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REPORT

• In the past three weeks, we saw 18 FinTech Funding Deals in Europe for a total amount of €21.9m raised:

With 10 deals in the UK, 3 in Germany, 2 in Czech republic, 1 in Switzerland, 1 in Finland and 1 in Estonia.

?? NEWS HIGHLIGHT

• Trustly acquires SlimPay

The combination will add to Trustly’s existing Direct Debit capability in the UK - achieved through last year's acquisition of open banking vendor Ecospend - and Sweden, and provide a pan-European recurring payments service for merchants and consumers across the continent, including Germany, France, Spain and Italy.

?? ARTICLE

• Becoming a bank proves challenging for fintechs seeking survival

In an era of soaring interest rates and intense competition, fintechs are increasingly deciding they need to become banks to ensure their longterm survival. They’re also finding that doing so isn’t easy.

??INSIGHTS

• Europe turns pink: Klarna announces huge growth in key European markets.

Klarna announced strong growth across Europe, with GMV up 14% YoY in Q2 - outpacing e-commerce, which grew by just 1% in the same period*. Since 2020, Klarna has launched in 11 European markets, most recently Romania and Czech Republic. Klarna has amassed 100 million European consumers and has partnered with over 470,000 merchants, with recent new multi-market deals including TIER, MandMDirect and Deichmann.

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

?? FINTECH HIGHLIGHTS

?? European Investment Fund backs SME Finance to the tune of €40 million.

?? Ex-Monzo duo launch Sync Savings to fix UK’s broken cash savings market.

?? Zopa narrows losses; predicts full year profitability for 2023.

?? Starling Bank to reboot Irish office with new engineer hiring push.

?? Archie, a new fintech accelerator backed by a former neobank founder, has launched.

PAYMENTS

NALA has officially launched payments from the UK and Europe to Nigeria. This is a significant move for NALA given their strong roots in East Africa.

Over 300,000 N26 customers in the Netherlands can now use iDEAL to make online payments directly from their N26 accounts.

Yeeld has partnered with Airwallex to focus on driving customer access to global payments.

EchoPay and Token.io have announced their partnership to bring A2A payments to wholesale merchants across the United Kingdom.

Trustly is proud to announce a collaboration with Sergel. The partnership enables Sergel to offer a reliable way for its users to manage their regular payments and keep pace with installment plans.

WALBING has obtained a Payment Service License from the German Federal Financial Supervisory Authority.

BNPL

Zorrz Finance and Swedish fintech Sileon, specialised in card-based Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) functionality, have announced a partnership to enable more consumers to access BNPL solutions.

OPEN BANKING

TreasurUp partners with Salt Edge for Open Banking solutions. The collaboration seeks to enable a first-rate experience in account aggregation and Open Banking compliance for UK- and EU-based financial institutions.

Guavapay and Yapily join forces to provide a seamless top-up experience through open banking.

INVESTMENT

Lightyear is launching UK business investment accounts that will enable sole director companies to invest in stocks, funds and ETFs on the same terms as its retail customers.

Craftgate has recived a $1 million investment from Turkish e-commerce platform Hepsiburada and UK VC D4 Ventures.

NAO aims to provide retail investors the same investment opportunities available to institutional investors.

DONE DEAL

Finastra has successfully secured a groundbreaking private loan package. This strategic move by Finastra distinguishes its $5.3bn loan from the likes of the prior $5bn record held by Zendesk.

M&As

OANDA Global Corporation announced that it has acquired a majority interest in Coinpass Limited, a crypto asset firm registered with the United Kingdom's Financial Conduct Authority (FCA).

Auxmoney has acquired a majority stake in the Dutch credit marketplace Lender & Spender. Lender & Spender will continue to operate under its own brand in the Dutch market.

Datasite has completed the acquisition of MergerLinks. The acquisition supports Datasite’s strategy to be the home of M&A.

Pandadoc has acquired Berlin's fintech company Denario. The move aims to expand Pandadoc's own payment services.

MOVERS & SHAKERS

Mambu has appointed Fernando Zandona as Chief Executive Officer (CEO). Fernando will now spearhead the business as it enters its next phase of growth.