The company gained its U.K. trading license in November, has over 800,000 U.K. trading customers, and already offers U.S. and European equities, Bloomberg reported Friday (April 11).

“We are including U.K. stocks in our offering as we’ve seen interest from our U.K. customers to get exposure to the local economy and diversify their portfolio further,” Yana Shkrebenkova, CEO of wealth and trading U.K. at Revolut, said in the report.

When Revolut received its U.K. trading license from the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) in November, the company said it planned to offer its U.K. customers new trading products and features.

The receipt of the license made Revolut Trading an authorized investment firm, allowing it to introduce U.K. and European Union stocks and exchange-traded funds (ETFs).

The company had already operated a trading feature as an appointed representative with a principal in the U.K. since 2019, allowing it to offer an investment service through its app and enable retail customers to buy and sell shares listed in the U.S.

“Having launched our successful investment product five years ago, we strive to bring best-in-class investment products to our customers in the U.K.,” Shkrebenkova said in a November press release. “We know that there is so much more our Revolut Trading customers want from our platform, and we are working hard to deliver this, rolling out new features safely and considerately.”

It was reported March 13 that Revolut was hiring 100 new staffers while preparing to expand its U.K. banking business after receiving its British banking license last summer.

The FinTech had already begun building that side of its business and expects to have a staff of around 200 by the end of the year.

On March 18, it was reported that Revolut is working to build out its banking operations in the U.K., expand globally and then launch an initial public offering (IPO).

The company aims to become a global financial services app. It currently lets users make payments, trade assets and hold money, and it aims to expand this offering to include loans, overdrafts and mortgages.

The post Revolut to Add UK Stocks to Trading Platform appeared first on PYMNTS.com.

The platform currently supports 45 French brands and aims to support 150 brands across Europe within four years, starting with expansion in the U.K. and Italy, Faume said in a Thursday (April 10) press release.

Faume recently signed its first partnership in the U.K., with fashion house Victoria Beckham, and expects to add several heritage brands in Italy later this year, according to the release.

The company helps its existing clients sell in not only France but also Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain and Italy, per the release. Since its launch in 2020, the company has enabled the sale of 300,000 secondhand premium fashion pieces, 40% of which were sold outside France.

“At Faume, we show daily that resale is a lever for brand resilience — combining sustainability and profitability across the board,” Faume CEO Aymeric Déchin said in the release. “Our solution, already adopted by more than 45 leading brands, proves that building a resale model is not only possible and valuable, but also drives long-term performance.”

Faume enables premium brands to enter the second-hand market without compromising their image or losing their control over distribution, according to the release.

The platform allows them to launch resale channels under their own name and branding; deliver a premium customer experience; retain control over pricing, image and inventory; and embed this circular model into their own ecosystem, the release said.

With this solution, brands can launch their own branded resale channels in four to eight weeks, per the release.

One of the companies using the platform is fashion brand Soeur, which launched Soeur Second Hand in collaboration with Faume, according to the release.

“We’re pleased with the rollout and proud to offer a premium in-store take-back service,” Soeur Managing Director Freja Day said in the release. “Already available in 14 countries, it reflects our commitment to circular and conscious fashion.”

Fleek, a London-based secondhand clothing platform that connects wholesalers and retailers, raised $20.4 million in November to expand its offerings. Fleek works with 10,000 resellers and retailers in 70 countries and moves 2.5 million secondhand clothing items from 1,000 wholesale suppliers.

In September, fast-fashion brand Zara said it was bringing its secondhand clothing marketplace, Zara Pre-Owned, to the U.S. Zara introduced its Pre-Owned business in 2023, part of a wave of other retailers providing similar services amid pressures to improve their sustainability practices.

The post Faume Raises $9.1 Million to Expand Fashion Resale Platform Across Europe appeared first on PYMNTS.com.

