Weekly update #118

Welcome to this edition of the weekly newsletter. The idea behind this is to gather all the information in the startup ecosystem in one place, with a special focus on the fintech market and the VC industry.

No episode of Builders this week, but you can always recover the last one where I sit down with Anil Stocker , CEO and founder of Kriya. You can find the full episodes here on YouTube, or here on Spotify and here on Apple Podcast.

Anil is a UK fintech entrepreneur and investor, best known as the CEO and co-founder of Kriya, formerly MarketFinance. He founded the company in 2011 to provide UK businesses with frictionless access to B2B payments, credit and embedded finance, and has since overseen the deployment of more than £4 billion in credit through invoice finance, business loans and PayLater solutions.

Under his leadership, Kriya raised over £50 million in equity and more than £500 million in debt from institutions including Barclays UK, Northzone, Mouro Capital, Deutsche Bank, Intesa Sanpaolo and the British Business Bank, before being acquired by Allica Bank in October 2025.

Before founding Kriya, Stocker worked in private equity at Lehman Brothers and later at Cogent Partners, focusing on alternative investments and post-crisis portfolio restructuring. He holds a first-class degree in Economics from the University of Cambridge, is a Forbes 30 Under 30 Finance alumnus, and is an active angel investor across fintech, SaaS and climate-focused startups.

With him, we will discuss the ups and downs of launching a fintech company, but also how tricky it is to sell it to a big player, what is coming after an exit, and the difference between being an investor and a founder.

Coming back to us, this week I’ve been reading a very interesting report called “Protecting users from Scam Ads” by Juniper Research and commissioned by Revolut. Scams, and even more financial frauds, have grown to become a large problem across social media platforms. Despite paid advertising being a regulated industry, scam ads continue to plague social media users. The report wants to highlight this problem, backing it up with a quantitative overview. Here my main takeaways:

Only in Europe, 59% of adults aged 15 and over are monthly active social media users, while 10% of all social media ad impressions are classified as scam ads. In total, Europe records 993 billion scam social media ad impressions in 2025, generating £3.8 billion in revenue, equivalent to €4.4 billion. Country level data indicates large variation, with France at 107 billion impressions, the UK at 95 billion, Italy at 94 billion, and Germany at 89 billion. Other notable figures include Poland with 37 billion, Romania with 31 billion, Czechia with 29 billion, Hungary with 19 billion, Bulgaria with 16 billion, the Netherlands with 14 billion, Ireland with 6 billion, and Lithuania with 4 billion. Other European markets combined account for 453 billion impressions.

The scale of the issue has intensified in recent years. As scammers increasingly exploit the extensive reach of social platforms, these platforms continue to generate advertising revenue from such activity. In 2025, more than half of Europe’s population will be active on social media, representing around 437 million users. This figure is expected to rise to 476 million monthly users by 2030, creating an expanding opportunity for fraudulent activity.

Social media platforms also facilitate payments and marketplaces that users tend to trust, further enabling scams. While users generally assume platforms monitor harmful activity, this trust can foster a false sense of security, increasing exposure to financial loss as platform credibility is exploited.

Juniper Research estimates that close to one trillion scam ad impressions were served to social media users in Europe in 2025. If left unaddressed, the continued spread of scam advertising risks eroding the long term value of major social media platforms. It is therefore in the commercial interest of companies such as Meta to invest more heavily in systems that can detect and prevent scam ads and the advertisers behind them.

Current projections suggest that, if existing trends persist, scam ad impressions in Europe could exceed 1.4 trillion by 2030. This trajectory could be slowed or reversed if platforms take more decisive and transparent action. While scam ads may contribute to higher advertising revenue in the short term, they threaten platform credibility over time, encouraging users to migrate elsewhere.

Financial scams, including crypto related schemes, are particularly effective due to their promise of rapid returns. Beyond monetary harm, the widespread presence of scam ads weakens confidence in social media ecosystems. As exposure increases, users become more sceptical of legitimate advertising, which can ultimately reduce engagement and advertiser demand.

Victims may also experience emotional distress, including embarrassment or a sense of violation, discouraging future interaction with ads and platforms more broadly. While users carry some responsibility to remain vigilant, platforms must play a greater role in preventing scam ads from reaching audiences.

In Europe, one in ten social media ads shown in 2025 was a scam, with exposure expected to reach 250 scam ads per user per month by 2030. Scam prevalence varies by country, reaching around 14 percent of ad impressions in Bulgaria and over 6 percent in Poland, underscoring the need for stronger detection and enforcement.

The growth of social media advertising revenue in Europe has intensified the challenge of scam ads. Social media platforms generate around 10% of their European ad revenue from scam ads, creating a clear conflict of interest between user protection and revenue generation. Juniper Research estimates that total social media ad revenue in Europe will increase from £38 billion, equivalent to €44 billion, in 2025 to more than £84 billion, or €98 billion, by 2030. This represents growth of 120% in just five years.

Social media platforms hold primary responsibility for reducing scam ads, as they control the infrastructure, algorithms, and approval processes that enable such content. Continued inaction exposes users to financial losses and further undermines trust in platforms. Responsibility cannot be shifted to users or regulators, and platforms are urged to prioritise user safety over revenues derived from scam advertising.

