Here are the latest news items our decidedly human editor has deemed worthy of attention from banking, fintech and other financial services execs. It's updated throughout the day. Enjoy!

August 17

  • Chris Skinner | Crypto startups wanted to get rid of banks. Now they are banks.
  • American Banker (paywall) | CFPB's open-banking plan is likely to cause a new legal battle.
  • CoinDesk | Bank Leumi, Israel's largest bank, tapped Galaxy Digital to offer in-app Bitcoin, Ether and Solana trading next year for its 2.5M customers
  • Reuters | World Liberty Financial received conditional OCC approval for a national trust bank charter, allowing it to directly issue its USD1 stablecoin, which has $4 billion in circulation.

August 14

  • Coindesk | Figure Technology Solutions, the blockchain lending firm co-founded by former SoFi CEO Mike Cagney, reported $226 million in net revenue, up 113% year over year.
  • CB Insights | Global insurtech funding hit $2.4B across 107 deals in Q2’26, the highest quarterly funding total since Q3’22.
  • FinTech Futures | Citi agreed to acquire Kard, whose platform embeds merchant-funded cash-back offers into banking apps using transaction data and predictive AI.
  • FinTech Futures | Payments firm Yuno raised $45 million in a Series B led by Global PayTech Ventures, bringing total funding to $80 million.

August 13

August 12

  • American Banker (paywall) | The FDIC is working with industry groups on a potential independent organization that would certify technology vendors after standardized due-diligence reviews.
  • The Paypers | Circle introduced a discovery layer that lets AI agents automatically find digital services and pay for them in USDC using the x402 payment protocol.
  • Finovate | Micronotes sold its cross-sell digital engagement business to Array which relaunched it as Eligen.
  • American Banker (paywall) | Rankings: Large community banks (assets = $10B to $50B) ranked by Q2 performance.

August 11

  • Bloomberg | Payments company Moneris is sold by Royal Bank of Canada and Bank of Montreal to private equity firm Francisco Partners for $1.4B.
  • The Block | Alt-investing specialist eToro will acquire online brokerage TradeZero for $230 million, 3x its $80M in annual revenue

August 10

  • Financial Times |Palmer Luckey's Erebor is in advanced talks to raise $1.5B at an $8B valuation
  • Techcrunch | Google added Venmo as a payment option on Google Play in the United States, expanding the existing PayPal and Cash App options
  • FinTech Futures | Revolut landed ad full French banking licence; the bank already serves 30 million European customers
  • FinTech Futures | Billing and revenue-management fintech Ordway raised $20 million in equity and debt led by Harbert Growth Partners, with debt from Western Alliance Bank
  • FinTech Futures | Western Union partnered with Rain to debut Stablecard, its first stablecoin-linked card product, as the remittance giant pivots back toward digital assets.
  • FinTech Futures | India's SIDBI went live with MonetaGo‘s Secure Financing solution to combat trade-finance fraud across small-business lending.

August 7

  • Digital Transactions | BNPL provider Sezzle reported 76% year-over-year growth in customers with 850,000 at the end of June; volume hit $1.3 billion in the quarter, up 38% YOY.
  • Wall Street Journal| Singapore-based Multiplier, which rolls up accounting firms hoping to boost their growth with AI, raised $35 million at a $300M valuation.
  • Finextra | The FDIC is working with banking and fintech trade groups on an independent certification organization for bank technology and fintech vendors.
  • Finextra | Google Wallet added parent-controlled balances for U.S. users under 18, allowing parents to transfer money, set spending limits, monitor transactions and lock balances without opening a separate bank account.

August 6

August 5

  •  Axios (paywall) | Travel insurance provider Faye raised a $50M Series C led by Madrona.
  • Fortune | Internet traffic cop Cloudflare introduced new infrastructure for secure agentic commerce.
  • American Banker (paywall) | Solo pilots its bank-data sharing service designed to streamline and improve KYC/KYB effectiveness while Treasury watches closely.
  • Circle reported $73 billion of USDC in circulation, up 19% from a year earlier, while quarterly onchain transaction volume increased 150% to $15 trillion.

  • FinTech Futures | Stablecoin infrastructure provider Dakota applied for a US national trust bank charter, joining the crowded OCC queue behind Circle, Sony, BitGo, and Ripple.

