NatWest to Buy Evelyn Partners in $3.68 Billion

Hey FinTech Fanatic!

Last week in Europe, I covered how scale, automation, and interoperability are becoming the real battlegrounds across financial services. The focus wasn’t on bold promises, but on making systems faster, smarter, and easier to operate at scale.

That showed up with iDenfy embedding AI directly into KYB workflows, NatWest moving to consolidate its wealth offering through the acquisition of Evelyn Partners, and Adyen expanding its partnership with Uber to support new markets and use cases. I also followed progress on cross-border, phone-based euro transfers and Volt launching new cash management capabilities for merchants across the UK and EU.

Here’s what stood out across FinTech, Payments, and Digital Banking in Europe last week 👇

Cheers,

Marcel

• IDenfy bakes AI into KYB platform.

These new improvements were built to help compliance teams quickly pre-fill business key entity details from multiple official registries and government global databases, allowing compliance teams access AI assistant’s tips and insights much faster.

Read more

NOW, ON TO THE SUMMARY OF LAST WEEK’S NEWS

⭐️ NatWest to buy Evelyn Partners in $3.68 billion bid to break crowded wealth market. NatWest said it expects the deal to generate about 100 million pounds in annual cost savings and announced a 750 million pound share buyback. Continue reading

⭐️ Adyen and Uber expand global partnership to power new markets, Launch Uber Kiosks. The expanded partnership reflects Uber's growing use of Adyen's global payments platform to enhance performance and offer more alternative payment methods, to support Uber's continued international growth.

⭐️ Phone-to-phone euro transfers from Spain to Poland, BLIK tests interoperability with additional European payment systems. This means the ability to make seamless, instant phone-number-based transfers between users of different mobile payment systems in Europe, without the need to install additional applications.

⭐️ Volt launches Volt Accounts, a flagship cash management suite for merchants and partners in the UK and the EU. Volt Accounts monitors transactions in EUR and GBP from initiation to receipt, providing status updates at crucial stages of the payment value chain. When payments are completed, merchants can dispatch goods or deliver services faster and with greater certainty.

Lyf Pay is shutting down. The FinTech Lyf, which offers an electronic wallet, QR code payments in stores or at tables, and peer-to-peer money pools, has never been able to generate sufficient volume against heavyweights like Apple Pay or Lydia. Read more

Cleo brings AI-powered money management back to the UK. Founder Barney Hussey-Yeo described the return as a homecoming and the start of a new chapter, with the app offering personalised coaching and straightforward answers to users’ everyday financial questions.

Starling founder Anne Boden cuts stake in £4bn FinTech. Anne Boden cut her holdings in the digital bank to near 2.7% from a previous 4.3%. It comes after Starling launched a secondary share sale last year in a bid to enable its current investors to sell down stakes and open up new opportunities.

The Bank of Spain has a simple warning for anyone who pays by phone. Financial authorities warn that users often rely on weak locks, unchanged spending limits, and disabled security features such as two-factor authentication, leaving phones vulnerable if lost or stolen.

Moonrise by Lunar launches instant payments in Norway via NICS Real. By connecting directly to NICS Real, Moonrise enables partners to send and receive Norwegian Krone (NOK) in real time, 24/7/365. Continue reading

Revolut is boosting the team that runs share sales without Wall Street. The FinTech is looking to bolster its corporate development team in London, where it’s headquartered. It’s working to recruit an investment banker, asset manager, or person with venture capital experience to oversee transactions, including potential mergers and acquisitions, as it stays private for longer.

Zippay vs Revolut: The battle for Ireland’s instant payments. Ireland’s major banks are launching Zippay, an instant payments service built into their mobile apps to rival Revolut. While Zippay will enable easy person-to-person payments, Revolut already has strong traction with around three million Irish users, including a large teenage base.

Czech Bank challenges Revolut with new multi-currency service. Partners Banka now allows clients to hold and manage several currencies within a single account without extra fees. The bank says the goal is to simplify everyday international payments while keeping exchange costs predictable.

