Gresham House Ventures has led a £4.65mn investment round in climate impact data business Connect Earth.

Nigerian digital bank Carbon has acquired Vella Finance for the launch of an AI-powered platform for SMEs. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Greenwashing has become a ‘systemic problem’ among UK banks despite universal claims that sustainability is at the heart of their business, a new survey has found.

An increasing number of challenger banks, neobanks and digital offshoots are being born in the cloud and the technology is now being used by traditional banks and new players alike for all IT needs. Banks that are born in the cloud are at an advantage because legacy players that are in the process of migrating to the cloud are struggling with application modernisation, data centralisation and security.

NatWest is buying a minority stake in Bourn, a London-bases small business financing fintech, according to Sky News.

Billed as a game-changer for productivity, up to 90% off Klarna staff are now using generative AI daily, with non-technical groups such as Communications, Marketing, and Legal seeing adoption rates of 92.6%, 87.9%, and 86.4% respectively.

Turkey’s İşbank has opened an API portal, enabling third party developers to plug in and develop their own products and services.

ABN Amro is to offer customers a sustainability discount on mortgage interest rates for energy efficient homes.

Flash, an Egyptian startup offering cashless transactions to businesses via QR Codes, has closed a $6 million seed funding round.

Banking giant HSBC has invested $10 million in CloudBees, a US software delivery management system provider.

Gradient Labs, a startup creating AI agents for the financial services industry and founded by former Monzo alumni, has raised $13 million.

MasterCard is inviting UK coders, designers and developers to battle it out in a three day hackathon building payments-enabled travel apps for the chance to win £10,000.

HTX, a digital asset exchange, released their 2025 crypto outlook, reflecting on the key developments in 2024 and highlighting developments to watch in 2025.

Capitalsing on consumer concern about climate change, fintech startup ekko has set up a waitlist for a new debit card that beds sustainability into every transaction,

The Covid-19 crisis could spur innovative uses of technology, such as VR trading desks, in the financial services sector, according to Goldman Sachs CTO Atte Lahtiranta, who says the Wall Street giant has adapted smoothly to the lockdown.