Weekly update is now Builders in Fintech

After 151 issues, this newsletter, the podcast and everything around them now live under one name: Builders in Fintech. Same weekly update, same Monday slot, but now with a home: buildersinfintech.ai.

Behind it is the database I’ve been building from every issue since November 2023. Here’s what’s live:

• 2,400+ fintech funding rounds, each sourced and editorially reviewed, with investors, lead flags and amounts in the currency announced.

• The Builders Fintech Funding Index: a weekly read on fintech deal activity against its 12-week average. This week: 215.

• Investor scorecards: how often an investor backs the same company again within 24 months.

• Podcast knowledge: all 53 episodes turned into summaries, timestamped facts and Q&A. You can search what founders and VCs actually said and jump to the moment on YouTube.

• The Embargo Desk for founders and PR teams: send announcements under embargo and they publish on time.

One more thing. The whole database is open to AI assistants through a free MCP server: no key, 19 tools, listed in the official MCP Registry. Connect it to Claude or any MCP client and ask things like “Which investors were most active in European payments rounds this year?” Details at buildersinfintech.ai/for-agents. The data is also free to download (CC BY 4.0) on GitHub, Hugging Face and Zenodo.

Thank you for reading, 151 issues in. Builders in Fintech is still the same newsletter, now with more around it. Now, back to the news.

Stripe agreed to acquire Parafin, Kalshi Agarwal is in talks to raise about $1B at a $40B valuation, and Valley National is paying $340M for Bluevine. Below: The latest episode of the podcast with Nika Kurdiani from TBC Uzbekistan and McKinsey & Company report on wallet adoption, a survey of 300+ corporates, investors and sponsors on the 12–25% of banking wallet that changes hands every year, the week’s rounds and funds, and three managers raising now.

The podcast: Episode #53 aired last Tuesday: my guest was Nika Kurdiani, CEO of TBC Uzbekistan. You can take a look at it here on LinkedIn or here on Substack, full episode here on YouTube and here on Spotify.

All episodes: YouTube · Spotify · Apple Podcasts · Amazon. Founders and VCs who want to come on the show: message me on LinkedIn.

Lisbon, 6–8 October. I’ll be speaking at Fintech Meetup Europe, the first European edition of the meetings first event, at FIL in Lisbon next week. If you are there, message me on LinkedIn and let’s find a slot.

The report: the 12–25% of banking wallet that moves every year

McKinsey & Company, Anchor or drift: What it takes to capture wallet share in 2026. The 2026 CIB Voice of the Customer Survey draws on more than 300 corporations, institutional investors and financial sponsors, plus C-suite interviews, on how they split business among banks and nonbanks. Here my main takeaways:

The numbers. Clients reallocate 12–25% of their banking wallet every year. About 94% of corporates reassess allocations annually but move only 12–13% per cycle; 77% of institutional investors reassess and move 17%; 54% of sponsors reassess but move up to 25% when they do. Operational cash management stays put; FX, hedging and trade finance retender every quarter; M&A and event financing drive the occasional structural shift.

Anchor status. House banks get a disproportionate share. Corporates consolidate about 73% of wallet with their top three providers, institutional investors 60%, sponsors 55%. The advantage over a non-core bank is roughly 3× for corporates, 2× for investors and 1.3× for sponsors. Corporates run two to three house banks out of six or seven relationships; sponsors four to five out of eight. About 92% of sponsors say they drive portfolio-company banking decisions.

Beyond price. Pricing ranks first for corporates (74% of respondents) and investors (58%), but sponsors put certainty and speed of execution first (67%), relationship strength second (60%) and price third (48%). Corporates rank execution certainty and relationship strength joint second at 47%. Investors list sector expertise (31%) and product innovation (31%) in their top five, with more than 40% of their AUM now in alternatives.

Nonbank competition. About 40% of corporates expect to shift financing toward nonbanks over the next three years: 22% to private credit and direct lending, 17% to fintechs. 67% of sponsors already use direct lenders and private credit, mainly for NAV facilities. Nonbank market makers hold 9–14% of wallet by asset class, deepest in cash equities (14%) and ETFs (13%); only 3% of clients say they distrust them. Fintechs lose on product breadth, enterprise delivery and regulatory robustness; private credit on pricing, covenants and valuation opacity.

The relationship manager. 47% of corporates and 42% of investors want the RM as central orchestrator; 69% of sponsors want a hybrid model with direct access to specialists. Digital-first coverage polls at 3%, 12% and 0%. Corporates grade an RM on speed and responsiveness (76%) and understanding of the company’s needs (49%). McKinsey’s conclusion: AI tools will commoditise, and the differentiator becomes the RM’s judgement and ability to orchestrate the whole bank.

The read. The contestable slice is the flow business, and that is where the week’s news sits. Stripe is buying Parafin to put credit next to payments for 18,000 platforms; Valley National is paying $340M mostly for Bluevine’s $2.1B of small-business deposits; Citi is settling stablecoin checkout for corporate clients with Coinbase; and five European schemes formed a Madrid entity to connect 130M wallet users. Each one targets the products McKinsey says retender every quarter rather than the sticky operating core. The survey also explains why fintechs still rarely become the house bank: 40% of corporates are open to them, but on breadth, enterprise delivery and regulatory robustness they come up short, which is why the charter and licence applications of the last month (Bastion, Chime, Revolut) matter more than product launches. Watch whether sponsors, the most mobile segment at 25% a year, push portfolio-company banking to nonbanks, and whether the 17% of corporates leaning toward fintechs for financing turns into named mandates in 2027.

The week in six stories

1. Stripe agrees to acquire Parafin. Terms were not disclosed and closing is expected in the coming months. Founded in 2020 by Sahill Poddar and Vineet Goel, Parafin lets software platforms offer credit underwritten on platform data and has financed more than 60,000 businesses; Stripe will bring its products to the more than 18,000 platforms built on it, alongside Stripe Capital.

2. Kalshi in talks to raise about $1B at a $40B valuation. Reuters reports Sequoia Capital and Wellington Management are in talks to lead, with Tiger Global and Dragoneer also in discussions; the round has not closed. Kalshi raised $1B at $22B in May and reported more than $40B of trading volume in August.

3. Valley National Bancorp agrees to acquire Bluevine for $340M. About $255M in cash and 6.3M Valley shares, closing expected in early 2027. Bluevine brings 175,000 active customers and $2.1B of deposits, 99% from non-borrowers; co-founder and CEO Eyal Lifshitz joins Valley as head of small business banking.

4. Homeward raises a $120M Series D led by Saluda Grade plus $330M in asset-backed debt. Citi Ventures, Magnetar, Norwest, Adams Street and LiveOak took part. The Austin company, led by CEO Tim Heyl, has worked with 25,000 agents and facilitated more than $4B of residential transactions.

5. Jeeves raises a $110M Series C led by CoinFund. AllianceBernstein, Andreessen Horowitz, Coinbase Ventures, CRV, GIC, ParaFi, Vista, Wintermute and Y Combinator joined. Stablecoin activity is about $1.5B of annualised volume; the company launches a stablecoin wallet with payouts to 190 countries and extends its cards from 25 to 35 countries.

6. Open USD goes live, issued by Bridge. The stablecoin from Open Standard, the company founded by Coinbase, Mastercard, Shopify, Stripe and Visa, launched on 30 September on Ethereum, Solana, Base and Tempo, with more than $1B in committed launch liquidity and free 1:1 mint and burn; Stripe makes it the default stablecoin on its platform.

Also: BANCOMAT, Bizum, Wero, MBway and Vipps MobilePay create the European Network for Payments, a Madrid entity to connect 130M users in 13 countries; Outmarket AI $34.5M Series B led by SignalFire; erad $22M Series A led by MEVP; Blockchain.com targets a $500M US IPO at a $4–6B valuation; Checkout.com reports $750M annualised net revenue and targets $150M EBITDA; Apple Pay launches in India with Axis Bank; Nubank says it is not pursuing a deal with Monzo; MNT-Halan plans to float 20% of its Egyptian business.

Funds. Seven new vehicles this week: KASZEK (reported ~$600M Fund VII, as former Nubank CFO Guilherme Lago joins as partner), Headline ($400M EU VIII, seed and Series A in Europe, backed by EIF and EBRD), Protego Ventures ($125M Fund I, Israeli defence), DIG Ventures ($120M Fund III, European AI infrastructure, LPs include Horsley Bridge and Sofina), IronWave (€105M first close of its debut fund, €5–15M minority stakes in European B2B software), Eastend Ventures (A$30M debut fund for South Australia, WA and Queensland, anchored by Funds SA) and Freesbee ventures ($15M Fund II, applied AI, $300–500K tickets).

All rounds

Equity

• TXSE Group — third funding round, size undisclosed, takes the Texas Stock Exchange’s capital to $430M, US

• Jeeves — $110M Series C led by CoinFund, stablecoin-native banking platform for global enterprises, US

• Outmarket — $34.5M Series B led by SignalFire, AI for commercial insurance brokers, US

• erad — $22M Series A led by MEVP, Shariah-compliant SME working capital, Saudi Arabia

• Underdogs Group — €20M equity and debt led by Nextalia Ventures, MadTech buy-and-build, Italy

• Complaion — €13.5M co-led by Eurazeo and Italian Founders Fund, ISO certification and compliance for SMEs, Italy

• Blue Fire AI — $9M round as Mizuho’s Asset Management One takes a minority stake, AI for active investment management, Singapore

• Promenaut — $8.9M total funding as HSBC invests and joins as design partner, orchestration of AI agents in banks, US

• Marble — €6.5M Series A led by Smartfin, open-source fraud and AML compliance platform, France

• Stay — R$30M (about $5.8M) Series A led by Citrino, corporate pensions as an employee benefit, Brazil

• Elio Mortgage — $5.1M pre-seed co-led by Motive Partners and Social Leverage, AI-native mortgage brokerage, US

• Walapay — $4.6M seed led by Generative Ventures, cross-border payments infrastructure, US

• Mona — $3.5M led by Sandberg Bernthal Venture Partners, AI capital-matching for small businesses, US

• Humanos — $3.2M seed led by Anthemis, live risk scores for AI agents, Portugal

• FRANK — €2.9M co-led by Armilar and Start Ventures, AI back office for insurance brokers, Portugal

• Computis — €2M pre-seed led by Techshop Capital, AI-run accounting for SMEs, Italy

Debt and credit

• Galgo — MXN 1B (about $56M) credit line from BBVA Spark, motorcycle financing for delivery riders, Mexico

VC funds

• Kaszek — reported ~$600M Fund VII nearing close, LatAm, as former Nubank CFO Guilherme Lago joins as partner

• Headline — $400M EU VIII, seed and Series A in Europe with a focus on AI

• Protego Ventures — $125M Fund I final close, early-growth Israeli defence companies

• DIG Ventures — $120M Fund III, pre-seed and seed AI infrastructure in Europe

• IronWave — €105M first close of its debut fund, €5–15M minority stakes in European B2B software, Wendel Growth spin-out

• Freesbee Ventures — $15M Fund II, applied AI from late seed to Series A, $300–500K tickets

Market news

Stablecoins, crypto and tokenisation

• Open Standard launches Open USD, issued by Bridge and backed by Visa, Stripe, Mastercard and Coinbase, live on four chains

• Citi and Coinbase expand their partnership so Citi’s corporate clients can accept stablecoin payments

• CoinMarketCap acquires crypto derivatives data platform Coinglass

• Blockchain.com targets a $500M US IPO at up to $6B valuation, Bloomberg reports

M&A and capital markets

• Stripe agrees to acquire Parafin to bring embedded small business credit to the 18,000 platforms built on Stripe

• Kalshi in talks to raise about $1B at a $40B valuation, with Sequoia and Wellington set to lead

• Valley National Bancorp agrees to acquire Bluevine for $340M to add $2.1B in digital small business deposits

• Zilch taps banks for a London IPO as soon as 2027

• Nubank says it is not pursuing a deal with Monzo after reports of £8–10bn takeover talks

• Checkout.com says annualised net revenue hits $750M, up 28%, and targets $150M adjusted EBITDA for 2026

Payments and infrastructure

• BANCOMAT, Bizum, Wero, MB WAY and Vipps MobilePay launch the European Network for Payments, a Madrid entity to connect their wallets

• ECB and Brazil’s central bank study linking TIPS with Pix for instant euro-Brazil payments

• Apple Pay launches in India with Axis Bank as first partner

• Aljazira Bank selects Thunes to power international remittances from Saudi Arabia

Licensing, expansion and people

• Alpaca secures MAS in-principle approval for a Capital Markets Services licence in Singapore

• Trade Republic launches a free current account in Greece

• Revolut appoints Álvaro Alberdi as Head of Business Growth for Southern Europe and LatAm

AI, agents and products

• Robinhood unveils AI trading agents, 10x crypto perps and weekend stock trading at HOOD Summit

Builders Fintech Funding Index

215 (last full week, week of 21 Sep). 26 equity rounds recorded, against a 12-week average of 12. Median disclosed USD round: index 107. Our round coverage expanded in September 2026, so the Index overstates activity until mid-December. Full reading

Raising now

Space for GPs and solo GPs launching funds. Not paid. If you’re raising and want to be listed, message me on LinkedIn.

• Parallax Ventures — fintech, LatAm. Fund I: +50% IRR, 0.7x DPI. Raising Fund II. [link] · gennari@parallax.vc

• Founder Factor — YC-focused. Just closed investments in YC W26 and is expanding the current vehicle to double down on the batch. [link]

• RedFish Capital Partners — private equity, Italian SMEs in growth and mature phases. 40%+ IRR track record, €200M+ AUM. Raising a new AIF with a soft commitment from the European Investment Fund. redfish.capital · investor.relations@redfish.capital

Performance figures are provided by the managers. Nothing here is investment advice.

Events, next 30 days

• Fintech Meetup Europe — Lisbon, 6–8 Oct

• TOKEN2049 Singapore — Singapore, 7–8 Oct

• Money20/20 USA — Las Vegas, 18–21 Oct

• MERGE Madrid — Madrid, 27–29 Oct

• Hong Kong FinTech Week — Hong Kong, 2–6 Nov

Later: Africa Stablecoin Summit, Johannesburg (12–13 Nov) · Solana Breakpoint, London (15–17 Nov) · Singapore FinTech Festival (18–20 Nov) · Fintech Nerdcon, San Diego (19–20 Nov) · Bitcoin MENA, Abu Dhabi (7–8 Dec) · Abu Dhabi Finance Week (7–10 Dec) · TOKEN2049 Dubai (21–22 Apr 2027) · Money20/20 Asia, Bangkok (27–29 Apr 2027)

Want an event listed or sponsored? DM me.

Previous edition: Weekly update #151

You can see here a short clip from the video, full episode here:

• Youtube

• Spotify

• Apple podcast

• Amazon podcast

Nika is the CEO of TBC Uzbekistan, one of the world’s fastest-growing digital financial ecosystems, with more than 23 million registered users and 6 million monthly active users. He leads TBC Digital, the group’s Uzbek holding company, and Space International, and sits on TBC Group’s Executive Committee.

Over a career spanning more than 23 years, Nika has driven growth, transformation and post-acquisition integration across banking, payments, fintech, insurance and B2B SaaS in Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia. As Deputy CEO of TBC Bank Georgia, he oversaw business banking, payments, international expansion and the launch of the digital neobank Space. He also chaired the board of Payme, one of Uzbekistan’s leading payment platforms, and held senior roles at UniCredit, Kaspi Bank and Bank of Georgia.

With him, we will talk about running a bank in Central Asia, the challenges of banking in 2026 and how to retain talent in the AI era.

As always, enjoy and share.

In this episode, I sit down with Nika Kurdiani, CEO of TBC Uzbekistan.

Nika is the CEO of TBC Uzbekistan, one of the world's fastest-growing digital financial ecosystems, with more than 23 million registered users and 6 million monthly active users. He leads TBC Digital, the group's Uzbek holding company, and Space International, and sits on TBC Group's Executive Committee.

