The Weekly Wrap: all you need to know by Friday COB | April 29th

By Gaia Lamperti

The Weekly Wrap is published every Friday and recaps the week’s main stories and deals, as well as upcoming events and announcements. For Prime subscribers only.

The Big Story

UK challenger bank Starling Bank has completed an internal fundraise of £130.5 million at a pre-money valuation of more than £2.5 billion. Existing Starling investors Harold McPike, Fidelity, RPMI Railpen, Qatar Investment Authority and Goldman Sach all participated in the round.

The firm announced that the new funds will be invested in growth and to “build a war chest for acquisitions,” as a spokesperson said. “We are looking at a number of potential targets.” Starling made its first acquisition in July last year, a £50 million deal for buy-to-let mortgage group Fleet Mortgages.

Starling’s last equity injection came from Goldman Sachs Growth Equity, which invested £50 million in an extension of the bank’s oversubscribed £272 million Series D funding round announced in March 2021, which valued it in excess of £1.1 billion pre-money. The challenger is also about to launch in Europe, offering a banking-as-a-service package to businesses and banks.

Deals of the week

• Kard raises $23 million Series A to power card rewards
• Ondo Finance raises $20 million Series A to accelerate DeFi adoption
• Estateguru finances €16.7 million of loans in March 2022
• MENA’s first FinTech app for school fees, zenda raises $9.4 million
• Volume raises $2.4 million to drive online payment fees to zero
• Finastra extends collaboration with Orange Bank for integrated treasury management in the cloud
• Cellulant partners with NALA to power remittance payments from the UK and USA into Africa

Be on the lookout for

Banco Santander and Oxentia Foundation are inviting startups and scaleups from 11 countries to compete in a blockchain challenge and have the chance to win cash prizes. Firms are being invited to enter ideas addressing issues such as improving user privacy and security in blockchain networks, boosting DeFi and tokenisation, and enhancing and expanding digital interactions with users through concepts such as Web3 and the metaverse.