The Angel CoFund (ACF) is a UK based venture capital fund that co-invests alongside syndicates of sector-smart Angel investors, to fund and scale some of the best high-potential early-stage businesses. The Angel CoFund (ACF) is an active co-investment fund that seeks to achieve consistent returns by partnering with experienced syndicates of angel investors to help fund and scale early-stage businesses. Launched in 2011, ACF’s experienced team has a track record of backing some of the UK’s best success stories through its proven co-investment model, working alongside the unrivalled skills and expertise of the fund’s network of entrepreneurs and private investor partners.   Since its launch, the fund has invested over £40M, alongside more than £200M from business angels and other investors, creating a portfolio of more than 80 companies. In many cases, the fund has supported companies through multiple rounds of funding as they have scaled.

ACF Investors

Barclays PLC is a global financial services company that provides various financial products and services worldwide. It is engaged in retail banking, credit cards, corporate and investment banking, and wealth management with an extensive international presence in Europe, the Americas, Africa, and Asia. The company offers current accounts, savings products, Woolwich-branded mortgages, unsecured loans, general insurance, and banking and money transmission services to small- and medium-sized businesses; investment and insurance products; business lending services; bank assurance solutions; and retail, credit and debit card, and corporate services. It also offers international payments services for consumer and business customers, including credit cards and consumer lending services; investment banking services comprising strategic advisory, financing, and risk management services to large corporate, government, and institutional clients; integrated corporate banking solutions, including cash management, lending, and trade financing services to corporate and financial institutions as well as multinationals; and a range of wealth and investment management services such as international and private banking, investment management, fiduciary, and brokerage services. With over 300 years of history and expertise in banking, Barclays operates in over 50 countries and employs more than 147,500 people. Barclays moves, lends, invests, and protects money of more than 48 million customers and clients worldwide. The company was formerly known as Barclays Bank Limited and changed its name to Barclays PLC in January 1985. It was founded in 1896 and is headquartered in London, United Kingdom.

Barclays Corporate Banking

Molten Ventures is a venture capital company. They invest in software, telecoms, electronics, the internet, MedTech, and cleantech services. They support visionary entrepreneurs who will invent the future.

Molten Ventures

Goldman Sachs Asset Management provides institutional and individual investors with investment and advisory solutions, with strategies spanning asset classes, industries, and geographies.  They seek to build long-term relationships based on conviction, sustainable outcomes, and shared success over time. It was founded in 1991 and is headquartered in New York, United States.

Goldman Sachs Asset Management

Mastercard is a payments and technology company that connects consumers, businesses, merchants, and governments. They provide data services and marketing center. Their marketing materials help card portfolios and businesses. They also provide fraud prevention solutions and payment ecosystem security.

Mastercard

83North is a global venture capital firm with more than $1.8B million under management. The firm invests across all stages of consumer and enterprise companies and backed some of the fast-growing category leaders. 83North has two main offices in London and Herzliya.

83North

Lloyds Banking Group is a financial services group focused on retail and commercial customers, It is their role to help businesses and individuals while making a positive contribution to the communities in which they operate.

Lloyds Banking Group

Nationwide Building Society is a commercial bank that serves as a building society, savings provider, and mortgage lender. The bank provides a diverse range of financial services, including savings, mortgages, current accounts, credit cards, investments, and loans.

Nationwide

British Patient Capital invests in a diversified portfolio of best-in-class venture and growth capital funds and start ups, capturing value through financing the growth of innovative companies. We invest on a commercial basis to deliver competitive returns and manage risk. As well as providing our own funding we work to encourage more investors to make allocations to this asset class by demonstrating that a long-term patient capital investment strategy can produce commercially attractive returns. Once we’ve established a strong record, and have proved the value of the asset class, we intend to privatise British Patient Capital at an appropriate time in the future.

British Patient Capital

The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. provides investment banking, securities, and investment management services, as well as financial services to corporations, financial institutions, governments, and high-net-worth individuals worldwide. Its Investment Banking segment offers financial advisory services, including advisory assignments concerning mergers and acquisitions, divestitures, corporate defense, risk management, and restructurings and spin-offs; and underwriting services comprising public offerings and private placements of a range of securities, loans, and other financial instruments, and derivative transactions. The company’s Institutional Client Services segment provides client execution services, such as fixed income, currency, and commodities client execution related to making markets in interest rate products, credit products, mortgages, currencies, and commodities; and equities related to making markets in equity products, as well as executes and clears institutional client transactions on stock, options, and futures exchanges. This segment also engages in the securities services business providing financing, securities lending, and other brokerage services to institutional clients, including hedge funds, mutual funds, pension funds, and foundations. Its Investing and Lending segment originates longer-term loans; and invests in debt securities, loans, public and private equity securities, real estate, consolidated investment entities, distressed assets, currencies, commodities, and power generation facilities. The company’s investment management segment provides investment products and services, as well as offers wealth advisory services, including portfolio management and financial counseling, and brokerage and other transaction services.

