fintech

Airtel Money prices London IPO at £5.3 billion value

Airtel Money, the mobile money arm of Airtel Africa, on Thursday set the price for its London initial public offering at £1.96 per share. That values the payments company at about £5.3 billion, or $7 billion, ahead of its planned…

PayPal partners with Meta to power purchases through Muse AI agents

PayPal announced on Tuesday a partnership with Meta that will allow its customers to shop and check out using Meta's Muse personal AI agents across PayPal's worldwide merchant network. Shares of PayPal surged as much as 4.8% in morning trading…

Revolut CEO outlines ‘zero risk’ bank that barely lends

Revolut founder and CEO Nik Storonsky has laid out his plan to build a global bank carrying "effectively zero risk," keeping lending at a fraction of deposits even as the fintech giant collects banking licenses across the world's largest markets.

ECB launches Pontes blockchain settlement alongside digital euro merchant call

The European Central Bank has invited online and mobile-commerce merchants across the euro area to apply for a 12-month pilot of the digital euro, marking a new phase in the Eurosystem's preparations for a potential central bank digital currency. The…

Sam Altman’s World rolls out financial super app in 150+ countries

World, the identity-focused crypto project co-founded by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Alex Blania, has begun rolling out a self-custodial financial application called World Money in more than 150 countries, positioning it as a one-stop platform for stablecoin payments, investing,…

Revolut CEO confirms dual listing plans for Nasdaq and London

Revolut founder and CEO Nik Storonsky confirmed on Thursday that the fintech giant is planning a dual stock market listing on Nasdaq and the London Stock Exchange, marking the first time the company has publicly acknowledged such plans. Storonsky made…

Mastercard launches Wallet Pay to link digital wallets globally

Mastercard has introduced Wallet Pay, a global suite of solutions designed to bridge digital wallets across contactless, QR code, and online payments, as the company moves to position itself at the center of a rapidly growing ecosystem serving more than…

Circle launches Arc blockchain with BlackRock, Visa as validators

Circle Internet Group on Wednesday launched the public mainnet for Arc, a Layer 1 blockchain designed for payments, trading, and AI-agent transactions, backed by a founding validator cohort that reads like a who's who of global finance. Despite the announcement,…

Grab to buy Atome Financial for $1.49B in BNPL push

Grab Holdings announced on Tuesday that it has agreed to acquire a controlling 60% stake in Singapore-based buy-now-pay-later platform Atome Financial for $1.49 billion in cash, marking the ride-hailing giant's largest deal yet as it accelerates its expansion into consumer…

Hackers demand $780M in Bitcoin from Revolut after data breach

Revolut confirmed on September 12 that it disclosed sensitive customer data to an unauthorized party after fraudulent requests arrived from an email address on a legitimate government agency domain, in what the fintech is calling a "sophisticated external impersonation scam."…

Anthropic building Claude Money to link bank accounts to AI

Unreleased interface components discovered on Monday reveal that Anthropic is developing a personal finance tool called Claude Money for its Claude iOS app, which would allow users to link their bank accounts directly to the AI assistant for ongoing financial…

Lagarde warns EU is ‘vulnerable’ without digital euro

European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde used her press conference on Thursday to underscore the geopolitical urgency of the digital euro, warning that any region that fails to control its own payment infrastructure "is potentially vulnerable."

OpenAI launches ChatGPT for financial services

OpenAI on Thursday unveiled ChatGPT for Financial Services, a tailored version of its enterprise platform designed to automate the research, financial modeling, and pitchbook creation that have long defined the work of entry-level investment bankers. The product, powered by the…

Mastercard launches Wallet Pay to connect digital wallets globally

Mastercard on Tuesday unveiled Wallet Pay, a suite of solutions aimed at connecting digital wallets worldwide across contactless, QR code, and online payments, as the company positions itself as the infrastructure layer for a rapidly expanding ecosystem that already serves…

PayPal launches platform letting businesses mint custom stablecoins

PayPal on Wednesday launched PYUSDx, a developer platform that allows businesses to create their own branded stablecoins backed one-to-one by PayPal USD, the company's existing dollar-pegged token issued by Paxos Trust Company.

