Half-year funding rose while deal count fell by a quarter. An unsolicited $53 billion approach for PayPal. And a charter denial that says more than the approvals.
Global fintech venture funding, first half of 2026, from Crunchbase News, 15 July 2026. The two columns describe the same six months.
A recurring brief. We report transactions and appointments we can verify against a named source with a date, and we say when something is an offer rather than an agreement. Where our searches came back thin, we say that too rather than padding the list.
The market, in one number pair
Global fintech venture funding reached $28.6 billion in the first half of 2026, up 22.7 per cent year on year but down 17.3 per cent against the second half of 2025. Deal count fell to 1,605, down 25.7 per cent year on year and roughly 40 per cent against the first half of 2024.
More money into fewer companies is the whole story of the period. The United States took over 52 per cent of the total at $15 billion, the United Kingdom was second at $2.7 billion and India third at $1.9 billion. There were three fintech listings, all foreign issuers listing in New York: PicPay and AgiBank from Brazil and PayPay from Japan, the same count as the first half of 2025.
Funding: the rounds we could verify
Ramp raised $750 million in early June 2026 at a $44 billion valuation, months after a $300 million round at $32 billion. Taktile, a New York agentic decision platform for banks and insurers, raised a $110 million Series C led by Goldman Sachs Alternatives. Flutterwave raised an undisclosed Series E at a $3.2 billion valuation. Ant International closed approximately $1.2 billion in Series A equity financing in July, with participation from Ant Group, Alibaba Group and international institutions.
In insurance technology, Poetic raised $50 million in a Series A backed by Kleiner Perkins, Founders Fund, First Harmonic and OpenAI, for underwriting and compliance automation. Honeycomb Insurance raised $40 million led by Zeev Ventures with a broad syndicate. Tugboat, a consumer claims platform, raised a $3 million seed. Around 70 insurtech funding events were counted in June 2026 alone.
Smaller and outside the usual geographies, Fincart closed an oversubscribed $2.8 million seed co-led by Launch Africa and Antler MENAP for an AI operating system for e-commerce merchants across the Middle East, North Africa and sub-Saharan Africa.
The transaction of the period is an approach, not a deal
On 15 July 2026, Stripe and Advent International were reported to have made a joint offer for PayPal at $60.50 per share, valuing the company at more than $53 billion, a premium of about 28 per cent to the prior close, with approximately $50 billion in committed bank financing and equal ownership between the two acquirers. The reported plan does not involve breaking the company up. PayPal had not responded at the time of reporting and is working with Goldman Sachs and Evercore.
This is an unsolicited approach and should be described as one until PayPal responds. For scale on the other side of it, Stripe was valued at $159 billion in a February 2026 tender offer, up 49 per cent on $106.7 billion the previous September.
Acquisitions, completed or agreed
Nubank signed a share purchase agreement on 20 July 2026 for 100 per cent of Banco Porto Real de Investimentos in Brazil, disclosed in a Form 6-K. The purpose is regulatory rather than commercial: without a full banking licence, Nubank would have had to drop the word bank from its name by November 2026 under a joint resolution of the Central Bank of Brazil and the National Monetary Council. The deal is subject to Central Bank approval and the price was not disclosed.
That is the cleanest example this year of a licence being the asset. Everything else in the transaction is secondary to it.
CSI acquired Qolo on 20 July 2026 to extend embedded finance and real-time payments infrastructure to community bank clients. FinWise Bancorp acquired the technology platform and related assets of Tallied Technologies, also announced 20 July 2026, bringing credit card application, issuing, processing and servicing in house. Neither price was disclosed.
Leadership
Fiserv announced a leadership transition on 15 June 2026. Takis Georgakopoulos was appointed chief executive and a board member with immediate effect, having joined in late 2024 and progressed through chief operating officer for technology and merchant solutions to co-president in December 2025. He was previously global head of payments at J.P. Morgan's corporate and investment bank. Mike Lyons stepped down as chief executive and director to become chief executive of Truist Financial, reported effective 1 September 2026. Fiserv reaffirmed 2026 guidance of 1 to 3 per cent organic revenue growth and adjusted earnings per share of $8.00 to $8.30.
Elsewhere: Colin Bell, formerly chief executive of HSBC Bank and HSBC Europe, became chair of Starling Group Holdings and Starling Bank effective 1 July 2026. At Revolut, co-founder and chief technology officer Vlad Yatsenko stepped down from the executive role to non-executive director from 1 July 2026, with Donato Lucia promoted to vice president of technology. Dame Clare Barclay joined the board of Zilch in June 2026.
