Issue #103: Robinhood (Finally) Opens Up Shop In The UK, Revolut Launches Yet Another Product And Starbucks Calls It Quits On Its Foray Into The World Of NFTs
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A curated round-up of the most interesting and relevant news from the world of fintech. In each issue, I focus on what caught my eye from the previous week — so don’t expect a weekly smorgasbord of press releases and partnership announcements. The aim is to serve the meaty bits in a neat, nibble-worthy package. It's all about spotlighting the head-turners and giving you the nitty-gritty without the fluff.
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As always, it’s been a busy week for fintech, so without further ado, let's delve into the major happenings from last week.
📣 The News Grab Bag
⤷ Robinhood set to take on Europe’s wealthtechs on their hometurf
Robinhood is venturing into the UK market. Despite previous setbacks, Robinhood is launching its stock brokerage and crypto offerings in the UK, aiming to provide commission-free trading and innovative features. The company plans to introduce local stock options and tax wrappers to cater to European investors' preferences.
🥡 Takeaway: After first announcing back in 2019 that they’d set up shop across the pond (and then axing that plan just a year later), Robinhood has finally launched its trading app in the UK.
The move comes at a very different time from when they first announced their plans to offer commission-free trading to UK customers. The market has caught up, and the once unique offering of zero-commission trading of US stocks is less unique, with numerous competitors now offering similar products. Beyond the standalone brokerage products like Trade Republic and Bux, the market has also seen Monzo and Revolut launch stock trading products, which are all competing for investors’ dollars.
The consensus view is that it’s a crowded market, which means Robinhood faces an uphill battle to gain meaningful ‘portfolio share’ from a well-serviced UK market.
Having said this, I think this could be an opportune time for Robinhood to hang up its shingle. Their timing might be right on the money as the stock market (and crypto markets, for that matter) begins to heat back up. This means we might see a new crop of equity market-curious investors enter, and Robinhood might be able to ride the wave.
From a more strategic perspective, Robinhood's bet is that they’ll be able to leverage their brand and, let’s be honest, their much deeper pockets to outspend the competitors to acquire customers. Yep, expect to see ads in the tube advertising commission-free stock trading.
At a time when the general trend in consumer fintech has been to pull back from global expansion, Robinhood is bucking the trend. It’s a brave move, given how well-rounded many of the offerings are in the UK and how much of a lead they have over the US company when it comes to brand recognition. Many will be watching to see if Robinhood’s UK playbook works. If it does, we might see US fintechs dusting off their UK expansion plans.
⤷ GoCardless to buy Nuapay from EML Payments
GoCardless is acquiring Nuapay from EML Payments for €32.75m to enhance its bank payments services. This acquisition will enable GoCardless to expand its customer segments and provide new disbursement capabilities in various vertical sectors like payroll, financial services, utilities, insurance, gaming, and gambling.
According to the article, GoCardless' CEO sees Nuapay as a strategic fit for their growth plans to establish a global bank payment network. EML Payments decided to sell Nuapay because it was deemed non-core and unprofitable, projecting a loss of A$2m in EBITDA for the full year 2024.
🥡 Takeaway: In 2021, EML acquired Nuapay in a forward-looking move aimed at bolstering its open banking capabilities. Specifically, the company was looking to grow beyond its general purpose reloadable (GPR) card heritage into what it saw as the future of payments: A2A payments.
In an investor presentation not long after the acquisition, they highlighted how incorporating an A2A payment function would allow them to offer their customers a ‘next-gen digital wallet’. This is pretty prescient, considering where most think A2A payments are headed.
Unfortunately, that’s not how it panned out for the Aussie payments company. Only a few months after the purchase of Nuapay, they found themselves the subject of serious allegations relating to major breaches of AML and CTF laws in Ireland relating to their European operations. Although unrelated to the Nuapay acquisition, as you might imagine, it became a massive distraction for the company as management struggled to get the remediation process under control.
Fast-forward to today, and it seems the company is trying to return to its roots in the GPR card segment and abandoning its vision for A2A payments as ‘non-core’ to its operations. This is a shame, really.
It’ll be interesting to see what GoCardless do with Nuapay and how it fits in with their move into A2A as a disbursement method and, more importantly, whether they can turn this loss-making asset into something more akin to what the EML initially thought it could be for their business.
⤷ Australian Bureau of Statistics reveal details of 'sizeable' increase in card fraud as Australians lose $2.2 billion in 2023
The Australian Bureau of Statistics reported a significant increase in card fraud incidents in 2023, with Australians losing $2.2b to such fraud. The data revealed that 1.8m people experienced card fraud, an increase from the previous year.
The median amount lost per card fraud incident was around $200, totalling $2.2b in gross losses. Despite some reimbursement, the net loss to victims was $476m.
Individuals aged 45-54 were most frequently affected, and those in specific demographics, like older individuals and those in higher income brackets, were more at risk.
🥡 Takeaway: Fraud data is always a fascinating read. In many ways, I think it’s underutilised by those considering opportunities in fintech (or regtech, for that matter).
As fraud continues to snake up and to the right in every market, it presents a massive opportunity for startups — and it’s only going to get crazier in a world of more capable AI models.
I’m sure scammers are licking their lips, thinking of ways to use the latest models to scam 50-year-olds out of $200, at scale. Likewise, I think founders should be thinking about products they can build to protect them from the rising tide of deep fake scams coming online.