Circle to buy Singapore payments firm Tazapay for $400M

Circle Internet Group, the issuer of the USDC stablecoin, announced on Tuesday that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Singapore-based cross-border payments firm Tazapay in an all-stock transaction valued at approximately $400 million. The deal marks the company's…

Visa pairs settlement data with onchain lending as stablecoin card programs surge

Visa announced Tuesday that more than 160 stablecoin-linked card programs are now live globally, with payment volume surging nearly 200% year over year as the payments giant moves to pair its settlement data with onchain lending infrastructure for blockchain-based lenders.

Anthropic weighs building payments in-house, cutting Stripe reliance

Anthropic is evaluating whether to build more of its billing, fraud detection, and financial infrastructure internally rather than relying on third-party providers like Stripe, according to a report by The Information published Friday. The move, revealed through recent job postings,…

PayPal begins cutting 20% of global workforce

PayPal has begun laying off dozens of employees at its Israel development center as part of a sweeping global restructuring that will eliminate roughly 4,760 jobs — about 20% of the company's workforce — over two to three years.

21 major banks plan joint dollar stablecoin for 2027

Twenty-one global financial institutions announced on Tuesday that they plan to form a new company in the second half of 2026 to issue a US dollar-denominated stablecoin, with a target market launch in the first half of 2027.

Global fintech investment tops $100B in first half of 2026

Global fintech investment reached $103.1 billion in the first half of 2026, more than doubling from the same period a year earlier, according to KPMG 's latest Pulse of Fintech report released Monday. The surge was driven by a wave…

Ant International signs Citi, HSBC, Barclays for new forex AI tool

Ant International on Thursday rolled out an upgraded artificial intelligence model designed to forecast foreign exchange risk, partnering with six major global banks as financial institutions race to embed specialized AI into their core operations.

Stripe acquires AI routing startup OpenRouter for $7.5B

Stripe announced Wednesday that it has agreed to acquire OpenRouter, a fast-growing AI model gateway platform, in a deal that values the startup at approximately $7.5 billion — more than five times its $1.3 billion valuation from a funding round…

AWS launches autonomous payment service for AI agents

Amazon Web Services Amazon.com, Inc. has made Amazon Bedrock AgentCore Payments generally available, enabling AI agents to autonomously pay for APIs, data feeds, and digital content using the USDC stablecoin — a move that brings autonomous machine-to-machine financial transactions into…

Visa, Mastercard join alliance to set AI payment rules

More than 25 organizations across payments, crypto, and fintech have joined a newly formed coalition aimed at shaping how AI agents transact on behalf of humans and machines, as the industry races to define standards before trillions of dollars in…

PayPal in talks to sell itself to Stripe and Advent

PayPal is in active discussions to sell itself to a consortium of Stripe and private-equity firm Advent International, in what would be the largest fintech acquisition ever, according to reporting by The Wall Street Journal on August 14.

Stripe, Advent in talks to acquire PayPal for $53B

Stripe and private-equity firm Advent International are in active negotiations to acquire PayPal for roughly $53 billion, the Wall Street Journal News Corp reported Friday in an exclusive, a deal that would reshape the global payments industry by uniting two…

Samsung Wallet to add stablecoin payments later this year

Samsung Electronics is preparing to bring stablecoin functionality to Samsung Wallet by the end of 2026, a move that would allow Galaxy smartphone users to open stablecoin accounts, send cross-border remittances, and make in-store payments without downloading a separate cryptocurrency…

Revolut wins French banking license for Western Europe push

Revolut secured a full French banking license on Monday following joint approval from France's Prudential Supervision and Resolution Authority (ACPR) and the European Central Bank, giving the British fintech a second standalone banking license within the eurozone.

China’s UnionPay links to Brazil’s Pix amid US tariff dispute

China's UnionPay International plans to link Chinese payment apps to Brazil's Pix instant payment system, a pilot that arrives just weeks after the United States imposed tariffs on Brazilian goods partly in retaliation for the government-run platform's dominance over American…