FinTech funding dips and Monzo 'debank' Jeremy Hunt

Happy Friday! I hope everyone has had a great week despite the gloomy weather in the UK!

We thought we'd start the 6th edition of?#fintechweekly , your go-to newsletter on all things fintech, with a quick macro overview of the latest trends in the space.

• Global fintech funding hits lowest levels since 2017
• Mega round funding ($100 million or more) fell to a 6 year low (these only represented 26% of total funding and 3 of these rounds came from Europe - Odoo raised $164 million (Netherlands), Accelerant raised $150 million (UK), and Quantexa raised $129 million (UK)
• Payments funding falls the most out of any sector (a 75% decline QoQ), a greenshoot has been the RegTech market which is on track to raise more capital in 2023 than any other year apart from 2021.
• Emerging markets are leading the way for new funding: LatAm & the Carribean is the only region to see funding growth (the largest funding round in the region came from Kross Wallet which raised an $100 million Seed Round). Europe saw a slight dip of funding rounds with deals decreasing 12% QoQ.
• All of the IPO exits came from non-US based fintechs: Autocount Accounting (Malaysi), MBME Group (UAE), Veefin (India) and Vinanz (Virgin Islands).

• Monzo bank denied Jeremy Hunt an account as staff called Tories ‘evil. He has since asked the FCA to "urgently investigate" whether account closures for political reasons are widespread. You can read more here .
• The Consumer Duty is now in force for UK financial services firms, marking one of the 'most significant changes to UK financial services regulation in a decade. Check out what industry experts have to say about it here.
• Sequoia Capital?slashes Crypto Fund From $585M to $200M. The vaunted VC firm told investors earlier in the year it would shrink the fund to reflect a changed market.
• CNBC and Statista release their 'Top 200 Fintech Companies' Report. Amongst those named 65 are based in the US, with the UK coming in second with 16 of the top firms. You can see the full-list here.
• Koyo Loans winds down operations.?The London-based consumer lender that was powered by open banking, raised a hefty ￡100m in debt funding last October — but after struggling to find additional equity funding since, it's wound down its business and passed customers over to credit solutions company Capquest.

Paulette Rowe takes CEO role at Stax Payments

Previously CEO of Paysafe’s Integrated and E-commerce Solutions division, Paulette Rowe is a seasoned global executive with strategic leadership experience across banking, payments and fintech. Known for growing and transforming businesses, driving market growth, and building winning cultures with strong customer alignment, she has held senior leadership positions with organizations such as Barclays, Meta, Royal Bank of Scotland/NatWest, and GE Capital. When asked what attracted her to Stax Payments she said:

“Stax has experienced fantastic organic and inorganic growth in recent years, carving out an enviable niche as a disruptor and a leader in the payments landscape. I’m delighted for the opportunity to work with this dynamic team in developing innovative solutions that simplify and enhance integrated payments.”

Edinburgh-based Open Banking Provider Atto appoints Chris Mills as CEO, succeeding founder James Varga, with an eye to lead the company into its next phase of growth.

Chris brings a wealth of relevant experience guiding high-growth?startups?and a deep understanding of DirectID’s mission and market landscape. He has more than 15 years leadership experience in financial services, latterly as CEO of the UK’s largest independent mortgage broker, L&C Mortgages.You can read more here .

Crypto payments fintech BVNK has appointed Jane M. as its new vice president of platform partnerships.

She brings experience from Starling; Capgemini Consulting, where she was head of fintech; Wise, where she was head of UK and Europe at Wise for Banks; and Koinly most recently, where she was global head of partnerships. You can read more here .

• Pockit ,?a London-based money management app for people underserved by banks, has raised?$10m?in a growth round led by?Puma Private Equity.
• Orbital , a London-based finance platform for traditional and crypto payments, has raised?￡5m.
• LULA , which aims to be the “Stripe for insurance,” got a little bit of its own operations-related insurance by securing $35.5 million.
• Tradeshift , the AI-powered business-to-business (B2B) commerce startup, has raised $70 million as it rolls out financing products with HSBC, focused on B2B trade.Fintech-as-a-service startup
• Rapyd has acquired a piece of PayU , the Netherlands-based payment service provider for online merchants, from investment group Prosus for $610 million.
• Knot raises $10 million from Amex to transform card-on-file management

This week's featured guest is Alastair Pike , Head of Product Management at CellPoint Digital (a leading Payments Orchestration platform). Throughout his career he has worked for both large financial institutions like HSBC, Mastercard and Visa as well as fast-growing startups, and is a true expert when it comes to developing a strategic vision, building high-performing teams and scaling products that are used by thousands of users.

You come from a strategy and marketing, rather than technical background. How did those skills help you to build a successful career in Product?

My original roles involved strategic market and competitor analysis for companies looking to diversify and innovate within accelerated 12-month timeframes – good groundwork for Product! My first product role at Vodafone involved translating board level strategy through to concrete revenue generating product launches. This targeted Globally focused CTOs through a 2-year roadmap, including major technical/product development and launches within 3-6 months. My only way to achieve this was taking full ‘end to end responsibility’ for the entire product lifecycle, placing the customer opportunity and requirements at the centre of the collaboration with the technical teams.

What were some of the most challenging fraud trends or tactics you encountered throughout your career in FinTech, and how did your team effectively respond to those challenges?

I would call out two key experiences here. First, the growing incidence of Account Takeover and Identity Theft as Digital Commerce has expanded and opened up new opportunities for malicious fraudsters and imposters. For both I have actively collaborated with leading FinTechs in Fraud, Authentication and Digital Identity, with effective cross fertilisation across my teams. In each case new solutions have been built quickly through development of a FinTech Ecosystem.

What does it take to be a top performing Product Leader?

My ‘brand’ of Product puts the customer and markets at the heart of technical developments and innovation. Key to this is Vision, seeing the ‘bigger picture’ and longer-term ambition but most importantly being able to ‘bridge’ towards the ambitious market focused Vision through a roadmap covering the Short, Medium and Longer Term. This unites teams and focus across functions, with Collaboration the critical factor that Leaders must motivate.

What do you think is the biggest opportunity in FinTech which is being overlooked?

In line with the fraud trends and tactics above I see huge opportunities in blending together the disciplines of Fraud and Authentication with Digital Identity to reduce fraud and malicious system attacks but also to confirm ‘good’ customers and transactions. The key is in pooling Data , Analytics, Machine Learning and very use case specific Artificial Intelligence.

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• Looking to build your personal or employer brand and be our nex featured guest. Please get in touch at [email protected].

That's a wrap for this week! I hope you enjoyed it and don't forget to subscribe ??