August 4

  • CoinDesk | Wells Fargo will launch tokenized deposits this fall, starting with 24/7 dollar-to-pound transactions for select corporate clients on its proprietary blockchain, expanding to more currencies in 2027.
  • Upstarts Media | Accounting software startup Ambrook, raised a $30M B round led by Lachy Groom to expand beyond farming.
  • Financial Times (paywall) | How Wall Street learned to love the blockchain.
  • FinTech Global | Stable coin infrastructure provider Yellow Card raised $40 million from investors including SC Ventures, Sony Innovation Fund, Polychain Capital and Blockchain Capital. Yellow Card has processed more than $10 billion and supports over 50 currencies across 22 jurisdictions.
  • FinTech Global | Core banking company 10x Banking, servicing 10 million accounts across all its clients, secured £40 million from AshGrove Capital.
  • FinTech Global | Core banking startup Maximum emerged from stealth with a $30 million seed round led by CRV, with participation from Pear VC, Restive, Plug and Play Ventures and Anthemis.
  • FinTech Global | Pan-African payments platform Moment raised a $22 million Series A led by AlphaCode Venture Partners, with backing from General Catalyst, MultiChoice and Canal+. It currently processes 600,000 transactions daily for 10 million people.
  • FinTech Global | LendingTree added six product categories through: business insurance, pet insurance, RV insurance, student loans, student-loan refinancing and financial advice.

August 3

July 31

July 30

July 29

  • Fintech Global | Credit Union (CUSO) owned InvestiFi lands $20m to boost embedded investing
  • Financial Times (paywall) | BNY (Bank of New York Mellon) will use blockchain technology record-keeping systems that service $8.6T in assets
  • Reuters | SoFi now has 15.8 million customers, a 35% increase year over and originationed nearly $15 billion in loans in the most recent quarter.
  • Fintech News Singapore | Visa processed $3.7 billion through 1.9 million stablecoin-linked cards across more than 200 markets during the past year.

July 28

July 27

July 26

July 24

  • Finovate | Q&A with Pentedge, a new AI monitoring platform built for financial institutions (see demo at FinovateSpring 2026)
  • Intuit | Intuit launches Quickbooks-integrated business credit with 2% cashback
  • Reuters | New York state lawsuit accusing Zelle of lax fraud controls moves forward.
  • Coindesk | Using Cowmed tech, Brazilian farmers raise $20,000 by tokenizing 10 dairy cows in a test of blockchain-based asset financing.
  • Reuters | Wise shares fell 10% after the OCC rejected its application for a U.S. national trust bank; Wise will reapply under the GENIUS Act framework.
  • The Block | World Foundation, the nonprofit behind the World identity and payments protocol, raised $52.5 million from Pantera Capital and others.
  • FinTech Futures | Trade-finance software provider Mitigram acquired Export Enterprises, adding tools and data intended to expand its digital trade-finance capabilities.
  • Banking Dive | Cross-border payments provider Nium acquired stablecoin infrastructure company Cypher as it expands stablecoin-based settlement and payment services.

July 23

July 22

July 21

July 20

July 17

  • American Banker (paywall) | Wise approaches $1B per day in cross-border payment volume with $70B in the most recent quarter
  • American Banker (paywall) | A look at Cash App's direct lending program one-year after Block launched it in its wildly popular P2P payments service
  • American Banker (paywall) | Twenty state attorneys general asked federal regulators to reject proposed bank acquisitions involving online lenders Enova and OppFi, arguing that bank ownership could allow the companies to bypass state interest-rate limits.
  • TechEU | UK startup Stoa raised $2.4 million seed for its rewards platform.

July 16

  • Coindesk | Singapore-based drypto exchange Crypto.com raised $400M from Citadel Securities at a $20B valuation, making it the 23rd most valuable fintech company launched since 2000
  • Bloomberg (paywall) | Brokerage infrastructure provider Alpaca raised $135M in equity and $300M in debt; in January the company was valued at $1.2B
  • FinTech Futures | Embedded-insurance provider Cover Genius raised $100M at a $1.9B valuation.
  • FinTech Futures | Former Monzo CEO Tom Blomfield joined Anthropic, a notable fintech-founder-to-AI-lab move.
  • FinTech Futures | Feathery, which automates onboarding, underwriting and other workflows for wealth-management and insurance firms, closed a Series A bringing total funding to $30M; it serves more than 300 firms and processes tens of millions of submissions monthly.

July 15

  • Reuters | Stripe and Advent International offered more than $53 billion for PayPal to unite Stripe’s merchant-processing platform with PayPal’s 430 million consumer accounts and Venmo.
  • Crunchbase News | Global venture investments into fintech grew 23% YoY in the first half of 2026 to $28.6B, but deal count fell 26%. Funding fell 17% vs. the second half of 2025's $34.6B.
  •  Axios | Lumin Digital, which sells digital banking software to banks and credit unions, raised $115M at a $1.6B post-money valuation, becoming the 448th fintech unicorn of the 21st century
  • SiliconANGLE | American Growth Insurance raised $70 million to acquire struggling independent insurance firms and transform them using AI.
  • Fortune| Cyclops, which operates an infrastructure platform that bundles crypto and stablecoin services for payments companies, raised a $20M Series A
  • American Banker (paywall) | Computer Services Inc. acquired Qolo, a commercial payments infrastructure provider.
  • American Banker (paywall) | The increase in fintech applications for national bank charters may reduce demand for sponsor-bank partnerships.
  • Fintech Futures | Moneybox is set to hit an £800M valuation via an employee share sale,

