New Fintech Hubs: Paris, Stockholm, Amsterdam?

TECHCRUNCH: French startup Prêt d’Union just raised $34 million (€31 million) from Eurazeo, Pierre Kosciusko-Morizet as well as its existing investors. Prêt d’Union is a European online credit marketplace that matches lenders and borrowers without any financial institution in-between. You can call it a sort of Lending Club for Europe.

For now, the startup is only available in France, but it’s looking to expand to other European countries in the coming months probably in the eurozone as there are a lot of competitors in the U.K. already. The company has managed $220 million in loans so far and is growing by 6 percent month over month. It is still way less than the billions of dollars of loans managed by Lending Club. But France is a smaller market, and so far nobody has cracked the European market to create a unified lending platform with loans priced in euros. Read the full article

The Cointelegraph: France Creates National FinTech Program to Rival London, New York. Not wanting to be left behind in the global FinTech engineering race, corporate leaders from around France have banded together to create the France FinTech association. Read the full article

LOL, French are so French: trying to attract new startups and arresting CEO of one of the biggest one:) France Launches French Tech Ticket, A Startup Visa For Foreign Entrepreneurs – TechCrunch

…and at the same time Uber France Leaders Arrested – TechCrunch:

Right reaction could be: Boris Johnson, major of London, defends telling black cabbie to “fuck off and die” saying the irate driver had heckled him first in row over Uber app – DailyMail

Finextra: Competitor of Paris – Stockholm – is staking a claim as a major European fintech hub after recording $266 million in startup investments over the past year, leaving it trailing only London as a magnet for VC inflows. While the Swedish capital lacks an extensive financial ecosystem of accelerators, incubators, and niche investors compared to other European financial centres, it nonetheless accounted for 18.3% of all fintech investments in Europe over the past five years, according to figures from the Stockholm School of Economics. Read the full article

Read also: Stockholm for fintech

Finextra: With Sweden recently staking a claim as a fintech hotspot, Stockholm-headquartered Nordea has moved to grab a slice of the action by setting up an accelerator programme with Finnish innovation agency Nestholma to nurture small businesses developing digital banking services across the Nordics. Read the full article

TechCrunch: Behind London and Berlin, the Dutch startup scene is already considered to be one of the most prominent in Europe. (If it feels unfair to weigh an entire country against individual cities, consider that the Netherlands has 17 million people crammed into an area half the size of South Carolina.) Startup Juncture reported 75 major deals in 2014, for a total of roughly $560 million in investment. Ten companies raised over $9 million. Read the full article