European fintechs fared well in funding rounds this week, with neobank N26 nabbing $900 million and banking infrastructure company Euroclear collecting $824.5 million.

N26’s series E funding round brought the bank’s valuation to more than $9 billion.

Third Point Ventures and Coatue Management led the funding round for the Berlin-based bank, and were joined by existing investors Dragoneer Investment Group.

N26 will use the windfall to expand its mobile banking platform, scale its global team to 1,000 additional employees in technology, cybersecurity and product, extend its employee equity pool, and increase employee participation in the employee stock ownership plan (ESOP) participation to 100%.

N26’s mobile platform has more than 7 million customers in 25 markets, and holds a full European banking license.

Euroclear secures private round of $824.5M

Euroclear, a Brussels-based banking infrastructure company, received $824.5 million in private equity funding in the form of Silver Lake’s acquisition of Intercontinental Exchange’s 9.85% stake in Euroclear. Silver Lake is a technology investment firm.

Euroclear offers solutions for post-trade security settlement, custody, collateral management, fund management and data services. It has $40.9 trillion of assets under custody and 284 million netted transactions settled in the 12 months ended June 2021. The fintech connects more than 2,000 financial institutions in 50 different markets and settles transactions in 50 currencies.

The Euroclear transaction is expected to close in the first half of 2022, with more than $88 billion in combined assets under management and committed capital and a team of professionals based in North America, Europe and Asia.

Cryptocurrency Exchange raises $420M

FTX.com, a global cryptocurrency exchange, brought in $420 million in a series B-1 funding round Thursday with 69 investors participating – including the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan Board via its Teachers Innovation Platform.

“Teachers’ Innovation Platform (TIP) invests in innovative companies that use technology to help shape new categories,” Olivia Steedman, senior managing director for TIP, said in a release announcing the round. “As a global, technology-driven innovator in the financial sector, FTX fits well with our mandate.”

The funding round brings FTX.com’s valuation to $25 billion.

Other investors include Temasek, Sequoia Capital, Sea Capital, IVP, ICONIQ Growth, Tiger Global, Ribbit Capital, Lightspeed Venture Partners, and funds and accounts managed by BlackRock.

On top of that, the Bahamas-based company revealed that Temasek had participated in the previously announced series B, held in July; that brings the total amount of the series B round up from $900 million to $1 billion.

The company reported that it’s seen significant growth since July, with its user base growing 48% and its average trade volume increasing 75%. It now averages $14 billion per day in daily volume.

DeFi protocol Element Finance raises $32M

Decentralized finance fixed rate protocol Element Finance closed a $32 million series A funding round Tuesday, bringing its valuation to $320 million.

The funding round was led by Polychain Capital and was joined by previous investors Andreessen Horowitz, Placeholder, A. Capital Ventures and Scalar Capital. New investors were Republic, Advanced Blockchain, P2P Validator, Rarestone Capital and Ethereal Ventures.

Element plans to use the funds to expand its workforce in the areas of engineering, research, and user interface and design, the company said.

Element Finance launched its open-source protocol for fixed and variable yield markets in June. It has surpassed 9,000 active users and reached $70 million in trading volume and $180 million of total value locked, the company said.

Deals

Wells Fargo Strategic Capital invests $10M in Volante Technologies

Volante Technologies received a $10 million investment from Wells Fargo Strategic Capital, bringing the total institutional investment to $45 million.

Other financial institutions that have invested in the cloud payments and financial messaging company include Wavecrest Growth Partners, BNY Mellon, Citi Ventures, PostePay (Poste Italiane) and Visa Inc. Volante’s clients include multinational banks, global asset managers, stock exchanges and payment networks.

Recently, Wells Fargo initiated a strategic payments modernization effort by migrating to the ISO 20022 financial messaging standard across its global payments operations, selecting Volante for ISO 20022 migration and modernization, the bank said in announcing the funding round. Legacy core payments infrastructure has been slow to adopt new technologies, said Basil Darwish, managing director for Wells Fargo Strategic Capital.

“Volante solved such challenges by offering a modern cloud-native payments platform that minimizes the complexity while accelerating its customers’ payments modernization efforts,” Darwish said in a release.

American Express and Goldman Sachs partner on corporate digital payment solution

Goldman Sachs is partnering with American Express to provide large corporate clients with a cloud-based payments solution that will support multiple B2B payment options. It will also offer data and analytics in an integrated platform, American Express said in a release announcing the deal.

The collaboration combines Goldman Sachs’ TxB cloud-based platform, which is for transaction banking, with American Express’ card expertise and direct buyer and supplier relationships to create the digital treasury solution for large corporations.

The solution will embed American Express’ virtual cards into the Goldman Sachs TxB platform, which already offers ACH, wire and foreign currency payments.

This new integrated payment solution will include:

• A simple “one flow” process that combines payment activity, both virtual card and non-card, into a holistic set of B2B payment instructions. This helps generate operational efficiencies, eliminates repetitive manual processes, and reduces bank fees incurred due to multi-file initiation.
• Goldman Sachs TxB’s Intelligent Payments Engine, which will route payments to a particular payment channel in a manner that optimizes a buyer’s preferences based on speed and cost.
• Buyer and supplier access to dashboards that provide spend data and analytics, as well as real-time updates on payment statuses.
• Actionable insights that will enable corporate CFOs to make more informed decisions for their companies.

The solution is currently available to select clients and is anticipated to launch for general availability in early 2022.