Over a career spanning more than 23 years, Nika has driven growth, transformation and post-acquisition integration across banking, payments, fintech, insurance and B2B SaaS in Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia. As Deputy CEO of TBC Bank Georgia, he oversaw business banking, payments, international expansion and the launch of the digital neobank Space. He also chaired the board of Payme, one of Uzbekistan's leading payment platforms, and held senior roles at UniCredit, Kaspi Bank and Bank of Georgia.

Beyond his executive work, Nika founded the Applied Management Institute and the Design Institute, invests in early-stage companies, and supports initiatives in education, food security and hospice care. He holds an MBA from IE Business School and completed executive programs at Stanford GSB and IMD.

A former professional basketball player, he received Uzbekistan's Presidential Order of Friendship (Dustlik) for his contribution to the country's financial sector.

Want to stay up to date with the market? Here my newsletter and my podcast:

Linkedin: https://tinyurl.com/fintech-weekly 

Substack: https://michelemattei.substack.com/

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@buildersinfintech 

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6L6L7uj3IIYEHbBStLXi8M?si=fa10d8cefe2741aa 

ApplePodcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/it/podcast/builders/id1767562838?l=en-GB

Amazon:https://podcasters.amazon.com/podcasts/a1f92635-a50e-4a0c-ac96-7daa09c4e853 

Builders in Fintech: No episode this week, but you can always recover the last one, where my guest was Nicolas Kipp , CEO and founder of Credibur :

All episodes: YouTube · Spotify · Apple Podcasts · Amazon. Founders and VCs who want to come on the show: message me on LinkedIn.

The interview: Ingo Ernst, CEO of Kybix, on perpetual KYB

No report this week, but I did sit down for an interview with Ingo Ernst, CEO and founder of Kybix. Kybix launched on 16 September as a Euroclear portfolio company backed by Liminal, the venture studio founded by Temasek. It builds on Euroclear’s GlobalWatch platform, with more than 800 customers and partners expected to move across, and sells a shared exchange for Know Your Business information: registries, APIs and AI research on one side, private data supplied by the businesses themselves on the other. I asked Ingo Ernst, its CEO, nine questions.

KYB checks remain repetitive and manual across financial institutions. Why has business identity lagged so far behind consumer KYC?

Business identity is complex. You are dealing with legal entities across jurisdictions, layered ownership structures, beneficial owners, directors, signatories, changing corporate information and a mixture of public and private data.

The information is also fragmented between registries, internal systems, documents, emails and portals. That means many institutions are still asking businesses very similar questions in different formats, then manually reconciling the answers.

As a result, the issue is not simply making a risk decision; it is getting accurate information from the right parties, in the right format, at the right time. That is why KYB has remained slower to digitise, and why it needs shared infrastructure, rather than another isolated workflow tool.

You advocate a shift from periodic annual reviews to continuous, perpetual KYB. How close is the sector to adopting continuous monitoring, and what is holding it back?

The sector is moving in that direction, but we should be realistic. Right now, most organisations are not yet operating perpetual KYB at scale. Annual or periodic reviews remain the norm because that is how many processes, systems and teams have been designed.

What is changing is the expectation that firms maintain accurate and current customer and beneficial ownership information throughout a relationship, rather than treating KYB as a one-off onboarding event.

The main barriers are fragmented data, the lack of secure ways to reuse private information between trusted parties, legacy processes and understandable concerns around governance and accountability.

Perpetual KYB will not happen through monitoring alone. Ultimately, it requires fresher information, controlled exchange and the ability for people to understand and act on meaningful changes.

How do you see a shared, reusable corporate identity profile reshaping corporate banking over the next decade?

Over the next decade, a reusable corporate identity profile could make corporate banking feel far less repetitive. Instead of every new relationship beginning with a blank questionnaire and a long document chase, a business should be able to securely share a maintained profile with the relevant information, permissions and supporting evidence already in place.

That does not mean one institution simply accepts another’s risk decision. Each firm will retain its own policies, risk appetite and accountability. But it can mean the underlying information is collected once, enriched, refreshed and reused more intelligently. The result should be a better experience for businesses, faster onboarding for institutions and more capacity for teams to focus on the genuinely complex or higher-risk decisions.

Kybix combines startup agility with backing from Euroclear and Liminal. What does that blend give you in the RegTech market?

It gives us the benefit of being able to move with the focus and product mindset of a new technology company, while building from within trusted financial infrastructure. Euroclear brings deep market understanding, established customer relationships and experience of operating in highly regulated environments. Liminal, Temasek’s venture studio, brings technology expertise and access to Asian networks.

That combination matters because trust is not something you add at the end. Institutions need confidence that a platform understands security, control, governance and operational reality from the outset.

Reusable identity networks depend on adoption on both sides: institutions need a deep network of profiles, businesses want high institutional acceptance. How are you tackling the chicken-and-egg problem?

You’re right, the challenge is real. A reusable identity model only becomes more valuable as more trusted organisations participate. The good news is that Kybix is not beginning from zero. We are building on Euroclear’s GlobalWatch platform, with more than 800 customers and partners expected to transition to Kybix.

Our approach is to start with a clear, practical use case: improving the collection, exchange and refresh of KYB information in areas where the pain is already acute. We then build value for both sides of the network. Institutions gain better information flows and less manual effort; businesses face fewer repeated requests and have greater control over how their information is shared. Adoption follows when the platform solves an immediate operational problem before it delivers the wider network benefit.

Kybix integrates AI-powered research and questionnaires alongside human oversight. Where is the line between automation and regulatory accountability?

AI can remove a great deal of the administrative burden in KYB. It can support data collection, pre-populate questionnaires, bring together information from different sources, surface initial insights and help identify where information may need attention.

However, AI should support judgement, not replace it. In regulated environments, accountability remains with the institution and its people. Kybix is therefore being designed around permission-based access, human oversight and clear governance. The balance is straightforward: automate the repetitive work, make the information richer and easier to review, and ensure people remain responsible for the decisions that matter.

What is the roadmap for expanding across Europe, Asia-Pacific and the Americas?

Our starting point is Europe, building on the GlobalWatch foundation and our established network in the funds management and wider financial-services ecosystem. From there, the ambition is to serve a much broader global market, including Asia-Pacific and the Americas.

Euroclear gives us a strong European foundation, while Liminal and Temasek bring valuable technology and Asian market connections.

Beyond banks, Kybix also targets multinational corporations. How do the KYB pain points differ for a global corporate managing vendor risk versus a bank onboarding a client?

For a bank, KYB is largely about onboarding and maintaining a client relationship while meeting regulatory obligations. The institution needs enough reliable information to make a defensible decision, assess risk and keep records current over time.

For a multinational corporate, the problem is often broader and more operational. It may need to understand suppliers, distributors, partners and other third parties across multiple markets, while repeatedly providing its own information to banks and counterparties. Both have the same underlying challenges, fragmented, changing business identity information, however the workflow, risk context and decision-maker are different. Kybix is designed to help both sides exchange that information with more control and less duplication.

What do the next 12 to 18 months look like in terms of platform rollouts, ecosystem adoption and client expansion?

Over the next 12 to 18 months, our focus is on building the platform in stages and working closely with customers and partners to ensure each capability addresses a real KYB challenge. The initial priority is secure information exchange, alongside AI-powered questionnaires, third-party connectivity and tools that support more efficient review.

In parallel, we will grow the ecosystem beyond the existing GlobalWatch base, particularly across funds management and broader financial services. Over time, we will extend into maintenance, monitoring, risk insight and decision support. Our goal from 2027 is to establish Kybix as the platform of choice for trusted KYB data sharing across these sectors.

Five years out, if Kybix fully realises its mission, how will corporate onboarding differ from today?

Five years from now, success would mean that businesses are no longer repeatedly rebuilding their identity from scratch every time they establish a new financial relationship. They would maintain a trusted, permissioned corporate profile that can be securely shared, updated and reused when needed.

For institutions, that would mean less document chasing, fewer disconnected processes and far more timely information. Onboarding would be faster, periodic reviews would be more targeted, and risk teams could spend more time applying expertise to exceptions and meaningful decisions. That is the shift we are working towards: from KYB as a recurring administrative burden to trusted, continuously maintained business identity infrastructure.

The read. The number that matters in this interview is 800: the GlobalWatch customers and partners Kybix starts with. Reusable-identity networks before it, from bank-led KYC utilities to the corporate KYC consortia of the last decade, stalled on the same point: getting the first side of the market to show up. Kybix inherits that side from a market infrastructure that already holds the relationships, a better starting position than its predecessors had. The open question is the second side: whether corporates will maintain a profile for a network built in funds management, and whether banks outside Euroclear’s base will accept information they did not collect themselves. This week’s rounds say the demand is there: Baselayer raised $35M to extend business identity checks to AI agents, Footprint $25M for an AI compliance operating system, IPID $16M with Citi and HSBC for payee verification. Watch who signs outside the funds industry in the next twelve months.

The week in six stories

1. Airtel Money confirms a London IPO at an $8–9B valuation. The offer is about $800M of existing shares, so the company raises no new capital; IFC has agreed to invest up to $90M as cornerstone. Airtel Money had 53M monthly active users at the end of June and processed $213B in the twelve months to June; pricing is expected in mid-October.

2. Priority Technology Holdings to go private in a $1.6B deal. An investor group led by chairman and CEO Thomas Priore, who already holds around 58% of the stock, will pay $8.05 a share in cash, a 38% premium to the 18 September close, with equity from Searchlight Capital Partners; closing is expected in the first half of 2027.

3. Nubank to invest COP 5 trillion ($1.58B) in Colombia by 2030. Nu Colombia has 5M customers and roughly 10% of the credit card market after five years; founder David Vélez used the announcement to call for an end to the usury rate cap.

4. Bird raises $450M in debt led by J.P. Morgan. A $400M term loan and a $50M revolver from seven banks including Capital One and Citi, structured as a dividend recapitalisation for shareholders and current and former employees; the company reported $165M of EBITDA in 2025.

5. Numeral raises a $100M Series C led by Insight Partners. Salesforce Ventures, Benchmark, Mayfield and Y Combinator joined; total funding reaches $157M a year after the $35M Series B, and transaction volume on the sales tax platform grew 327% year on year.

6. Binance invests $100M in Circle. About 1.24M Class A shares at $80.84 each, a 5% discount, locked up for up to two years, alongside a five-year agreement in which Circle pays Binance a monthly fee tied to USDC balances held on its wallet infrastructure.

Also: HIFI raises $37M Series A led by Left Lane Capital for stablecoin and tokenised settlement; Baselayer $35M Series A led by M13 to extend identity checks to AI agents; Paymob $35M pre-Series C co-led by Mubadala and EBRD; MCO more than $100M in growth financing from Accel-KKR Credit Partners; Huspy acquires Italy’s Integra Finance and commits $86M to the Italian market; Bastion wins conditional OCC approval for a national trust bank charter; MoonPay agrees to acquire North Capital.

Funds. Eleven new vehicles this week: Bessemer Venture Partners ($5.75B in a single close, $1.75B for seed and early stage and $4B for growth), DTCP (€455M first close of Defence Fund I, target €500M), Lightspeed ($250M target for a new early-stage AI fund in India), Activate ($105M debut fund for AI-native founders in India), Final Frontier and Myriad (merger targeting a €100M defence tech fund), Pulse Fund ($63M inaugural climate fund), Norrsken Evolve (€62M electrification fund, Fortum joins as LP), Connect Ventures ($55M first close of an $80M Fund V, anchored by British Business Bank), Energy Revolution Ventures ($13.5M first close of Fund II, anchored by Centrica, target $50M), NewSchool vc (€10M Fund I, early-stage B2B tech) and Project Ventures (£5M debut fund for Imperial-linked deeptech and AI).

All rounds

Equity

• Numeral — $100M Series C led by Insight Partners, AI sales tax compliance, US

• HIFI — $37M Series A led by Left Lane Capital, stablecoin and tokenised settlement infrastructure, US

• Baselayer — $35M Series A led by M13, business identity checks extended to AI agents, US

• Paymob — $35M pre-Series C co-led by Mubadala and EBRD, payments infrastructure, MENA

• CellPoint Digital — $34M from Toscafund, new CEO and AI payments platform Zenith, travel payments

• FintechOS — $28M equity and debt from existing investors and Santander, US expansion, UK

• dtcpay — $25M Series A, SBI Group joins, digital payments, Singapore

• Footprint — $25M Series B led by QED Investors, AI operating system for financial crime compliance, US

• Sela — $21M seed and Series A led by Costanoa Ventures, AI mortgage sales agents, US

• IPID — $16M Series A led by Foundation Capital, with Citi and HSBC, payee verification, Singapore

• NG.CASH — $15M led by Blockchain Capital, credit and crypto for Gen Z, Brazil

• Wealthcome — €15M Series B led by Breega, wealth management software, France

• Atum — $13.5M from Variant and PayPal Ventures, open payments network for stablecoins and AI agents, US

• Tundr — €11.6M Series A, Italy

• Sprive — $10M Series A, cashback-to-mortgage app, UK

• Tenora — £7.5M from Fexco (£5.5M equity, £2M funding line), corporate treasury, UK

• Benford — €5M pre-seed, financial audit

• Creem — €5M seed led by Inovo.vc, billing and monetisation for AI-native software, Estonia

• Mirai RiskTech — €5M seed, balance sheet and ALM software for banks, Spain

• Abwab.ai — $4M seed led by Speedinvest, its first investment in Saudi Arabia, SME lending infrastructure

• Relai — $2.5M at a $90M valuation, bitcoin app, Switzerland

• Duqu raises $1.5M to unlock cash trapped in unpaid invoices

Debt and credit

• Bird — $450M debt financing led by J.P. Morgan, $400M term loan and $50M revolver, dividend recapitalisation

• MCO (MyComplianceOffice) raises more than $100M in growth financing from Accel-KKR Credit Partners

VC funds

• Bessemer Venture Partners — $5.75B in a single close, $1.75B seed and early stage, $4B growth

• DTCP — €455M first close of Defence Fund I, growth-stage European defence and security, target €500M

• Lightspeed — $250M target for a new early-stage AI fund in India

• Activate — $105M debut fund for AI-native founders in India

• Final Frontier and Myriad — merger targeting a €100M defence tech fund

• Pulse Fund — $63M inaugural fund for climate companies

• Norrsken Evolve — €62M fund for European electrification, Fortum joins as LP

• Connect Ventures — $55M first close of an $80M Fund V, pre-seed for technical founders in Europe

• Energy Revolution Ventures — $13.5M first close of Fund II anchored by Centrica, target $50M

• NewSchool.vc — €10M Fund I, early-stage B2B tech

• Project Ventures — £5M debut fund for Imperial-linked deeptech and AI startups

Market news

Stablecoins, crypto and tokenisation

• Binance invests $100M in Circle and signs a five-year deal to promote USDC

• Bastion wins conditional OCC approval for a national trust bank charter for stablecoin custody and issuance

• Raiffeisen Bank International to give 18M customers crypto access through Bitpanda

• MoonPay agrees to acquire North Capital to move into onchain capital markets

• Kredete acquires Gravv to bring its stablecoin payment rails in-house, Nigeria

M&A and capital markets

• Priority Technology Holdings to go private in a $1.6B deal led by CEO Thomas Priore and backed by Searchlight Capital Partners

• Airtel Money prepares a $9B London IPO

• Huspy acquires Italy’s Integra Finance and plans an $86M investment in the Italian market

• Crazy news! Monzo is reported in early talks on sale to Nubank for £8–10bn!