July 14

  • Reuters | The European Central Bank selected 36 payment providers, including Deutsche Bank, UniCredit and Revolut, for a 12-month digital euro pilot scheduled to begin in the second half of 2027.
  • Fintech News Switzerland | Kraken launches 2% cashback debit card in Europe
  • Finovate's David Penn looks at trends in recent fintech venture investing
  • American Banker (paywall) | In November, San Francisco will vote on whether to create a municipal public bank, a first of its kind in the United States (also on SFist)
  • The Block | Velocity, a stablecoin treasury and settlement platform, raised a $38M Series A bringing its total funding to $50M
  • Reuters | Flex, which offers AI-based payments, credit, and more to SMBs, raised a $70M led by Halo Fund at a $1.2B valuation, tied for #310 on our fintech unicorn list
  • FinTech Futures | Grace Investment Machine closed $20M for agentic trading technology, extending the AI-agents-in-finance funding streak.
  • American Banker (paywall) | Visa introduced an AI-powered financial assistant for bank clients.

July 13

  • FinTech Futures | Mastercard is reportedly exploring the sale of a majority stake in UK payments infrastructure provider Vocalink, which it acquired from a consortium of British banks in 2017.
  • The Paypers | Nu Mexico received authorization to operate as a full bank, converting its SOFIPO license; the Nubank subsidiary had more than $5.9 billion in deposits and reached breakeven in Q1 2026.
  • The Paypers | Digital bank Plata received regulatory authorization and began operations in Colombia, its first expansion beyond Mexico.
  • FinTech Futures | DeFi yield strategy provider Gauntlet raised a $125 million Series C from SBI Holdings; Gauntlet provides automated risk-managed yield strategies for fintechs, financial institutions and stablecoin issuers.
  • FinTech Futures | Credit-building fintech Kikoff acquired technology, customer relationships and other assets from The Service Bureau, adding more than 1,000 corporate clients to its B2B credit infrastructure platform; financial terms were not disclosed.

July 12

  • Forrester looks at Stripe's OpenUSD stablecoin bet
  • CoinDesk | Circle won final OCC approval for a national trust bank, sending shares up 14% pre-market; Circle National Trust will provide fiduciary digital asset custody and eventually oversee USDC reserves.
  • CoinDesk | A CBDC prohibition tucked into the new housing law takes effect tonight, formally banning a US government-issued digital dollar, a landmark win for the anti-CBDC, pro-stablecoin camp.
  • CoinDesk | Polymarket applied to offer margin trading to US customers, following the CFTC authorization rival Kalshi received in March, escalating the prediction-market arms race.
  • CoinDesk | BitGo received full unconditional OCC approval immediately after its initial conditional authorization, joining Circle in the charter wave alongside Kraken, Ripple, Paxos, and Fidelity Digital Assets

July 10

  • Bloomberg | A look at the sketchy behavior of Phia and other online shopping apps using fake clicks or “cookie stuffing” to claim affiliate commissions
  • Finovate | Informa's Finovate is launching IMPACT: Funders & Founders Forum, a new conference within a conference aimed at startup investors, at its upcoming flagship FinovateFall event
  • Fintech Times | Xero's Melio unit launches agentic B2B payments network with partners Capital One, Shopify, and Fiserv
  • Bloomberg (paywall) | Circle received U.S. regulatory approval for a national digital-currency trust bank allowing it to offer institutional custody services
  • Finovate | Julie Muhn looks at Robinhood's 7% yield on stablecoin deposits
  • The Paypers | Aria raised a €7M Series A extension and launched a €240M debt facility to expand its embedded invoice-financing platform across Europe.
  • The Paypers | Atome Philippines closed an $81M wholesale facility with Asia United Bank to support expansion of its PayLater Anywhere Card
  • American Banker (paywall) | Community banks may gain more room to compete for large corporate and municipal deposits if a housing package’s reciprocal-deposit provision becomes law.
  • Wall Street Journal (paywall) | JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo and PNC have explored buying a debit-payments network from Fiserv as large banks look for ways to reduce reliance on third-party debit rails and potentially avoid Durbin fee caps.

