BlackFin Tech Weekly — March 13th

Dear Fintech folks, we hope you all had a great week. After a rather depressing week for Fintech in which Silvergate, Railsr, and Silicon Valley Bank dominated the headlines, let’s take a closer look at last week’s fundraisings. Congrats to the UK for closing the most deals and to France for raising the largest amounts.

Last week we saw 12 deals in Europe for a total of €54.8m raised, with three deals in the UK, France and Germany, two in Switzerland, and one in Sweden.

Congratulations to the expense management software company N2F for its €24m Venture round, followed by Cologne-based Fintech Bezahl.de in a €11m Series A. Finally, the Swiss bitcoin platform Relai raised a €4.5m Venture Round.

Subsector-wise, most deals were in Banktech (4) and Payments (3), followed by Investment Banking and Crypto with one deal each.

Let’s dive in :

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N2F

• French N2F raised €24m in a Venture round with Providence Strategic Growth (PSG).
• The expense management software was born in 2015 within Okteo, a digital services company specializing in the agricultural business context. Four years later, the Fintech went independent — with Okteo still taking a 20% stake.
• N2F has developed a solution that allows users to take a picture of their expense report and send it directly to the financial department. Other functionalities complete this application such as the management of financial caps, anti-fraud control and automatic integration with the accounting system.

Bezahl.de

• Bezahl.de has raised a €11m Series A with Motive Partners, some Family offices and Bas. The start up is based in Cologne, Germany.
• The company is part of NX technologies, a German-based Fintech. It specializes in BNPL and payment management solutions in the automotive retail sector.
• In addition to hiring new employees, NX Technologies will use the funds to extend its bezahl.de platform by integrating further embedded finance solutions. The firm also plans on expanding into other regions.

Relai

• Relai has secured €4.5m in a Venture round led by Ego Death Capital.
• Relai wants to simplify the buying, selling and keeping of Bitcoins. The company is developing an app that gives users real ownership of their tokens through an integrated self-custody wallet. This gives investors control over their private keys.
• As a result of this transaction, Relai plans to offer fee-free trading and a white label product for Fintechs. They also recently launched Relai Business, a service dedicated to SMEs that want to add Bitcoin to their balance sheet.

Congrats also to getmomo, tidely, Steadypay, Elyn, Zipzero, abound, and aisot on their respective rounds.

In addition to the fundraising activity, we also observed some interesting M&A deals this week.

• Garantme, the insurer and guarantor for tenants and landlords, has acquired Citima, the CRM software provider for real estate agencies. The acquisition will allow Garantme to offer an all-in-one solution to real estate agencies and follows its €15m Series B in January led by Bpifrance.
• Weavr, the embedded banking and payments startup, has acquired Comma Payments, the B2B Open Banking platform. The deal comes after Weavr more than tripled its user base and experienced a 340% surge in transactions through its platform since a $40m Series A in February 2022.
• Scalapay, the BNPL unicorn, has acquired Cabel IP, the Italian payment institution. The acquisition means that merchants will now be able to integrate Scalapay via their payment service providers.
• ColCap, the Australian residential mortgage loans provider, has acquired Molo Finance, the UK digital lender. The deal follows a strategic partnership between the two firms that was struck last year.
• Marlin Equity Partners, the US private equity fund, has acquired a majority stake in Tennaxia, the CSR software provider. Bpifrance will acquire a minority stake.
• HSBC, the British bank, has acquired Silicon Valley Bank’s UK arm for £1. The fire sale saw interest from multiple parties, including British banks OakNorth and a consortium led by the Bank of London.

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

• UK launches $445M+ plan to boost tech investment. The UK government has pledged more than £370m (about $445m) to support tech investment in a bid to make the country a “science and technology superpower” by 2030. The plan includes a £250m investment pot to back startups in AI, quantum technologies and engineering biology, £10m for the UK Innovation and Science Seed Fund, and up to £50m for co-investments. The framework also sets out a series of other measures intended to increase public and private investment in science and tech, better attract talent and improve regulation.
• N26’s top executives warned co-founders over ‘dysfunctional’ leadership. N26’s top executives, including the CRO, CFO, CTO and head of HR, accused co-founders Maximilian Tayenthal and Valentin Stalf of promoting a “culture of fear” in an internal memo sent in February 2022. N26 has declined to comment on internal conversations, emails, or other internal information, but emphasized that it has made significant investments in governance and leadership over the past 18 months.
• Stablecoin USDC breaks dollar peg after firm reveals it has $3.3bn in SVB exposure. Circle’s Coin lost its dollar peg and fell to a record low Saturday morning after the company revealed it has nearly 8% of its $40bn in reserves tied up at SVB. USDC is designed to trade at $1, but it fell below 87 cents on Saturday, according to data from CoinDesk. In a tweet Friday, Circle said it has $3.3bn in remaining reserves at SVB. The company called for the continuity of the bank and said it will follow guidance from regulators.

Have a great week & see you next Monday!