Main Set

📊 𝗠𝗮𝗶𝗻 𝗦𝗲𝘁 𝗙𝗶𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗰𝗵 𝗙𝘂𝗻𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗥𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗱𝘂𝗽 | 𝗝𝘂𝗻𝗲 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟲 📈 𝗢𝘃𝗲𝗿𝗮𝗹𝗹 𝘁𝗿𝗲𝗻𝗱 • Total funding +5% MoM & investment count +7%, a modest uptick, but the stage mix swung firmly back to late-stage. • By stage: Seed flat (+1%), Early-stage -37%, Late-stage +176%. June's gains came almost entirely from a rebound in large late-stage rounds. • By geography: Europe (+269%) & RoW (+64%) led, with Australia re-emerging (~$474m across 4 investments after a blank May), while the US (-16%) & UK (-96%) both fell sharply. 🏆 𝗡𝗼𝘁𝗮𝗯𝗹𝗲 𝗝𝘂𝗻𝗲 𝗜𝗻𝘃𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁𝘀 • CRED AI-powered app for credit card bill payments & rewards, now expanding into lending & full-stack payments for India's creditworthy consumers. • Ramp Corporate card & finance automation platform unifying expense management, accounts payable & accounting in a single workflow. • Airwallex Global financial operations platform providing multi-currency accounts, cross-border payments, treasury & embedded finance through its own infrastructure & APIs. • Digital Asset Public Layer-1 blockchain (Daml / Canton) for tokenising real-world assets, bringing privacy-enabled settlement & automation to institutional capital markets. • WARREN AI-driven financial wellness platform delivering personalised coaching on savings, budgeting & investing. 💡 𝗞𝗲𝘆 𝗧𝗮𝗸𝗲𝗮𝘄𝗮𝘆 A +176% surge in late-stage rounds lifted total June funding even as early-stage cooled (-37%), with capital flowing into Europe, emerging markets & Australia. Beneath the mega-rounds, the ~150 seed-to-Series-B investments skewed heavily to banking & lending tech, with AI-driven automation, analytics, payments & crypto infrastructure close behind. #fintech #privatemarkets #venturecapital

Main Set Fintech Index | June 2026 𝗝𝘂𝗻𝗲 𝘀𝗻𝗮𝗽𝘀𝗵𝗼𝘁 The Main Set Fintech Index © eased -1.3% in June, broadly in line with the S&P 500 (-1.0%) and a near-flat NASDAQ 100 (-0.2%). At the half-year mark the index sits at -6.4% YTD, trailing the S&P 500 (+10.1%) and NASDAQ 100 (+20.2%). 𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗺𝗮𝗿𝗸𝗲𝘁 𝗶𝘀 𝘁𝗲𝗹𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘂𝘀 The index level masked wide dispersion at the stock level. June's biggest moves came from company-specific catalysts rather than the macro tape: M&A interest, index inclusion and execution against guidance. 𝗔𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗰𝗸 𝗹𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗹 Dave and Payoneer were the standout gainers. Dave was added to the S&P SmallCap 600 effective 1 June, with index-inclusion demand landing on top of a strong Q1 (revenue +47% YoY), raised full-year guidance and an upsized $300m buyback. Payoneer surged on reports of advanced takeover talks with Nuvei at around $2.7bn. Guidewire Software and United Wholesale Mortgage were the sharpest decliners: Guidewire on ARR landing at the low end of guidance despite a beat-and-raise quarter, and UWM as its contested bid for Two Harbors turned into a public proxy fight against a backdrop of higher-for-longer mortgage rates. 𝗣𝗿𝗶𝘃𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝗺𝗮𝗿𝗸𝗲𝘁𝘀 𝗽𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗽𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲 June reinforced that fintech is not trading as a single factor. Capital is rewarding company-specific catalysts and real unit economics over narrative. For early and growth-stage investors, that discipline matters more than the index print. 𝗠𝗮𝗶𝗻 𝗦𝗲𝘁 𝗳𝗼𝗰𝘂𝘀 Main Set invests in private markets, but public fintech is a useful signal. What we underwrite doesn't change with the tape: differentiated products, sharper execution and credible monetisation. #fintech #privatemarkets #growthcapital

Databento has closed a ~3x oversubscribed $97M Series B. Market data has been one of the last corners of financial infrastructure still run on procurement cycles and legacy contracts. Databento rebuilt it as on-demand, API-first, sourced straight from the exchange. This is the standard we look for in portfolio companies. Durable infrastructure and new delivery models, built by deep domain experts. Congratulations to Christina Qi, Luca Lin and the Databento team.

