing and promoting crypto products that crashed after launch
NOW, ON TO THE SUMMARY OF LAST WEEK'S NEWS
🌎 FINTECH HIGHLIGHTS
⭐️ Estonian FinTech Depowise expands to Ireland and the UK.
⭐️ Nexi and Engineering Group: NOVA, Advanced Digital Banking Platform, is Born.
⭐️ Prosper smashes £800,000 Crowdcube target.
⭐️ Wise shares tumble after forecasts disappoint.
FINTECH
Capchase expands to Ireland. The company now operates in seven European markets, with a total of nine countries across the globe. The expansion comes at a time when venture capital funding in Europe fell by more than 45% in 2023 compared to the previous year.
Merge, a FinTech that provides embedded payments and banking infrastructure via a single API, has secured approval in-principle for an EMI license in France. The French license in-principle means that Merge can significantly widen its operational scope and provide a new range of financial services.
PAYMENTS
UK regulators imposed a series of restrictions on a financial-technology company owned by Uruguay’s first-ever billionaires as part of a widening crackdown on payments firms that process hundreds of millions of dollars worth of transactions every day.
MoonPay and PayPal partnership expands to UK and EU. MoonPay and PayPal partnership is now live to users across the European Union and United Kingdom, following a successful launch in the United States last month.
Nexi and Mediobanca credit arm Compass extend BNPL to e-commerce segment. The extension of the partnership will involve PagoLight, Compass's proprietary, full-digital BNPL solution, being integrated into XPay, the e-commerce payment gateway developed by Nexi.
Stripe announced a range of product and partnership updates for businesses operating in France. This represents Stripe’s largest set of new products “for the French market since launching in the country in 2016.”
OPEN BANKING
Jaja Finance turns to TrueLayer to smooth credit card repayments. The payment is linked to an individual’s bank app making the overall experience safer and smoother.
DIGITAL BANKING
German banks to shut down their PayPal competitor Paydirekt. German banks are set shut down their PayPal competitor Giropay/Paydirekt and instead throw their weight behind continent-wide startup the European Payments Initiative.
Revolut's new Global HQ will open in London in the former Thomson Reuters building in May 2025. Revolut will move its headquarters to one of Canary Wharf’s most prominent buildings as it presses ahead with expansion plans despite its failure so far to win a full banking licence in the UK.
DONEDEAL
German RegTech Hawk has extended its Series B funding round with an additional investment from Dutch bank Rabobank. Hawk raised $17 million in March in the first tranche of its Series B.
AI stock picking platform Danelfin raises €2 million. the past two years, about 30 million people in the USA opened brokerage accounts. Retail investors now make up 25% of all stock trades.
Wealthon, a Polish FinTech company that provides financial support to SMEs and offers innovative tools for entrepreneurs, secured debt financing of USD12.3M from funds managed by CVI Dom Maklerski.
Wealth management startup Sidekick raises £8.5 million in debt and equity round. The combined £8.5 million will see the startup continue scaling its team and expanding its product lineup while securing a European license.
AccountsIQ secures €60m to embed AI into accounting platform. The company, which was founded in 2004, says the investment will be used to “move to the next level of its development”.
Gener8 – a free-to-use app empowering people to control and be rewarded from their data has announced a £2 million funding round, valuing the company at £39m. Gener8 is creating a movement to highlight the importance of protecting our online data and the diverse nature of backers shows that this issue affects many from all walks of life.
CleverCards raises €8m. The Irish-headquartered company will use the capital raised to accelerate its expansion efforts and support the company’s ambitious growth plans to create the world’s most advanced digital payments platform.
M&As
Danish FinTech Ageras eyes acquisitions. The results, combined with a recent EUR83 million funding round, leave Ageras eager to take advantage of a “growing market appetite” for pan-European consolidation in the FinTech sector.
The London Stock Exchange is in talks about a deal to boost its offering to retail investors by taking over parts of PrimaryBid, one of the hottest British FinTech start-ups of recent years.
Mubadala Investment Co. has proposed selling troubled insurance tech startup Wefox Holding AG to UK insurance broker Ardonagh Group Ltd. in a deal opposed by the German firm’s founders.
MOVERS & SHAKERS
S64 appoints Marcus Glover as CTO. In his role as CTO, Glover is responsible for shaping the future direction of S64's enterprise private markets technology platform.
Hannah Dobson appointed as KPMG's UK head of FinTech. Hannah was previously Co-Head of FinTech alongside John Hallsworth, who is retiring from the firm in July 2024.
CAB Payments has confirmed that veteran banker Neeraj Kapur has taken over as its new chief executive after its previous boss quit just months after the FinTech’s disastrous London float last year.