Weekly update #66

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.

The latest episode of the Builders podcast has been released this week. In this episode, I sit down with Andrea Gurnari, partner at 2100 Ventures.

2100 Ventures is dedicated to supporting European entrepreneurs driving the new golden age of industrial innovation, investing in B2B businesses across a range of verticals. They’re investing in pre-seed and seed stage startups across Europe covering SaaS, AI, fintech & data, and ClimateTech, among others.

Andrea comes from a real multi sector experience, ranging from BlackRock to Goldman Sachs, from Atomico to Nivaura, with transversal skills from product to finance.

With Andrea, we will discuss the status of the VC market in Europe, the importance of a multicultural environment for founders, how to be relevant in this industry and the upcoming trends in fintech.

You can find the full video here on Youtube, and the audio here on Spotify and here on Apple Podcast.

Coming back to us, I am recently deep diving on the payment industry, with a special focus on the stablecoin trend. This week, I’ve been reading a very interesting report from McKinsey & Company named: “Payments in 2024: simpler interfaces, complex reality”. The study examines the evolving global payments ecosystem and highlights where players can capitalize on new dynamics. Here my main takeaways:

In 2023, the global payments industry processed 3.4 trillion transactions, representing a total value of $1.8 quadrillion and generating $2.4 trillion in revenue. Between 2018 and 2023, revenues grew at an annual rate of 7 percent, driven by increasing digitization of consumer and commercial transactions alongside higher interest rates. However, the analysis indicates that growth will moderate to 5 percent annually in the coming years, aligning with projected nominal GDP expansion.

By 2028, this will add $700 billion in revenue, bringing the total to $3.1 trillion. Payments will account for 35 percent of the overall banking revenue pool, reinforcing their strategic importance for banks and the need for investment in payment technologies to maintain a competitive edge against specialized market players.

Over the past decade, the total market capitalization of specialist payments firms has surged from $400 billion to $1.4 trillion. Additionally, the number of fintech unicorns has skyrocketed, with over 384 startups now valued at a combined $1 trillion—marking a tenfold increase from just 39 unicorns five years ago. These shifts set the stage for six key trends expected to shape the industry in the next five years.

India began building its digital infrastructure stack in 2010 with Aadhaar, a biometric digital ID system. Before its introduction, nearly half of the population lacked a universally recognized identification card. The banking sector quickly adopted Aadhaar for instant customer verification, significantly reducing fraud risks. Alongside the government’s financial inclusion efforts through the prime minister’s public finance scheme, Aadhaar contributed to a rise in bank account ownership from 35 percent in 2011 to 80 percent by 2017.

The second layer of India’s digital stack is the Unified Payments Interface (UPI), a mobile-based system enabling seamless interbank peer-to-peer and person-to-merchant transactions. The third component, the Open Credit Enablement Network (OCEN), utilizes the stack’s open data ecosystem to digitize lending and improve financial access for the informal sector.

Commerce is increasingly consolidating on platforms such as Shopify, Square, and Toast, as well as marketplaces like Amazon, eBay, and Etsy. Collectively, these channels now handle approximately 30 percent of global consumer purchases, representing 25 to 30 percent of total spending in the European Union and 35 to 40 percent in the United States. The concentration is even higher among small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), where companies like Square, SumUp, and Toast provide integrated solutions as independent software vendors (ISVs).

These platforms and marketplaces frequently delegate payment processing to merchant acquirers like Fiserv and Global Payments at wholesale rates while maintaining control over the customer experience and capturing higher margins through value-added services. ISVs develop applications that embed payment processing into existing solutions, such as point-of-sale (POS) systems or customer relationship management tools, often catering to specific industries like healthcare and retail.

Last but not least, a detail from the stablecoin trend directly from Visa payments monitoring tool. You can see here an overview of many different blockchain used for stablecoin payments over time. A very interesting data about volumes: there were less than $100 billion in payments in November 2020, while we were slowly approaching $800 billion at the end of 2024.

In terms of winners, Tron is still the most frequently used for this kind of payments, followed by Ethereum, while we can clearly see a very interesting trend around Solana and its many use cases. Stablecoin payments remains one of my top predictions for winners in fintech in 2025.