Licensing and expansion

• Nu Colombia to invest COP 5 trillion ($1.58B) by 2030 as David Vélez calls for an end to the usury cap

• Revolut receives Central Bank approval to acquire Cetelem in Argentina

• Argentina’s central bank expects Mercado Pago and Revolut to hold banking licences before year end

• PhonePe wins in-principle approval from the Central Bank of the UAE for two payment licences, its first market outside India

• Qonto expands in Paris with a new headquarters as its banking licence application stays under review

• TBC Uzbekistan expands flagship debit card through Платёжная система «UZCARD» partnership

AI, agents and partnerships

• Mastercard and Alchemy bring Mastercard credentials to AgentCard, so AI agents can pay online

• ANNA Money and YouLend bring revenue-based financing into the ANNA app for UK small businesses

• Revolut launches a London pilot for “Pay with Smile”

People and operations

• Adyen nominates former Klarna CFO Niclas Neglen as its next CFO

• Trustly plans to cut around 200 jobs, about a quarter of its workforce

• Revolut customers notified about another data incident

Founders to watch

Companies I’ve been talking with this week that I find interesting

• Vocations - Italy based job platform AI-driven (Italy)

• KALYP - blockchain based financial market infrastructure (US)

• Paymove - agentic payments (Poland)

Let me know if you want to have a chat with them, always happy to make an intro.

Raising now

Space for GPs and solo GPs launching funds. Not paid. If you’re raising and want to be listed, message me on LinkedIn.

• Parallax Ventures — fintech, LatAm. Fund I: +50% IRR, 0.7x DPI. Raising Fund II. [link] · gennari@parallax.vc

• Founder Factor — YC-focused. Just closed investments in YC W26 and is expanding the current vehicle to double down on the batch. [link]

• RedFish Capital Partners — private equity, Italian SMEs in growth and mature phases. 40%+ IRR track record, €200M+ AUM. Raising a new AIF with a soft commitment from the European Investment Fund. redfish.capital · investor.relations@redfish.capital

Performance figures are provided by the managers. Nothing here is investment advice.

Events, next 30 days

• TOKEN2049 Singapore — Singapore, 7–8 Oct

• Money20/20 USA — Las Vegas, 18–21 Oct

• MERGE Madrid — Madrid, 27–29 Oct

Later: Hong Kong FinTech Week (2–6 Nov) · Africa Stablecoin Summit, Johannesburg (12–13 Nov) · Solana Breakpoint, London (15–17 Nov) · Singapore FinTech Festival (18–20 Nov) · Fintech Nerdcon, San Diego (19–20 Nov) · Abu Dhabi Finance Week (7–10 Dec) · Bitcoin MENA, Abu Dhabi (7–8 Dec) · TOKEN2049 Dubai (21–22 Apr 2027) · Money20/20 Asia, Bangkok (27–29 Apr 2027)

Want an event listed or sponsored? DM me.

Previous edition: Weekly update #150

Podcast

Builders #52 is out. This week my guest was Nicolas Kipp, CEO and founder of Credibur. Here a short clip from the video:

Listen on YouTube · Spotify · Apple Podcasts · Amazon

This week’s report: McKinsey 2026 M&A Trends

Global M&A deal value rose 43% to $4.7T in 2025, reaching 4.2% of total market value — up from 3.3% in 2024 and still below the 10-year average of 5.3%. Large deals ($10B+) numbered 60, the most since the post-COVID peak in 2021, with value more than doubling to $1.3T (+112%). PE deal value jumped 54% to $1.2T, with average deal size up to $890M.

Divestitures grew 30% to $1.6T. Financial services M&A rose ~40% to $499B; fintech and payments deal value grew 108%, average deal size up 131% to $1.2B. The Americas accounted for 51% of financial services deal value ($255B). Banks are still trading at 0.9× book despite record net income of ~$1.2T in 2024 — a gap McKinsey expects to drive consolidation in 2026.

The read: the M&A market is back on volume and conviction. The fintech subsector’s 108% increase in deal value points squarely at two themes this week: scale plays in payments (Global Payments/Worldpay, FIS/Issuer) and capability acquisitions (Allica/Kriya, Banca Ifis/Illimity). The same logic is running through the rounds this week — barq and Tabby are building at scale, not at the margins.

What McKinsey flags for 2026: cross-border deals in EMEA, more carve-outs as banks refocus on core, and AI as an accelerant of integration timelines. That last point is the one to watch — if AI genuinely compresses post-merger integration, deal cadence could keep rising even without valuation compression.

The week in six stories

1. Tabby raises $233M at a $6.5B valuation as it moves beyond BNPL into a broader financial services platform — The Saudi-based BNPL leader is now valued at $6.5B after raising $233M. The round signals Tabby’s pivot from instalment payments into a full financial services platform across the Gulf.

2. barq closes a $329.5M Series A at a $1.85B valuation, two years after launch — The Saudi-founded payments network reached unicorn status just 24 months in, with the round among the largest Series A closes in MENA fintech.

3. S&P Global agrees to acquire OpenZeppelin, the smart contract security standard behind $37T in onchain value — Three days after leading Kaiko’s $110M round, S&P now owns both the market data and the security layer under tokenised finance.

4. Circle launches the Arc mainnet in partnership with BlackRock, DTCC, ICE, Mastercard and Visa — Arc is a Layer 1 payment blockchain built for instant settlement. The consortium of partners positions it as the institutional-grade stablecoin infrastructure rail.

5. Qupital raises $300M in Series C and ABS financing led by M CAPITAL to expand e-commerce trade finance — The Hong Kong-based receivables financing platform combines a Series C equity round with an asset-backed securities vehicle to fund e-commerce seller working capital across Asia.

6. Revolut prepares for a potential dual listing in London and New York, according to CEO Nik Storonsky — A dual listing would give Revolut access to deeper capital markets and validate its post-IPO ambition following the UK banking licence approval earlier this year.

Also: Split Pay raises $125M across Series A and B led by Khosla Ventures · Ridgeline raises $250M Series E at $1.425B to build the AI-native investment management platform · Celligence secures up to $100M from Mortgage Treasury to scale its AngelAi mortgage platform · Velocity raises Series A to $48M with Visa, Circle and Ripple · Grab agrees to acquire 60% of Atome Financial for $1.49B · Ramp launches in the UK six months after acquiring Billhop · OpenAI launches ChatGPT for financial services, built with Morgan Stanley and Evercore.

All rounds

Equity

• $329.5M Series A — barq · Saudi digital payments network · $1.85B valuation · two years after launch

• $300M Series C + ABS — Qupital · Hong Kong e-commerce trade finance · led by M CAPITAL

• $233M — Tabby · Saudi BNPL and financial platform · $6.5B valuation

• $125M Series A + B — Split Pay · BNPE X w led by Khosla Ventures

• $110M Series B extension — Kaiko · crypto market data · strategic round led by S&P Global

• R$360M ($70M) Series D — A5X · Brazil derivatives exchange · R$2.7B valuation

• $48M Series A — Velocity · stablecoin · backed by Visa, Circle and Ripple

• $20M seed — Fin.com · stablecoin-to-local-currency infrastructure · led by Expa and Garrett Camp

• $15M Series A — Pave Finance · AI rtortfolio management for advisors · $100M pre-money valuation

• $13M Series A — Synapse Analytics · AI credit decisioning inside bank infrastructure · led by Partech

• $13M — ETFBOOK · ETF data intelligence layer

• $10.5M — Chift API · European financial connectivity layer

• $10M seed — Intermezzo · AI-native global payroll infrastructure

• $10M — Zeal · loyalty software on 4M+ payment terminals

• $3.5M seed — OCTA · AI agents for accounting firms · led by MEVP

• €18M Series A — Integra · account and tax reporting

• €2M seed — Opio · AI financial due diligence · Frst, Seedcamp, Global Founders Capital

• €3.7M — JustSolve · agentic AI for credit collection

• £2.75M — Quartz · AI wealth advisor

• €1.1M seed — Peaky · AI financial planning for finance teams · led by JK Invest

Debt and credit

• Up to $100M — Celligence (AngelAi) · AI mortgage platform · from Mortgage Treasury

• $50M strategic financing — Tarabut · open banking · from Saudi banks and family groups

• $50M corporate debt — Wayflyer · SME working capital · from Trinity Capital

• £2ؕ billion milestone — YouLend + Dojo · SME funding partnership

• £75M ($100M) facility — Ayan Capital · Shariah-compliant car finance · from Triple Point

VC funds

• $600M - Portage Ventures IV · fintech · fourth flagship fund

• $525M debut — Intrepid Growth Partners · AI — Fund I

• $484M across four vehicles — Crane Venture Partners · global tech · multi-stage

• $450M Eund II — Matter Venture Partners · HardTech · LPs include ASML, TSMC, Kleiner Perkins

• $1.6B Fund XI — Bain Capital Ventures · AI infrastructure, applications and services · early-stage

• $254M Fund IV — Artemis Capital Partners · Industrial Tech buyouts · aerospace, defence, life science, semis

• $130M Fund V — Seed Capital · Nordic startups · from Denmark across the Nordics

• $72M first close — Brighteye Ventures III · edtech, AI, productivity, labour tech · Fund III

• $77.6M Fund I — Cosmos Ventures

• $31M Fund II — Grindstone Ventures · Africa’s missing middle

• €40M target, first close — Primo Biotech Lazio · biotech and life sciences · Primo Capital, Lazio Innova cornerstone

• €40M first close — DAL Partners

• $1B allocation — BDC Defence Platform · $500M Defence Fund + $200M StrongNorth top-up · Canada

Market news

Stablecoins and crypto rails

• Circle launches the Arc mainnet with BlackRock, DTCC, ICE, Mastercard and Visa — payment Layer 1 for institutional settlement

• Column releases stablecoins, full-stack card issuing, global banking and multicurrency accounts — the chartered bank built by William Hockey opens its full product suite

• S&P Global agrees to acquire OpenZeppelin — the smart contract security standard behind $37T in onchain value; three days after S&P led Kaiko’s $110M round

AI in financial services

• OpenAI launches ChatGPT for financial services built with Morgan Stanley and Evercore — purpose-built AI for banking workflows

• Meta launches Muse, a personal AI agent that can shop and pay through Stripe’s Link

• Ramp launches in the UK, its first market outside North America, six months after acquiring Billhop for the licences

M&A and exits

• Grab signs definitive agreement to acquire 60% of Atome Financial for $1.49B — remaining 40% about two years later, valuation capped at $4.5B

Expansion and licensing

• Bybit secures an EMI licence in Austria to launch a European super app with bank accounts, stocks and crypto

• Revolut secures a Colombian banking licence ahead of a 2027 launch

• Revolut applies for a Swiss banking licence from FINMA and commits to invest CHF 150M over five years

• Revolut is preparing for a potential dual listing in London and New York

• Wise launches a Chequing Account in Canada with no monthly fee, free Interac e-Transfers and CDIC-eligible balances

• Monzo releases Aura, a new credit card

Security

• Revolut confirms a customer data breach through fraudulent government requests

Funds raising now

Space for GPs and solo GPs launching funds. Not paid. If you’re raising and want to be listed, message me on LinkedIn.

• Parallax Ventures — fintech, LatAm. Fund I: +50% IRR, 0.7x DPI. Raising Fund II. [link] · gennari@parallax.vc

• Founder Factor — YC-focused. Just closed investments in YC W26 and is expanding the current vehicle to double down on the batch. [link]

• RedFish Capital Partners — private equity, Italian SMEs in growth and mature phases. 40%+ IRR track record, €200M+ AUM. Raising a new AIF with a soft commitment from the European Investment Fund. redfish.capital · investor.relations@redfish.capital

Performance figures are provided by the managers. Nothing here is investment advice.

Events, next 30 days

• Money 20/20 Middle East | Riyadh | 14-16 September (link here)

• European blockchain week | Barcelona | 16-17 September (link here)

• Nordic fintech week | Copenhagen | 23-24 September (link here)

• Korea Blockchain Week 2026 | Seoul | September 29 - October 1 (link here)

Later: Money20/20 USA, Las Vegas (18–21 Oct) · MERGE Madrid (27–29 Oct) · Hong Kong Fintech Week (2–6 Nov) · Africa Stablecoin Summit, Johannesburg (12–13 Nov) · Solana Breakpoint, London (15–17 Nov) · Singapore FinTech Festival (18–20 Nov) · Fintech Nerdcon, San Diego (19–20 Nov) · Bitcoin MENA, Abu Dhabi (7–8 Dec) · Abu Dhabi Finance Week (7–10 Dec) · TOKEN2049 Dubai (21–22 Apr 2027) · Money20/20 Asia, Bangkok (27–29 Apr 2027)

Want an event listed or sponsored? DM me.

Previous edition

Weekly update #149 · Substack

Here a short clip from the video, full episode here:

• Youtube

• Spotify

• Apple podcast

• Amazon podcast

Nicolas Kipp is a fintech entrepreneur, investor and financial services executive with extensive experience across lending, payments, risk management and embedded finance. He is currently Founder and CEO of Credibur, where he is building infrastructure to automate the management of structured credit transactions between alternative lenders and institutional capital providers.

Previously, Nicolas co founded Banxware, an embedded financial services provider enabling digital platforms to offer integrated financing products to merchants. Before that, he spent four years at Ratepay, ultimately serving as Chief Risk Officer, with responsibility for credit and fraud risk, KYC, compliance, data analytics and IT security.

He has also served on Bitkom’s board for Payments, FinTech and Digital Banking, advised the German Bundestag on artificial intelligence, and invests in and advises fintech, proptech and software companies across Europe and the US.

With him, we will be talking about the future of the fintech market in Europe, but also building trust in this market, and going from an executive to a founder role.

In this episode, I sit down with Nicolas Kipp, CEO and founder of Credibur.

Nicolas Kipp is a fintech entrepreneur, investor and financial services executive with extensive experience across lending, payments, risk management and embedded finance. He is currently Founder and CEO of Credibur, where he is building infrastructure to automate the management of structured credit transactions between alternative lenders and institutional capital providers. 

Previously, Nicolas co founded Banxware, an embedded financial services provider enabling digital platforms to offer integrated financing products to merchants. Before that, he spent four years at Ratepay, ultimately serving as Chief Risk Officer, with responsibility for credit and fraud risk, KYC, compliance, data analytics and IT security. 

He has also served on Bitkom’s board for Payments, FinTech and Digital Banking, advised the German Bundestag on artificial intelligence, and invests in and advises fintech, proptech and software companies across Europe and the US.

With him, we will be talking about the future of the fintech market in Europe, but also building trust in this market, and going from an executive to a founder role.

Want to stay up to date with the market? Here my newsletter and my podcast:

Linkedin: https://tinyurl.com/fintech-weekly 

Substack: https://michelemattei.substack.com/

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@buildersinfintech 

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6L6L7uj3IIYEHbBStLXi8M?si=fa10d8cefe2741aa 

ApplePodcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/it/podcast/builders/id1767562838?l=en-GB

Amazon:https://podcasters.amazon.com/podcasts/a1f92635-a50e-4a0c-ac96-7daa09c4e853 

Builders in Fintech: Season 5 aired last week on Tuesday with episode #51, where my guest was Gaston Irigoyen, CEO and founder of Pomelo. You can take a look at the full episode here on YouTube or here on Spotify. This week another episode will be live on Tuesday at 10.30am CET!

All episodes: YouTube · Spotify · Apple Podcasts · Amazon. Founders and VCs who want to come on the show: message me on LinkedIn!

The report: European fintech, fewer deals and a regulatory moat

SBI Ventures Europe, European Fintech H1 2026: Selectivity, Regulation and the Infrastructure Opportunity. The report explores investments in the European fintech sector during H1, 2026. Here my main takeaways:

The numbers. 383 deals in H1 2026, down 36% from 598 a year earlier, but disclosed capital rose 21% to $5.74B. Median round went from $3.0M to $4.2M (+40%); the mean from $12.8M to $21.4M. 61% of deals were early-stage. The top 10 deals took $1.8B, or 31% of all capital, and $100M+ rounds went from 8 to 9. For scale: the US did 1,280 deals and $22.3B in the same period.

Where the big checks went. Alan $538M Series G, Pennylane $240M Series E, Morpho $175M Series C, 9fin $169M Series C, Allica Bank $155M Series D, Elliptic $120M Series D, Taktile $110M Series C, Primer $100M Series C, Keyrock $100M Series C, Upvest $90M equity (the $125M headline included a $35M debt facility). Three French companies took 53% of top-10 capital. Three digital-asset companies made the list.