Main Set was in Hong Kong for LEAP East. On the Ecosystem Xchange stage, our Founder & Managing Partner Ioto Iotov CA, CFA, CAIA moderated and participated in PE in the Room: What Private Equity Actually Wants from Tech Founders. A conversation spanning large-cap PE, mid-market PE, and the founder perspective at the VC-to-PE crossover. Thanks to panelists Issam Al-Mamlouk (I.M. Mamlouk & Co.) and Brian Sheng (Aquaria), and to the LEAP East team for having us. Beyond the stage, the team had a series of valuable one-to-one meetings across the event. Including Ivan Wong, who sat down with Cindy Chow of Alibaba Entrepreneurs Fund. Conversations like these sharpen how we think about investing in category-defining companies within fintech. From first cheque through to scale. #mainset #fintech #venturecapital #leapeast #events

The payments industry has spent twenty years treating Central and Eastern Europe as a footnote. Too fragmented, too many local specifics, too hard. In that time, CEE has become one of the fastest-growing e-commerce regions in Europe. Yet it still runs on patchwork payment rails. Fixing that fragmentation, idiosyncrasy and complexity is why Main Set is investing in the seed round of Paypercut, alongside our friends at Concentric, Passion Capital, Arāya Ventures and others. The problem itself is easy to describe. A merchant expanding from Poland to Romania basically rebuilds their payment setup at the border. New methods, new contracts, new settlement. Paypercut collapses all of that into a single integration: cards, local methods, BNPL and multi-currency settlement. Stoil Vasilev, Gareth Walsh and Emil Savov have spent their careers inside this exact problem, building SumUp into one of Europe's defining payments companies. They know what breaks when you cross these borders because they were the ones fixing it. Main Set's thesis is that the next decade of payments won't be won on better UX. It'll be won by the teams willing to fix the plumbing. That retooling of financial services is what we look for in our investments. A warm welcome to the whole Paypercut team. If you're building financial infrastructure in markets the industry has overlooked, we'd like to hear from you.

The DeFi conversation is moving past speculation to infrastructure: payments, settlement, and tokenised assets. That's what we're getting into with Google on 17 June. 𝗖𝗮𝗽𝗮𝗰𝗶𝘁𝘆 𝗶𝘀 𝗹𝗶𝗺𝗶𝘁𝗲𝗱 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗽𝗹𝗮𝗰𝗲𝘀 𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝗳𝗶𝗿𝗺𝗲𝗱 𝗼𝗻 𝗮𝗽𝗽𝗿𝗼𝘃𝗮𝗹, 𝘀𝗼 𝗶𝘁'𝘀 𝘄𝗼𝗿𝘁𝗵 𝗿𝗲𝗴𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗹𝘆. Register here: https://luma.com/8y9ck91s Panel: Decentralised Finance in the Real Economy: tokenisation, stablecoins, and what comes next. On the panel: - Emma Lovett, Executive Director, J.P. Morgan - Ankush Sharma, VP of Product, Agio Ratings - Pavel Skalin, CEO, Align - Dmitry T. Tokarev, Founder, Bron Moderated by our founder, Ioto Iotov. Doors open at 17:30 (Google's King's Cross office), panel and Q&A from 18:15, drinks and networking after. The room will be mostly founders and operators working in the space, and numbers are limited. The question we keep coming back to: which of these use cases are genuinely ready for institutional scale, and which are still a few years out?

Main Set Industry Insights | May 2026 | #Fintech Funding Roundup 🔎 📈 𝗧𝗿𝗲𝗻𝗱𝘀 • Total funding -41% MoM in April, with investment counts -23%. A clear step down from March's late-stage spike. • By stage: Seed +2%, Early-stage +2%, Late-stage -55%. The drop was almost entirely a late-stage story; seed & early held flat. • Geography: RoW was the only region where capital grew (+138% in value). US (-49%), UK (-59%) & EU (-96%) all fell materially. 👇 𝗡𝗼𝘁𝗮𝗯𝗹𝗲 𝗔𝗽𝗿𝗶𝗹 𝗜𝗻𝘃𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗥𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗱𝘀 • Banco Plata: Mexican digital bank, high-limit credit cards & cashback. Series C, ~$405m. • Rogo: US gen-AI platform for financial institutions, focused on research & investment workflows. Series D, ~$160m. • Corgi: UK digital commercial insurance covering general liability, cyber & workers' comp. Series A, ~$108m. • Comfi.ai: UAE B2B payments platform offering flexible credit terms to MENA suppliers. Seed, ~$65m. • Wealth.com: US estate-planning platform digitising trust, will & legacy workflows for advisors. Series B, ~$65m. 💡 𝗠𝗮𝗶𝗻 𝗦𝗲𝘁 𝗧𝗮𝗸𝗲𝗮𝘄𝗮𝘆 April looked like a cooling month after March's late-stage spike. The dollars that did move flowed into AI/data platforms, banking & lending infrastructure, & wealth tech. This fits where Main Set is investing: the architecture and new delivery models that will power financial services for the next decade. If you're building or allocating with a long-term lens, we'd welcome the conversation. #Fintech #financialservices

