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Hello fintech friends,
This week Wise rolled out e-sim functionality in its app.
Wise is the latest in a series of banks and fintechs to offer such a solution. Others that already have an e-sim offering include Starling, Santander, Monzo, N26 and Revolut. While Klarna isn't a bank in the UK, it does have an e-sim offering. Yonder offers credit and debit cards, and it also provides an e-sim solution to its customers.
This trend for banks and fintechs to offer e-sims as a paid product, or as part of a paid account, has accelerated at pace. Integrators such as Gigs enable banks and fintechs to offer e-sims easily. Banks have the distribution, while Gigs provides the connectivity to the telecom networks.
It's common for UK customers to use Wise, Monzo or Revolut when travelling, even if these providers are not their primary banking relationship. Mainly this stems from the fact that they offer low or no fees when using their cards abroad, whether in euros, dollars or any other non-GBP currency.
Also, customers interact with their banking or fintech apps far more than they do with their mobile phone provider. The only time I contact my phone provider is to change my contract every year or so; otherwise I have no reason to contact them.
Selecting an e-sim plan in the Wise app
With this in mind, it makes sense for banks to own this relationship. And it's going further than just e-sims. Monzo, Revolut and Klarna now also offer domestic phone contracts in the UK. The pricing won't make sense to everyone. It really depends on your usage and how much your value having a single relationship, but it’s incremental revenue for banks, with limited, if any, downside.
If a customer has both a banking relationship and a phone plan, the chance of that customer churning surely reduces. There must also be an element of FOMO. As other banks and fintechs develop e-sims for travel and domestic phone plans, no bank wants to be left out.
In terms of Wise's specific offering, it allows more control than other similar solutions I've seen, both in the amount of data a user wishes to purchase and the number of days the data will be valid for.
While fintechs in the UK and Europe are not super apps, the addition of e-sims and domestic phone plans shows the potential to grow offerings beyond core solutions such as payments and lending.
Are there any proof points from other markets? Yes. In South Africa, two banks, Capitec and FNB, both have over a million customers on their SIM plans.
Please find another week of fintech news below!
— Matt Jones
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The Rundown
🏦 M&A
Monzo courted private-equity investors for growth capital after Nubank confirmed that it is not pursuing a takeover, or merger, with London-based neobank.
German HR software group Personio acquired Berlin spend-management platform Circula, which has more than 3,000 mid-market customers and will run as Circula by Personio.
UBS agreed to transfer its remaining fund administration business in Switzerland and Luxembourg, including the former Credit Suisse units, to Northern Trust.
US tax-compliance software firm Sovos acquired Flowie, a French startup whose AI agents handle accounts payable, invoicing, collections and vendor onboarding.
🚀 Product Launches
Bancomat, Bizum, EPI, SIBS MB WAY and Vipps MobilePay created the European Network for Payments, a Madrid-based company, to link their wallets across over 130 million users in 13 countries.
Lloyds and Visa completed a seven-day live pilot settling $750,000 of real obligations in USDC, with funds reaching Visa in under an hour. Lloyds bought the USDC through Archax and booked it through its Jersey branch.
TrueLayer extended its partnership with SumUp, taking Pay by Bank top-ups in the SumUp app to Ireland, Germany, France, Spain and Italy after a UK launch earlier this year.
Mollie relaunched Pay by Bank on GoCardless's open-banking connections to more than 2,500 European banks. It went live in the Netherlands last week, with the rest of Europe to follow in 2027.
OakNorth agreed to build Wise's international payments into its business banking platform.
Also with Wise. The company added customisable travel eSIM plans, letting customers choose their data allowance and duration for each trip, in the UK, EEA, US, Canada, Brazil, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore and Malaysia.
Zopa launched targeted support for investment customers, an assessment steers users to Invesco-managed funds. Users can invest from £1, and the solution was built on Upvest.
💸 Fundraises
Paris-based Spiko raised $90m in a Series B led by New Enterprise Associates, with Index Ventures and Speedinvest also investing, taking total funding to $120m. Spiko issues tokenised money-market funds.
Pay-by-bank group Trustly secured binding equity commitments of more than $40m from main owner Nordic Capital and from Alfvén & Didrikson, with the round expected to close in November.
Berlin-based embedded lender finmid raised €17m led by Big Pi Ventures and Mainset, with Earlybird and Blossom Capita lfollowing on, taking the total round size to €52m.
French accounts-receivable startup Cleavr raised €8m led by Varsity, for AI agents that chase unpaid invoices.
Portuguese insurtech FRANK raised €2.9m led by Armilar and Start Ventures for an AI Operator to help does insurance brokers.
🏛️ Policy & Regulation
The FCA opened applications for the UK's new cryptoasset regime.
The UK Treasury appointed Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds, Morgan Stanley, NatWest and RBC Capital Markets as lead managers for its digital gilt pilot, DIGIT, a short-dated bond to be issued by the first quarter of 2027.
ESMA and national regulators questioned Binance over its use of the reverse-solicitation exemption to keep serving EU customers after it was ordered to wind down its business in the bloc.
The Bank of England’s financial market infrastructure director Sasha Mills set out five commitments on tokenised markets.
🗂️ Other News
Airtel Money set its share offer price with an implied market value of £5.3bn.
Zilch invited investment banks to pitch ahead of a planned flotation in H2 2027 or early 2028. London is the favoured listing destination, but New York has not been ruled out.
Revolut told Philippine trade secretary Cristina Roque at meeting in London that it plans to apply for digital bank and e-money licences from the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas.
Transport for Greater Manchester put its Bee Card into Apple Wallet, meaning that passengers can buy bus and tram tickets and tap to travel without unlocking their phone.
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Name that fintech…
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