BlackFin Tech Weekly — March 2nd, 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 eleven fintech deals in Europe, totaling €237.3m in disclosed funding, including four transactions in the UK, one in France, one in Germany, one in Italy, one in Belgium, one in Spain, one in Switzerland, and one in Lithuania.
Congratulations to the three largest rounds announced last week:
Allica Bank, a UK-based digital bank serving established SMBs, has raised $131.5m in a Series D round led by Ventura Capital.
Dwelly, a UK-based AI-driven rental marketplace acquiring and digitizing letting agencies, has secured over €79.3m in combined equity and debt financing, including a €36.8m equity round led by General Catalyst.
STS Digital, a Switzerland-based institutional crypto derivatives trading firm, has raised €25.6m in a funding round led by CMT Digital.
Let’s dive!
Allica Bank, a UK-based digital bank serving established small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), raised €131.5m in a Series D round led by Ventura Capital, with participation from GLG, Sona AM, and existing investors TCV and Blue Owl. The company provides a full-stack, AI-powered banking platform focused on lending and deposit products for established SMBs. The funding will support continued UK lending growth, further investment in its proprietary technology stack, and international expansion.
Dwelly, a UK-based AI-driven rental marketplace and property management platform, secured over €79.3m (£69m) in combined equity and debt financing. The raise includes a €36.8m equity round led by General Catalyst, with participation from Begin Capital and S16VC, alongside a €42.55m debt facility from Trinity Capital. Founded in 2024, Dwelly acquires independent letting agencies and integrates them into a unified AI-enabled platform that digitises tenant-landlord matchmaking, rent collection, maintenance, and pricing optimisation. The funding will support continued acquisitions and national expansion across the fragmented UK rental market.
STS Digital, a Switzerland-based regulated crypto derivatives trading firm, raised €25.6m in a funding round led by CMT Digital, with participation from Payward, Strobe Ventures, Arrington Capital, F-Prime, and BitRock Capital. The company operates an institutional-grade platform for spot, options, and structured digital asset products, providing deep liquidity and market-making services across 400+ tokens. The funding will be used to scale its platform, strengthen market-making capabilities, enhance balance sheet resilience, and support global institutional expansion.
In addition to this week’s fundraising activity, here is the European M&A activity for the week:
iAltA Holdings, the WestCap-backed private markets infrastructure company, has acquired Delio, a provider of white-label operating systems for private markets distribution and reporting. Delio enables asset managers, wealth firms and distributors to digitize, structure, distribute and report on alternative investments through its configurable, low-code Delio Core OS, supporting more than 50 financial institutions across 18 jurisdictions and over 12,000 end clients globally. The acquisition strengthens iAltA’s Private Markets vertical and advances its strategy to unify fragmented private markets workflows with scalable, institutional-grade digital infrastructure.
Euroclear has acquired a minority stake in Proxymity, becoming a strategic shareholder and client. Proxymity provides real-time digital proxy voting and shareholder disclosure technology, connecting issuers, intermediaries and investors across more than 105 markets worldwide. The investment supports the continued development of Proxymity’s global governance and communications platform and its international expansion, while enabling the integration of its technology into Euroclear’s corporate actions and governance services to enhance transparency, efficiency and end-to-end digital post-trade processes.
And finally, we bring you four news stories that caught our eye last week:
Stripe is reportedly in early discussions to potentially acquire PayPal, with the fintech giant considering buying all or parts of the payments platform. The deal could involve assets such as PayPal’s merchant services unit Braintree or its consumer wallet platform Venmo. Both companies declined to comment. PayPal’s stock surged nearly 7% on Tuesday following the Bloomberg report. The company has lost more than 19% this year amid slowing growth and mounting competition, with new CEO Enrique Lores set to take over on March 1. Stripe, valued at $159 billion, now dwarfs PayPal’s $43 billion market cap. The valuation marks a 74% increase from last year, underscoring the diverging fortunes of the two payments giants.
Block, the fintech company behind Square and Cash App, announced on 26 February 2026 it is cutting over 4,000 jobs, reducing its workforce from more than 10,000 to under 6,000. Shares surged over 22% following the news. CEO Jack Dorsey framed the decision as strategic rather than reactive, citing AI tools that enable smaller teams to operate more effectively. Block deployed its open-source AI agent Goose to all employees by October 2025, with engineers reporting 8-10 hours of weekly time savings. Block’s cut is among the largest AI-attributed layoffs on record, as over 49,000 tech jobs have been eliminated globally in early 2026 alone. The move signals a broader industry shift toward AI-driven operational efficiency.
MSCI has launched new AI connectors enabling clients to access data via the MSCI ONE cloud platform or through major AI providers, including apps in OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Claude. The first solution, MSCI IndexAI Insights, is a conversational AI interface combining MSCI’s index data with large language models, allowing clients to ask plain-language questions about index performance, exposures, constituents, and methodologies. The launch is the first in a series of AI-enabled offerings MSCI plans to build on this foundation, as the firm looks to embed its data and analytics deeper into client workflows through natural language interfaces.
Coinbase has rolled out stock trading to all US users, allowing customers to buy, sell, and manage stocks and ETFs alongside crypto holdings, 24/5, with zero commission. Trades can be funded instantly using USD and USDC. The move advances Coinbase’s Everything Exchange concept, combining trading, financial services, and applications into one platform. CEO Brian Armstrong highlighted strong 2024 results: Coinbase One subscriptions reaching ~1 million, doubled trading volume, and all-time high USDC holdings. Coinbase also announced a partnership with Yahoo Finance enabling one-click trade execution, plus plans for tokenised stocks and expanded stock perpetuals for non-US traders seeking 24/7 exposure to US equities.
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.