Startups

Morgan Stanley has submitted an application to the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) for a de novo national trust bank charter to establish a federally regulated trust bank that can directly custody digital assets.

BBVA’s dedicated venture banking unit BBVA Spark is exhibiting tangible growth in startup financing, committing nearly €1 billion in financing and signing over 30 financing deals with growth-oriented companies in 2025 alone.

DivTax, a German financial technology company focused on automating withholding tax refunds for cross-border dividend income, announced a €1 million pre-seed financing round to support product development and partnerships.

Decentralized finance participants Resolv Labs and Centrifuge announce a structured deployment of up to $100 million of tokenized institutional credit (JAAA) into Aave Horizon lending markets.

Indian B2B cross-border payments fintech Xflow closes a $16.6 million Series A round led by General Catalyst and secures a full Payment Aggregator-Cross Border (PA-CB) licence from the RBI.

Morocco-based retail fintech WafR has closed an oversubscribed $4 million seed round to expand its network of neighborhood merchants acting as last-mile financial access points across the region.

Bengaluru-based deep-tech startup ToneTag secures $3.8 million from Qualcomm Ventures to accelerate its edge AI-enabled, sound-based proximity commerce technologies.

Kolkata and Gurugram-based fintech startup Roopya raises ₹4 crore in seed funding led by Inflection Point Ventures to scale its no-code lending infrastructure and expand its market footprint.

London-based FYLD secures €34 million in Series B funding led by Energy Impact Partners to accelerate the deployment of its AI-powered operational intelligence platform across global infrastructure sectors.

Bedfordshire-based biotech company Tozaro raises £6 million led by Mercia Ventures to advance its Smart Polymer technology, aimed at lowering the astronomical costs of viral vector production for cell and gene therapies.

London-based digital health startup Nul announces a €840,000 Seed funding round led by dmg ventures and BYVP to support its alcohol consumption reduction platform.

Indian fintech startup Olyv secures $23 million in a Series B round led by The Fundamentum Partnership to broaden its financial product suite and scale operations for India’s underbanked population.