Major UK Building Societies Set Sights on Atom Bank Takeover
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Major UK Building Societies Set Sights on Atom Bank Takeover
Two of the UK’s biggest building societies are preparing bids for FinTech Atom Bank.
Yorkshire Building Society and Leeds Building Society, both headquartered in the north of England, are among groups considering a takeover of the challenger bank, which was founded in 2014.
According to people familiar with the matter, Atom had intended to pursue an initial public offering, but its owners have since opted for a sale process.
Atom, which has about 250,000 customers, is aiming to get more than £600mn. This would mark a significant increase in valuation for a bank that was valued at £350mn when it raised funds last year.
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#FINTECHREPORT
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INSIGHTS
🇳🇱 DashDevs will attend Money20/20 Europe 2026 in Amsterdam, where the team plans to meet with FinTech founders, product leaders, and infrastructure providers. The company said discussions will focus on digital banking, payments infrastructure, open banking, compliance automation, and embedded finance solutions.
📊 The South Africa 🇿🇦 FinTech Map includes 150+ FinTech companies.
FINTECH NEWS
🇬🇧 Top UK building societies plot bids for digital bank Atom, whose owners are seeking a valuation of more than £600 million. The potential deal reflects a broader trend of UK mutual lenders pursuing acquisitions to expand scale, strengthen competitiveness, and broaden their product offerings.
🌍 Revolut, Wayve and Elevenlabs join European tech sovereignty push. More than 100 European founders and CEOs have joined Balderton Capital’s new “Built in Europe” initiative, aimed at strengthening the continent’s technology sovereignty and highlighting the scale of its startup ecosystem. The campaign includes FinTech leaders such as Revolut, Cleo, Scalable Capital, Lendable, and GoCardless.
🇺🇸 OpenPayd targets a Nasdaq Listing at a unicorn valuation after agreeing to merge with Titan Acquisition Corp. The transaction could provide up to $276 million in gross proceeds to support OpenPayd’s expansion across fiat, stablecoin, and blockchain-based payment infrastructure, with a particular focus on the U.S. market and emerging agentic payment use cases.
PAYMENTS NEWS
🇭🇰 Mastercard enhances the travel experience with contactless card payment on Airport Express. This enhancement enables cardholders to enjoy seamless, tap-and-go journeys between the airport and the city, further strengthening Hong Kong’s position as a globally connected smart travel hub.
🌍 Mastercard advances instant cross-border payments with TIPS cross-currency pilot. Through Mastercard Move, the company successfully processed and settled real-time payments between euros and Danish kroner, demonstrating how cross-border transactions can be executed with greater speed, transparency, and reduced settlement risk.
🌍 Mastercard advances Europe’s checkout transformation on the road to 2030. Working with banks, merchants and payment partners across the ecosystem, Mastercard is scaling technologies such as tokenisation, Click to Pay and payment passkeys to make digital checkout faster, safer and more seamless for consumers, while helping merchants reduce fraud and improve approval rates.
🇮🇳 India's RBI plans expansion of digital rupee through welfare schemes, cross-border payments. The central bank has already piloted programmable digital rupee disbursements for government benefit schemes and is working with partners in Singapore and the United Arab Emirates on cross-border payment initiatives.
🇮🇳 UPI transactions hit a record high of ₹29.9 lakh crore in May. National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) said the value of transactions was at ₹29.03 lakh crore in April against ₹25.14 lakh crore in the same month a year ago, registering a 19% growth on an annual basis.
🇧🇪 Money transfer giant Wise was investigated for half a billion in suspicious transactions. Prosecutors in Belgium opened the investigation last year after noticing that Wise accounts had featured in hundreds of requests for cross-border help in criminal proceedings from more than 30 countries across Europe.
🌍 Visa strengthens long-term commitment to Europe with new €500m investment in regional infrastructure, growth and innovation. The investments are focused on strengthening payment resilience, AI-driven innovation, cybersecurity, and digital payments infrastructure across the region.
🌍 Flutterwave hits 1 billion transactions and processes $40bn in payments, highlighting the growing adoption of digital payments across Africa. The company also expanded its regulatory footprint with new licences in Senegal, Zambia, and Cameroon, while strengthening its cross-border capabilities through stablecoin partnerships with Circle and Polygon.
DIGITAL BANKING NEWS
🌍 Revolut has launched a new privacy-focused payment card across the UK and the European Economic Area, featuring no printed card number, CVV, or other sensitive details on the physical card. All card information is accessible only through the Revolut app. Additionally, Revolut vows to hire 200 more French staff in Europe's growth push. The new hires will focus largely on fraud prevention and sales and will be added over the next few years, Revolut said in a statement.
🇺🇸 Nomura-backed Laser Digital secures conditional approval for a US banking license. The move would allow it to hold and administer tokenised, digital and conventional assets in the U.S. under federal supervision upon receiving a full sign-off from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, Laser Digital said in a statement.
BLOCKCHAIN/CRYPTO NEWS
🇮🇳 Coinbase launches in India with direct INR rails. Indian customers can now deposit and withdraw INR directly on Coinbase, access spot and perpetual futures trading, and use the same platform trusted by institutions and traders around the world.
PARTNERSHIPS
🇺🇸 Coinbase and Kalshi bring regulated perpetual crypto futures to US investors. By housing these contracts within a CFTC-regulated framework, the exchanges aim to offer a secure alternative for institutional and retail investors previously forced to navigate opaque or offshore venues for access.
🇺🇸 Visa partners with PingPong for a global business card-to-account payments launch. The solution enables corporates to settle any supplier invoice using their existing commercial credit card, even if the supplier does not accept card payments.
🌍 The National Bank of Rwanda and the National Bank of Cambodia announced a new cross-border payments cooperation initiative. The partnership aims to modernise payment systems, improve financial connectivity and support trade, tourism and broader economic relations between both countries.
DONEDEAL FUNDING NEWS
🇺🇸 Saris raises $28.8M to push agentic workflow automation for banks. CEO Danial Jameel said the new capital would help scale Saris’ platform across more financial institutions, deepen integrations with partners like Fiserv, Encompass, and MeridianLink, and expand the teams that train and deploy AI agents.
🇬🇧 Gradient Labs raises $13M for FinTech agents. London-headquartered Gradient Labs said it will use the funding for its US expansion plans and on strategy and tech improvements. Continue reading
M&A
🇫🇷 Worldline announces the finalisation of the divestment of the Mobility & e-Transactional Services perimeter to Magellan Partners Group. The divestment is part of Worldline’s North Star 2030 strategy to sharpen its focus on core payment services in Europe, with total proceeds from recently announced asset sales expected to reach €590–640 million.
🌍 OpenFX doubles down on Europe with the Embed acquisition. The deal brings EU and UK payments licences, strengthens OpenFX’s regulatory footprint, and supports its strategy of combining stablecoin-powered settlement with local financial infrastructure across key global markets.
MOVERS AND SHAKERS
🇨🇭 Hercle appoints Gabriele Zuliani as Chief Revenue Officer. In the new role, Zuliani will take full ownership of Hercle's commercial engine, spanning Sales, Account Management, Business Development, Marketing, and Client Onboarding, with a mandate to convert the company's institutional footprint into repeatable revenue growth across global corridors.
🇬🇧 AccessPay appoints Johan Jardevall as CEO to lead the next phase of growth. Johan brings more than 25 years of experience leading and scaling enterprise software and SaaS businesses across Europe and the UK. He has held several senior executive and CEO positions within high-growth technology companies.
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