Metro Bank Launches a Formal Sale Process, With No Buyer Yet
Hey Digital Banking Fanatic!
Three years ago, Metro Bank needed a rescue. Now it’s looking for a buyer.
The UK lender has put itself up for sale, launching a strategic review that includes a formal sale process under the UK Takeover Code. Morgan Stanley is the lead financial adviser.
There’s no buyer yet. Metro says it isn’t in talks with anyone and hasn’t received an approach. Its shares rose about 6% on the news.
What I find interesting is the timing. Metro was rescued in 2023, when Colombian billionaire Jaime Gilinski Bacal became its largest shareholder. Since then, years of cost cuts have turned it around, and pre-tax profit rose 41% to £60.7 million in the first half of 2026, its best half-year on record.
So this is a sale from a position of strength, not need. That makes Metro one of the more interesting assets in UK mid-sized banking right now.
And if no deal comes through, Metro says it will stick to its current strategy and financial targets.
Now let’s see who comes knocking.
In the meantime, here’s what else is happening in digital banking today👇
See you on Monday!
Cheers,
INSIGHTS
💡 Incognia: If I Ran Fraud at a Bank, Here’s Where I’d Start with AI Agents. There’s a lot of attention on detecting AI agents and Know Your Agent (KYA), but what should banks do once they’ve identified one? In his latest The Signal: FinServ column, Incognia CEO and Co-founder André Ferraz sets out four priorities: checking whether an agent’s action makes sense for the customer, moving away from SMS and email OTPs for new-device authorisation, giving agents limited permissions that grow as they earn trust, and treating agent detection as an ongoing game of whack-a-mole. Incognia says that in its analysis of more than 300 million transactions, 86.2% of reported scams showed no observed physical-world relationship between sender and recipient. Read the full analysis here
NEWS
🇪🇪 Tuum joins the Mastercard Engage partner network. The core banking provider supports tokenisation, push provisioning to Apple Pay and Google Pay, token lifecycle management, and spend alerts and controls. Banks can start due diligence with card-scheme questions already answered.
🇸🇪 Klarna names Chris Koegel as Chief Financial Officer. Koegel joins from Robinhood, where he heads corporate finance and investor relations. He starts on 1 January 2027, subject to regulatory approval.
🇱🇧 Lebanon's General Security launches the Ma'ak platform with BLOM Bank and Mastercard. Residents can renew residency permits, apply for entry visas and request certificates online, paying by local or international card through Mastercard Gateway. Passport renewals are planned in the near future.
🇬🇧 BVNK lets businesses pay out from stablecoin balances to local bank accounts. Payouts are live in 11 currencies, including MXN, BRL, PHP and EUR, via API or the BVNK portal. The service integrates with Mastercard Move, and more than 40 currencies are planned for 2027.
🇬🇧 Metro Bank launches a formal sale process. The UK lender's board unanimously backs a strategic review that includes a sale, with Morgan Stanley advising. The move follows years of cost cuts, and Metro says it is not in active talks with any bidder.
🇩🇪 BaFin fines Deutsche Bank €8M over the Postbank customer migration. The regulator imposed €5.5M for inadequate arrangements to handle a surge in complaints and €2.5M for delayed securities-account transfers. Deutsche Bank said it accepts BaFin's decision and has fixed the issues.
🇵🇾 Paraguay partially refunds depositors of collapsed digital bank Ueno. The central bank, which took over Ueno on 3 November, said 1,812,348 eligible depositors have received at least part of their money through the deposit guarantee fund. Most funds have not yet been recovered.
🇩🇪 N26 plans a digital private retirement account in Germany with Franklin Templeton. Subject to certification, the state-subsidised account is due to launch on 1 January 2027, with Franklin Templeton as exclusive partner for the standard portfolio. Existing customers can pre-register in the app.
🇺🇸 SoFi Bank expands its SoFiUSD stablecoin to Polygon. The dollar-backed token, already on Ethereum and Solana, is available to more than 17 million SoFi members to buy, sell, hold and convert in the SoFi app, with 1:1 redemption for US dollars.
🇬🇧 Griffin raises $20M Series B led by Octagon Partners. The UK bank will use the funding to reach profitability and add card issuing and stablecoin services to its agentic banking platform. Notion Capital, A+ Ventures, Nordic Ninja and Breega also participated.
🇵🇱 Bank Millennium adds instalments to BLIK Pay Later. Purchases over PLN300 can be split into 3, 6 or 12 monthly instalments at checkout or later in the app, at 14.5% annual interest and with no arrangement fee.
🇧🇷 Itaú Unibanco selects Harness for bankwide software delivery. The bank will standardise software delivery for thousands of engineers on the Harness platform, starting with an initial adoption phase and expanding across the delivery lifecycle in the coming months.
🇸🇬 UOB expands payment options for customers travelling to China. The bank will add an updated UnionPay card and QR code payments in its TMRW app by end-2026, covering more than 100 million merchant locations in China. The card carries zero foreign exchange fees worldwide.
🇬🇧 Wirex launches Navoka, an AI agent with its own bank account and card. The invite-only agent has an IBAN, debit card and USDC and EURC wallets, with user-set merchant lists, daily caps and country whitelists. It is now live on Telegram, with WhatsApp and iMessage planned.
🇺🇸 Ripple's bank-lending system on the XRP Ledger moves closer to launch. The two required amendments have about 63% and 66% validator support, short of the 80% threshold held for two weeks. Lenders would deposit tokens into vaults for brokers to lend to banks and payment firms.
🇰🇷 South Korea considers rules giving banks control of won stablecoin issuers. Under the Financial Services Commission's draft Digital Asset Basic Act, banks would hold at least 50% plus one share in issuing consortiums. Exchanges and payment firms would handle distribution and settlement.
🇦🇪 MidChains and Standard Chartered form a banking partnership in the UAE. Standard Chartered will provide the VARA-licensed broker-dealer with fiat settlement, segregated client money accounts and correspondent banking services. The firms did not disclose a go-live date
🇱🇺 Banque Internationale à Luxembourg selects Fourthline for identity verification. In Fourthline's first partnership in Luxembourg, the firm will provide document and biometric verification through a single API for the bank's domestic and international digital onboarding.
🇿🇦 Standard Bank integrates Kinexys by J.P. Morgan. Standard Bank's corporate and investment banking unit will use the Blockchain Deposit Account network for faster payments, with opportunities to pilot near real-time cross-border and intra-group settlement. The unit operates in 21 African countries.
🇵🇹 Feedzai helps banks detect AI agents accessing customer accounts. The expanded Digital Trust solution uses device, behaviour and network signals to distinguish trusted personal agents from malicious ones. It also reduces banks' reliance on SMS one-time passcodes.
POST OF THE DAY
💡 Revolut is now worth 1.5x Barclays, on just 15% of its revenue. A FinTech founded in 2015 is now valued higher than a British banking group with more than 330 years of history: $115B against $79B. The contrast is striking. Barclays generates around $39B in annual income to Revolut's $6B, yet Revolut serves more retail customers (80M+ vs. 40M+) and reports a higher pre-tax margin (38% vs. 31%). The key difference: Revolut's valuation comes from a private secondary share sale, while Barclays is priced by public markets, so investors are pricing in Revolut's future global growth. Read the full breakdown here
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