A recent Finch Capital report shows that paytech deals drove Europe’s fintech funding in the third quarter, which fell slightly from the April to June period. Overall, paytech startups raised €896 million the third quarter, up 117% from €413 million sequentially.
A key third quarter paytech deal was XBO Ventures’ US$25 million strategic investment in Rapyd’s Series F round, which raised US$500 million in March at a US$4.5 billion valuation. Acting as a bridge between the crypto economy and traditional finance, this investment grants XBO Ventures and its portfolio companies priority access to Rapyd’s extensive global fintech infrastructure.
Those portfolio companies and other digital asset firms can now fast-track their global scaling efforts by leveraging Rapyd’s existing infrastructure, which operates in over 100 countries and supports more than 1,200 payment methods. This reduces the need for them to build complex compliance and payment systems from scratch.
The biggest-ticket paytech round of the third quarter was Fnality’s US$136 million Series C, a deal that is significant for bridging traditional wholesale finance with institutional tokenized assets using Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT).
The massive capital injection is intended to speed up expansion of Fnality’s settlement network to other major currencies beyond the existing Sterling Fnality Payment System, which launched in the UK in December 2023, including the CAD, EUR, JPY, and USD.
The funding will advance solutions that provide real-time, on-ledger settlement using central bank-backed cash, which is a critical foundation for enabling 24/7 trading of digital bonds and other tokenized securities. It also also positions Fnality as a foundational element of a new global settlement layer that provides settlement interoperability for stablecoins and tokenized deposits.
Of particular interest to us was the involvement of several heavyweight financial sector incumbents in Fnality’s Series C, including Bank of America and Citibank, which suggests growing acceptance of tokenized assets.
In a news release, Deepak Mehra, Head of Digital Strategy, Citi Markets said, “Fnality’s work in wholesale payments aligns with Citi’s ongoing commitment to delivering innovative solutions for the digital asset landscape. Their regulated DLT-based approach offers a compelling pathway for more efficient and resilient financial market infrastructure.”
#payments #europe #fintech #stablecoins #cryptocurrency