Welcome to FinTech Monthly for July 2016 – your monthly round up of the top financial technology news. This month, we filmed from Central Working’s new venue in Paddington. In this episode, we have funding rounds from Tide, Moneybox and Revolut; VocaLink’s £700m acquisition, a new FinTech bridge, and more.
Investments
Mobile-first banking service Tide closed a $2m seed round with investors including LocalGlobe and Passion Capital. Founded early last year by George Bevis, Tide claims to enable customers to set up a business current account in three minutes or less.
Savings and investment app Moneybox received $1.75m in a funding round led by Oxford Capital Partners. The news comes after the London startup, which seeks to encourage millennials to save through the use of its mobile app, raised $3m in seed funding in January.
Currency transfer app Revolut landed somewhere around £6.75m in Series A funding in a round led by Balderton Capital. Ribit Capital, Index Ventures, Point Nine Capital, Venrex and Seedcamp also invested in the round.
Take a look at the video to hear the views of James Brockhurst, of Gowling WLG, on whether the currency transfer industry is currently ripe for disruption.
MasterCard acquires VocaLink
Towards the end of the month, MasterCard acquired 92.4% of payments services company VocaLink Holdings for around £700m.
Based in London, VocaLink operates key payments technology platforms on behalf of UK payment schemes. In 2015, the company reported revenues of £182m, having processed more than 11 billion transactions.
FinTech Bridge
The HM Treasury has announced a new FinTech Bridge between UK and the Republic of Korea. The initiative is designed to help UK FinTech firms to expand to the Republic of Korea, as well as attracting Korean FinTech companies and investors to the UK.
It is hoped this new FinTech Bridge will further encourage innovation in both nations’ financial services sectors.
London FinTech Week
London FinTech Week returned, bringing with it a series of conferences, workshops, hackathons, meetups and parties. Topics covered included payments, capital markets, insurance innovation, blockchain and security.
At one of the events, senior Berlin politician Cornelia itzer said more than 100 startup companies in London are looking into relocating to Germany’s capital following the UK’s decision to leave the EU.
That’s all for this month’s roundup. For more financial technology updates, check out our FinTech channel and follow us on Twitter.