Goldman Sachs

Visa is an American multinational financial services company that facilitates electronic payment systems throughout the world. The company operates the retail electronic payments network through the transfer of value and information among financial institutions, merchants, consumers, businesses, and government entities.

Visa

Barclays is a transatlantic consumer and wholesale bank with global reach, offering products, and services. The company's businesses include consumer banking and payments operations around the world, as well as a top-tier, full-service, global corporate, and investment bank, all of which are supported by our service company which provides technology, operations, and functional services across the Group.  It was founded in 1690 and is based in London.

Barclays

Form3

Form3 delivers cloud-based connectivity, payment processing, clearing, and settlement services. It is a fully managed payment technology service combining a powerful AWS cloud processing platform, multiple-scheme payment gateways, and a fully managed 24x7 service model. Form3's powerful micro-services architecture and API's provide a single point of simple access to the full universe of payment schemes. Its clients include a wide range of regulated financial institutions, including leading banks, non-bank financial institutions, and fintech companies (payment institutions, e-money providers, and pre-paid card providers).  Form3 was founded in 2016 and is based in London, England.

Form3 is a British company that offers banking support services by providing a cloud-based payment processing, clearing, and settlement infrastructure for banks and regulated FinTechs through APIs. The platform facilitates agency payments through several popular clearing and settlement systems, including the UK Bacs, Faster Payments, Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA), and SWIFT payments.

Democratizing financial technology with a suite of API-based solutions

FinTech Infrastructure

Form3: Cloud-Native Account-To-Account Platform Company Closes $60 Million (Series C Extension)

Form3 is a British company that offers banking support services by providing a cloud-based payment processing, clearing, and settlement infrastructure for banks and regulated FinTechs through APIs. The platform facilitates agency payments through several popular clearing and settlement systems, including the UK Bacs, Faster Payments, Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA), and SWIFT payments.Form3 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/20436">completed testing and certification </a>for the Federal Reserve's new instant payment offering, FedNowSM Service, in July 2023. The company was reportedly among the first companies to complete testing and certification for it.Key customers and partnershipsForm3’s platform is reportedly used by Tier1 banks and fast-growing FinTechs in the UK and Europe.In March 2024, Form3 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/27918">partnered</a> with Portugal-based <a href="https://sp-edge.com/companies/71031">Feedzai</a>, an anti-fraud and financial crime software provider, to launch an authorized push payment (APP) fraud prevention solution. Form3 partnered with Mastercard in July 2021 to launch the “PayPort+” gateway that provides easier access for financial institutions and payment service providers into the UK’s Faster Payments Network (a network that enables real-time mobile, internet, telephone, and standing order payments). This partnership was formed shortly after Mastercard invested an undisclosed sum in Form3 in December 2020.Form3 has also partnered with British payments and accounting firm Countingup in September 2020 to help small businesses leverage real-time payments to simplify workflows and manage their finances and accounting functions. Form3 subsequently partnered with Goldman Sachs (GS) in April 2022, to leverage GS’ Transaction Banking (TxB) infrastructure and offer cross-border payments and FX capabilities to Form3’s regulated financial institution customers (across 124 currencies in 163 countries).