Geography. UK 151 deals (39% of the market, -26% YoY), France 33 (-37%), Germany 29, Switzerland 23, Spain 22 (+22%), Netherlands 21, Italy 18 (+12%), Denmark 14, Ireland 12, Sweden 8 (-56%). Spain and Italy together did 40 deals in a contracting market. Most active investors by deal count: Index Ventures (8), SFC Capital (7), Fuel Ventures and Seedcamp (6 each); among public investors Lazio Innova (10) and CDP Venture Capital (5); among strategics Coinbase Ventures (6).

Sectors. Lending deal count collapsed 69% (78 to 24) even though the sector raised the most disclosed capital ($1.97B). Regtech/AML: 35 deals, median up 128% to $4.1M, $501M raised. Digital assets: 65 deals, median up 96% to $5.5M, $484M raised. Payments/A2A: 46 deals (-28%), median up 90% to $5.7M, $352M raised. SME/CFO stack: 59 deals, median down 25% to $1.8M. Banking infra/BaaS: 19 deals (-41%). SBI ranks regtech and licensed digital assets as the top H2 themes and lists generic BaaS, consumer BNPL and generic AI copilots as no-go areas.

Exits. 50 M&A transactions worth $4.0B, 22 PE/buyout deals worth $289M, zero VC-comparable IPOs. Largest: Inigo Insurance to Radian Group ($1.67B), PrimaryBid to SoFi ($519M), Lendo Group to Clar Global ($458M), Billhop to Ramp ($395M), October to Aether Financial Services ($155M). Named IPO candidates: Monzo, Zilch, Bitpanda, Revolut.

AI, counted properly. AI-tagged deal share rose from 30% to 42%. Of 931 fintechs screened across both halves, 481 ship a working AI product and 5 qualify as agents; 84 describe themselves as agents. AI-feature companies took 71% of disclosed round value on 40% of deals, with the AI-feature median rising from $4.4M to $7.0M.

The regulatory calendar. MiCA fully live since 1 July 2026 (one CASP licence, €50–150k capital, passport to 27 states). CCD2 binds 20 November 2026. eIDAS 2 state wallets by 24 December 2026, mandatory acceptance by 24 December 2027. Instant Payments non-bank duty 9 April 2027. Single EU AML rulebook 10 July 2027, AMLA direct supervision from 2028. AI Act high-risk duties for credit scoring and insurance pricing 2 December 2027. PSD3/PSR text expected H2 2026; FiDA has no agreed text.

The read. The European market did not recover in H1; it filtered. A third fewer companies raised, but the ones that cleared raised at higher medians, and capital pooled where a licence, a compliance mandate or a settlement rail creates non-optional demand. That is where margin is moving: regtech medians more than doubled, licensed digital-asset infrastructure kept its deal count while everything else shrank, and payments capital went to rail operators rather than orchestration. The companies best positioned are the ones already holding the permission: Elliptic, Taktile, Keyrock, Upvest and the MiCA-licensed CASPs, plus the AML vendors selling into a July 2027 deadline. Exposed: Series A/B companies without a regulatory hook (growth-stage share fell from 23% to 17%), lending platforms without a named lender, and B2C apps facing rising CAC. This week’s news reads the same way: Chime, Block and Nubank all chose to own or apply for a charter, TRM Labs doubled its valuation on compliance demand, and Circle bought last-mile licences with Tazapay. Watch Italy and Spain, which grew deal count while the UK and France fell.

The week in six stories

1. Ramp in early talks for a ~$1B Series G at a $60B valuation. Bloomberg reports the talks three months after the $750M Series F at $44B; annualised revenue passed $1.5B by June. Ramp declined to comment.

2. Chime to acquire Stride Bank for $590M in cash. Stride, its bank partner for seven-plus years, becomes Chime Bank, N.A.; price is ~1.5x tangible book, closing expected H1 2027 pending OCC and Fed approval, with ~$100M of net synergies from removing sponsor-bank fees.

3. Circle to acquire Tazapay for $400M in stock. The Singapore cross-border payments company handles $25B+ in annualised volume across 100+ markets, about 60% already in stablecoins; close expected 2027 subject to MAS approval.

4. Nubank launches in the US. Deposits sit with FDIC-insured Lead Bank while the OCC charter for Nubank, N.A. completes; the account pays 3.50% APY, and Nu Global converts deposits into USDC or EURC for transfers across 35+ countries.

5. FNZ raises $450M in new equity from existing shareholders. La Caisse, CPP Investments, Generation Investment Management and Motive Partners, following $650M from the same group in November 2025; the group has $2.5T of assets on platform.

6. TRM Labs closes a Series C expansion at a $2B valuation. Led by Blockchain Capital, doubling the February Series C valuation; ARR has quadrupled in three years. Amount undisclosed.

Also: Harvey raises $550M at a $15.5B valuation co-led by Diffusion and Lightspeed; Bending Spoons to acquire Miro for $1.355B; Savvy Wealth raises $100M Series C at a $600M valuation led by Halo Fund; Kapital raises $125M from Tru Arrow Partners and Fasanara Capital; Grab in talks to buy a majority stake in Atome at a $2B+ valuation.

Funds. Seven new vehicles this week: CVC Secondary Partners ($10B, Secondary Opportunities Fund VI), Claret Capital Partners (€575M growth debt fund), Tether and Fasanara Capital ($400M StableFund, stablecoin-enabled private credit), Molten Ventures (£175M first close of a £350M growth fund), UK Government (£150M northern scaleup fund), Clean Growth Fund (£81.5M second close, fund II), The Techshop SGR (€43M first close, fund II, B2B AI).

All rounds

Equity

• Ramp — eyes $1B Series G at $60B valuation, reported

• FNZ — $450M new equity from existing shareholders

• Kapital — $125M equity and debt (Series C extension) from Tru Arrow Partners and Fasanara Capital, B2B financial institution, Mexico

• Savvy Wealth — $100M Series C at $600M valuation, AI-native RIA, led by Halo Fund

• Latitude — $35M Series A, stablecoin infrastructure

• OpenReserve — $25M seed led by a16z crypto, plus preliminary OCC approval for a full-service national bank

• Blee — $20M Series A, governance of AI-generated marketing content

• NAYLA — $17.9M pre-Series A, micro-business lending, Saudi Arabia

• fundcraft — €12M, fund operations platform

• Diameter Pay — $10M Series A co-led by CMT Digital and Lightspeed Faction

• HelmGuard AI — $7.3M, AI for governance, risk and compliance

• Olenbee — €7M, real-time employee benefits, France

• Creditstar Group — €4.6M from Kilde at €130M pre-money valuation

• Sav — $3.5M, AI-powered personal finance platform

• Outline — $3M, agentic FP&A platform

• Hello Clever — strategic round, undisclosed, approaching $100M ARR

VC funds

• CVC Secondary Partners — $10B, Secondary Opportunities Fund VI

• Claret Capital Partners — €575M growth debt fund

• Tether and Fasanara Capital — $400M StableFund, stablecoin-enabled private credit

• Molten Ventures — £175M first close of £350M growth fund

• UK Government — £150M northern scaleup fund

• Clean Growth Fund — £81.5M second close, fund II

• The Techshop SGR — €43M first close, fund II, B2B AI

Market news

Stablecoins and crypto rails

• Circle to acquire Tazapay for $400M in stock to expand USDC payments infrastructure

• Nubank launches in the US with cards, savings, crypto and stablecoins

• Block applies to launch national trust bank for crypto custody

• MoneyGram launches stablecoin backed card with Rain and Visa

• Coinbase files SEC notice registrations to offer single-stock perpetual futures in the US

• BVNK and Marqeta partner on stablecoin-backed card infrastructure

• Flex partners with Mesh to bring stablecoin deposits into business finance

• Robinhood takes minority stakes in Crypto.com and OG.com in a multi-year prediction markets deal

M&A

• Chime to acquire Stride Bank for $590M

• EQT agrees to acquire specialty (re)insurance broker McGill and Partners at a $2B valuation

• Bending Spoons to acquire Miro for $1.355B

• PayTabs Global to acquire Amazon Payment Services MENA in a $100M deal

• UniCredit acquires a minority stake in German fintech vc trade

Regulation and licensing

• Checkout.com launches US direct acquiring under its MALPB charter

• MoonPay secures a Dutch EMI licence to expand in Europe

• Revolut reportedly seeks two new licences in Luxembourg

AI and partnerships

• Plaid connects Grok to US users’ bank and investment accounts

• Ramp signs a strategic collaboration agreement with AWS and lists on AWS Marketplace

• Checkout.com to power Best Buy marketplace payments infrastructure

• Bank of America pilots a Zelle-UPI link for cross-border payments

• FC Bayern München names Wonderful as official enterprise AI partner

• SumUp becomes Manchester United’s official sleeve partner in a multi-year deal

• Ant Technology slowly building an HR stack

Expansion and operations

• Checkout.com US payment volume up 126% as North America expansion accelerates

• Deblock adds free embedded insurance for all customers

• PayPal files notice of 251 permanent job cuts at its San Jose headquarters

Founders to watch

Companies I’ve been talking with this week that I find interesting

• Finanz — Consumer finance learning app in Italy

• Syeew — AI powerd ERP for multi point of sales chains

• Pegasus — Defense tech in Canada, selling to air defense both in CA and US

Let me know if you want to have a chat with them, always happy to make an intro.

Raising now

Space for GPs and solo GPs launching funds. Not paid. If you’re raising and want to be listed, message me on LinkedIn.

• Parallax Ventures — fintech, LatAm. Fund I: +50% IRR, 0.7x DPI. Raising Fund II. [link] · gennari@parallax.vc

• Founder Factor — YC-focused. Just closed investments in YC W26 and is expanding the current vehicle to double down on the batch. [link]

• RedFish Capital Partners — private equity, Italian SMEs in growth and mature phases. 40%+ IRR track record, €200M+ AUM. Raising a new AIF with a soft commitment from the European Investment Fund. redfish.capital · investor.relations@redfish.capital

Performance figures are provided by the managers. Nothing here is investment advice.

Events, next 30 days

• Money 20/20 Middle East | Riyadh | 14-16 September (link here)

• European blockchain week | Barcelona | 16-17 September (link here)

• Nordic fintech week | Copenhagen | 23-24 September (link here)

• Korea Blockchain Week 2026 | Seoul | September 29 - October 1 (link here)

Later: Money20/20 USA, Las Vegas (18–21 Oct) · MERGE Madrid (27–29 Oct) · Hong Kong Fintech Week (2–6 Nov) · Africa Stablecoin Summit, Johannesburg (12–13 Nov) · Solana Breakpoint, London (15–17 Nov) · Singapore FinTech Festival (18–20 Nov) · Fintech Nerdcon, San Diego (19–20 Nov) · Bitcoin MENA, Abu Dhabi (7–8 Dec) · Abu Dhabi Finance Week (7–10 Dec) · TOKEN2049 Dubai (21–22 Apr 2027) · Money20/20 Asia, Bangkok (27–29 Apr 2027)

Want an event listed or sponsored? DM me.

Previous edition: Weekly update #148

Builders in Fintech is back: season 5 opened on Tuesday with episode #51, where my guest was Gaston Irigoyen, CEO and founder of Pomelo. You can take a look at the full episode here on YouTube or here on Spotify, in the meanwhile take a look at a short clip:

All episodes: [YouTube] · [Spotify] · [Apple Podcasts] · [Amazon].

Founders and VCs who want to come on the show: message me on LinkedIn!

Also, I will be speaking at To the peak in Bolzano next week. I will share the stage with Claudio Erba and Alessandro Fracassi to talk about: “Building Something Big: Here or There?”, a very interesting discussion on why founders should or shouldn’t stay to build in Europe.

The report: quantum computing reaches the commercial phase

McKinsey, Quantum Technology Monitor 2026: A commercial tipping point (April 2026, fifth edition). Here my main takeaways:

The market. Quantum computing companies generated more than $1B in revenue in 2025, projected to reach up to $4.4B by 2028. The “internal” quantum market (hardware, software, services) is forecast at $60–100B by 2035, with computing accounting for $43–71B; McKinsey raised the lower bound from last year’s $28B after seeing corporate budgets shift. Over 300 organizations, including Airbus, Boehringer Ingelheim, E.ON, JPMorgan Chase and Liberty Mutual, are now working with quantum providers, moving from pilots to applications embedded in workflows.

Where the value sits. Economic value at stake by 2035: $1.3–2.7T across industries. Chemicals leads at $450–800B; financial services is second at $400–600B, ahead of travel and logistics ($200–500B) and pharma ($80–400B). Of 162 customers analyzed, 14% are financial services firms, 43% are headquartered in Europe (US 29%, Asia 22%), and 72% are privately owned, a reversal from the public-lab-led market of a few years ago.

Corporate budgets. One-third of surveyed companies spent more than $10M on quantum in 2025; 7% spent over $50M. 44% of budgets go to use-case development (average ~$6M, with willingness to pay around $13M). Spending is going to applications, integration and internal teams, not hardware: private companies buy quantum-as-a-service via cloud, public entities buy on-premise.

Capital. Investment in quantum start-ups hit $12.6B in 2025, 6.3x 2024. 90% went to computing. The source of capital flipped: public money (governments, sovereign funds, universities) was one-third of the total in 2024 and 3% in 2025. Of private capital, 44% came from capital markets (IPOs, SPACs, PIPEs), 34% from funds, 22% from corporates. Roughly 60% of the year’s total went into the top ten deals. Exits arrived: IonQ’s $1.1B acquisition of Oxford Ionics, Xanadu’s SPAC listing, and IonQ’s further purchases of Qubitekk, Lightsynq, Capella Space, Vector Atomic and a majority of ID Quantique, with SkyWater Technology expected to close in 2026.

What’s still hard. Bottlenecks have moved from qubits to lasers, cryogenics, control electronics and manufacturing. Provider roadmaps range from hundreds to hundreds of thousands of logical qubits within a few years; fault-tolerance timelines remain uncertain. The credible near-term path is hybrid: classical HPC does most of the work, AI orchestrates, quantum handles the hardest sub-problems.

The read. Finance is the second-largest value pool in the report and the one with the clearest forcing function: Q-Day, when public-key cryptography breaks, is a compliance deadline that every bank and payments network will have to budget for, regardless of whether quantum optimization ever pays off. JPMorgan already has an internal team on portfolio optimization, AI and cryptography, and the report’s use cases in finance (risk scenarios, edge-case correlations) look like today’s model-risk stack with a new back end. Two things to watch. First, the 2025 capital number is mostly public-market money going into a handful of listed names; with only 3% public funding and 60% concentrated in ten deals, valuations are pricing in roadmaps that the report itself calls uncertain. Second, “quantum-as-a-service” via AWS and Azure means the buy-side for fintech is going to look like cloud procurement, not R&D partnerships, and the winners will be the software layer (Classiq, Zapata) that makes it usable, not the hardware. For post-quantum cryptography specifically, the vendors selling migration tooling to banks are the fintech angle nobody is pricing yet.

The week in six stories

1. Revolut wins conditional OCC approval for a US national bank charter. The application was filed in March; FDIC, Federal Reserve and final OCC sign-off are still required. The bank will be based in Stamford, Connecticut, with ~$95M of initial capital and a 2027 launch target.

2. Mollie completes the GoCardless acquisition, creating a broader European payments platform spanning card acceptance and bank-to-bank collections.

3. EQT completes its $3.2B combination with Coller Capital, taking a private-markets secondaries specialist inside one of Europe’s largest alternative managers.

4. Anthropic launches AI commerce agents with Visa, Mastercard and Accenture. The card networks are now partners of the model providers on agentic checkout, a week after Experian brought credit-card shopping into ChatGPT.

5. Félix secures a $200M Series C to build an AI-powered financial platform for Latinos in the US.

6. TabaPay raises $155M and moves to acquire Transact Bank, the payments processor’s route to owning a bank charter.

Also: Wonderful raises $550M at a $5B valuation for enterprise AI agents; London Stock Exchange and Kraken parent Payward bring FTSE 100 stocks onchain; X moves US creator payouts from Stripe to X Money; Polymarket reportedly in talks for $300M from 1789 Capital as part of a $1B round; PayPal cuts nearly 25% of its Israel workforce and 600 jobs in India under a plan to remove ~20% of global headcount.