The round brings the company’s total funding to date to $2.2 billion, and it expects to add more Series E participants in the coming weeks, Nuro said in a Wednesday press release.

Nuro will use the new funding to scale its technology platform and advance its commercial partnerships, according to the release.

The company has a licensing-driven business model and offers its “vehicle-agnostic, cost-effective technology” to automotive manufacturers, suppliers and mobility companies that can integrate it into robotaxis, goods-delivery vehicles and personal vehicles, the release said.

“We’re excited to see strong investor enthusiasm for our Series E,” Nuro Co-founder and CEO Jiajun Zhu said in the release. “Our technology, years of experience with driver-out Level 4 deployments, and focus on licensing uniquely position us to help automakers, mobility platforms and commercial fleets accelerate their autonomy roadmaps.”

Nuro said in November that it expanded its deployment of autonomous vehicles in two cities in California — Mountain View and Palo Alto — and in Houston, Texas.

The company said it was ready to provide its autonomy platform to automotive OEMs and mobility companies.

“Our latest driverless deployment demonstrates the maturity and capability of our AI platform, and we’re excited for potential partners to capitalize on the performance, safety and sophistication of the Nuro Driver to build their own incredible autonomy products,” Zhu said in a Nov. 19 press release.

Nuro announced the expansion of its business model to include licensing in September, saying that its partnering with automotive OEMs and mobility platforms would accelerate the adoption of autonomous vehicles.

The company said its licensing model offers a “commercially independent, road-proven platform” that automotive OEMs and mobility platforms can use to speed up their development and deployment of autonomous vehicles.

“We believe Nuro is positioned to be a major contributor to this autonomous future where people and goods mobility are free-flowing, representing a significant increase in the quality of life for everyone,” Zhu said in a Sept. 11 press release.

The post Nuro Raises $106 Million to Scale Autonomous Vehicle Technology Platform appeared first on PYMNTS.com.

“With this funding round, we’ll continue our mission of giving acquiring banks, marketplaces and platforms the technology they need to automatically split payments and process payouts at a much lower cost than solutions offered by Stripe Connect, Adyen and others in the market,” Alex Mackenzie, co-founder and managing director at Ryft, said in a Wednesday (April 9) post on LinkedIn.

Ryft’s solution enables business to accept online payments from major credit cards and preferred payment methods like Apple Pay and Google Pay; ensure smooth marketplace payments by automating split payments, customizing commission rates and holding funds until conditions are met; generate revenue from online payment fees; and process payments with full regulatory compliance, according to its website.

The company’s latest funding round was led by EdenBase, with support from British Business Bank, Pembroke VCT, The SideBySide Partnership, GPOS Investments, Ingenii VC and some executives from PayPal, Sadra Hosseini, co-founder and CEO at Ryft, said in a Wednesday post on LinkedIn.

“This means even bigger things ahead for Ryft; helping platforms, marketplaces and acquirers automate and scale payment flows efficiently, with full compliance,” Hosseini said in the post. “The funding will be used to help scale Ryft further internationally to really cater to our partners’ needs.”

Since its seed funding round of 1.2 million pounds in 2022, Ryft has secured a Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) license, partnered with American Express and Visa, and become a Mastercard Network Enablement Provider, Pembroke VCT said in a Wednesday post on LinkedIn.

“Ryft is transforming the payments landscape by providing businesses with a secure, compliant and scalable solution to process, manage and monetize payments with ease,” Pembroke VCT said in the post. “Already trusted by over 1,500 businesses, Ryft is streamlining the payment process and driving efficiency across several industries.”

When announcing its partnership with American Express in March 2024, Ryft said that move would enable its merchants in the U.K. to accept payments from Amex cards and gain Amex benefits.

The post Ryft Raises $7.3 Million to Expand Embedded Payment Solution appeared first on PYMNTS.com.

The fund will seek global investors that want to invest in the U.S. tech industry at a time when President Donald Trump is encouraging companies to make products in the U.S., Reuters reported Tuesday (April 8), citing unnamed sources.

