The Bank of London extends its Series C round

The Prudential Regulatory Authority of the Bank of England has authorised and the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has regulated the Bank of London, a main clearing bank in the UK.

The bank raised USD 90 million at a USD 1.1 billion valuation in December 2021, the same month that its Series C round was initially reported. An 'oversubscribed' Series C extension, according to The Bank of London, allowed it to maintain that valuation.

Mangove Capital Partners and 14W Venture Capital jointly led the extension, and ForgeLight, which had previously led the first part of its Series C, made a follow-on investment.

The goal of Bank of London is to provide a specifically designed global payments and clearing infrastructure, enabling a more robust and productive economy and empowering tomorrow's business owners. It is designed to help financial institutions such as banks, clearing houses, traditional and digital asset companies, governments, local and international fintech companies, payment networks, and non-financial brands who want to introduce fully compliant financial products and services both domestically and internationally.

The Bank’s of London other developments

The Bank of London had a busy 2022, concentrating on a variety of partnerships and expanding its product line. It joined the UK's 24/7 real-time payments network, the Faster Payment System, in March 2022 as a Directly Connected Settling Participant (DCSP). It later joined the Bankers' Automated Clearing Services (BACS) payment network, enabling account-to-account (A2A) transfers between UK banks in December 2022.

It consequently became a DCSP of BACS, which is owned and run by Pay.UK. BACS is a payment system that was established in 1968 and permits individual transactions under GBP 20 million in the UK and its Crown Dependencies, including Gibraltar, Guernsey, Jersey, and The Isle of Man.

To further improve and streamline global clearing and transaction banking, the Bank of London has also partnered with SAP Fioneer, a provider of financial services software solutions and platforms. The Bank of London's API is connected with SAP Fioneer's Cloud for Banking platform (C4B), creating a fully integrated real-time, frictionless compliance, clearance, settlement, and payments solution for banks, fintechs, and corporations.

Clearing banks in UK

Although the UK has one of the most favorable regulatory environments in the world for fintech, its financial services sector has had difficulty increasing competition in several areas. Particularly, only a select few players – Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds Group, RBS, and ClearBank – have dominated the clearing bank market.

The Bank of London, which has offices in New York and London, competes with conventional banks on three fronts: clearing and settlement; providing transaction banking services to the corporate market; and providing banking as a service to businesses looking to integrate payments into their products. The bank is in advanced talks with regulators in the EU and North America as part of its ongoing worldwide growth strategy.

Clearing banks are permitted to transfer funds via UK payment systems including BACS and Faster Payments between businesses and individuals. The Bank of London asserts that it was created specifically to be a clearing bank, whereas other banks have acquired clearing status during the past few decades through acquisition by incumbents.