Charters: one denial worth more attention than the approvals
Circle received final OCC approval on 10 July 2026 to establish a national trust bank, operating as Circle National Trust, for fiduciary digital asset custody, authorised to open on or after that date and able later to serve institutional customers directly and manage the USDC reserve. The application was filed on 30 June 2025 with conditional approval in December 2025.
Morgan Stanley received conditional OCC approval in late June 2026 for a digital-asset trust bank headquartered in Purchase, New York. We have this from a secondary tracker rather than the OCC's own list, so treat the detail as provisional.
And in July 2026 the OCC denied Wise a trust charter, citing anti-money laundering deficiencies.
More than twenty fintechs have applied to acquire a bank or obtain a charter since January 2025, with trust charters boosted by the GENIUS Act. In that context a denial on anti-money laundering grounds is the more informative data point, because it establishes where the bar sits.
What we could not verify
Two funding rounds surfaced in search summaries that we could not confirm against a named dated source, so they are not in the list above. And we could not verify a single senior appointment or departure at a financial regulator in June or July 2026. We are reporting that as an absence rather than filling it.
A note on sourcing this brief. Some monthly roundups in this sector now carry disclosures that they were assembled with AI assistance and reviewed by an editor. Where an item reaches us only through such a roundup we have treated it as single-source and said so. Items sourced to a company release, an SEC filing or a regulator are marked by their references below.
This is reporting on corporate and market events. It is not investment advice, and nothing here is a recommendation to buy, sell or hold any security. Where a transaction is an offer rather than an agreement, we say so.
References
Every figure and legal citation in this article is drawn from the sources below. Where an instrument is proposed rather than in force we say so in the text.
Crunchbase News, Fintech funding rises as deals slump in H1 2026, by Mary Ann Azevedo, 15 July 2026. https://news.crunchbase.com/fintech/funding-rises-deals-slump-h1-2026/
CNBC, Stripe and Advent offer to buy PayPal for more than $53 billion, 15 July 2026. https://www.cnbc.com/2026/07/15/stripe-advent-offer-to-buy-paypal-for-more-than-53-billion-reuters.html
Nu Holdings, Form 6-K, share purchase agreement for Banco Porto Real de Investimentos, 20 July 2026. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/0001691493/000129281426003814/nu20260720_6k.htm
Nubank, Nubank strengthens its Brazil operation with a new banking licence, 20 July 2026. https://international.nubank.com.br/company/nubank-strengthens-its-brazil-operation-with-a-new-banking-license/
FinTech Global, CSI acquires Qolo to expand embedded finance offering, 20 July 2026. https://fintech.global/2026/07/20/csi-acquires-qolo-to-expand-embedded-finance-offering/
GlobeNewswire, FinWise Bancorp acquires Tallied technology platform, 20 July 2026. https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2026/07/20/3330108/0/en/FinWise-Bancorp-Acquires-Tallied-Technology-Platform-Bringing-End-to-End-Credit-Card-Issuing-and-Processing-In-House.html
Fiserv, Fiserv announces leadership transition, 15 June 2026. https://investors.fiserv.com/news-releases/news-release-details/fiserv-announces-leadership-transition
FinTech Futures, June 2026 top five movers and shakers stories of the month, June 2026. https://www.fintechfutures.com/job-cuts-new-hires/june-2026-top-five-movers-and-shakers-stories-of-the-month
Circle, Circle receives final OCC approval to establish a national trust bank, 10 July 2026. https://www.circle.com/pressroom/circle-receives-final-occ-approval-to-establish-national-trust-bank
Payments Dive, OCC denies Wise trust charter application over AML deficiencies, July 2026. https://www.paymentsdive.com/news/occ-denies-wise-trust-charter-application-aml-deficiencies/826166/
Digital Insurance, Top insurtech funding rounds, June 2026, 7 July 2026. https://www.dig-in.com/news/top-insurtech-funding-rounds-june-2026
FinTech Global, Fincart secures $2.8m seed, 27 July 2026. https://fintech.global/2026/07/27/fincart-secures-2-8m-seed-to-power-e-commerce-growth/
How we work. This article was researched and written by the Financy editorial team. We do not republish press releases. Every number and legal citation is checked against a primary source, which is named and linked above. Where an instrument is proposed rather than in force, we say so. Corrections are made openly on the article itself, never by silent edit. If you believe something here is wrong, write to info@financyhub.com and tell us what and why.
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