⤷ Revolut introduces Point-of-Sale iPad app
Revolut has released a PoS iPad app tailored for the hospitality industry to streamline operations like payments, transactions, and order taking. The system focuses on customer care and sales growth and aims to eliminate the need for extensive admin tasks and lengthy contracts for businesses.
🥡 Takeaway: Revolut has been on a heater recently. I’m not sure what’s going on at Revolut, but the product cadence has really started to pick up.
You might recall that a few weeks ago, they announced an eSim product, a new HR product offering for businesses, and now a PoS product for the hospitality sector.
There’s clearly a push by senior management at Revolut to expand the offering — maybe ahead of a listing? Regardless of the reason, what’ll be interesting is how they unify the plethora of financial services into a coherent offering vs just a mishmash of unrelated products, and more importantly, how they turn these into new profitable lines of business.
⤷ Starbucks is shutting down its NFT rewards program
Starbucks launched a beta NFT rewards program called Starbucks Odyssey in late 2022, but it will be ending the program without ever leaving the beta phase. The program will officially end on March 31, with users in the closed beta having until March 25 to complete any remaining activities to earn NFTs and reward points.
🥡 Takeaway: RIP Starbucks NFTs. For those tracking corporates and their exploration (maybe dalliances is a better description) of blockchain technology, you might recall Starbucks shared its crypto-related ambitions in 2022, with the CEO mentioning NFTs as part of the company's plans.
Clearly, that hasn’t come to fruition with the axing of this somewhat coherent-sounding product. To be honest, offering little digital tchotchke and rewards sounds like something a Starbucks superfan might be down for. It’s just a shame they never took the idea into production.
In any case, this is another one to add to the digital graveyard of failed NFT projects from corporates.
💸 Notable Funding Announcements
Last week, there was an uptick in fintech financings announced, with 72 funding rounds completed and companies collectively securing $796m in investment.
⤷ VCs double down on fintech Coast, which aims to be the Brex for ‘real-world’ industries
Coast, a fuel and fleet spending management firm, announced last week that it had raised $92m in new capital. The funding includes $25m in equity capital from investors like BoxGroup and Accel and $67m in debt from Silicon Valley Bank and TriplePoint Capital.
Coast aims to improve fleet payments using mobile technology and vehicle data, providing customisable policies for fleet managers.
🥡 Takeaway: For the uninitiated, the world of fuel and fleet cards is massive. In the US, fleet vehicles consume around 60 billion gallons of fuel annually. Whether it’s the travelling salesman or the truck driver, the fuel card lives in the wallets of many Americans.
The big player in the US market is WEX, the NYSE-listed company currently serving around 25-30% of the overall market. In a world where innovation is slow, and distribution is the name of the game, WEX has thrived.
Presumably, Coast and its investors see an opportunity to take what Ramp and Brex have done in the world of SME banking and apply it to fuel and fleet cards. Moreover, with approximately 30-40% of fleet vehicles still not using a fleet card, there is ample opportunity for growth and market penetration for new players.
It’ll be interesting to see how Coast continues to grow its proposition and expand into new markets while taking on a highly focused incumbent like WEX.
⤷ Solaris raises €96 million in funding
Solaris, a German Banking-as-a-Service company, has raised €96m in a Series F funding round. They also secured a financial guarantee of up to €100m in capital equivalent — to allow them to execute a major credit card contract with Munich-based motor association Adac, involving issuing Adac-branded credit cards to the club's 21m members for the next ten years.
Despite reporting a €56m loss in fiscal year 2022, Solaris aims to boost annual sales by over €100m with this new contract. The funding round was led by SBI Group, one of Solaris' early strategic investors.
🥡 Takeaway: Unlike the US BaaS market, the EU is much more fragmented. As the market map below highlights, navigating the core infrastructure needed to launch a consumer-facing fintech product is much more complex in the EU than it is across the pond.

Recently, this has become even more complex, as we’ve seen some once-popular options face regulatory challenges and others face the harsh commercial realities of building a BaaS product.
In some ways, this has opened the way for new entrants and old stalwarts like Solaris to fill the void. As the money starts to flow back into consumer fintech—albeit slowly—it’s looking like the perfect time to beef up the war chest. This is especially true when you consider the next wave of fintech startups being birthed and hunting for a solid platform on which to build their product. Building up resources now means companies like Solaris can be the go-to spot for the next wave of fintech startups and vertical SaaS players… or so they and their investors hope.
🎧 Resources & Recommendations
⤷ Highnote: Molding a Modern Card Platform
On this episode of Research Radio, John Macllwaine, CEO and Co-founder of Highnote, discusses Highnote’s offering and how it differentiates from the sea of other BaaS offerings in the market.
He also discusses the impact of marketplaces on brands, what this means for embedded fintech offerings and the innovative financial solutions for business growth that companies can now deploy using an embedded approach.
⤷ Finding Founder-Market Fit with AngelList's Avlok Kohli and On Deck's David Booth
On this episode of Request For Startups, Avlok Kohli, CEO of AngelList, sits down with Erik Torenberg and David Booth to discuss Founder-Market fit, startup moats, and the 'dislocation' being caused by AI.
During their conversation they explore areas ripe for exploration in startups, the “compound startup” strategy, and why now is the time to build. The conversation also touches on the importance of founder-market fit, strategic planning, and innovations in operations and strategic decisions.
A great listen for fintech founders looking to navigate building a product in the current market and fascinating insight into how AngelList think about building new fintech products.
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