Digital bank Monzo wrongly rejects fraud refunds for more than 1,000 customers. The ombudsman overturned 34% of Monzo’s decisions across 3,372 cases, the worst rate among major UK banks, involving authorised push payment scams, card fraud, and identity theft.

Russia's Sberbank plans crypto-backed loans to corporate clients. Sberbank is moving to offer loans secured by cryptocurrency and says it is ready to work with the central bank on a regulatory framework. Sberbank's planned program will extend crypto-backed lending beyond miners to businesses holding digital assets.

Ecommpay announces strategic partnership with Payrails to revolutionise global payments for enterprises. The collaboration aims to directly impact top-line growth and bottom-line costs. By leveraging the combined strengths of both platforms, enterprises can aim to expect improved acceptance and conversion rates, reduced costs, and accelerated speed to market for their services.

myTU taps Intrepid Fox to automate business onboarding. The integration is designed to enable small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and FinTech clients to open fully operational accounts within minutes, rather than days. Keep reading

Akbank goes live on Mambu core in Germany. Operating under a German banking licence from BaFin, the division serves customers in Germany and the wider EU market, providing banking services and supporting cross‑border financial activity between Europe and Turkey.

Viva.com and BlueStar EMEA announce strategic partnership to power end-to-end commerce across Europe. This partnership aims to bridge Viva. com’s unified payments and embedded finance platform with BlueStar’s leading hardware and distribution capabilities.

Apexx Global raises $10m for payments orchestration platform. By intelligently routing transactions across the global payments ecosystem, Apexx says it materially increases acceptance rates, reduces processing costs, and improves unit economics.

Stripe alumni raise €30M Series A for Duna, backed by Stripe and Adyen execs. Backed by prominent angel investors from Stripe and rivals like Adyen, the company aims to build a reusable digital passport system that allows businesses to share verified identity information across multiple platforms.

Synthesia and Flatpay founders back Pluto.markets in $6M raise. Joakim Bruchmann, founder of Pluto.markets, said the funds will be used to move into new markets and launch new products. Pluto.markets offers users commission-free trading in fractional stocks, ETFs, and cryptocurrencies.

UK FinTech Sidekick raises £7.8m as it expands operations in Wales and opens Cardiff Hub. The funding will be used to grow Sidekick’s team, accelerate product development, and support continued customer growth. Continue reading

Bound has secured a $24.5m (£18m) Series A funding round. The UK FinTech will use its new funding to pursue expansion in Europe, first by seeking regulatory authorisation in the European Union. Using Bound, finance teams can set up best-practice hedging strategies that automatically manage exposure to market volatility with no manual intervention required.

Taxnova secures funding following a16z speedrun accelerator. Taxnova said its platform identifies projects, generates technical narratives, calculates eligible costs, and produces documents ready for audit. Read more

Swedish AI FinTech Fintower raises €1.5 million seed to replace spreadsheets in financial planning. The fresh capital will be used to deepen product development and scale the business as the company targets becoming the leading financial decision-support platform in the Nordics.

Tandem Bank announces Ryan Heaps as New Finance Chief. Ryan, a chartered accountant with over 15 years’ experience in senior finance roles. The appointment is a testament to Tandem’s focus on nurturing internal talent and its investment in developing a strong pipeline of future leaders from within the bank.

ClearBank hires Visa's Neil Drennan as CTO. He brings over 15 years of experience across the media and financial services industry, including roles at 10x Future Technologies and Amazon. At ClearBank, Drennan will lead the evolution and enhancement of the company's cloud-based API and payments infrastructure.

XTB hires ex-Revolut marketer Zoe Gralinska-Sakai as it ramps up marketing spend. Her appointment comes as XTB expands its European footprint and targets serving more than 2 million users globally through its multi-asset investment app, with Sakai focused on driving growth and improving local market relevance.