BlackFin Tech Weekly — April 27th, 2026
Every Week, we publish a short digest which sums up last week’s Fintech activity.
Hello FinTech Friends,
Welcome to another week of fintech insights. Let’s explore the news and trends shaping the industry!
Over the last week, there were six fintech deals in Europe, totaling €16.3m in disclosed funding, including 2 transactions in the UK, one in Italy, one in Ireland, one in Bulgaria and one in the Netherlands.
Congratulations to the three largest rounds announced last week:
Seapoint, an Ireland-based company, has raised €7.5m in a Seed round led by 13books.
Firenze, a UK-based company, has raised €6.9m in a Seed round extension led by AlbionVC.
Quillon, a Bulgaria-based company, has raised €1.3m in a pre-Seed round led by 42CAP.
Let’s dive!
Seapoint, an Ireland- and UK-based company, raised €7.5m in a Seed round led by 13books, with participation from Frontline Ventures, Tapestry VC, and angel investors. The company provides an AI-native financial operations platform for startups, integrating banking, accounting, payroll, and treasury into a single system. The funding will support platform scaling and European expansion, as Seapoint aims to become a unified financial hub for founders.
Firenze, a UK-based company, raised €6.9m in a Seed round extension led by AlbionVC, with participation from Outward VC and Form Ventures. The company provides an embedded lending platform enabling wealth managers to offer Lombard lending solutions, allowing clients to access liquidity against their investment portfolios without selling assets. The funding will support team expansion, product development, and international growth, as Firenze aims to broaden access to investment-backed lending.
Quillon, a Bulgaria-based company, raised €1.3m in a pre-Seed round led by 42CAP, with participation from angel investors affiliated with NVIDIA and Roblox. The company provides an AI platform for technical accounting and financial reporting, enabling audit-grade, traceable analysis of complex accounting standards. The funding will support engineering and go-to-market expansion, as Quillon aims to improve accuracy and efficiency in financial reporting workflows.
In addition to this week’s fundraising activity, here is the European M&A activity for the week:
Adyen, a Netherlands-based global payments and financial technology platform, has agreed to acquire Talon.One, a Germany-based provider of loyalty and promotions infrastructure, for €750.0m. The acquisition will combine Adyen’s payments and data capabilities with Talon.One’s real-time decisioning engine, enabling merchants to deliver personalized promotions and pricing across online and in-store channels. The transaction supports Adyen’s unified commerce strategy, enhancing its ability to connect customer data with transaction flows and improve conversion, customer engagement, and overall transaction economics.
And finally, we bring you four news stories that caught our eye last week:
Revolut is targeting a valuation of $150bn to $200bn in a stock market listing, though the company has indicated it will not seek a flotation before 2028. The London-based group, which secured a full UK banking licence last month after a four-year wait, recently saw its pre-tax profits rise 57% to £1.7bn on £4.5bn of revenue. Its last funding round in November valued the group at $75bn, with backers including chipmaker Nvidia. Hitting the target valuation would unlock a major incentive package for founder Nik Storonsky, whose stake would rise to roughly 40% at a $200bn valuation. A secondary share sale is also planned for H2 2026.
Goldman Sachs Alternatives has invested $50m in BLP Digital, a Zurich-based ETH spinoff specialising in AI-driven automation of enterprise finance processes. No valuation was disclosed. BLP Digital has largely scaled without external capital and is currently growing at over 100% annually. The company uses AI agents to automate tasks like invoice processing and financial closing, replacing legacy tools such as OCR and robotic process automation. Goldman Sachs Alternatives sees the deal as a broader bet that demand for AI-enabled financial operations will continue to accelerate. BLP Digital plans to scale from 150 to roughly 500 employees by 2027 as it expands into the US.
The FCA confirmed eight firms for the second cohort of its AI Live Testing initiative, announced at UK FinTech Week. Participants include Barclays, Experian, Lloyds Banking Group (Scottish Widows), UBS, Aereve, Coadjute, GoCardless, and Palindrome. Use cases span customer-facing and B2B applications, including AI-enabled investment support, credit score insights, agentic payments, AML detection, and KYC. Technologies range from agentic AI and small language models to neurosymbolic AI. The FCA‘s Regulatory Sandbox and Innovation Pathways saw a 49% increase in applications year-on-year. Testing began in April 2026 and will conclude by year-end, with a full evaluation report due Q1 2027.
ST Group, a French aerospace manufacturer, completed Europe’s first fully on-chain IPO on Lise, a tokenized equity platform operating under the EU’s DLT Pilot Regime. Trading commenced on 25 April 2026. Retail investors represented 97% of subscribers and 65% of total capital raised, with new shareholders holding 20.1% of equity. Lise enables atomic settlement, 24/7 trading, and transparent on-chain ownership, eliminating traditional multi-day clearing cycles. ST Group specialises in high-performance composite parts for Airbus, Dassault‘s Rafale, and space programmes, with projected revenue potential exceeding €59M over the next decade. Lise is backed by BNP Paribas, CACEIS, and Bpifrance.
Have a great start into the week!
*The information presented in this publication comes from publicly available sources. While the management company uses strict data selection criteria and focuses on the reliability of its sources, it cannot be held responsible for any inaccuracies, omissions, or errors in the data provided. This publication is for informational purposes only and does not constitute an investment recommendation.