It is in its early stages and could take several months to close, according to the report.

Andreessen Horowitz did not immediately reply to PYMNTS’ request for comment.

The new fund would be the venture capital firm’s largest ever and would be surpassed only by two SoftBank Vision Funds, one of which raised $100 billion while the other raised $56 billion, the report said.

Sequoia Capital, which has over $56 billion in assets under management, has a fund that now stands at $19.6 billion, per the report.

Andreessen Horowitz currently has $45 billion of assets under management, according to the report.

A large part of the firm’s new fund would be devoted to follow-on investments into AI companies in its portfolio, which includes Databricks and xAI, the report said.

Andreessen Horowitz announced in April 2024 that it raised $7.2 billion to invest in tech startups, including those in the AI sector.

The firm said at the time in a press release that the bulk of the funding — $3.75 billion — would go to projects in its “Growth” category, for latter-stage startups, while $1.25 billion would be allocated for firms building AI infrastructure and $1 billion for startups creating AI applications.

It was reported Tuesday that the venture capital/startup space is in crisis mode as Trump’s new tariffs rock the global stock market.

The Bloomberg News report likened the mood inside Silicon Valley VC firms as the week began to the start of the pandemic five years ago.

On March 10, it was reported that excitement for AI had brought American startup investment to a three-year high, with much of this funding from the venture capital space being focused on a few very large private tech firms.

A Financial Times report said upward of $30 billion had been invested in tech startups at that point in the first quarter, with another $50 billion in fundraising in the works.

The post Report: Andreessen Horowitz Seeks to Raise $20 Billion for American AI Startups appeared first on PYMNTS.com.

Octane will use the funding to accelerate the development of its platform that uses machine learning to continuously analyze blockchain codebases, identify vulnerabilities and remediate them before they can be exploited, the company said in a Tuesday (April 8) press release.

“Flawed blockchain code enables billions in theft across crypto, with vulnerable smart contracts creating an ever-expanding attack surface as more value enters the ecosystem,” Octane CEO Giovanni Vignone said in the release.

Octane’s platform helps developers catch bugs before deployment and throughout the software development cycle, according to the release. It will soon offer code analysis for off-chain codebases as well.

The company’s seed funding round was co-led by Archetype and Winklevoss Capital, per the release.

“Securing smart contracts on the blockchain is one of the biggest challenges facing any crypto developer,” Tyler Winklevoss said in the release. “Octane allows devs to battle-test their smart contract code with AI-powered security testing before it hits production on the blockchain. This is huge for devs, companies and mainstream crypto adoption.”

A growing share of chief operating officers at organizations that generate more than $1 billion in annual revenue have implemented AI-powered automated cybersecurity management systems, according to the PYMNTS Intelligence report, “COOs Leverage GenAI to Reduce Data Security Losses.”

The report found that the share of these COOs who said their companies have implemented these systems leapt from about 17% in May to 55% in August.

This growth has been driven by COOs’ demand for GenAI-driven solutions to improve cybersecurity management at a time when companies face the threat of cyberattacks that are growing more sophisticated, according to the report.

Dream, a company focused on AI-powered cybersecurity for nations and critical infrastructure, said in February that it raised $100 million in a Series B funding round to expand into additional markets in which cyber threats pose challenges to national security.

In September, Torq raised $70 million in a Series C funding round to expand its AI-first cybersecurity hyperautomation solutions that automate, manage and monitor critical security operations center (SOC) responses.

The post Octane Secures $6.75 Million for AI-Powered Cybersecurity Solution for Blockchain appeared first on PYMNTS.com.

The new financing, announced Tuesday (April 8), brings the Israeli company’s total Series B funding round to $55 million.