Ioto Iotov CA, CFA, CAIA joined Kaushalya Somasundaram, Ashish Aggarwal (PayPal Ventures), Steve Gibson (13books Capital) and Devin Kohli (Outward VC) on the Fintech 3.0 panel at UK Private Capital's Accelerate 2026 conference. A few points from the discussion: ▪️The UK fintech narrative is more negative than the data warrants. ▪️The next decade's value sits in the infrastructure layer beneath the consumer brands. Banking-as-a-service. Capital markets data. Claims and underwriting automation. Embedded finance. Better unit economics, more durable moats. ▪️AI changes where defensibility lives. Traditional moats (tech, data, brand) are weakening. What remains: regulatory licences, workflow data that compounds with deployment, and embedded distribution. This is where Main Set invests. US, UK, and Europe: Seed to Series C in the infrastructure layer and new delivery models of financial services. cc: Chris Elphick #fintech #investing #UKPrivateCapital #Accelerate2026

Delighted to see our own Ivan Wong featured on the Raising Europe podcast. In this episode, Ivan shares how Main Set approaches early and growth-stage fintech investing, from valuation discipline and founder assessment to why the infrastructure layer of finance is where durable returns are being built. Well worth a listen for anyone following the European fintech and venture capital space. Full blog post in comments. #fintech #venturecapital #EuropeanTech #EuropeanVC

Main Set Fintech Index | March 2026 📸 𝗠𝗮𝗿𝗰𝗵 𝘀𝗻𝗮𝗽𝘀𝗵𝗼𝘁 The Main Set Fintech Index © fell -5.3% in March & is now -12.1% YTD, underperforming the S&P 500 (-3.6% YTD) & NASDAQ 100 (-4.7% YTD). This was not a sector-specific selloff, rather a broad macro drawdown, with rising geopolitical uncertainty, tariff volatility & risk-off positioning playing out unevenly across Fintech sub-segments. 💹 𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗺𝗮𝗿𝗸𝗲𝘁 𝗶𝘀 𝘁𝗲𝗹𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘂𝘀 Dispersion across sub-sectors was wide. In March: – Wealth & Capital Markets (-3.4%) & Insurtech (-3.8%) held up best – Payments (-5.9%) & Lending (-5.3%) saw mid-range pressure – Banking (-7.4%) & Financial Management Solutions (-8.4%) saw sharper drawdowns – Crypto & Blockchain (-14.2%) was the hardest hit The pattern is consistent with what we observe in private markets: sensitivity to macro, credit & regulatory risk varies substantially by sub-segment. 🪙 𝗔𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗰𝗸 𝗹𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗹 Virtu Financial & Lemonade were the standout gainers, each supported by clear company-specific catalysts; strong earnings & a favourable volatility backdrop in Virtu's case, an analyst upgrade in Lemonade's. Bakkt & NCR Voyix were the sharpest decliners, reflecting execution risk & guidance pressure. 🌐 𝗣𝗿𝗶𝘃𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝗺𝗮𝗿𝗸𝗲𝘁𝘀 𝗽𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗽𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲 March reinforced that fintech is not trading as a single factor. The weakest areas were the most macro- & risk-asset-sensitive segments, particularly Crypto & Blockchain. Relative resilience came from segments with lower beta & clearer earnings visibility. 🔎 𝗠𝗮𝗶𝗻 𝗦𝗲𝘁 𝗳𝗼𝗰𝘂𝘀 Main Set invests in private markets, but public fintech is a useful signal. What we underwrite doesn't change with the tape: structural tailwinds, real & large problems, & business models built for durability. #fintech #privatemarkets #growthcapital