But let’s take a closer look at the main news of the last seven days. Checkout.com partners with Spotify to power global payments, SpaceX acquires xAI to create a $1.25T giant, Airwallex enters in Germany and promises a $31M investment in the market and Gemini exits EU, UK and Australia markets. But also, Visa partners with UnionPay International to power cross borders payments in China, Revolut is looking for a banking license in the Philippines, Copper.co is considering an IPO and Tether.io is scaling back from fundraising ambitions. Lot of movement in the VC market! SlateVC closes a first $132M for its new fund, Mundi Ventures did the same with a $750M closing, but also new funds from Constructor Capital, SNAK Venture Partners, Shorooq and many others. And finally, some very interesting funding rounds from fintech startups like Incard, Fleet, Varo Bank, Bits, Ruvo, Talos, Duna and many others.

Let’s take a closer look:

Rounds

• Incard raises £10M Series A to automate digital business finance
• Fleet opens capital at a €100M valuation after 7 years of bootstrapping
• Varo Bank secures $123.9M to support disciplined growth strategy
• Talos extends Series B to $150M at $1.5B valuation
• Bits raises $12M to build a pan European AML platform
• GoCab raises $45M to expand vehicle ownership for Africa’s gig workforce
• Stanford University students raise $2M to build Breakthrough Ventures accelerator
• Wonder secures $12M venture debt from HSBC to scale instant payments across Asia Pacific
• Ruvo raises $4.6M seed to modernize Brazil US remittances with Pix and crypto
• Lateral UK raises £2.5M to build integrated health and financial cover for over 60s
• alfred secures $15M Series A to scale cross border payments across Latam
• Neo Financial raises $68.5M to pioneer securitization in Canadian fintech
• ElevenLabs raises $500M round led by Sequoia Capital at $11B valuation!
• Axiology raises €5M to scale tokenised capital markets under EU DLT regime
• Stripe alumni power Duna to €30M Series A for business identity verification
• APEXX Global secures up to $10M to scale its payments orchestration platform
• Pluto.markets raises $6M seed backed by Denmark’s top tech founders
• Bcas secures €30M facility to scale flexible student financing across Europe
• SkipCash raises $4M Series A to accelerate digital payments growth across the GCC
• South African fintech Lula secures $21M to expand SME lending
• Bound raises $24.5M Series A to scale automated FX hedging across Europe
• Anchorage Digital secures $100M investment from Tether.io at $4.2B valuation
• tapi raises $27M Series B to scale Mexico’s payment and collection infrastructure
• Sapiom raises $15M to power payments for autonomous AI agents

VC funds

• Constructor Capital closes $110M Fund I to back science first founders
• SANTÉ Ventures closes $330M Fund V to back early stage healthcare innovation
• Shorooq raises $200M fund to back Gulf late stage and pre IPO companies
• Lexis® Create+, formerly Henchman founders back 100 pre seed startups with new €12M fund 100IN
• SlateVC launches with €132M first close to back Europe’s climate tech scaleups
• Mundi Ventures secures €750M first close for Kembara to back Europe’s deep tech scale ups
• SNAK Venture Partners closes $50M fund to back B2B vertical marketplaces

News on the market

• Bizum, BANCOMAT, Vipps MobilePay and SIBS partners with EPI Company on seamless cross borders payments in EU by 2027
• Revolut emerges as front runner in Philippines digital bank licensing
• Crypto custodian Copper.co explores public listing as infrastructure IPOs gain momentum
• Checkout.com partners with Spotify to scale global payments across 180 countries
• YouLend and Intuit launch embedded capital for Quickbooks UK businesses
• SpaceX acquires xAI in $1.25T deal to pursue space based data centers
• Amazon Germany expands embedded lending with HypoVereinsbank - UniCredit - Deutschland and Banxware
• Airwallex enters Germany with €31M investment and enterprise push
• Visa Direct and UnionPay International expand cross border payments into mainland China
• Revolut Business launches end to end merchant acquiring in Australia
• Tether.io scales back fundraising plans amid scrutiny of $500bn valuation
• Gemini 2.0 signals strategic reset and exits EU, UK and Australia markets

Italian market

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And here some useful resources for everyone involved in the ecosystem:

Events you don’t want to miss

• FIBE | Berlin - 15th-16th April 2026 (Link here)
• Stablecon EMEA | Amsterdam - 19th-20th May (Link here)

You have a cool event you want to mention or to sponsor? Feel free to send me a DM.

Founders to watch in fintech

I also wanted to start shining a light on the most interesting fintech founders out there, so I thought to start sharing how I look for ideas to invest on. Every week, I will start sharing the most interesting founders in fintech, divided per area.

This week we take a look at the most interesting founders in fintech in the US.

I usually use Spectre to scout for new ideas, the team is great and they also give me a free account once they learned I was a fan of the product. So if you wanna take a look at it, you can find it here.

New funds

I recently spoke with Marco Scotti from Raspberry Ventures. Thanks to their Y Combinator Alumni network, they unlock access to the top 10% of YC companies for Angel investors. Co-investing up to $3M across 15 - 25 companies in each YC batch, 4 batches a year, before Demo Day; and before the Silicon Valley VCs come in and take allocations in the best companies.

Their next batch YC W26m is closing February 1st, 2026. You can take a look here if you are interested!

Take also a look at the last edition of the newsletter, Weekly update #117.