BlackFin Tech Weekly — July 6th, 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 eight fintech deals in Europe, totaling €51.5m in disclosed funding, including two transactions in the UK, two in Germany, two in the Czech Republic, one in Denmark and one in Switzerland.
Congratulations to the three largest rounds announced last week:
Theo, a Germany-based AI real estate operations platform, has raised €25m in a Series A round (incl. venture debt) led by Insight Partners, with BlackRock as debt provider.
MDOTM, a UK-based provider of AI-driven investment solutions for asset and wealth managers, has raised €23.7m in a growth equity round led by Expedition Growth Capital.
BR-DGE, a UK-based payment orchestration platform, has raised €11.6m in a funding round, with new growth partner Bettor Capital.
Let’s dive!
Theo, a Germany-based AI real estate operations platform, has raised €25m in a Series A round (including venture debt) led by Insight Partners, with BlackRock acting as debt provider. The company provides an AI-driven platform automating bookkeeping, maintenance, letting, sales, and ownership workflows for real estate professionals. The funding will support product development and further growth, as Theo aims to become the operating system for real estate operations.
MDOTM, a UK-based provider of AI-driven investment solutions for asset and wealth managers, has raised €23.7m in a growth equity round led by Expedition Growth Capital. The company provides Sphere, an AI investment platform built for human-AI collaboration that supports portfolio construction, rebalancing, and automated client reporting, and is used by more than 60 financial institutions including Morgan Stanley, Amundi, and Zurich Bank. The funding will support the global expansion of Sphere and hiring across AI research, engineering, product, sales, and client solutions, as MDOTM looks to meet accelerating AI adoption across the asset and wealth management industry.
BR-DGE, a UK-based payment orchestration platform for enterprise merchants, has raised €11.6m in a funding round, with US gaming-focused investor Bettor Capital joining as a new growth partner alongside existing investors. The company provides a single integration that unifies routing, tokenization, data insight, and intelligent controls, helping merchants improve approval rates and optimize payment flows across markets, and has grown platform volumes fifteenfold in under two years. The funding will enhance BR-DGE’s platform capabilities, strengthen go-to-market activity, and drive geographic growth, as BR-DGE expands from its leadership position in gaming payments into adjacent enterprise sectors.
In addition to this week’s fundraising activity, here is the European M&A activity for the week:
Qonto, a France-based financial management platform for SMEs and freelancers, has acquired the assets of Acasi, a France-based online chartered-accountancy firm for independent professionals. The acquisition strengthens Qonto’s push to become an all-in-one financial platform by combining its business account, payments, and invoicing tools with Acasi’s certified online accounting capabilities. The transaction supports Qonto’s strategy to become the single financial infrastructure for European SMEs, adding an integrated certified accounting offer for freelancers and very small businesses alongside its Qontable proposition for partner accounting firms.
And finally, we bring you four news stories that caught our eye last week:
Standard Chartered has been granted authorization under the EU’s MiCA regulation and an Electronic Money Institution license from Luxembourg’s CSSF, giving the London-headquartered bank a regulated base to offer digital asset custody and electronic money services across the EU. The bank will use Luxembourg as its European hub and plans to passport services into other member states under MiCA, with a phased rollout. The move builds on its Luxembourg entity established in 2025 and extends the digital asset custody services it already runs in Asia and the Middle East.
The UK’s Financial Conduct Authority has published its final rulebook for crypto and digital assets, requiring firms that buy, trade, or hold crypto to meet capital, stress-testing, and market integrity standards, including new rules on insider trading and market manipulation. Alongside the Bank of England, the regulator set out a stablecoin framework with simpler capital requirements, cutting the reserve issuers must hold to 1% of the value they issue, down from the 2% previously proposed. The regime takes effect in October 2027, with applications opening in September 2026, and was broadly welcomed by the industry.
PayPal has joined the European Payments Council, securing a seat to help shape the rules, standards, and infrastructure of the Single Euro Payments Area across 41 countries. The company brings its experience as a regulated European bank and a global payments provider with more than 430 million active accounts, and says it will contribute to discussions on interoperability, instant payments, and fraud prevention. PayPal Europe CEO Sean Byrne said the group sees itself as an integral part of how European payment infrastructure evolves.
More than 140 businesses, including Visa, Mastercard, Stripe, Coinbase, and banks such as BNY, have backed Open USD, a consortium stablecoin launched by Open Standard and led on an interim basis by Bridge CEO Zach Abrams. The token lets businesses mint and redeem at no cost, with reserve earnings shared among partners and governance handled by a board of member companies rather than a single issuer. Open USD is expected to go live later this year, as backers position it as shared infrastructure for stablecoin payments at scale.
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.
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