BlackFin Tech Weekly — January 30th

Dear Fintech folks, we hope you all had a great week. This week the UK was back on top closing most deals and total amount raised.

Last week, a total amount of €58.5m was raised across 9 deals! Congratulations to our portfolio company Hawk:AI in a $17m Series B followed by Spanish Twinco Capital in a €9m Series C round. Finally, the German carbon credit broker senken raised €7.5m in a venture round.

The UK is occupying the first place with 3 deals this week, followed by Germany with two deals and Spain, Denmark, Estonia, and France with one deal each.

Subsector-wise, most deals were in Regtech with two deals each, followed by Banktech (2), and Crypto, Payments, Wealth Management, Investment Banking and Other each generating one deal.

Let’s dive in:

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Hawk:AI raised $17m:

• We’re proud to announce that our German portfolio company Hawk:AI raised a $17m Series B led by Sands Capital with participation of DN Capital, Coalition, Picus Capital and BlackFin Tech.
• Hawk:AI develops an anti-money laundering (AML) and fraud prevention platform for financial institutions. The company offers products such as payments screening, customer screening, transaction monitoring, transaction fraud and customer risk rating, allowing its customers to build their own risk-rating model by combining static with dynamic data.
• The funds will be used to bolster its product development and global expansion plans.

Twinco raised €9m:

• Spanish Twinco raised a €9m Series C led by Quona Capital.
• Twinco Capital is a supply chain finance solution. It offers funding to corporates’ suppliers worldwide, advancing up to 60% of the purchase order value upfront and paying the remainder upon delivery.
• The funds will be used to accelerate the company’s expansion and strengthen its technology and data capabilities, in particular in relation to ESG.

Senken raised €7.5m:

• German Senken raised €7.5m in a venture round led by Obvious Ventures.
• Senken is a blockchain based carbon credit marketplace offering a wide selection of climate assets (20m carbon credits). By adding data layers containing project information (such as vintage, credit type, additionality), carbon ratings, pricing, and MRV data, the company ensures quality and integrity of the projects.
• The company will use the funds to pursue its growth.

Congrats also to Scaleup Finance, Asset Reality, tranch, salv, keyzy and Masteos on their respective rounds.

In addition to the fundraising activity, we also observed a couple of M&A deals this week.

• Corlytics, the regulatory risk intelligence provider, has acquired SparQ, ING’s regulatory monitoring spinout for €5m. The announcement comes on the back of a partnership dating back to 2018. The combined businesses will establish a unified platform to automate, deliver and prove compliance.
• Clark, the global Insurtech with more than two million customers, has acquired Anorak, the UK based automated life insurance brokerage and advice platform. Anorak’s technology can be integrated into existing software for use in everyday services and is expected to compliment Clark Group’s UK operations.
• CrowdX, a Fintech providing marketplaces and liquidity solutions for private firms, has acquired JP Jenkins, the UK trading platform for private companies. The combined company will offer a secondary market for private capital and facilitate the primary issuance of debt and equity instruments.
• Indosuez Wealth Management, the wealth management arm of Credit Agricole, has acquired a 70% stake in Wealth Dynamix, the Client Lifecycle Management fintech. The acquisition builds on an existing partnership and will help users with 360-degree vision, prospecting, onboarding, KYC reviews, and the digitalisation of regulatory compliance processes.

And here are the news that caught our eye last week, enjoy:

• US banking heavyweights are teaming up to offer a digital consumer e-wallet in order to grab market share from tech titans Apple and PayPal.
• Stripe told employees and investors it will make a plan to go public next year. The company is looking to solve the issue of 10-year stock units awarded to veteran employees that are expected to expire at the end of this year.
• Ecospend, the UK’s leading Open Banking payment provider, revealed the results from its partnership with the HMRC. This partnership marked the first time that an Open Banking payment method had been embedded within a government department’s system.
• UK Treasury is advertising for a candidate to steer the Government’s approach to the introduction of a central bank digital currency.

If you haven’t checked out our article on Fintech & Insurtech predictions for 2023, please find the link here and enjoy.

Have a great week & see you next Monday!