July 9

  • CoinDesk | Swift is starting live tests of a blockchain shared ledger with 17 major banks across six continents to enable 24/7 cross-border payments using tokenized deposits.
  • Fortune | Databento, which sells financial data feeds in competition with Bloomberg amont others, raised a $97M Series B led by NEA, taking its total funding to $127M
  •  Reuters (paywall) | Block will pay $45M and offer live customer support for Cash App to settle claims by 46 U.S. states that the company failed to protect users from fraud

July 8

  • Banking Dive (paywall) | Sony received conditional OCC approval for a U.S. national trust bank, Connectia Trust, capitalized with $40M to issue and manage dollar-denominated stablecoins.
  • American Banker 🔥 (paywall) | Robinhood launched an on-chain mainnet, pairing tokenized equities, stablecoin lending, and agentic AI trading into 120+ countries.
  • FinTech Futures | Equifax is acquiring Mexican credit bureau Círculo de Crédito in a $750M deal, expanding its Latin American credit data footprint.
  • FinTech Futures | Axos Financial is buying Arc Technologies, a cash-management and AI software platform for tech-focused small businesses.
  • FinTech Global | Bluevine, the SMB digital banking platform, expanded access for international owners of U.S. businesses across seven regions.

July 7

  • CoinDesk | Kraken is pursuing a full European banking license via Lithuania, which would make it the only crypto exchange with such a designation.
  • PYMNTS | FinCEN and banking agencies proposed the first customer identification rules for stablecoin issuers, a foundational AML/KYC step under the GENIUS Act framework.
  • CoinDesk | Vanguard is looking to hire a digital assets leader to oversee tokenization, stablecoins and blockchain, a notable shift for a firm long skeptical of crypto.
  • CoinDesk | The SEC plans to propose a “Reg Crypto” rule as soon as this month to ease startup fundraising, signaling a friendlier posture toward token issuance.
  • Fortune | Super.com, which offers a consumer money-savings app and secured credit card, raised a $65M round led by TPG at a $1.2B valuation, becoming the 447th fintech unicorn of the 21st century
  • CoinDesk: EDX Markets, an institutional cryptocurrency trading platform, raised a $76M round led by SBI Holdings
  • American Banker (paywall) | SEC Chair Paul Atkins says tokenized bank deposits could arrive by next year as regulators near a framework, though irreversibility and AML hurdles remain unresolved.
  • FinTech Futures | Visa launched a DR Congo pilot settling M-Pesa mobile wallet top-ups in stablecoins via Onafriq, testing cross-border mobile money settlement in Africa.
  • FinTech Futures | Thought Machine secured £30M from a new investor, extending the core banking platform's runway as it pushes toward profitability.
  • SiliconANGLE: Tangos, which uses AI to conduct financial crime investigations, raised a $20M seed led by Red Dot.

July 6

  • CNBC | Klarna applied for an FDIC-insured Utah bank charter, letting it fund loans with customer deposits and expand beyond BNPL into full consumer banking, following Mercury‘s earlier approval.
  • CoinDesk | Standard Chartered and BNY integrated Circle‘s USDC into their infrastructure, as the institutional debate shifts from whether to use stablecoins to how.
  • FinTech Futures | Tilt entered Brazil by acquiring Blipay, a salary-advance and personal-loan platform with about 6 million registered users.
  • PYMNTS  | Sberbank, Russia's largest bank, plans to offer a crypto wallet and digital depository inside its apps once Russia's digital currency law takes effect in September.

July 3

  • The Paypers | Plaid is considering an IPO after its valuation rose to about $8 billion this year.
  • FinTech Futures | Colombian BNPL/digital-commerce fintech Addi raised an $85 million Series D led by Citius and co-led by BTG Pactual.

July 2

  • Axios | Crypto payments startup Mesh is raising funding at a$2B valuation, six months after raising $75M at a $1B valuation
  • Bloomberg (paywall) | Erebor Bank is looking to raise money at an $8B+ valuation, up from $4.35B in 2025; its deposits are up from $1.1B in March to $4.05B
  • The Paypers | Grasshopper Bank and Increase launched a stablecoin-based payments capability for fintechs.
  • FinTech Futures | The UK FCA published new cryptoasset and stablecoin rules, effectivce 25 October 2027.
  • American Banker (paywall) | Payward, Kraken‘s parent, closed its $600M acquisition of stablecoin card fintech Reap.
  • FinTech Futures | InstaSwitch launched account activation infrastructure for business banking alongside a $4.7M funding round, targeting faster fintech account onboarding.

July 1

  • PYMNTS | Morgan Stanley received preliminary OCC approval to charter a national trust bank for blockchain custody, settlement and fiduciary services, joining the race for institutional digital asset infrastructure.