Funds. Eleven new vehicles this week. Andreessen Horowitz launched a $1.1B Machine Age fund for AI infrastructure and expanded its growth fund to $8.5B; Swish Ventures (Omri Casspi) launched a $250M fund, taking AUM to $800M; Permanent Capital Ventures closed a second $200M fund; Uplift Ventures launched a €100M deep-tech fund; Cherubic Ventures closed a $68.88M Fund VI as a solo GP; Auxxo Female Catalyst Fund closed €33.3M Fund II; British Business Bank committed up to £46M to Zinc’s new deep-tech fund; Redstone launched a €10M deep-tech fund in Finland; GMO VenturePartners announced Fintech Fund 8, ¥6.4B at first close with a ¥10B target, focused on AI × fintech [verify: the Sept 2026 announcement — first close vs launch]; Mykhailo Fedorov plans a Ukrainian defence-tech fund.

All rounds

Equity

• Wonderful raises $550M at $5B valuation to scale enterprise AI agents

• Félix secures $200M series C to build an AI powered financial platform for latinos

• TabaPay raises $155M and moves to acquire Transact Bank

• Firelight Protocol raises $8M to bring staked XRP protection to DeFi

• MFast raises $6M to expand its agent led fintech model into the Philippines

• Plenti raises $3M seed round led by Tether.io to expand across Latin America

• Instarc Technologies raises €1.25M to scale cloud compliance platform in South Africa

Debt and credit

• ID Finance secures €21M debt facility to expand lending in Spain

Reported / in progress

• Polymarket reportedly in talks to raise $300M from 1789 Capital in $1B funding round

• Bolt seeks up to $27M in bridge funding as Ryan Breslow leads turnaround

VC funds

• Andreessen Horowitz expands growth fund to $8.5B as AI investment accelerates

• Andreessen Horowitz launches $1.1 billion Machine Age fund for AI infrastructure

• Omri Casspi’s Swish Ventures launches $250M fund, reaching $800M in AUM

• Uplift Ventures launches €100 million deep tech fund

• British Business Bank commits up to £46M to Zinc’s new deeptech fund

• Auxxo Female Catalyst Fund closes €33.3M fund II to back female founders across Europe

• Redstone launches €10 million DeepTech fund in Finland

• Mykhailo Fedorov plans new Ukrainian defence tech fund

Market news

Regulation and licensing

• Revolut wins conditional OCC approval for a US national bank charter

• Fiat Republic and ClearBank partner on MiCA safeguarding

• Monetary Authority of Singapore commits S$220M to accelerate fintech innovation

Stablecoins and digital assets

• London Stock Exchange and Kraken parent Payward bring FTSE 100 stocks onchain

• BitGo acquires NYDIG’s institutional trading business

• Nium launches USDC funding for global fiat payouts

• Alpaca partners with Kalshi to bring prediction markets to its brokerage infrastructure

AI

• Anthropic launches AI commerce agents with Visa, Mastercard and Accenture

• Revolut launches AIR, its AI financial assistant, across Europe

• Experian brings credit card shopping to ChatGPT

• Accrual to acquire Puzzle and expand AI platform into client accounting

• Airwallex backs 10 Australian AI startups with $1M in equity free funding

M&A

• Mollie completes GoCardless acquisition, creating a broader European payments platform

• EQT Group completes $3.2B combination with Coller Capital

• TabaPay raises $155M and moves to acquire Transact Bank

• fomo acquires Mobula’s technology and team in $17M deal

Payments and partnerships

• EPI Company launches Wero in Luxembourg as Payconiq migration enters final phase

• Orange becomes first french merchant to offer Wero for subscription payments

• Revolut and Yuno partner to expand global merchant payments

• X moves US creator payouts from Stripe to X Money

• Ingenico expands leadership team following €150M investment

• Contents welcomes Deel Ventures as strategic investor

• Allica Bank targets Sweden for first international expansion

Sports partnerships

• Circle‘s USDC becomes Chelsea Football Club front of shirt sponsor

• etoro becomes official trading partner of Leeds United

• Finom becomes Juventus Football Club’ official B2B financial platform partner

Restructuring

• PayPal cuts up to 25% of Israel workforce as global restructuring accelerates

Startups to watch

Companies I’ve been talking with this week that I find interesting

• BigData.com— Data analysis, embedded directly in your AI tool

• Syeew — AI powerd ERP for multi point of sales chains

• BeBelong — Solving the housing problem in the US with advertising

Let me know if you want to have a chat with them, always happy to make an intro.

Raising now

Space for GPs and solo GPs launching funds. Not paid. If you’re raising and want to be listed, message me on LinkedIn.

• Parallax Ventures — fintech, LatAm. Fund I: +50% IRR, 0.7x DPI. Raising Fund II. [link] · gennari@parallax.vc

• Founder Factor — YC-focused. Closed investments in YC W26 and is expanding the current vehicle to double down on the batch. [link]

• RedFish Capital Partners — private equity, Italian SMEs in growth and mature phases. 40%+ IRR track record, €200M+ AUM. Raising a new AIF with a soft commitment from the European Investment Fund. [link] · investor.relations@redfish.capital

Performance figures are provided by the managers. Nothing here is investment advice.

Events, next 30 days

• Global Fintech Fest 2026 | Mumbai | 9-11 September (link here)

• Money 20/20 Middle East | Riyadh | 14-16 September (link here)

• European blockchain week | Barcelona | 16-17 September (link here)

• Nordic fintech week | Copenhagen | 23-24 September (link here)

• Korea Blockchain Week 2026 | Seoul | September 29 - October 1 (link here)

Later: TOKEN2049 Singapore (7–8 Oct) · Money20/20 USA, Las Vegas (18–21 Oct) · MERGE Madrid (27–29 Oct) · Hong Kong Fintech Week (2–6 Nov) · Africa Stablecoin Summit, Johannesburg (12–13 Nov) · Solana Breakpoint, London (15–17 Nov) · Singapore FinTech Festival (18–20 Nov) · Fintech Nerdcon, San Diego (19–20 Nov) · Bitcoin MENA, Abu Dhabi (7–8 Dec) · Abu Dhabi Finance Week (7–10 Dec) · TOKEN2049 Dubai (21–22 Apr 2027) · Money20/20 Asia, Bangkok (27–29 Apr 2027)

Want an event listed? DM me.

Previous edition: [Weekly update #147]

Here a short clip from the video, full episode here:

• Youtube

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Gaston Irigoyen is the CEO and Co Founder of Pomelo, a Latin American payments infrastructure company serving more than 150 customers across Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Panama, Peru, and Puerto Rico. Since its launch in 2021, Pomelo has raised $160 million from investors including Kaszek, Monashees, Index, Insight, QED, and Endeavor Catalyst.

Before Pomelo, Gaston was CEO of Naranja X, where he helped build Argentina’s largest neobank to 9 million customers and cardholders. He also held leadership roles at Restorando, founded Guidecentral, and spent more than five years at Google, including as Manager of YouTube Partnerships. He is also a lecturer in entrepreneurship, fintech, and fundraising at Universidad de San Andrés.

With him, we will talk about the struggles of building a fintech company in Latam, but also the importance of payment rails and the complexity of managing payments globally.

As always, enjoy and share.

In this episode, I sit down with Gaston Irigoyen, CEO and founder of Pomelo.

Gaston Irigoyen is the CEO and Co Founder of Pomelo, a Latin American payments infrastructure company serving more than 150 customers across Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Panama, Peru, and Puerto Rico. Since its launch in 2021, Pomelo has raised $160 million from investors including Kaszek, Monashees, Index, Insight, QED, and Endeavor Catalyst. 

Before Pomelo, Gaston was CEO of Naranja X, where he helped build Argentina’s largest neobank to 9 million customers and cardholders. He also held leadership roles at Restorando, founded Guidecentral, and spent more than five years at Google, including as Manager of YouTube Partnerships. He is also a lecturer in entrepreneurship, fintech, and fundraising at Universidad de San Andrés.

With him, we will talk about the struggles of building a fintech company in Latam, but also the importance of payment rails and the complexity of managing payments globally.

Want to stay up to date with the market? Here my newsletter and my podcast:

Linkedin: https://tinyurl.com/fintech-weekly 

Substack: https://michelemattei.substack.com/

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@buildersinfintech 

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6L6L7uj3IIYEHbBStLXi8M?si=fa10d8cefe2741aa 

ApplePodcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/it/podcast/builders/id1767562838?l=en-GB

Amazon:https://podcasters.amazon.com/podcasts/a1f92635-a50e-4a0c-ac96-7daa09c4e853 

Builders will be back tomorrow with season 5 first episode! Keep an eye open on linkedin for the announce. But you can always recover all episodes here:

• Youtube

• Spotify

• Apple Podcast

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If you are interested in joining me on the podcast, feel free to drop a message on Linkedin! I am always looking forward to speak with the best founders and VCs in the market!

Coming back to us, this week I’ve been reading a very interesting report from McKinsey & Company on stablecoins, the “Cross-borders payments: Out of the commodity trap and into the future”. The global cross-border payments industry has run on a single, successful playbook for many years: Reduce the friction, cost, and time needed to move money from point A to point B. Yet this stability hides the underlying shifts that are set to reshape the cross-border payments industry in the years to come. Here my main takeaways:

McKinsey estimates cross border payment volumes at $190 trillion, generating more than $290 billion in global revenues, with revenues expected to grow about 4 percent annually.

However, the industry is entering a structural shift. Security, speed, and cost, once key competitive advantages, are increasingly becoming standard capabilities as payment rails modernize, licensed global providers expand, and new settlement networks emerge.

Payments are also becoming embedded within accounting, procurement, and treasury workflows. As a result, moving money alone may no longer be a sustainable standalone product, forcing banks and fintech specialists to compete through broader financial and operational solutions.

Cost and speed remain central competitive factors in cross border payments, with fintech specialists driving lower prices, faster transactions, and greater margin transparency. Over the past decade, they have captured about 50 percent of consumer payments and remittances and roughly 20 percent of small business and SME flows.

Pricing pressure is accelerating. World Bank data shows the average cost of sending a $200 remittance declined from 6.8 percent in 2019 to 6.3 percent in 2025. Digital only channels now average below 5 percent, while the most competitive corridors already meet or fall below the UN’s 3 percent target.

The G20 is pushing further, targeting total retail payment costs below 1 percent, including fees and FX spreads. This shift is most advanced across high volume G7 corridors, while lower volume and more complex routes still command higher margins.

Four strategic models are emerging. Providers can become business operations platforms by embedding payments into invoicing, ERP, expense management, reconciliation, and AI enabled workflows, as seen with Airwallex and Tipalti. They can evolve into modern transaction banks offering liquidity, FX, lending, and treasury services, following examples such as Ebury.

Others may specialize deeply in complex verticals, as Flywire has done in international education, or become multirail orchestrators that optimize transactions across banking networks, instant payments, cards, stablecoins, and tokenized deposits. Thunes and Nium illustrate this infrastructure focused model.

Pricing pressure in cross border payments is intensifying as fintechs such as Wise, Revolut , and Airwallex compete on lower fees, tighter FX spreads, and transparency. Banks are responding: KBC offers commission free FX up to €1,500 per month, while Bank of America and HSBC have removed certain international transfer fees.

Speed is also becoming standard as Banking Circle, Wise, Buna, Project Nexus, Swift, stablecoins, and tokenized deposits push payments toward instant settlement. Open USD already involves more than 140 members.

Value is therefore shifting toward advisory and workflow services. FX turnover reached $9.6 trillion per day in April 2025, 25 percent above 2022. US China trade fell about 12 percent in 2025, Vietnam exports grew 17 percent, and India redirected an additional $15 billion in smartphone exports to the US.

But let’s take a closer look at the main news of the last seven days, Revolut launched EURR, its proprietary stablecoin, NVIDIA acquired Hugging Face for $12.9 billion, Stripe and Advent deal to acquire PayPal officially collapsed and SumUp became Newcastle United Football Club official training kit sponsor. But also, Airwallex commits $43M to UAE expansion, Revolut launches AI research division to work on PRAGMA, Kraken parent company Payward explores full US banking license and Vanguard acquires Altruist. In the VC ecosystem, lots of new funds this week. RunwayVC closed a $40M fund II, Fiat Ventures became FGV Capital and raised $35M for fund II, Capital F debuted with a $17M first fund, but also OpenAI, Einride, SaaSholic . And finally, some very interesting funding rounds from fintech startups like Fasset, Natural, Helcim, Repodo (congrats Ken Villum Klausen!), Socure, neno and many others.

Let’s take a closer look:

Rounds

• Fasset raises $68M series C at $1B valuation

• Natural secures $100M credit facility to scale agentic payments

• Helcim raises $53M Series C at $250M valuation

• Pago ASAP raises $1.15M to expand in Colombia

• Lunar founder Ken Villum Klausen launches AI native audit firm Repodo with €8.2M round

• neno raises €6.6M to expand AI native financial services across Europe

• AppsFlyer secures $400M credit line from Bank Leumi בנק לאומי

• Nexedge Capital raises $20M to scale wealth management platform

• ItoFlow raises $2.5M for AI investment research agents

• Standard Metrics raises $20M series B for AI portfolio management

• Imprint secures $2 billion in new debt funding

• Payload raises $9 million Series A led by Fifth Third Bank

• Fina partner raises $1 million seed round to expand SME fintech platform

• Hivemind Capital raises $17 million to scale tokenization infrastructure

• Socure reaches $5.2B valuation and acquires Fravity AI

• RQD* Clearing raises $74 million to expand clearing infrastructure

• Ajaib raises $270 million series C to expand its investment platform across Indonesia

VC funds

• RunwayVC reaches €40M first close for fund II

• Fiat Ventures rebrands as FGV Capital and raises $35M fund II

• Einride founders launch Navisalma to invest €450M in European deep tech startups

• OpenAI prepares $400M second VC fund

• Capital F closes $17M debut fund with 80% female LPs

• SaaSholic closes $30 million fund III to back Latin American software

News on the market

• Airwallex plans to expand into autonomous finance after the $320M round

• SumUp becomes Newcastle United Football Club’s official training kit partner

• Nubank will spend around $475 million in office expansion across Brazil

• Kraken parent Payward explores full banking license outside the US

• Miracle Pay partners with zerohash to bring stablecoin payments to US merchants

• Revolut launches AI research division to power PRAGMA in collaboration with NVIDIA

• Guzco partners with Mollie to automate chargeback resolution

• Airwallex commits $43M to UAE expansion

• Zand expands stablecoin infrastructure with USDC

• Revolut launches EURR, its first Euro stablecoin

• Scalable Capital opens investing platform to AI Agents

• payabl. expands Visa partnership to automate dispute resolution

• Plum expands Upvest partnership to power UK investments

• NVIDIA agrees to $12.9B acquisition of Hugging Face

• Vanguard to acquire AI wealthtech platform Altruist

• DBS Bank and Stripe partner on AI powered commerce and cross border payments in Asia

• Deutsche Bank Private Bank selects Thought Machine for core banking transformation

• zerohash resubmits OCC national trust bank charter application

• Ant International backed R2 expands into Brazil

• Stripe and Advent end $53 billion pursuit of PayPal

• UK gives Bank of England new mandate to support stablecoin innovation

And here some useful resources for everyone involved in the ecosystem:

Events you don’t want to miss

• Global Fintech Fest 2026 | Mumbai | 9-11 September (link here)

• Money 20/20 Middle East | Riyadh | 14-16 September (link here)

• European blockchain week | Barcelona | 16-17 September (link here)

• Nordic fintech week | Copenhagen | 23-24 September (link here)

• Korea Blockchain Week 2026 | Seoul | September 29 - October 1 (link here)

• TOKEN2049 | Singapore | 7-8 October (link here)

• Money 20/20 USA | Las Vegas | 18-21 October (link here)

• MERGE Madrid 2026 | Madrid | October 27-29 (link here)

• Hong Kong fintech week | Hong Kong | 02-06 November (link here)

• Africa Stablecoin Summit 2026 | Johannesburg | 12-13 November (link here)

• Solana Breakpoint 2026 | London | 15-17 November (link here)

• Singapore FinTech Festival 2026 | Singapore | 18-20 November (link here)

• Fintech Nerdcon | San Diego | 19-20 November (link here)

• Bitcoin MENA 2026 | Abu Dhabi | 7-8 December (link here)

• Abu Dhabi Finance Week 2026 | Abu Dhabi | 7-10 December (link here)

• TOKEN2049 Dubai 2027 | Dubai | 21-22 April, 2027 (link here)

• Money20/20 Asia 2027 | Bangkok | 27-29 April, 2027 (link here)

You have a cool event you want to mention or to sponsor? Feel free to send me a DM.