Cross River Bank provides a white-label banking-as-a-service (BaaS) platform for enterprises, combining banking services, payments, and marketplace lending infrastructure to build fintechs. Its solutions comprise demand deposits, savings accounts, credit and debit cards, and payment clearing services, including automated clearing house (ACH) and real-time payments. The company also provides banking and payment infrastructure for the crypto industry, including risk management services for its crypto clients. Key customers and partnerships As of December 2020, the company had over 400 employees, and had entered into more than 30 partnerships. Moreover, as of March 2021, the platform had been used to support over 375,000 small businesses through the paycheck protection program (PPP).Cross River Bank teamed up with UK-based BaaS provider <a href="https://sp-edge.com/companies/421515">Railsr </a>in January 2019 to launch a common API for their platforms to be used globally. As of April 2022, Cross River had over 80 clients including lenders such as Affirm, Best Egg, and Upstart, neobanks such as <a href="https://sp-edge.com/companies/220119">Revolut </a>, and blockchain-based payment processing platform GreenBox. The platform reportedly originated over USD 24 billion in loans per annum, around 10x the value of loans it originated in 2015. Cross River Bank has expanded its operations by acquiring Betterfin, a platform offering lending-as-a-service (LaaS) solutions, in November 2021. Through the acquisition, Cross River Bank leveraged Betterfin’s software to digitize parts of the small-business lending process (such as origination and underwriting).The company partnered with <a href="https://sp-edge.com/companies/1643">American Express </a>(Amex) to enable FinTechs to issue credit cards through Cross River Bank, on the Amex network, while also providing select Amex benefits to the FinTechs.Funding and financials The company <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/9458">raised USD 620 million in funding </a>co-led by Eldridge and a16z, at a valuation of over USD 3 billion, to invest in product developments, recruitment, international expansion, and boosting strategic partnerships.

Cross River Bank

Synctera was co-founded in 2020 by Peter Hazlehurst, the former head of Uber Money, who previously led the development of Google Wallet. The company offers an API-based infrastructure platform for community and regional banks to find and partner with FinTechs. This enables FinTechs to leverage the former’s licenses to embed FDIC-insured mobile checking, debit cards, savings accounts, and payment innovations, among other features. The API platform offered to the banks will then be sold to the FinTechs to code on. Although the end customers interact with the FinTechs, they legally belong to the bank.<a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/8117">Synctera mainly charges the banks </a>based on the interchange fees they earn (half of the interchange fees, as of January 2022) from the services provided. It does not charge them an initial amount to use the platform. Moreover, the platform also embeds fraud-as-a-service and charges FinTechs on a per transaction basis (4 cents per transaction) should they choose to use it. It subsequently shares that revenue 50/50 with the banks.The company launched the “t-minus10” project in January 2022, which offers a live sandbox for FinTechs to build apps, test, and go to market, enhancing their access to banking partners. It subsequently launched a “Smart Charge Card” (APIs to build, launch, and issue charge cards) and “White-label Banking App” (a codebase for developers to build embedded banking products or neobank apps) infrastructure in October 2022.Key customers and partnershipsIn February 2022, Lineage Bank (a community bank in Tennessee) and GoGetr (FinTech aiming to promote health and wealth management) became the first companies to launch a banking solution using the Synctera platform. As of March 2023, the platform was working with around 50 fintechs, of which 14 were live (including Wayapay and Float). Synctera reportedly had over 20 implementations set for launch in the following two months.Synctera announced a new card issuing and management infrastructure offering (Card-as-a-Service), in July 2021, which it developed in partnership with Mastercard and leading card issuing infrastructure disruptor, <a href="https://sp-edge.com/companies/64287">Marqeta</a>.Funding and financialsIn March 2024, Synctera raised USD 18.6 million in <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/27244">Series A1 extension</a> co-led by Lightspeed and Fin Capital. The company earmarked the funds to support business growth by facilitating more complex use cases across the US and international markets. The company also <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/16980?industryIds=53">raised USD 15 million</a> in funding led by NAventures in March 2023, to invest in expanding the platform’s use cases and broadening its geographic footprint beyond the US (including expanding to Canada). Meanwhile, Synctera has also partnered with the National Bank of Canada to enable companies to launch FinTech apps and embedded banking products in Canada.

Synctera

Based in the UK, Weavr, formerly known as Open Payments Cloud, was spun out of payment provider Ixaris in 2019. Weavr offers the infrastructure for enterprises to embed banking services across various industries, including education, fitness, logistics, etc. Weavr’s “Meta” platform combines multiple banking and payments partners in one platform through application programming interfaces (APIs). Using the APIs, enterprises can embed virtual banking services such as card payments, fund transfers, and international banking accounts.Weavr expanded its operations to Singapore in November 2022, as part of its global expansion plans.Key customers and partnershipsAs of July 2021, Weavr’s customers included Finway, Thanks Ben, and MySkillCamp, among others.In October 2019, Weavr partnered with payment service providers Global Processing Services (GPS), Paynetics, and iDenfy to enable developers to create and run sophisticated and streamlined payment experiences for their European customers through Weavr.Funding and financialsWeavr <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/8647?industryIds=53">raised USD 40 million </a>in Series A funding in February 2022, led by Tiger Global, less than a year after <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/4166">raising GBP 4 million (USD 5.5 million) </a>in seed funding in July. The funds were earmarked for business development and recruitment to support Weavr’s expansion to the US market, while also supporting its continued expansion in the UK and Europe.