June 30

  • FinTech Futures | Arca launched with $64 million in funding. The company is a wealthtech platform focused on AI-assisted investment management and digital wealth services.
  • CoinDesk | 140+ companies including Stripe, Coinbase, Visa, Mastercard, BlackRock, Google, and BNY unveiled Open USD, a consortium stablecoin that returns reserve earnings to partners. Circle stock dropped 12%.
  • American Banker (paywall) | Elon Musk's X Money launched to an initial group of users with a 6% APY, 3% cashback, a Visa debit card and P2P payments, powered by Cross River Bank.
  • PYMNTS | Plasma wants to be the first stablecoin bank, arguing the real opportunity isn't payments but becoming the primary account for users in developing markets.
  • Bloomberg (paywall) | Nebex, a space fintech connecting US tech suppliers with foreign governments and investors, raised a $30M seed led by GV (Google Ventures).
  • The Paypers | BR-DGE raised $13.2 million to expand its payments orchestration platform internationally.
  • Axios (paywall)| Wealthtech startup MDOTM, which makes AI software for asset and wealth managers, raised $27M led by Expedition Growth Capital.
  • Bloomberg (paywall) | Nebex, a startup a marketplace connecting US space tech suppliers, foreign governments, and investors, raised a $30M seed led by GV

June 29

  • Wall Street Journal (paywall): Quantifind, whose AI products help banks combat financial crimes such as money laundering, raised $200M led by Summit Partners
  • CoinDesk: Japanese financial giant SBI will acquire Bitbank, a top-10 Japanese crypto exchange for $290M
  • Reuters | Airwallex raised $320 million at an $11 billion valuation. The payments and financial software company will use the capital for global expansion and AI capabilities.
  • FinTech Futures | Backbase acquired Kasisto, adding Kasisto’s financial-services AI agents to Backbase’s AI-native Banking OS.
  • The Paypers | PayPoint acquired AperiData, a UK real-time credit reference and Open Banking platform.
  • Fintech News Singapore | Libeara raised $14 million to expand tokenisation infrastructure for regulated digital assets. The Singapore company works with financial institutions and asset managers to issue and distribute tokenised assets.

June 24

  • American Banker (paywall) | Block expanded Afterpay BNPL and launched Cash App mobile phone plans, pushing deeper into consumer wallets while operating with 40% fewer employees.
  • Fortune: NYC-based Taktile, which helps fintechs build automated decision-making workflows, raised a $110M Series C led by Goldman Sachs.

June 23

  • FinTech Futures | Retail trading startup Fomo closed a $75 million Series B led by Index Ventures.

June 22

June 18

  • The Paypers | Range raised an $8.3 million Series A to expand its stablecoin and fiat treasury/compliance platform.
  • The Paypers | FV Bank launched Stablecoin Invoicing, letting businesses generate invoices and accept settlement in USDC or PYUSD, with automatic conversion and USD settlement on receipt.
  • FinTech Futures | Wise acquired Expatica, an information platform for people living and working abroad.
  • WSJ (paywall) | Deluxe will acquire Celero Commerce for $625 million in cash, accelerating Deluxe’s shift from checks toward SMB payment processing and data services.

June 17

  • FinTech Futures | Trace Finance raised a $32 million Series A led by CoinFund. Trace provides infrastructure for cross-border payments between Latin America and the U.S. using stablecoins and local rails including Pix, SPEI, ACH and SEPA.

June 16

  • Banking Dive | Robinhood is cutting 10% of its workforce, or roughly 295 employees.

  • Bloomberg (paywall) | Ripple took an equity stake in Flutterwave, valuing Africa's leading payments fintech at $3.3B.

  • American Banker (paywall) | Banks built fraud and identity defenses for humans, not AI agents transacting with a customer's own credentials, panelists warned at the Digital Banking conference in Orlando.

  • Fintech News Singapore | Choco Up secured a US$15 million credit facility from to expand SME/SMB financing in Singapore.
  • FinTech Futures | Citation Group acquired PayCaptain, a UK payroll-software company with employee savings, budgeting and wage-advance tools
  • PYMNTS | Mercury launched Mercury Command, a conversational AI interface that can answer account questions and execute approved actions such as checking cash position, changing auto-transfer rules, categorizing transactions and sending invoices.
  • WSJ (paywall) | Mynt, operator of GCash, is reportedly preparing to file for a Philippine IPO that could raise more than $1 billion; GCash has about 94 million users and offers payments, transfers, credit, savings and insurance.

June 15

  • PYMNTS | Interchecks raised a $50 million Series C to expand its instant-payments infrastructure for sportsbooks, fintechs and financial institutions.

  • FinTech Futures | Climate First Bancorp raised $67 million for its Climate First Bank, which focuses on solar-project lending, and OneEthos, a climate-finance and digital-banking fintech.

  • Reuters | Nuvei agreed to buy Payoneer for $2.75 billion, combining Nuvei’s merchant-processing stack with Payoneer’s cross-border network for SMBs and platforms. The companies expect roughly $3 billion in combined revenue and more than $500 billion in annual payment volume.
  • Reuters | American Express agreed to buy TheFork, Tripadvisor’s European restaurant-booking platform, for $700 million.
  • Reuters | Payment processor Razorpay confidentially filed India IPO papers for a potential $600 million offering, targeting a market debut by late 2026.
  • FinTech Futures | United Community Banks agreed to sell Navitas, its small business equipment-finance unit, to Wafra-managed funds for $1.9 billion.

