John Reynolds

4 days ago | tech.eu | John Reynolds

The co-founders of General Catalyst-backed UK AI startup Portia AI first encountered each other professionally in 2021 at Stripe when Emma Burrows, Stripe’s then-UK CTO, interviewed Mounir Mouawad, for a fintech role at the payment giant. “She was tough,” says Mouawad, squashed up next to his co-founder, in a small annex to their Kings Cross, London office, on an early weekday morning. “I think you were tough in the sense that you had a lot on your mind during that interview. But you did sell me.

4 days ago | tech.eu | John Reynolds

UK BNPL startup Zilch is launching its first physical card, after striking a deal with Visa, which is replacing MasterCard as its card network. The multi-year partnership between Zilch and Visa was announced today (Tuesday) at the Money 20/20 conference in Amsterdam. It is unclear why Zilch is replacing MasterCard with Visa. Zilch says it will shift billions in annual transactions onto Visa’s global infrastructure.

5 days ago | tech.eu | John Reynolds

Monzo today (Monday) revealed that a third of its customers were using it as a primary bank, as profits surged four-fold to £60.5m in the year ending March 2025. The UK challenger bank, famed for its coral-coloured cards, said it added 2.4m customers in the year and now had more than 12m customers in total. The bank, led by CEO TS Anil, said it was now the seventh-largest bank by customer numbers. In its results, Monzo did not divulge any details of its long-rumoured IPO.

1 week ago | tech.eu | John Reynolds

Starling Bank has reported a 26 per cent fall in profits to £223m in the year ending March 2025, after its finances were hit by two legacy regulatory issues. Starling, one of the UK’s most prominent challenger banks which has around 4.6m customers and is backed by Goldman Sachs and Chrysalis, reported revenues were up from £682m to £714m in the period. Its profit figure marked Starling’s fourth consecutive year of profitability.

1 week ago | tech.eu | John Reynolds

US brokerage fintech Robinhood is bringing its specialist desktop trading platform to the UK, as it looks to drive up active trader numbers. Robinhood, famed for bringing commission-free trading to the market, launched in the UK in March last year offering investors commission–free trading in thousands of US-listed stocks including Tesla, Amazon and Apple. It has since beefed up its offering by bringing more US products to the UK, such as options trading and margin trading.