Weavr

MX offers an open finance portal, data connectivity application programming interface (API), and MX platform API for banks, credit unions, and other financial service providers. The company’s solutions allow its clients to utilize financial data to reduce fraud, approve loans faster, and improve their customer experiences. In addition to APIs and connections, MX also offers a range of capabilities, including data aggregation, analytics, financial feed insights, wealth and investment services, and verification services. MX looks to enable banks and financial institutions to launch next-generation services and apps that automate and personalize financial experiences. As of January 2021, the company noted that it worked with more than 2,000 banks, credit unions, and FinTech companies, and its platform reached over 200 million end-users. Moreover, it also powered 43 of the top 50 digital banks as of the same period. In <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/8753?industryIds=53">February 2022, MX partnered </a>with <a href="https://sp-edge.com/companies/361160">Rize </a>, to enable users to access Rize’s banking infrastructure to build, launch, and scale financial products through a single API, thereby reducing the development time and cost. In January 2021, MX raised USD 300 million in a Series C funding round led by TPG Capital, at a valuation of USD 1.9 billion. The newly raised funds are to be invested in improving MX’s capabilities, expanding its global presence, and increasing its workforce. In January 2021, MX noted that its headcount tripled over the past two years, reaching 550 staff members. The company appointed Shane Evans as interim chief executive officer (CEO) in January 2022, to prepare the company for an IPO or sale (at a valuation of over USD 5 billion) and oversee its growth.

Bankable is a banking-as-a-service (BaaS) infrastructure provider allowing financial institutions and corporations to utilize its API to integrate banking services. It provides a platform for its enterprise customers to offer modular banking services, including ledger management (process data from multiple banks to support cash management for global corporate affairs), digital banking, payment cards, and e-wallets. The company expanded its platform by <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/19662">acquiring Arex Markets </a>in June 2023, to embed working capital solutions (such as flexible invoice financing, corporate credit cards, lodged cars, and revolving credit). The company has a global presence, with operations spanning from the US to the Middle East as of January 2021. Bankable noted that the expansion of its global footprint also helps its European and US FinTech clients expand their operations internationally. Key customers and partnerships In January 2020, the company partnered with the diversified FinTech infrastructure provider <a href="https://sp-edge.com/companies/85350">Plaid </a>, which enabled Bankable’s customers to use Plaid’s tech to connect to more than 15,000 banks in the US and Europe. Funding and financialsIn April 2019, <a href="https://sp-edge.com/companies/13061">Visa </a>invested an undisclosed sum in Bankable and entered a partnership with the startup. Through the partnership, Visa members obtained access to Bankable’s platform, while Bankable used VisaNet (Visa’s electronic global payments network) to extend its international payment and banking solutions.

Bankable

Platforms that allow FinTechs to integrate banking services such as opening and maintaining accounts, facilitating card payments, etc.


Platforms that enable FinTechs to integrate a range of payment-related services such as one-time payments, subscriptions, and receipt management for domestic and cross-border transactions.


Companies that enable organizations to embed anti-money laundering (AML), identity verification, and know-your-customer (KYC) solutions.


Platforms that allow FinTechs to integrate lending services,  by typically applying AI/ML technology to a spending analysis to analyze creditworthiness.

Companies providing APIs and integrations for FinTechs to access securities markets, facilitate transactions and clearing, and provide insights to help end-users manage their finances.

May specialize in promoting inclusiveness in financial services, primarily in the investment and lending spaces

AI/ML can improve the quality of their offerings, such as using AI/ML to reduce biases

Used for payment completions, accessing banking and transaction data, and providing financial insights, among others

<div>
 
 Form3, a cloud-based payment processing platform, recently raised USD 60 million in a Series C extension funding round. The round was led by British Patient Capital, and saw participation from existing investors like Visa, Goldman Sachs, Mastercard and others. This funding round has raised Form3's post-money valuation to an impressive USD 570 million.
 The company has shared its intentions to utilize this fund to create new products and services. It also plans to aid its growth in key markets such as UK, Europe, and the US, and venture into new territories. 
 Interestingly, Form3 is responsible for handling more than half of all non-cash payment volume in the UK. In just the past six to nine months, the company reported a 2x growth in its global processing volume. It expects to double this figure again in the coming 12 months.
 
</div>

Form3

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