June 14

  • Fintech Business Weekly | Jason Mikula argues that the DOJ’s subpoenas to JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and other banks over alleged “debanking” are part of a larger political fight over bank regulation, crypto access, reputation-risk supervision and regulatory independence.
  • FinTech Futures | Egyptian lender Blnk raised fresh equity plus $24.6M in local debt, having surpassed one million customers and an EGP 1B loan portfolio since 2022.

June 12

  • American Banker (paywall): A look at PNC Bank‘s decision to build AI models and even data centers in-house.
  • FinSMEs: Current, a NYC-based PFM, raised $80M in Series E at a $1.5 Billion valuation, down from its $2.2 billion valuation in April 2021.
  • Fintech News Singapore | Adyen is purchasing San Francisco-based enterprise billing platform Orb for $335 million to connect billing data, pricing, invoicing, and payment performance for enterprise merchants.
  • FF News | Barclays will acquire GoHenry from Acorns, adding a youth money-management and debit-card platform for children and teens.

June 11

  • BetaKit: Canadian challenger bank Koho raised a $93M Series E at a $950M valuation as it tops 2.5 million customers.
  • FinTech Futures | Montreal digital mortgage lender Nesto raised CAD $216 million at a $1.05 billion valuation.
  • FinTech Futures | Blockchain capital markets platform Figure will acquire Kiavi for $717 million, adding a real-estate lending platform that has financed more than $30 billion in loans and is expected to add $7 billion in annual volume.
  • The Paypers | Chase expanded its small business Customer Insights combining Dun & Bradstreet credit-score monitoring with anonymized customer analytics.
  • FinTech Futures | Capsa AI raised an $18 million Series A for AI tools used by private-capital firms for sourcing, due diligence, portfolio monitoring, and back-office operations.
  • Associated Press: Bank-owned Zelle will expand its P2P payment service internationally this year, started in India and will create its own USD-backed stablecoin.
  • Bloomberg Law: Digital Asset, public blockchain creator used by Wall St firms, raised $355M, including $100M from a16z crypto
  • The Paypers | Blnk raised $37 million in equity and debt to expand point-of-sale consumer finance in Egypt, using AI/ML underwriting to approve installment financing at merchant checkout in three minutes.
  • Bloomberg (paywall) | Poetic, an AI compliance and underwriting automation startup backed by OpenAI, emerged from stealth with $50M at a $500M valuation.
  • Bloomberg (paywall) | Digital Asset, builder of the Canton Network blockchain used by Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan, raised $355M including $100M from a16z Crypto.

June 10

  • CoinDesk 🔥 | Japan's three largest banks, MUFG, SMBC, and Mizuho, are forming a joint council to co-issue a yen stablecoin by March 2027, the first coordinated major-bank stablecoin effort outside the US.
  • FF News | Record OS, founded by former Wise employees, raised $2 million in pre-seed funding led by Episode 1 to build software around UK tax, self-assessment, and Making Tax Digital workflows.
  • FF News | Titan raised $3 million led by Entropy Ventures to scale its banking-native AI platform.
  • CNBC: Edge Markets, which provides banking tools for gambling and prediction markets, including real-time payments on Kalshi, raised a $29.2M Series A led by CoinFund

June 9

  • Banking Dive | SoFi is rolling out Coach, an AI-powered chat-based financial guide for Plus members that uses customer data to provide advice.
  • Banking Dive | BNPL specialist Klarna is launching a U.S. high-yield savings account through WebBank.
  • Reuters | Nuvei is in advanced talks to acquire cross-border payments firm Payoneer for $2.7B. PAYO surged 24% on the news.
  • Fortune: Morpho, a decentralized lending protocol, raised $175M led in a token sale valuing Morpho at up to $2B.
  •  Axios (paywall):  Vinyl Equity, an SEC-registered transfer agent, raised a $20M Series A.
  • Fintech News Singapore | Tazapay is using its $36 million in new captial to build agentic payments and cross-border stablecoin rails.
  • The Paypers | Lloyds and Stripe launched a small-business payment suite that includes tap to pay, payment links, and in-person terminals.
  • The Paypers | Monzo launched a deposit-backed credit-card pilot with Fair4All Finance for UK adults with poor credit scores, offering normally ineligible applicants a card to help them build repayment history.

June 8

  • American Banker (paywall) | Stablecoins reduce intermediaries in cross-border payments but don't eliminate them, they just shift who those intermediaries are, complicating the “rails replacement” narrative.

  • Experian | Experian launched a personal-loan shopping app inside ChatGPT.
  • Bloomberg (paywall) | AI is reshaping wealth management by automating routine tasks, but a deeper reckoning looms for the industry.
  • Bloomberg (paywall) | SoftBank‘s PayPay is acquiring T&D Financial Life Insurance for $840M, extending Japan's dominant payments app into insurance.

June 6

  • Finovate | Gradient Labs raised $26M to build AI agents purpose-built for fintech — focused on compliance, onboarding, and customer ops workflows.