Founders to watch in fintech

I also wanted to start shining a light on the most interesting fintech founders out there, so I thought to start sharing how I look for ideas to invest on. Every week, I will start sharing the most interesting founders in fintech, divided per area.

This week I took a look at the most interesting fintech startups in Copenaghen, focusing on companies bootstrapped in the early stage (pre-seed and seed).

I usually use Spectre to scout for new ideas, the team is great and they also give me a free account once they learned I was a fan of the product. So if you wanna take a look at it, you can find it here.

VCs and PEs raising new funds now

I would like to leave this part of the newsletter as space for VC and solo GP that are launching new funds right now. I frequently speak with GPs and LPs, and I like the idea of giving them a showcase where to announce what they are doing. Here the new funds raising right now that I have been talking with:

• Parallax Ventures, a fintech VC fund focused on Latam. They closed Fund I with a strong +50% IRR and 0.7x DPI, and are now raising Fund II. Take a look here if you want to know more or reach out directly to the GP at gennari@parallax.vc for details.

• Founder Factor, VC focused on YC companies, that just closed investments on the latest YC W26. They are expanding the current vehicle to double down on the current batch. You can take a look here if you are interested.

• RedFish Capital Partners, a private equity investor focused on Italian SMEs in growth and mature capital phases, with a track record exceeding 40% IRR and with over €200M in Assets. Currently raising its brand new AIF, which has already secured a soft commitment from the European Investment Fund (EIF). You can check them out at redfish.capital or contact the team at investor.relations@redfish.capital.

Overall, very interesting to see where the VC ecosystem is heading recently, between new emerging managers, solo GP and micro funds.

Always happy to support if I can! If you are raising a fund and you want to be listed here send me a message on Linkedin.

And finally, take also a look at the last edition of the newsletter, Weekly update #146

Builders is on pause for the rest of August. The podcast will be back in September with season 5! But you can always recover all episodes here:

• Youtube

• Spotify

• Apple Podcast

• Amazon Podcast

If you are interested in joining me on the podcast, feel free to drop a message on Linkedin! I am always looking forward to speak with the best founders and VCs in the market!

Coming back to us, this week I’ve been reading two very interesting reports from McKinsey & Company on payments. The first one is “How instant payments are transforming the financial landscape” and the second one is “Guardrails for growth: building a resilient payment system”. The connection between the two is very clear, instant payments adoption is accelerating across different markets, but that must come with clear and well defined guardrails to protect users from scams and frauds. Here my main takeaways:

Instant payments are becoming a larger part of global payments, reaching nearly $22 trillion in value across the 15 largest adopting economies in 2024. This represented about 1% of the $2 quadrillion in worldwide payment flows. McKinsey expects instant payment volumes to grow 15% to 18% annually over the next five years.

India and Mexico show sharply different adoption paths. India launched IMPS in 2010 and UPI in 2016. UPI now processes more than 19 billion transactions per month, nearly one third of India’s total transaction volume. Adoption benefited from zero fees, government subsidies, broad bank participation, digital public infrastructure, and the 2016 demonetization that removed 86% of cash by value.

In Mexico, instant payments account for less than 5% of transactions. About 33% of consumers make more than half of in store payments in cash, while only 18% frequently use mobile tap or QR payments.

Brazil offers another example of rapid instant payments adoption. Since the central bank launched Pix in 2020, instant payments have grown to nearly 30% of the country’s total transaction volume.

Pix entered a favorable market, with 83% of Brazilian households connected to the internet and consumers increasingly moving away from cash. Adoption was supported by zero consumer fees, mandatory participation for certain banks, and P2P, P2B, and B2B use cases integrated into banking apps and websites.

Initial growth came from P2P payments. In a 2024 McKinsey survey, 55% of Pix users cited speed and ease of use as their main reasons for adoption.

Pix then expanded rapidly into merchant payments. A 2025 McKinsey survey found that almost all Brazilian micro, small, and medium sized enterprises use instant payments, with Pix accounting for approximately 40% of their sales mix, reducing reliance on boletos and debit cards.

Alongside the rapid growth of digital and instant payments, fraud is expanding in scale and sophistication. Juniper Research estimates that online payment fraud could exceed $362 billion between 2023 and 2028. In 2024, more than half of surveyed consumers across 18 countries reported being targeted by fraud attempts, while global consumer losses were estimated at more than $1 trillion.

Key threats include synthetic identity fraud, real time payment fraud, account takeovers, phishing, social engineering, check fraud, and AI driven deepfakes. AI is increasingly used across email, text, phone scams, and takeover attempts, while large volumes of personal and account data remain available on the dark web.

Real time payments create additional exposure because transactions offer limited recoverability. In the United States, investment scams generated the highest monetary losses in 2024, while imposter scams were the most frequently reported category.

As payment fraud grows, providers face a difficult tradeoff between stronger controls and customer experience. Excessive prevention can increase false positives, transaction declines, and abandoned purchases, while customers increasingly expect reimbursement when fraud occurs. One survey found that 77% of customers would leave a bank that refused to refund a scam loss, compared with just 6% of financial institutions planning to reimburse all scams.

AI and machine learning are becoming central to more targeted fraud detection. Many institutions still record false positive rates in the high 90s, compared with rates in the 60s among best performers.

AML pressures are also rising. Up to $2 trillion is laundered globally each year, while related fines exceeded $6 billion in 2023. EMEA institutions spent approximately $85 billion on financial crime compliance, yet less than 1% of international criminal financial flows are intercepted.

But let’s take a closer look at the main news of the last seven days, Revolut applied to establish a branch in Finland, Bitstack becomes official sponsor of Racing Club de Lens, TikTok explores a P2P payment solution and Stripe acquired OpenRouter for $7B. But also, Rain launched the agentic payment alliance along with Visa and Mastercard, Revolut expands BaaS partnership with Minna Bank in Japan, PayPal resumes sell talks with Stripe and Advent and Chime explores stablecoin feature for his app. In the VC market, a lot of new funds this week! QuantumLight, the VC launched by Revolut founder Nik Storonsky, closed a $500M fund, Reach Capital closed a $265M fund V, Floating Point a $125M fund III, but also new vehicles from Ripple Ventures, Blackbird Ventures and Inovo.vc. And finally, some very interesting funding rounds from fintech startups like Ingenico, Multiplier (YC P26), Jem, Astraeus, Rillet, Amber and many others.

Let’s take a closer look:

Rounds

• Ingenico secures €150M investment to accelerate payment innovation

• Amber raises €7 Million series A to build autonomous business AI

• Sterling raises NZ$3.8M to expand AI finance automation

• Rezolv AI raises $12.5M series A to scale AI lending automation

• Rillet raises $100M series C at $1B valuation

• Clearco secures $100M debt facility as it targets break even in Q4

• Noggin HQ raises £2.3M and secures FCA credit referencing approval

• Navi secures $100M from Prosus Ventures in first institutional capital raise

• Multiplier (YC P26) raises $6M to build AI infrastructure for institutional investors

• Jem raises $8.4M to scale WhatsApp based workforce management

• Former MoneyLion executives launch Astraeus with $10M in funding

VC funds

• QuantumLight closes oversubscribed $500M fund II

• Reach Capital closes $265M fund V to back AI founders

• Ripple Ventures unveils fund IV with new sovereign tech focus

• Blackbird Ventures closes sixth fund above A$1 billion

• Floating Point closes $125M fund III for complex, regulated startups

• European Investment Bank (EIB) and Bank Gospodarstwa Krajowego launch €30M fintech fund in Poland

News on the market

• PayPal sale talks with Stripe and Advent reportedly accelerate

• Chime explores stablecoin features for its banking app

• Stripe reportedly nears $7 Billion OpenRouter acquisition

• Citi to acquire Kard to expand personalized rewards

• Kraken partners with Mesh to simplify crypto deposits

• RedotPay delays $1B US IPO amid Binance lawsuit

• J.P. Morgan ended banking relationship with Polymarket over regulatory concerns

• Revolut expands BaaS partnership in Japan with Minna Bank, allowing users to open yen accounts

• Monzo chairman Gary Hoffman steps down after nearly eight years

• StoneX Group Inc. to acquire Banco Travelex and expand Brazil payments

• Thunes and Fiserv partner on real time global payouts

• Rain launches Agentic payments Alliance with Visa, Mastercard and Circle

• Revolut officially applies to open bank branch in Finland

• Bitstack becomes official partner of Racing Club de Lens

• Klarna Q2 revenue rises 27% as profitability accelerates

• TikTok explores Peer to Peer payments solution through direct messages

• Visa seeks new stablecoin partner after Mastercard’s $1.8B BVNK deal

• MoonPay adds Cash App Pay for digital asset purchases

• Monzo activates independent backup bank during app outage

• Stripe revenue jumps 41% as AI and crypto accelerate growth

• Revolut seeks approval to allow CEO borrow up to $250M against his shares

• Ant Group acquires an additional $309M stake in Paytm block trade

• Nium launches US card issuance as global platform expands

• PayPal and Venmo expand into tuition payments across US campuses

• Deel partners with Mesh to secure stablecoin payroll payouts

• Modulr becomes only non-banks to gain direct access to all 3 major UK payment schemes

And here some useful resources for everyone involved in the ecosystem:

Events you don’t want to miss

• Global Fintech Fest 2026 | Mumbai | 9-11 September (link here)

• Money 20/20 Middle East | Riyadh | 14-16 September (link here)

• European blockchain week | Barcelona | 16-17 September (link here)

• Nordic fintech week | Copenhagen | 23-24 September (link here)

• Korea Blockchain Week 2026 | Seoul | September 29 - October 1 (link here)

• TOKEN2049 | Singapore | 7-8 October (link here)

• Money 20/20 USA | Las Vegas | 18-21 October (link here)

• MERGE Madrid 2026 | Madrid | October 27-29 (link here)

• Hong Kong fintech week | Hong Kong | 02-06 November (link here)

• Africa Stablecoin Summit 2026 | Johannesburg | 12-13 November (link here)

• Solana Breakpoint 2026 | London | 15-17 November (link here)

• Singapore FinTech Festival 2026 | Singapore | 18-20 November (link here)

• Fintech Nerdcon | San Diego | 19-20 November (link here)

• Bitcoin MENA 2026 | Abu Dhabi | 7-8 December (link here)

• Abu Dhabi Finance Week 2026 | Abu Dhabi | 7-10 December (link here)

• TOKEN2049 Dubai 2027 | Dubai | 21-22 April, 2027 (link here)

• Money20/20 Asia 2027 | Bangkok | 27-29 April, 2027 (link here)

You have a cool event you want to mention or to sponsor? Feel free to send me a DM.

Founders to watch in fintech

I also wanted to start shining a light on the most interesting fintech founders out there, so I thought to start sharing how I look for ideas to invest on. Every week, I will start sharing the most interesting founders in fintech, divided per area.

This week I took a look at the most interesting fintech startups in Amsterdam, focusing on companies bootstrapped in the early stage (pre-seed and seed).

I usually use Spectre to scout for new ideas, the team is great and they also give me a free account once they learned I was a fan of the product. So if you wanna take a look at it, you can find it here.

VCs and PEs raising new funds now

I would like to leave this part of the newsletter as space for VC and solo GP that are launching new funds right now. I frequently speak with GPs and LPs, and I like the idea of giving them a showcase where to announce what they are doing. Here the new funds raising right now that I have been talking with:

• Parallax Ventures, a fintech VC fund focused on Latam. They closed Fund I with a strong +50% IRR and 0.7x DPI, and are now raising Fund II. Take a look here if you want to know more or reach out directly to the GP at gennari@parallax.vc for details.

• Founder Factor, VC focused on YC companies, that just closed investments on the latest YC W26. They are expanding the current vehicle to double down on the current batch. You can take a look here if you are interested.

• RedFish Capital Partners, a private equity investor focused on Italian SMEs in growth and mature capital phases, with a track record exceeding 40% IRR and with over €200M in Assets. Currently raising its brand new AIF, which has already secured a soft commitment from the European Investment Fund (EIF). You can check them out at redfish.capital or contact the team at investor.relations@redfish.capital.

Overall, very interesting to see where the VC ecosystem is heading recently, between new emerging managers, solo GP and micro funds.

Always happy to support if I can! If you are raising a fund and you want to be listed here send me a message on Linkedin.

And finally, take also a look at the last edition of the newsletter, Weekly update #145

Builders is on pause for the rest of August. The podcast will be back in September with season 5! But you can always recover all episodes here:

• Youtube

• Spotify

• Apple Podcast

• Amazon Podcast

If you are interested in joining me on the podcast, feel free to drop a message on Linkedin! always looking forward to speak with the best founders and VCs in the market!

Coming back to us, this week I’ve been speaking with David Ruda, VP of software products at Billtrust.

Dave has over 15 years of experience in product management, marketing technology, e-commerce, and web analytics, from fintech to software development. Started his career at Experian, moving then to Hewlett Packard Enterprise, TravelClick and finally Billtrust.

Billtrust is a B2B accounts receivable workflow and payment software. Their AI-powered solutions simplify the AR lifecycle - from rapid digital invoice distribution to easy payment application.

With him, we have been talking about the impact of AI on software products, but also on how the “buy or build” question is reshaping in 2026.

M: How do you separate AI that creates real value from AI that’s just theater, and what does that filter look like when your team decides what’s worth building?

B; The filter is simple to say and hard to hold to. We need to consider whether it removes a specific, named piece of pain for a specific person, or is it just AI added on top of a feature because AI is what you’re supposed to have right now? In Accounts Receivable (AR), we start by interviewing the frontline users, such as the collector, the credit analyst, and the team running the cash application, to map where their actual time is going, particularly the repetitive or manual tasks that slow them down

The version that’s just for show almost always shows up as something technically clever that nobody asked for. However, the real version quietly turns an eight-minute task into a two-minute one, without needing a slide to sell it because the user tells you. Ultimately, that’s what matters.

M: In fintech, the cost of a wrong answer is high; a single mistake can be expensive. How does that shape your approach to human-in-the-loop design, and where do you draw the line between what an agent handles on its own and what still needs a person?

B: Human-aided automation should always precede unaided automation. AI should act as a copilot, not the captain of the program.

Practically, that means we start with human-in-the-loop, where the agent drafts, recommends, or prioritizes and a human approves key actions and activities before anything goes out or any dollar moves. As the model earns trust through lower-stakes, high-volume decisions, the human-on-the-loop process can be adjusted accordingly, which might really just require visibility. In essence, you see the agent act, and a person can see what it’s doing and step in when needed.

What doesn’t move to full autonomy are decisions with real financial or relationship consequences, like extending credit or writing off a balance. Evidence and confidence scores travel with every recommendation, so even when a human is the one approving, they’re not approving on faith.

M: How do you decide which bottlenecks are worth automating first, and how do you resist the pull toward flashier use cases over the unglamorous, high-volume ones that often matter more?

B: We look for where manual effort is highest and most repetitive. For instance, paper checks still account for roughly 26% of B2B payments, which is a reminder of how much manual work remains in the payments process. Sometimes the most valuable automation is simply taking a manual process that happens thousands of times a day and making it disappear.

The unstructured inbox, hundreds of payment promises, disputes, and partial responses landing on a collector’s desk every day are not glamorous problems, but they’re the ones eating people’s entire day.