“We’ve always believed that GRC has way more to offer the business than it gets credit for, and that the way to change that is through data,” Yair Kuznitsov, Anecdotes’ co-founder and CEO, wrote on the company’s blog. “With this new funding, we’re doubling down on our mission to help enterprises scale GRC, automate operations, and ensure risk management is both proactive and effective.”

According to the blog post, Anecdotes was born out of frustration with the amount of time GRC teams needed to spend compiling evidence that would soon become outdated. These teams, Kuznitsov argued, were forced to work with “fragmented information, siloed processes, and guesswork, limiting GRC’s potential.

“Enterprise GRC is at a critical inflection point,” he wrote. “Regulatory complexity is increasing, cyber threats are higher than ever, and new technologies create novel risks to mitigate. Yet, most GRC teams still rely on manual, point-in-time and inefficient workflows.”

Anecdotes’ platform, the company said, can automate evidence collection “on an enterprise scale,” notify companies of gaps in their programs as they occur and leverage existing work to help improve their programs.

With the new investment, the company said it is accelerating its development of artificial intelligence (AI) agents and automation to help GRC teams spot gaps, assess risks and take action faster.

As PYMNTS wrote last month, financial industry executives believe that companies have little choice but to employ AI for risk management.

“In 2025, there is pretty much no compliance without AI, because compliance became exponentially harder,” said Alexander Statnikov, co-founder and CEO of Crosswise Risk Management. “Think about all the change management that happens with regulations. Now, states will be stepping in. How do you stay on top of it?”

It’s a similar situation with business product development cycles, he added, which have gotten considerably faster.

“Rather than being a two-year cycle, it’s been a few weeks. Products are being shipped quicker,” Statnikov told PYMNTS. Mix in the complexity of Banking-as-a-Service and handling of third-party risk management, and “this makes AI a necessity for success of compliance.”

The post Anecdotes Raises $30 Million to Automate Risk and Compliance Tools appeared first on PYMNTS.com.

The company will start by acquiring digital assets in the Solana ecosystem through U.S. public markets, it said in a Monday press release.

Janover said in another Monday press release that majority ownership in the company has been acquired by a team of former leaders of crypto platform Kraken who are “dedicated to bridging the liquidity gap between traditional finance (TradFi) and decentralized finance (DeFi).”

Two members of the group that acquired Janover have been appointed by the board of directors to roles at the company: former Kraken Chief Strategy Officer Joseph Onorati is now chairman and CEO of Janover, and former Kraken Engineering Director Parker White is now chief investment officer and chief operating officer, according to the release.

In addition, former Kraken Chief Legal Officer Marco Santori will join the board of Janover, the release said.

Janover Founder Blake Janover and Director and Audit Committee Chair William Caragol will remain on the board, per the release.

The board has adopted a treasury policy in which the principal holding in its treasury reserve on the balance sheet will be allocated to digital assets, starting with Solana (SOL), and the company will consider acquiring Solana validators and acquiring and staking SOL through them, according to the release.

Janover will continue operating its core business — the platform that provides data and software subscriptions and value-add services to multifamily and commercial property professionals — and will continue its transition to a software-as-a-service (SaaS) business model, the release said.

The company plans to change its name to DeFi Development Corp., per the release.

“After building in the crypto industry for more than a decade, we are at a tipping point in mass DeFi adoption,” Onorati said in the release. “We’re proud to be the first to introduce a digital asset treasury strategy in the U.S. public markets initially focused on Solana.”

Corporate treasurers are increasingly evaluating crypto’s role in their financial ecosystem, PYMNTS reported in February. Companies such as MicroStrategy — which is now doing business as Strategy — and Block have added bitcoin to their balance sheets, while other firms across industries are exploring its potential as both an investment vehicle and a transactional asset.

Retail gaming destination GameStop said March 25 that its board voted unanimously to add bitcoin as a treasury reserve asset.

The post Janover Raises $42 Million to Accelerate Acquisition of Digital Assets appeared first on PYMNTS.com.