June 5

June 4

  • WSJ (paywall) | Forage raised a $40M Series B led by Mouro Capital at a $225M valuation, making EBT/SNAP card acceptance easier for retailers and delivery platforms.
  • CoinDesk  | Mastercard will offer on-chain settlement across six regulated stablecoins including USDC, PYUSD, SoFiUSD, and RLUSD, accelerating its push to become the stablecoin settlement layer.
  • Economic Times | WeRize, an Indian fintech that distributes financial services through local advisors in smaller cities, raised $7 million led by Sony Innovation Fund.

  • Bloomberg (paywall) | Ramp raised $750M at a $44B valuation led by Iconiq, GIC, and OTPP, bringing total funding to $3B.

  • Fortune:  Honeycomb, an AI-powered insurance platform for multi-family residential, raised $40M bringing its total funding to $95M.

  • Bloomberg (paywall) | OnePay, Walmart‘s fintech app valued at $4B, hit 6M MAUs and $50B in annualized payments, both doubling year-over-year.

  • FinTech Global | Cense raised €6.5 million in seed funding for its digital-asset compliance and evidence platform for financial institutions.

  • FinTech Global | Paypercut raised €5 million in seed funding to expand cross-border payments for merchants in Central and Eastern Europe.

June 3

  • The Paypers | ING Germany expanded Wero to online retail payments, adding ecommerce acceptance to its existing person-to-person payment capability.
  • Axios (paywall) | Fonoa raised $110M Series C and acquired PwC‘s Indirect Tax Edge platform, building an AI-native global tax compliance operating system.
  • WSJ Pro VC (paywall)| Forage raised $40 million Series B at a $225 million valuation to expand SNAP/EBT payment infrastructure which already supports 100,000 stores.
  • PYMNTS | SoFi launched SoFi Coach, an AI-powered financial-planning chat tool for SoFi Plus members.
  • FinTech Global | Gradient Labs raised $26 million to build specialist autonomous AI agents for banks.

June 2

  • American Banker (paywall) | Global fintech revenues hit $500 billion in 2025, up  22% from last year and double the $250 billion just four years earlier (2021).

  • CoinDesk | MoneyGram launched MGUSD on Stellar, issued by Stripe‘s Bridge, powering stablecoin payments across its global remittance network.
  • Fintech Blueprint: A look at how Corgi hit a $2.6 billion valuation on $40 million of premiums.

  • Fintech News Singapore | Apple is preparing an iPhone bill-splitting feature that would let users scan receipts, assign items to people, and send payment requests through Apple Cash.

June 1

  • FinTech Futures | German fintech Riverty, owned by media conglomerate Bertelsmann, will launch Riverty Bank in July 2026, expanding from BNPL into full-service digital banking.
  • Business Wire | REPAY completed its $372 million acquisition of KUBRA, expanding its consumer bill-payment business; now processing more than $130 billion per year.
  • Business Wire | London-based payments and stablecoin startup OpenPayd plans to go public via a SPAC offering at a $1.1 billion valuation.
  • FinTech Futures | TrueLayer acquired Dutch BNPL checkout fintech in3 to add deferred-payment credit to its Pay-by-Bank network.

May 30

May 29

  • CoinDesk | SEC approved Paxos as the first blockchain-native clearing agency in the United States, enabling same-day equity settlement and directly challenging DTCC.
  • Reuters | Laser Digital, backed by Nomura, received conditional OCC approval for a U.S. national trust bank charter focused on tokenized assets, digital assets, cross-border payments, stablecoin transactions, and collateral management.

May 28

  • Axios:  Airwallex raised new funding at a $12B valuation, up from $8B late last year, and hit $1.5B in ARR, up from $1B in October.
  • TechCrunch:  Corgi, which uses AI to provide insurance for startups, raised $106M at a $2.6B valuation, up from $1.3B on May 6; total funding = $378M
  • CoinDesk | FalconX, the institutional crypto prime broker last valued at $8B, confidentially filed an S-1 with the SEC and hired Cantor to advise on an IPO.
  • American Banker (paywall) | Mastercard secured a NY BitLicense, one of fewer than 50 ever issued, clearing the path for stablecoin settlement and tokenized deposit products.
  • American Banker (paywall) | The fintech-as-disruptor narrative is fading as more established fintechs pursue bank charters and respectability; OCC charter applications up 40% in 2025.
  • CoinDesk | Samsung Securities and affiliates agreed to buy a $408M stake in Dunamu, operator of South Korea's largest crypto exchange Upbit.
  • Axios (paywall):  Saris, which builds AI agents to automate back-office work for financial institutions, raised a $28.8M Series A.
  • CNBC | Robinhood launched Trump Accounts serving as brokerage and clearing partner for the government program that provides eligible newborns a $1,000 Treasury-funded investment account.