Anyway we saw some very interesting news in the market this week. Bitpanda just became the first crypto platform to obtain the MiCar license in Europe, while Trade Republic officially launched domestic ibans and savings accounts in Italy. Revolut expands in commercial real estate lending, while X strikes a partnership with Visa for its upcoming financial service product. In the VC industry, Andreessen Horowitz closes its London office, Shift4Good closes a $220 million fund, and Madrona ventures a $770 million one. But also 8VC , Keen Venture Partners and Forbion. In the italian ecosystem indigo.ai closes a $10 million round. And finally some very interesting rounds from fintech startups like Furaha Financial, CapeZero, iplicit, Paytrack, Swan, Yavrio - Open Banking, Formance and many others.

But let's take a closer look at the main news of the last seven days.

Closed deals

• Nonprofit fundraising platform Fundraise Up raises $70 million
• Purpose driven lending platform Furaha Financial raises a $10 million funding round
• Affirm secures a $750 million funding deal with Liberty Mutual Investments
• Fintech platform CapeZero raises $2.6 million to revolutionize clean energy project financing
• Barcelona based TravelPerk raises $200 million and acquires the Swiss based Yokoy
• Austin-based fintech Method raises a $41.5 million series B to help companies build repayment features
• US fintech Foyer secures $6.2 million to help people save up to buy homes
• British fintech iplicit raises £25 million for its cloud based accounting platform
• French fintech Formance raises a $21 million series A to build the AWS for financial services
• Brazilian fintech Paytrack secures a $40 million series B
• Open banking provider Yavrio - Open Banking secures a $2.4 million seed round to get rid of CSV files in banking
• French embedded finance provider Swan secures another $44 million for its series B
• 129Knots launches with a $10 million investment from Sing Fuels
• 올라핀테크 (Allra Fintech) raises a $9.1 million series B to expand early payment services
• Cedar Money secures a $9.9 million round led by QED Investors
• Fintech startup Forus | فرص secures a $60 million debt facility from Fasanara Capital to boost growth in Saudi Arabia
• Irish fintech Swoop secures $6 million to expands its US business

Insights on the VC industry

• Andreessen Horowitz is closing its London office to focus on US crypto market
• Seattle based Madrona Ventures raises $770 million for its largest fund to date
• Shift4Good, a VC based between Paris and Singapore, closes a €220 million
• Keen Venture Partners raises a $125 million fund to invest in European startups
• Dutch VC Forbion closes its new BioEconomy Fund I at €164.5m million
• Superhero Capital is launching a fourth VC fund and is targeting a $50 million closing

News on the market

• Stitch expands to in-person payments by acquiring ExiPay
• Bitpanda become the first European crypto platform to secure a MiCAR license
• JUSPAY is set to become the first fintech unicorn in 2025 with a $150 million funding round near to closing
• X closes a partnership with Visa to power its upcoming financial product
• This is for sure the last thing I was expecting today: Trump Media & Technology Group is expanding into fintech
• Revolut expands into commercial real estate lending
• Payment fintech Vyne closes shop in the UK
• Tokyo-based Metaplanet wants to raise $745.5 million to accumulate Bitcoin
• Binance labs rebrands to YZi Labs to reflect its independence from the exchange
• Euronext announced the acquisition of Nasdaq's Nordic power future business

A special look in the Italian market

• indigo.ai chiude un round da 10 milioni di Euro guidato da Azimut Italia
• Trade Republic spinge sul mercato italiano con il lancio del nuovo conto deposito e dell'iban italiano

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

Events you don’t want to miss

• DXPX - Munich | 26-27.01.2025 (Link to the event)
• TechChill - Riga (Latvia) | 5-7.02.2025 (Link to the event)
• 0100 DACH - Wien (Austria) | 18-20.02.2025 (Link to the event)
• Tech Arena - Stockholm (Sweden) | 20-21.02.2025 (Link to the event)

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

Startups raising funds

• Loyyal - Loyalty platform from the MENA region, with entities in the US and South East Asia, provides a B2B2C platform to handle multiple loyalty programs and earn rewards all over the world. Raising a $6M Series A
• Freedhome - Proptech and fintech platform, enabling people to be able to gain profit from real estate by renting them to intermediaries. Raising a $1M seed round

• Tutornow - Edtech that provides an online tutoring platform for students with learning disorders. Raising $500k to $1M.
• Weagle - B2B Tech startup that provides the very first browser designed for company, with total security for sensitive data. Raising $6 millions for their seed round.

• Shoppy Code:Gift card platform that offers a points based loyalty program. They share part of the profits coming from marketing budgets with their customers. Raising $500k.

Take also a look at the last edition of the newsletter, Weekly update #65