How the Stables have turned. - TWIF UK & Europe (27/04)

Hello TWIF UK & Europe friends,

Don’t forget Stablecon is coming up! Be sure to grab a ticket!

This week’s UK and European fintech news had a very clear centre of gravity: payments, regulation, infrastructure, and the slow but important shift from fintech as “disruption” to fintech as national economic plumbing.

In the UK, the biggest story was the government’s FinTech Week package, aimed at bringing regs into line with the future of financial services and pushing the country further into tokenised financial markets. The appointment of former FCA interim chief Chris Woolard as the UK’s first Wholesale Digital Markets Champion seems both a symbolic and practical move: the UK wants to be seen not just as a home for consumer fintech, but as a serious venue for tokenised assets, stablecoins, open banking and next-generation payments infrastructure. The Govt framed the package as a way to boost Britain’s competitive edge and modernise payments services regulation, while also encouraging adoption of tokenised financial assets in wholesale markets.

The timing matters. Across Europe, fintech is no longer only about challenger banks, slick apps and cheap FX and smooth signup journeys. The market is increasingly about who owns the rails, who controls the compliance layer, and who can help institutions move faster without breaking regulatory expectations. The bastardised agency model of yesteryear seems increasingly under regulatory scrutiny, with fraud at all time highs and (for the average fintech at least) balance sheet to deal with at inverse lows. That theme came through strongly at FIBE 2026 in Berlin, where the mood was described as a tension between rapid technological change and the capacity of financial institutions to actually absorb it. AI, stablecoins and payments were all prominent, but the deeper message was that financial infrastructure is becoming the main battlefield. 

It’s not just the regulators identifying this. Bank’s themselves are making moves themselves with BaaS Providers like Clearbank getting MICA approved and Griffin delivering the Agentic-meets-Stablecoin thought piece “The Bank the world needs next”

And while some fads come and go (PPE, Arsenal’s title challenge and NuMetal to name a few) others like Stablecoins are seemingly “Here To Stay”

That infrastructure theme also showed up in dealmaking and partnerships. ClearBank’s partnership with Tazapay, linking Asian payments infrastructure to UK and European rails, is a good example of the type of fintech story that now matters: not a new consumer app, but connectivity between regions, payment systems and regulated institutions. The direction of travel is clear. Cross-border commerce, embedded finance and real-time settlement are converging, and the winners are likely to be companies that make those connections easier for platforms, banks and marketplaces.

So it doesn’t take a GENIUS Act to figure out that those who are Headless, Machine readable and most importantly, directionally ready to accept a disintermediation of direct ownership of the customer, that stand ready with a supply of shovels for the coming gold rush.

I’m talking to you Tier 2 banking execs. Sure, JP Morgan, Deutsche Bank, Barclays et al - yes you probably don’t have much to fear… But for the Tier 2s, the future looks bleak. The T2 generalists are seeing oxygen stolen by the Challenger Fintech/Banks. And thits just a matter of time before the T2 niche see the same through BaaS enabled tech solutions. Hyper-specialised banking enablement delivered CoinBase as the crypto Bank, Uber as the gig economy bank, YouLend as the LaaS default. And its only going to accelerate.

So if you aren’t building your APIs, and more importantly, building out the operational capacity to manage multiple brands distributing your licence AND talking to the regulators of how you intend to manage the about turn, the future is bleak! Fun Fun Fun.

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Highlights below of deals since the last post in the fintech space across the UK & Europe. Deal data powered by Dealroom.

Slash, an AI-first bank built for enterprise finance teams, raised $100M, to reach Unicorn Status

Digital Banking Platform Plata, secured $405M funding in mammoth series C

Wamo raised €10 million to expand its SME financial platform across Italy and the Nordics, accelerating embedded banking and business finance infrastructure growth

Schwarz Group commits $600 million into Cohere’s upcoming round as part of its Aleph Alpha merger, with strong implications for regulated European fintech and sovereign financial AI infrastructure.

Alan raised $116 million, making it one of Europe’s largest fintech rounds this quarter as it scales digital insurance and health-finance infrastructure.

🌍 Backbase launched its AI-native Banking OS for banks.

Nexi and Visa launched Nexi Ready, a managed card issuing proposition for German banks

🌍 Coinbase launched crypto-backed lending for UK users, using Morpho as the DeFi backend

🌍 Ripple Treasury Launches the First Treasury Management System With Native Digital Asset Capabilities

🇪🇺 Enfuce joined Mastercard Product Express to help fintechs and institutions launch business card programmes across Europe.

🇪🇺 Ingenico launched the next-generation of AXIUM payment devices, as well as the Ingenico 360 Unified Cloud Platform

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UK Fintech to be embraced - www.gov.uk