May 27

  • CoinDesk|SoFi launched SoFiUSD on Ethereum and Solana, becoming the first US national bank to offer a stablecoin directly to retail customers on a public blockchain.
  • FinTech Global|AI-native identity and fraud platform Didit closed a $7.5M seed round — part of a broader surge in identity infrastructure investment as fraud threats escalate.
  • Forbes | NYC-based insurtech Pace, whose AI agents automate back-office operations for insurance companies, raised $46M at a $375M valuation
  • WSJ | Robinhood now allows AI agents, linked to human customers,  to run dedicated investment accounts for trading stocks
  • American Banker (paywall) | Community Federal Savings Bank, sponsor bank for Wise and Crypto.com programs, is ordered to fix AML controls tied to its payment-processing/fintech-partner business.

May 26

  • American Banker (paywall)|Coinbase relaunched direct deposit, letting US customers auto-invest any paycheck portion into USDC or crypto with zero trading fees — a direct bid for bank primacy.
  • FinTech Futures | Catena raised $30 million and filed for a national trust bank charter to build regulated banking infrastructure for AI agents, including accounts, money movement, cards and stablecoin liquidity.

May 23

  • The Financial Revolution | AI agents are beginning to force a redesign of payment rails as companies prepare for autonomous machine-to-machine commerce and programmable payments.
  • FinTech Global | Equipifi raised $34M to scale its bank-led BNPL network — one of three deals dominating an otherwise modest $757M week in fintech funding.

May 22

  • Reuters | The European Central Bank rejected proposals to aggressively expand euro stablecoins, citing financial-stability and monetary-policy concerns.
  • FintechBloom | Investors and analysts increasingly describe stablecoins as core financial infrastructure rather than speculative crypto assets.
  • 9to5Google  | Google redesigns Google Wallet with quick access for favorites, a View more button and more.
  • Jones Day |Analysis of the EO's key provisions: regulators must review fintech-bank partnership rules within 90 days, the definition of “fintech firm” explicitly covers blockchain and digital asset services, and the Fed gets a separate 120-day clock.

May 21

  • Axios | The Federal Reserve is debating whether fintech and crypto firms should receive limited direct access to Fed payment systems. (Paywall)
  • FinTech Futures  |  N26 appointed a new COO amid broader operational restructuring and leadership changes.
  • FinTech Futures  | Fintech infrastructure startup Moment raised a $78M Series C round as infrastructure funding remains active.
  • Reuters | JPMorgan is rolling out AI tools globally across investment banking operations, accelerating Wall Street’s shift toward workflow automation.
  • Fintech Pulse | PayPal is moving stablecoin functionality toward a core account feature rather than a crypto product, consistent with PYUSD supply growing 600% to $3.6B in 2025 and the company's broader bet on programmable money for global commerce.

May 20

  • Reuters | Mercury raised $200M at a $5.2B valuation while positioning itself as the banking platform for AI-native startups. (Paywall).
  • Reuters | A euro stablecoin consortium added 25 banks, accelerating competition with dollar-backed stablecoins.
  • Fintech Wrap Up | New fintech research highlighted convergence between payments, treasury, lending, and settlement into unified programmable infrastructure layers.
  • Finextra | Analysts argued AI is moving from experimental pilots into core banking and fintech operating systems.
  • CNBC | Mercury CEO Immad Akhund explained the charter logic: “At the scale Mercury is at, it just makes sense to be directly regulated.” The charter lets it join Zelle, expand lending, and reduce reliance on partner banks Column and Choice Financial.
  • Axios Pro | Farther Finance raised $150M in a General Atlantic-led Series D for its AI-enabled wealth management platform for financial advisors

May 19

  • FinTech Futures | Lloyds deployed an internal AI “board bot” while ANZ expanded executive AI leadership roles, highlighting operational AI adoption across banking.
  • Business Insider | Investors remain hesitant to let AI chatbots directly manage their money despite growing acceptance of AI-driven financial advice tools.
  • White House | Trump signed two executive orders: one directing six federal regulators to reduce barriers for fintech and crypto firms within 90–180 days, and another updating Bank Secrecy Act customer-identification requirements.
  • American Banker | A wave of fintechs, Mission Lane, Agora Finance, Augustus Bank, are filing for national bank and trust charters in a “now-or-never moment” of OCC receptivity under the current administration.
  • Banking Dive | Chime CEO Chris Britt said the neobank regularly reevaluates its charter timing as regulators face an influx of applications — the largest US digital bank is watching the Mercury playbook closely.
  • CoinDesk | Trump's EO gives the Fed 120 days to review master account access for crypto firms — a live issue since Custodia was denied in 2023, while Kraken won a limited “skinny” account in March, with Ripple, Anchorage, and Wise pending.
  • FinTech Futures | Crypto-payments infrastructure company Zerohash secured an EMI license in the Netherlands.