Matt Bird is the co-founder and CEO of Lemon, a platform for small and medium businesses to manage their software as a service spending. Co-founded by Bird and James Lewis in 2023, the Manchester-based startup provides tools for businesses to spot where they might be overspending on software subscriptions. This week the company raised £500,000 in funding, with investment coming from Pitchdrive, SFC Capital and angel investors. Lemon is Bird’s third venture, having been an entrepreneur from the age of 22. The startup currently employs three people. In this week’s Founder in Five Q&A, B ..read more

Wagestream, a flexible earnings platform used by Asda, Burger King and Bupa, has closed a £17.5m funding round. Founded in 2018, Wagestream is a platform for shift workers to access earnings from completed work before designated paydays. Wagestream also offers users debt advice and savings options. The company said a significant portion of its users are frontline workers. “Do frontline workers not deserve choice? Do frontline workers – who keep essential services running in good times and tough times – not deserve a better financial future?” said Wagestream co-founder and CEO Peter Briffett ..read more

Fintech has returned to being the UK’s most-funded tech sector but the country is at risk of losing its crown, according to a handful of new policy recommendations from the likes of Monzo, Revolut and The Tony Blair Institute for Global Change. Two major fintech policy reports have been published this week as data revealed the sector raised $1.4bn in the first quarter, more than any other in the UK. The Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, founded by the former prime minister, along with lobby group the Startup Coalition, jointly published the Progressive Vision for Fintech report on Wednes ..read more

Fintech is once again the UK’s best-funded startup sector after climate tech secured the most investment in 2023. In the first quarter of 2024, UK fintech companies raised $1.4bn across 73 rounds, according to data from Dealroom and HSBC Innovation Banking. Fintech funding rounds over the period include £340m raised by challenger bank Monzo and the £18.8m raised by Manchester-based AccessPay. Fintech has historically been one of the UK’s leading technology sectors. However, last year climate tech startups accounted for nearly a third of all investment raised. More broadly, startup funding leve ..read more

International money transfer firm Wise has posted a small revenue bump for the fourth quarter of the fiscal year, but saw shares slip by 8% after missing analyst consensus estimates. In its Q4 trading update, the London-listed firm reported revenue of £277.2m, a marginal increase from the previous quarter’s £276.6m and a 24% increase from the same period in 2023. However, this was 1% below consensus estimates, according to Peel Hunt analysts. The company credited a 29% boost in active customers year-on-year, and more customers using multiple Wise features, as the driving factor behind the reve ..read more

Mimo, a financial management platform for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), has closed a £15.5m funding round. Founded in 2023, Mimo aims to simplify cashflow management for SMEs. The company said the abundance of software tools performing specific financial tasks such as payroll, invoicing and international payments, has created a fragmented and complex system for SMEs. Mimo claims it can solve this issue with a suite of tools that bundle the various financial tasks into a single platform. “I’ve seen first-hand the time-consuming and fragmented processes SMEs must deal with when mana ..read more

The traditional banking and finance sectors are ramping up their tech capabilities amid growing competition from challenger fintechs, new data suggests. A new report from recruitment firm Robert Walters found that banking job listings in London requiring fintech skills were up 75% in the last 12 months, and listings for applicants with machine learning skills were up 107%. As one of the oldest industries in history, finance has developed a reputation for being slow to change. However, increased pressure from tech startups offering financial services has been forcing a new approach over the las ..read more

Two years ago, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak – then serving as Boris Johnson’s chancellor – declared it was his “ambition to make the UK a global hub for cryptoasset technology”. Sunak, speaking along with John Glen – then the economic secretary to the Treasury, now paymaster general – at the Innovate Finance Global Summit in April 2022 said that “the measures we’ve outlined today will help to ensure firms can invest, innovate and scale up in this country.” Glen conceded that the government’s goal was “not going to happen overnight”. But now, two years later, what progress has the UK made towards ..read more

Embedded banking company ClearBank has posted its first full year of profit since being founded in 2015. The London-based fintech, which offers both clearing bank services and embedded banking tools, reported a profit of £18.4m for 2023, a considerable upswing from losing £7.1m the year before. ClearBank reported total income year-on-year had grown 91% to £111.3m and deposits were up 103%, reaching £6.1bn. “While the industry and the broader economy have faced significant challenges, our values of innovation and sustainable growth have led to our first full year of profitability—an incredible ..read more

Wales may be famed for its Welsh cakes, rugby and choirs, but the country is fast making a name for itself in the fintech space. According to a recent report from FinTech Wales, a membership association, the industry currently employs 16,000 people and has seen investment grow by 300% since 2022. In the 12 months up to October 2023, Welsh fintech firms raised £53m in publicly announced funding rounds. This growth is being driven not only by major fintech companies that call Wales home, such as Admiral, GoCompare, Confused.com, MoneySuperMarket, Starling Bank, and Monzo, but also by fast-growin ..read more