As public equity capital markets re-open amid hopes that rates might fall later this year, it looks as if private equity investors are also rediscovering their appetite to back growth companies in the fintech sector, after losing interest in 2023.
Last week, CapitalG, Alphabet’s independently managed venture fund, led a £340 million Series I round for Monzo, the UK challenger bank that began in 2017 with prepaid cards and now offers payments, instant access savings, investments and business banking.
Monzo has over nine million UK customers, adding two million last year, even while investors avoided the sector.
This week, a smaller deal shows the growing desire among non-banks to offer various forms of regulated, bank-like financial services to their customers and their appetite to take these in white-labelled form from a fully regulated banking-as-a-service provider.
Griffin, a UK fintech founded in 2016 by Silicon Valley engineers David Jarvis and Allen Rohner – who co-founded tech unicorn CircleCI – and a team of banking and technology executives from the Bank of England, Nasdaq, Visa HSBC, Form3, Monzo, Swift, GoCardless and others, has just raised £19 million.
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