The company will use the new funding to accelerate expansion that has already seen it triple its user base over the past 12 months, Pennylane said in a Monday (April 7) message posted on and translated by LinkedIn.

Pennylane’s solution is now used by 4,500 accounting firms and 350,000 companies and is offered by 60 reseller integrators that help the company reach small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), according to the post.

“Our priority has always been to simplify your daily life and to enhance your expertise,” the company said in the post, per the translation. “This new stage in our development demonstrates our deep commitment to accountants and businesses.”

Pennylane’s latest funding round was co-led by Meritech Capital, CapitalG and Sequoia Capital, according to a Monday post on LinkedIn by Capital G, which is Alphabet’s independent growth fund.

CapitalG said in the post that Pennylane, which was founded in 2020, aims to “transform financial management for small businesses and accountants across Continental Europe.”

“Pennylane’s platform streamlines financial flows, automates tasks and empowers businesses with real-time, actionable data,” CapitalG said in its post.

The company’s accounting platform can handle expense management, banking, cash management and eInvoicing, CapitalG said in a Monday blog post.

The software brings automation to accountants, real-time insights to small business owners, and the ability to handle the complexities of accounting for the 22 million small business owners in Continental Europe, according to the post.

“We spent a year developing our perspective on how back-office technology in Europe will evolve, and how upcoming eInvoicing could change the current landscape,” the post said. “When we met the Pennylane team, we knew they were the ones who could make the difference for these accountants and small businesses.”

The move toward eInvoicing is making the entire B2B invoicing process more streamlined and better integrated into digital business ecosystems, PYMNTS reported in April 2024.

The workflow transformation promises to reduce errors, lower costs and speed up B2B payment processes.

The post Alphabet-Backed Pennylane Raises $82 Million to Expand Accounting Platform Across Europe appeared first on PYMNTS.com.

But as The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported Saturday (April 5), investors are choosing to keep their cash close to home rather than buying shares at lower prices.

During the first few days of the month, investors pumped upwards of $60 billion into money market funds, the report said. This has pushed assets in these funds to $7.4 trillion, the highest level since at least 1972.

According to the report, market observers have kept an eye on cash investments in recent years, expecting that much of it would eventually move into stocks. Such a shift seems to be in limbo for now, WSJ added.

“I’m just sitting on as much cash as possible,” said Matthew Shaughnessy, an investor who runs an auto repair shop and a pet spa in Idaho. “If I try to catch this falling knife, I’m just going to get cut over and over and over on the way down.”

Before Trump announced his new tariffs last week, Shaughnessy said he sold his Rivian and Roblox stock in anticipation of a wave of selloffs. He doesn’t intend to purchase additional stocks until more normal market conditions resume.

For now, as PYMNTS wrote last week, “Many consumers are walking a financial tightrope, juggling everyday expenses with unexpected needs and have-it-now desires.”

New research from PYMNTS Intelligence finds some surprising shifts in financial behaviors, with changes in money management habits and a growing dependence on credit to bridge the gaps in an uncertain environment.

That research focused on two groups of consumers. The first are planners, who take a strategic and proactive approach, consistently paying off credit card balances, and building up savings for short-term and long-term needs.

The other group are the reactors, who deal with monthly bills on the fly and in some cases choosing which bills to pay. These consumers tend to carry higher credit card balances and have less saved, making them rely more on credit when unexpected costs arise.

However, the balance between those groups has begun to shift. According to “New Reality Check: The Paycheck-to-Paycheck Report,” a recent PYMNTS Intelligence report, just 40% of consumers identified as planners in January 2025 — down around 20% since February 2024, when about half of consumers 1 in 2 were planners. 

“The decline suggests more Americans are facing mounting financial strain,” PYMNTS wrote last week. “Surprisingly, that shift to reactor is notable among higher-income earners making at least $100,000 a year; over 11 months since February 2024, the number of planners in that group plunged by 25%.”

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