Ant Financial takes minority stake in fintech unicorn Klarna March 4, 2020 The highest valued fintech company in the world, Ant Financial, has taken a minority stake in payments platform Klarna. The “buy now pay later” specialist confirmed that Alipay owner Ant Financial had bought a less than one per cent stake, but refused to disclose how much it is worth. Ant Financial is part of the [...]
Draper Esprit leads $83m funding round in Thought Machine March 2, 2020 Technology company Thought Machine has raised $83m (£64.74m) in series B funding led by Draper Esprit. The venture capital firm, which has invested in a number of fintech businesses, contributed £26.5m to the funding for Thought Machine, a technology company that builds cloud-native technology for banks. Thought Machine’s banking platform, Vault, counts Lloyds Banking Group, [...]
Fintech unicorn Klarna posts first ever annual loss February 26, 2020 Klarna, the joint largest fintech startup in Europe, has suffered its first ever annual loss, with the “buy now pay later” specialist hit by heavy credit losses. The company, which lets people pay for online purchases in installments, reported a loss of 1.1bn Swedish krona (£87.5m) on revenues of 7.2bn krona last year, its first [...]
Revolut closes $500m from early Netflix investor as it seeks to turn a new leaf February 25, 2020 British digital banking giant Revolut has today revealed the close of $500m (£387m) in additional funding, making it tied with Klarna as the most valuable privately held fintech firm in Europe at $5.5bn. The funding, which was led by new investor TCV, takes Revolut’s total amount raised to date to $836m. TCV, a Silicon Valley-based [...]
Investors splash the cash on British fintech startups February 24, 2020 Global investors poured money into the UK’s fintech sector last year, almost doubling the amount invested here between 2018 and 2019 — despite the rest of the world suffering a slight downturn in funding. British fintech companies attracted $48.5bn (£37.4bn) of investment in 2019, up 91 per cent from $25.4bn a year earlier. Data released [...]
UK digital banks near 20m customers – but growth slows February 24, 2020 Digital banks operating in the UK edged towards 20 million customers in 2019, but slowing customer and deposit growth mean the lenders could face challenges on long term profitability, new figures show. Digital lenders including Monzo, Revolut and Starling gained over six million new customers in the second half of last year to reach a [...]
Treasury mulls new laws to delay end of cash February 23, 2020 The Treasury is drawing up plans to protect the availability of cash amid concerns over declining access to dispensers for older people and those from rural communities. Officials are understood to be in detailed discussions about how to combat the decline of cash ahead of the Budget next month, with one possible option the introduction [...]
The end of cash cannot come at the expense of the unbanked February 20, 2020 Today marks the launch of the new £20 note. With so much of the financial services sector switching to digital, could this be the last new £20 we get? In the future, financial services will be entirely digital — and we are already well on the way towards that reality. A quarter of us in [...]
Softbank set to invest $100m in AI startup Behavox February 19, 2020 Softbank is reportedly close to investing $100m (£77m) in a startup which uses artificial intelligence (AI) to help financial firms monitor employees’ behaviour. Softbank’s second Vision Fund is on the verge of signing the deal with Behavox, Sky News reported, which could be finalised as soon as next week. Behavox, which was founded in the [...]
Monzo plans to relaunch paid-for accounts and hire another 500 staff February 17, 2020 British fintech darling Monzo plans to recruit another 500 people as it targets 5.5m users this year and bids again to turn those numbers into a profit. Monzo, which is valued at around £2bn, is set to relaunch paid-for accounts in the first quarter of 2020 after a failed introduction last year, when it reversed [...]