iwoca secures €185M credit line as UK scaleups feature in bumper European funding week

London-based business lender iwoca has secured a credit line of €185M, according to Tech.eu’s latest weekly round-up of European tech deals. The facility gives the fintech additional firepower to continue lending to small and medium-sized businesses, a core part of its model since it was founded.

The credit line is one of several UK-linked developments in a week that saw more than 65 funding deals worth over €1.5 billion tracked across Europe, alongside four exits and a string of M&A moves.

Standard Chartered moves on Zodia Custody

In exits news, Standard Chartered is set to acquire Zodia Custody, according to the same round-up. The deal adds to a week of consolidation activity across Europe that also included Omnidocs’ acquisition of WoodWing in the Netherlands and Workflex’s acquisition of rhome in Germany.

New growth fund targets underserved scaleups

Elsewhere in the UK, The FSE Group has launched a London growth fund worth more than £70M, aimed at backing scaleups that have struggled to access growth capital through conventional channels. The fund adds to a broader wave of investor activity highlighted in the round-up, including Seaya’s €600M growth fund for European tech leaders and Nvidia’s investment in four German startups as part of a wider €10bn European pledge.

Smaller UK deals also featured. EV charging technology firm Go Eve secured £750,000 to advance its DockChain platform, one of several early-stage European startups named in the round-up alongside Italy’s Ganiga, Turkey’s Arke Telekom and Norway’s Jenz.

Part of a wider European rebound

The UK activity sits within a broader recovery in European tech funding, which Tech.eu reports has rebounded to €27.8 billion, driven by a run of billion-euro mega-rounds. The week’s headline deal was Swedish legal AI firm Legora, whose valuation leapt to $8.8 billion following a $550 million raise, while French company Pigment secured a £250M round led by the Scaleup Europe Fund and Estonian cybersecurity firm Blackwall reached a $2.2 billion valuation with a $100 million Series C.

German investors also called for a €15 billion annual funding boost to help build the next generation of European tech giants, while the EIT launched a €40 million funding call to help move university deep tech research towards commercialisation.

What it means

For UK founders and scaleups, the week’s news points to continued, if uneven, access to capital, from credit facilities for established fintechs like iwoca to fresh growth funding aimed specifically at London-based underserved scaleups. The Standard Chartered-Zodia Custody deal also signals ongoing interest from large UK financial institutions in digital asset infrastructure.

What to watch next

Attention will turn to how quickly The FSE Group deploys its new London fund, and whether the Standard Chartered-Zodia Custody deal completes on the terms reported. Tech.eu’s Q3 report, offering further data on the quarter’s funding trends, is available free to readers via the publication’s website.