More visible, impressive use cases are easy to pitch internally because they’re easy to visualize. High-volume, unglamorous areas of manual work are harder to pitch because they sound less exciting in a roadmap review, but they are where the actual hours and the actual cash are sitting.

What we’re really trying to do is put a data scientist on every collector’s shoulder. The value of that approach is measurable too. Our own numbers make the case for us, with teams tripling their capacity for collections outreach. It isn’t a flashy story, but it’s the kind of result that has a real impact on a business’s profit and loss.

M: As you roll out more agentic capabilities, how do you decide the sequence — which decisions to let an agent make first — and what has to be true before you widen an agent’s autonomy?

B: Gartner predicts that by 2028, at least 15% of day-to-day work decisions will be made independently through agentic AI. As that shift accelerates, the question becomes where to give an agent autonomy and where not to. We sequence by reversibility and volume. Decisions that are high-volume, low-stakes, and easy to reverse go first, such as how to prioritize a collections worklist or which channel to use for outreach and when to use it. Decisions that are low-volume but high-stakes, or hard to unwind, like credit limits or dispute write-offs, go last, and often never go fully autonomous.

Before we widen autonomy on anything, three things have to be true. Firstly, the model has been tested against a real, messy dataset, not a clean sample. Also, a person has watched it operate long enough to trust the pattern of its mistakes as well as its successes. And there’s a feedback loop that lets the system get smarter from what it gets wrong, not just what it gets right.

M: Billtrust sits on a large proprietary network of buyers and decades of payment data. In a world where anyone can wrap a foundation model, how much of the moat is the model versus that data — and how do you think about defensibility as AR software gets commoditized by AI?

B: Wrapping a foundation model around a workflow is becoming the standard now. Almost anyone can do it, and that’s exactly why it’s not a moat. What we have always said we want to give teams is a data scientist on their shoulder, and that only works if the shoulder has something real to draw on.

At Billtrust, we have 25 years of behavioral data across 13 million buyers and more than $1 trillion in annual invoice volume. A model wrapped around a generic LLM doesn’t know anything about how your buyers actually behave until it’s watched them behave. Our model doesn’t start from zero on day one, as it already has a meaningful understanding of how a given customer’s buyers pay, when they pay and where payments are likely to get stuck, because the network has already seen it play out many times over across our dataset.

M: How do you decide what to build in-house versus rent from foundation-model providers? Where’s the line between commodity intelligence you rent and the parts you have to own?

B: A foundation model on its own is a blunt instrument. It’s general-purpose by design, which is exactly why we don’t try to build our own. Reading an email, summarizing a document and drafting a response are solved problems, and there’s no advantage in re-inventing them.

What turns a blunt instrument into something precise enough to trust with a customer is everything we build around it. That’s the behavioral data, the deterministic business logic that encodes how credit, collections, and cash application actually work, and the layer that makes a model’s output specific enough to defend to an auditor.

So the line isn’t really build versus buy, but rather raw versus refined. The foundation model is the raw material, and the intelligence that makes it trustworthy in accounts receivable, grounded in real payment behavior and the way businesses get paid, is the part we have to build and keep building ourselves.

M: Shipping AI into finance is often less about the model and more about getting a skeptical end user to adopt it. What’s hardest about that, and what actually changes people’s minds?

B: Finance and accounts receivables professionals are risk-averse for good reason, as they are the ones who have to defend every number to a board or an auditor that directly affects cash flow, collections and customer relationships. So a black-box recommendation is a non-starter no matter how accurate it is. AI on its own is a blunt instrument and capable of creating as many problems as it solves. Guided by human expertise, though, it turns into something precise enough to actually trust.

What changes minds is watching the tool fit into work that teams are already doing, whether that’s prioritizing collections, reviewing payment behavior and seeing that it gets the recommendation right. Adoption follows trust, and trust is built one transparent, correct recommendation at a time.

M: When the product is an agent that acts on its own, “time saved” only tells part of the story. What signals would warn you that an agent is quietly making things worse before a customer notices?

B: Time saved is easy to celebrate and easy to be misled by. The signals to watch out for are what happens downstream. Is the agent’s outreach strengthening customer relationships as well as hitting volume targets? Are complaints, disputes and escalations staying at healthy levels, and are buyers responding positively to the way they’re being contacted? Those are the signals that tell us whether the system is working as intended.

A static approach that treats every account the same is really just casting the same net in the same spot every day and hoping for a good catch. If there is a pattern creeping back in even inside an automated system, that’s a sign we need to adjust the approach.

Another important signal is whether humans are still meaningfully reviewing the agent’s recommendations. If a human-in-the-loop step stops adding value, that’s not necessarily proof the agent has got better. It may be a sign that the review process needs to evolve. These signals create an opportunity to adjust and improve the system before they affect the customer.

M: With economic pressure pushing many companies to get paid slower, does that make finance teams more open to handing AI control, or more risk-averse? And looking five years out — what’s the job you think AI never takes over?

B: The answer is both, and that tension is the story of finance right now. Teams are under real pressure to do more with fewer people, which pushes them toward automation, but at the same time, mistakes can be very expensive, which may inadvertently make teams more cautious.

What we see is that pressure doesn’t make teams reckless with AI, but instead it makes them more deliberate about where they apply it, favoring the high-volume, defendable use cases over the flashy, unproven ones.

Five years out, the job AI doesn’t take over is the relationship with customers. It’s the judgment call on when to extend grace to a long-standing customer going through a rough quarter, or the negotiation that keeps a buyer relationship intact while still getting paid. AI can tell you who’s at risk and why with more evidence than any spreadsheet ever could. Deciding how to handle a difficult customer situation, balance the commercial relationship, and ultimately get paid is still a human call.

But let’s take a closer look at the main news of the last seven days, Revolut secures a full banking license in France, Robinhood brings crypto trading to his UK app, N26 launches Wero in Germany and France and Klarna wants to challenge traditional credit cards program in partnership with Zilch. But also, etoro acquires TradeZero for $231M, Bitwise cuts 14% of the workforce, Revolut launches an European network of airport lounges and Coinbase brings 24/5 US stock trading to their UK customers. In the VC market, Accel raises $3.5B across 4 new funds, 224 Ventures launches a $100M fund to invest in AI startups, Team8 raises $365M across 2 new funds, but also new vehicles from Cross-Border Impact Ventures, Mido Capital, GEM and K2 Global. And finally some very interesting funding rounds from fintech startups like River Markets (YC P26), Yuno, Axle, Activitis, Lovable, FAZ Cred and many others.

Let’s take a closer look:

Rounds

• Erebor nears $1.5 billion raise at $8 billion valuation

• Traydstream secures strategic investment from Mashreq’s NeoVentures

• Activitis plans $85M raise to scale digital finance in Ukraine

• HSBC Asset Management invests in Model ML as funding tops $100M

• Quartr raises €15.6M to expand AI ready public company data

• Yuno raises $45M to build an AI native operating system for global payments

• Axle raises $17.5M Series A to scale AI native insurance infrastructure

• Lovable raises $400M Series C at a $13.3B valuation

• FAZ Cred raises R$80M FIDC to scale private payroll lending in Brazil

• UBS invests in Finster AI to advance investment banking automation

• Future FinTech Group Inc. raises $30M through private Nasdaq stock sale

• River Markets (YC P26) raises $8.5M to build institutional prediction market infrastructure

• Thrive Holdings raises $2B at $12B valuation to scale AI powered PE acquisitions

VC funds

• 224 Ventures launches with $100M to back AI native startups

• Accel raises $3.5B across four new funds to back the next generation of tech startups

• Cross-Border Impact Ventures raises $58M first close for $125M women’s health tech fund

• Former a16z speedrun partner Bryan Kim launches $100M Mido Capital

• Team8 raises $365M across two funds for AI native startups

• Lightspeed seeks $600M to extend stakes in OpenAI, Anthropic and AI Leaders

• Bitget launches $300M institutional capital program

News on the market

• Revolut secures full banking license in France

• Coinbase brings 24/5 US stock trading to UK users

• etoro and Papaya Global connect payroll directly to investing

• Robinhood brings crypto trading to its main UK app

• Stripe owned Bridge joins EU MiCA register

• Aspire partners with Flagright to strengthen AI driven financial crime compliance

• MoonPay’s Iron launches stablecoin infrastructure APIs for businesses

• Commerzbank AG CEO opens door to UniCredit tie up

• MetaMask launches agent wallet for AI driven onchain execution

• Adyen expands Toast partnership into the U.S.

• UnionPay International plans to connect Chinese payment apps to Brazil’s Pix

• Circle launches AI agent discovery layer for USDC payments

• EU to review MiCA rules for non EU stablecoins

• etoro to acquire TradeZero for up to $231M as equities drive Q2 growth

• RBC and BMO sell Moneris to Francisco Partners for C$2 Billion

• N26 launches Wero for instant European payments in Germany and France

• Revolut plans European airport lounge network starting in Copenhagen

• Klarna and Zilch launch paid membership plans to challenge credit cards

• Bitwise Asset Management cuts 14% of workforce amid crypto market pressure

• Anthropic in talks to acquire Decart AI for around $6B

And here some useful resources for everyone involved in the ecosystem:

Events you don’t want to miss

• Global Fintech Fest 2026 | Mumbai | 9-11 September (link here)

• Money 20/20 Middle East | Riyadh | 14-16 September (link here)

• European blockchain week | Barcelona | 16-17 September (link here)

• Nordic fintech week | Copenhagen | 23-24 September (link here)

• Korea Blockchain Week 2026 | Seoul | September 29 - October 1 (link here)

• TOKEN2049 | Singapore | 7-8 October (link here)

• Money 20/20 USA | Las Vegas | 18-21 October (link here)

• MERGE Madrid 2026 | Madrid | October 27-29 (link here)

• Hong Kong fintech week | Hong Kong | 02-06 November (link here)

• Africa Stablecoin Summit 2026 | Johannesburg | 12-13 November (link here)

• Solana Breakpoint 2026 | London | 15-17 November (link here)

• Singapore FinTech Festival 2026 | Singapore | 18-20 November (link here)

• Fintech Nerdcon | San Diego | 19-20 November (link here)

• Bitcoin MENA 2026 | Abu Dhabi | 7-8 December (link here)

• Abu Dhabi Finance Week 2026 | Abu Dhabi | 7-10 December (link here)

• TOKEN2049 Dubai 2027 | Dubai | 21-22 April, 2027 (link here)

• Money20/20 Asia 2027 | Bangkok | 27-29 April, 2027 (link here)

You have a cool event you want to mention or to sponsor? Feel free to send me a DM.

Founders to watch in fintech

I also wanted to start shining a light on the most interesting fintech founders out there, so I thought to start sharing how I look for ideas to invest on. Every week, I will start sharing the most interesting founders in fintech, divided per area.

This week I took a look at the most interesting fintech startups in Madrid, focusing on companies bootstrapped in the early stage (pre-seed and seed).

I usually use Spectre to scout for new ideas, the team is great and they also give me a free account once they learned I was a fan of the product. So if you wanna take a look at it, you can find it here.

VCs and PEs raising new funds now

I would like to leave this part of the newsletter as space for VC and solo GP that are launching new funds right now. I frequently speak with GPs and LPs, and I like the idea of giving them a showcase where to announce what they are doing. Here the new funds raising right now that I have been talking with:

• Parallax Ventures, a fintech VC fund focused on Latam. They closed Fund I with a strong +50% IRR and 0.7x DPI, and are now raising Fund II. Take a look here if you want to know more or reach out directly to the GP at gennari@parallax.vc for details.

• Founder Factor, VC focused on YC companies, that just closed investments on the latest YC W26. They are expanding the current vehicle to double down on the current batch. You can take a look here if you are interested.

• RedFish Capital Partners, a private equity investor focused on Italian SMEs in growth and mature capital phases, with a track record exceeding 40% IRR and with over €200M in Assets. Currently raising its brand new AIF, which has already secured a soft commitment from the European Investment Fund (EIF). You can check them out at redfish.capital or contact the team at investor.relations@redfish.capital.

Overall, very interesting to see where the VC ecosystem is heading recently, between new emerging managers, solo GP and micro funds.

Always happy to support if I can! If you are raising a fund and you want to be listed here send me a message on Linkedin.

And finally, take also a look at the last edition of the newsletter, Weekly update #144

The latest episode of Builders was released last week! In this episode, I sit down with Kristy Kim, CEO and founder of TomoCredit. You can watch the full episode here on YouTube, or listen to it here on Spotify or here on Apple Podcast.

TomoCredit, a San Francisco fintech company focused on expanding access to financial services through technology. Since launching the business in 2019, she has led its development and the introduction of TomoIQ, an AI-powered financial advisor designed to support consumers in managing their financial lives.

Before founding TomoCredit, Kristy worked in business development at Credit Sesame and held investment roles at Kenetic, Oasis Labs and Vault12. She previously founded and led a venture-backed e-commerce company and served as Head of Global Business Development at Com2us Corporation, where she worked on international growth initiatives. Earlier in her career, she advised technology companies on mergers and acquisitions at J. Moore Partners, which later merged with B. Riley Financial.

Kristy is also a member of the Forbes Finance Council, where she contributes perspectives on fintech and personal finance. She holds an MBA from the University of California, Berkeley’s Haas School of Business and has served as a lecturer at Haas, teaching entrepreneurship and blockchain.

With her, we will talk about credit scoring in the US, fintech services and the importance of being in San Francisco to build your fintech startup.

Coming back to us, this week I’ve been reading a very interesting report, the “How retail banks build strategic distance” by McKinsey & Company. The strong financial performance of global banks in recent years is not reflected in their valuations: The price-to-book multiple of retail banks trails the average of all other industries by almost 70 percent globally. For example, in 2022, the price-to-book ratio of other industries was 2.9 times the banking industry globally, and in 2024, it was 3.3 times. Why? Markets doubt banks’ recent highs are sustainable, seeing them as tailwind-driven. Here my main takeaways:

Global banks are delivering their strongest financial performance in years, yet market valuations remain significantly lower than those of other industries. Banking revenues exceeded $3 trillion annually, growing an average of 6.2% per year between 2020 and 2024, while ROE surpassed pre pandemic levels. Despite this, retail banks’ price to book multiples trail other industries by almost 70%, with the valuation gap widening from 2.9 times in 2022 to 3.3 times in 2024.

Investors remain concerned that recent profitability is driven by temporary macroeconomic conditions. Banks also face fragmented customer relationships, changing channel preferences, rising costs, and competition from technology focused players. Customers increasingly use multiple financial institutions, rising from approximately 2.5 providers in 2021 to 3.0 in 2023, further weakening traditional banking relationships and increasing competitive pressure.

Retail banking is being reshaped by digital adoption, rising costs, and advances in AI. Mobile banking now has three times more active users than branches and generates 50 times more customer interactions, with touchpoints increasing by more than 90% since 2020. However, human interaction remains important for acquiring and cross selling complex products.

At the same time, banks face higher wages, technology expenses, funding costs, fraud, and credit risk. In Brazil, operating costs are expected to rise about 6% annually from 2024 to 2030.

Banks are responding with greater personalization, open banking, embedded finance, super apps, and AI. Around 65 million Brazilian accounts are already connected to open banking. AI can reduce credit model development times by up to 95%, while one Asian bank generated more than $500 million in economic value from AI and data initiatives in 2024.

Tech native banks are gaining ground by offering faster innovation, lower customer acquisition and servicing costs, and more personalized products. Incumbent banks can provide similar services, but legacy infrastructure, fragmented systems, talent shortages, and siloed operating models often slow execution.

Digital challengers are expanding rapidly. Nubank exceeded 107 million clients in Brazil by Q2 2025, more than doubling its 2021 customer base while reaching a 28% ROE. Revolut grew from about 2.5 million Spanish customers in 2023 to 4 million in 2024, while Nubank reached 12 million customers in Mexico in 2025, up 130% from 2023. In Germany, digital banks account for 45% of new accounts.

Retail banks are increasingly separating into distinct competitive archetypes as digital transformation reshapes the market. Rewired leaders are established institutions that invested early in technology and talent. In Brazil and Mexico, about 20% of their non sales workforce holds technology and digital roles, compared with less than 15% at other incumbents. Their next opportunity is to expand AI driven personalization, digital sales, and automation.

Sleeping giants remain large and operationally scalable but are losing customer relevance due to legacy technology and weaker digital experiences. In Spain, their share of primary customers falls by almost 50% among consumers who recently switched banks.

Retail banking competition is expected to intensify as digital superstars and rewired leaders strengthen their advantages in customer relationships, productivity, and technology. In Spain, sleeping giants still retain strong customer primacy, with more than 50% of their clients using them as their primary bank, compared with less than 20% for digital superstars. However, digital players already lead in customer satisfaction.

Banks face a more difficult position, lacking the scale of incumbents and the distinctive advantages of faster growing digital competitors. Looking ahead, banks that successfully combine AI powered advisory services, broader financial platforms, personalization, and operational efficiency are likely to widen the gap in revenue growth, cost to income performance, and ROE. As competitive pressure increases, more traditional and underperforming banks will need to accelerate digital transformation to remain profitable and relevant.

But let’s take a closer look at the main news of the last seven days, Chime cuts 10% of the workforce, Bending Spoons acquires Airtable for $1.25 billion, Western Union launches stablecoin card with Rain and norisbank launches Wero for instant payments. But also, Apple Pay launches in the Philippines, Stripe enables stablecoin payments for Dune, Deel acquires Clarity and Revolut consider record incentive package for Nik Storonsky. In the VC ecosystem, White Star Capital closes a $250M fund, Robinhood launches a $200M fund to invest on Y Combinator startups, Sequoia Capital closes a $10B AI fund, but also new vehicles from Adams Street Partners, South Park Commons and U.S. Venture Partners. And finally, some very interesting funding rounds from fintech startups like 10x Banking, Moment, Moss, Decade, Faye, Moove, Yellow Card, Rivo and many others.

Let’s take a closer look:

Rounds

• Ripple invests in ZILO™ and Licuido to expand tokenized capital markets

• 10x Banking secures £40 million to accelerate global expansion

• Bundle raises US$5.5 million for networked rewards platform

• Moment raises $22 million to expand payments across Africa

• Maximum emerges from stealth with $30 million seed round

• Moss reaches unicorn status with €30 million series C

• Polymarket seeks $1 billion at more than $20 billion valuation

• Decade raises $85 million in Latin America’s largest seed round

• Faye raises $50 million at an estimated $500 million valuation

• Moove raises $250 million at $2.1 billion valuation

• Yellow Card raises $40 million to expand stablecoin infrastructure globally

• Rivo raises $3.1 million to automate household cash management

• OpenFX acquires Global Ledger to expand embedded FX infrastructure

• Starling targets fee income growth and new products under Bernadette Smith

• Mastercard and AFS Group launch integrated corporate payments solution in UAE and Egypt

VC funds

• Adams Street Partners raises over $5 billion for secondaries strategy

• U.S. Venture Partners targets $400 million for 14th fund

• White Star Capital closes $250 million fund IV

• Robinhood targets Y Combinator startups with a $200 million retail fund

• South Park Commons raises $575 million fund IV for early stage tech founders

• Sequoia Capital plans record $10 billion AI fund under new leadership

News on the market

• Stripe enable stablecoin payments for Dune across Europe

• Flutterwave plans East African bank acquisition as IPO delays

• Chime cuts 10% of workforce as AI strategy accelerates

• Deel acquires Clarity to strengthen AI workforce security

• TBC Uzbekistan launches digital car loans

• bithumb official targets 2028 IPO with multi year preparation plan

• BBVA takes full ownership of Altura Markets S.V., S.A.

• BitGo launches Link for unified institutional crypto management

• Bending Spoons to acquire Airtable for $1.285 billion

• Mastercard completes acquisition of BVNK to connect stablecoins and fiat payments

• Santander adds global eSIM services to its mobile app in partnership with Gigs

• Visa acquires BioCatch for $2.4 billion to strengthen fraud prevention

• Bitget to exit Japan and close remaining positions by December 31

• AutoRek acquires Grath to expand AI driven reconciliation

• Apple Pay launches in the Philippines

• Plaid and Sierra bring financial data into AI agent workflows

• Revolut appoints Sid Jajodia to group board

• Western Union launches stablecard with Rain

• norisbank launches Wero for instant payments

• Revolut considers record incentive package for Nik Storonsky

• Visa Direct adds stablecoin payouts through zerohash

• KuCoin Exchange launches stablecoin gift cards for global business payments

And here some useful resources for everyone involved in the ecosystem:

Events you don’t want to miss

• Global Fintech Fest 2026 | Mumbai | 9-11 September (link here)

• Money 20/20 Middle East | Riyadh | 14-16 September (link here)

• European blockchain week | Barcelona | 16-17 September (link here)

• Nordic fintech week | Copenhagen | 23-24 September (link here)

• Korea Blockchain Week 2026 | Seoul | September 29 - October 1 (link here)

• TOKEN2049 | Singapore | 7-8 October (link here)

• Money 20/20 USA | Las Vegas | 18-21 October (link here)

• MERGE Madrid 2026 | Madrid | October 27-29 (link here)

• Hong Kong fintech week | Hong Kong | 02-06 November (link here)

• Africa Stablecoin Summit 2026 | Johannesburg | 12-13 November (link here)

• Solana Breakpoint 2026 | London | 15-17 November (link here)

• Singapore FinTech Festival 2026 | Singapore | 18-20 November (link here)

• Fintech Nerdcon | San Diego | 19-20 November (link here)

• Bitcoin MENA 2026 | Abu Dhabi | 7-8 December (link here)

• Abu Dhabi Finance Week 2026 | Abu Dhabi | 7-10 December (link here)

• TOKEN2049 Dubai 2027 | Dubai | 21-22 April, 2027 (link here)

• Money20/20 Asia 2027 | Bangkok | 27-29 April, 2027 (link here)

You have a cool event you want to mention or to sponsor? Feel free to send me a DM.

Founders to watch in fintech

I also wanted to start shining a light on the most interesting fintech founders out there, so I thought to start sharing how I look for ideas to invest on. Every week, I will start sharing the most interesting founders in fintech, divided per area.

This week I took a look at the most interesting fintech startups in Berlin, focusing on companies bootstrapped in the early stage (pre-seed and seed).

I usually use Spectre to scout for new ideas, the team is great and they also give me a free account once they learned I was a fan of the product. So if you wanna take a look at it, you can find it here.

VCs and PEs raising new funds now

I would like to leave this part of the newsletter as space for VC and solo GP that are launching new funds right now. I frequently speak with GPs and LPs, and I like the idea of giving them a showcase where to announce what they are doing. Here the new funds raising right now that I have been talking with:

• Parallax Ventures, a fintech VC fund focused on Latam. They closed Fund I with a strong +50% IRR and 0.7x DPI, and are now raising Fund II. Take a look here if you want to know more or reach out directly to the GP at gennari@parallax.vc for details.

• Founder Factor, VC focused on YC companies, that just closed investments on the latest YC W26. They are expanding the current vehicle to double down on the current batch. You can take a look here if you are interested.

• RedFish Capital Partners, a private equity investor focused on Italian SMEs in growth and mature capital phases, with a track record exceeding 40% IRR and with over €200M in Assets. Currently raising its brand new AIF, which has already secured a soft commitment from the European Investment Fund (EIF). You can check them out at redfish.capital or contact the team at investor.relations@redfish.capital.

Overall, very interesting to see where the VC ecosystem is heading recently, between new emerging managers, solo GP and micro funds.

Always happy to support if I can! If you are raising a fund and you want to be listed here send me a message on Linkedin.

And finally, take also a look at the last edition of the newsletter, Weekly update #143

The latest episode of Builders was released last week! In this episode, I sit down with Kristy Kim, CEO and founder of TomoCredit. You can watch the full episode here on YouTube, or listen to it here on Spotify or here on Apple Podcast. Here a short clip from the video:

TomoCredit, a San Francisco fintech company focused on expanding access to financial services through technology. Since launching the business in 2019, she has led its development and the introduction of TomoIQ, an AI-powered financial advisor designed to support consumers in managing their financial lives.

Before founding TomoCredit, Kristy worked in business development at Credit Sesame and held investment roles at Kenetic, Oasis Labs and Vault12. She previously founded and led a venture-backed e-commerce company and served as Head of Global Business Development at Com2us Corporation, where she worked on international growth initiatives. Earlier in her career, she advised technology companies on mergers and acquisitions at J. Moore Partners, which later merged with B. Riley Financial.

Kristy is also a member of the Forbes Finance Council, where she contributes perspectives on fintech and personal finance. She holds an MBA from the University of California, Berkeley’s Haas School of Business and has served as a lecturer at Haas, teaching entrepreneurship and blockchain.

With her, we will talk about credit scoring in the US, fintech services and the importance of being in San Francisco to build your fintech startup.

Coming back to us, this week I’ve been reading a very interesting report, the “Stablecoin - pulse of digital money”, monthly review of the stablecoin market. The report is a monthly analysis of stablecoin growth, transaction activity, market structure, capital flows and the key indicators driving the evolution of digital money. Here my main takeaways:

The stablecoin market remains highly concentrated, with Tether.io’s USDT and Circle’s USDC controlling more than 80% of total supply. USDT leads the sector with approximately 59% market share and over $185 billion in circulation. USDC follows with more than $76 billion, representing roughly 24% of the market.

Beyond these two dominant assets, the ecosystem is considerably more fragmented. Stablecoins such as USDS, DAI, USD1, USDe, PYUSD, RLUSD, BUIDL, and many smaller alternatives continue to develop specific use cases and market positions. However, none currently has the scale, liquidity, or adoption needed to compete directly with USDT and USDC.

Stablecoin issuance remained notably steady throughout June, with total circulating supply fluctuating within a relatively narrow range. This contrasts with earlier periods of rapid expansion and suggests that market growth is becoming more closely linked to genuine transaction demand rather than speculative issuance.

Capital continues to enter the stablecoin ecosystem, but it is being deployed more efficiently. Instead of driving excessive supply growth, new inflows appear to support practical use cases, liquidity needs, and payment activity.

Stablecoin distribution across blockchains remains broadly consistent. Ethereum continues to hold the largest share of global stablecoin liquidity, while Tron remains a major settlement network for international transfers.

At the same time, Solana, Base, BNB Chain, HyperEVM, Arbitrum, and other emerging networks are gaining importance. Their continued expansion reflects the industry’s gradual shift toward a more diversified multi-chain ecosystem, where stablecoin activity is distributed across several networks rather than concentrated on a single blockchain.

Stablecoin supply and transaction activity show that blockchains are increasingly serving different functions. Ethereum remains the leading network for holding stablecoin liquidity, while Base and Solana are processing a growing share of transaction volume. Tron continues to play an important role in cross-border payments due to its efficiency as a settlement network.

Rather than competing for the same use cases, blockchain networks are gradually becoming more specialized. Each chain is developing a distinct position based on liquidity, transaction capacity, cost, and settlement efficiency, contributing to a more segmented and mature multi-chain ecosystem.

Stablecoin activity became more geographically balanced in June. Europe accounted for the largest share of tracked transactions, closely followed by North America, while Asia remained a major contributor. Latin America, Africa, and Oceania also continued to expand their presence as stablecoins gained importance for remittances, merchant payments, and cross-border commerce. This broader distribution suggests that adoption is becoming less concentrated in a few established regions.

Trading activity, however, remains dominated by a limited number of global exchanges. Binance processed the largest stablecoin trading volume by a significant margin, followed by OKX, Bybit, Bitfinex, and Kraken. While stablecoin usage is spreading across regions and use cases, exchange liquidity continues to be concentrated among the industry’s largest trading platforms.

But let’s take a closer look at the main news of the last seven days, Stripe becomes the official partner of The Ryder Cup, Revolut partners with OpenAI to offer ChatGPT in their paid plans, Wise was denied a banking license in the US and X money is now available for all US consumers. But also, Revolut is now the official front shirt sponsor of Como 1907 and landed an approval for a Greece branch, Scalapay expands partnership with Stripe across 30 new countries, Coinbase launches AI agentic payments for businesses and Western Union shuts down its digital bank. In the VC market, Italian Founders Fund closes a new $100M fund to invest in italian founders, Framework Ventures closes a $400M fourth fund, and Highland Europe closes a crazy new $1.1B fund. And finally, some interesting funding rounds from fintech startups like Ábaco, Addi, PEX, LemonEdge, InvestFi, Olomon and many others.

Let’s take a closer look:

Rounds

• Ábaco raises $53 million to expand SME financing in Latam

• Addi secures more than $630M to scale digital credit in Colombia

• World Foundation raises $52.5 million to scale world ID

• 9fin completes first employee share sale after $170 million raise

• PEX secures $160 million to scale payments and finance automation

• LemonEdge raises $21 million to modernise private market fund accounting

• iwoca secures £250 million facility amid £1 billion sale reports

• SiloReal raises $2.5 million to scale digital agricultural asset verification

• Centralize raises $15 million to build a deal GPS for enterprise sales

• Plend | B Corp secures up to €58.3 million to expand responsible lending

• Olomon raises $2.6 million to build a financial system of record for households

• Epic Markets raises $10 million to build multi asset brokerage platform for the UAE

• Freehand raises $75 million for autonomous supply chain AI

• InvestiFi raises $20 million to expand embedded investing

• Harvey secures strategic investment from Goldman Sachs and J.P. Morgan

VC funds

• Italian Founders Fund closes a €100 million fund to invest on Italian early stage startups

• UK pension providers plan £1 Billion tech scale up fund

• Framework Ventures closes $400 million fourth fund

• Highland Europe raises €1.1 billion for sixth growth fund

• Jump Capital closes $350M venture fund to invest in AI infrastructure and crypto

News on the market

• Stripe becomes official payment partner of The Ryder Cup

• Revolut becomes Como 1907 front of shirt partner

• Revolut opens private markets to retail investors in Italy

• Wise denied US banking license as shares fall 7%

• Coinbase launches AI agent payments through stablecoin infrastructure

• Circle acquires IBM Blockchain patents to lead US IP holdings

• Revolut explores UK store as physical banking models evolve

• X Money just went live for US users!

• MoonPay and Tempo partner to expand stablecoin payments

• Robinhood explores Crypto.com partnership for prediction markets

• Xero and Revolut Business connect cross border finance in New Zealand

• Western Union to shut down its digital bank

• Bloomberg acquires Canoe Intelligence to expand private markets capabilities

• Pemo secures central bank approval to expand SME financial services

• Credito Lombardo Veneto S.p.a. backs Satispay’s pay in 3 with €30 million securitisation

• Legora acquires Wexler following $600 million series D

• Revolut partners with OpenAI to offer ChatGPT access to customers

• Starling Bank enters telecoms with embedded eSIM plans in partnership with Gigs

• Increase acquires Twin City Bank to build a fintech native banking platform

• GoCardless and anvil automate payments for telecom and IT providers

• Scalapay expands Stripe integration across more than 30 countries

• Remitly launches global card that holds USDC

• Revolut gets approval for a local branch in Greece and to release GR Ibans

And here some useful resources for everyone involved in the ecosystem:

Events you don’t want to miss

• Global Fintech Fest 2026 | Mumbai | 9-11 September (link here)

• Money 20/20 Middle East | Riyadh | 14-16 September (link here)

• European blockchain week | Barcelona | 16-17 September (link here)

• Nordic fintech week | Copenhagen | 23-24 September (link here)

• Korea Blockchain Week 2026 | Seoul | September 29 - October 1 (link here)

• TOKEN2049 | Singapore | 7-8 October (link here)

• Money 20/20 USA | Las Vegas | 18-21 October (link here)

• MERGE Madrid 2026 | Madrid | October 27-29 (link here)

• Hong Kong fintech week | Hong Kong | 02-06 November (link here)

• Africa Stablecoin Summit 2026 | Johannesburg | 12-13 November (link here)

• Solana Breakpoint 2026 | London | 15-17 November (link here)

• Singapore FinTech Festival 2026 | Singapore | 18-20 November (link here)

• Fintech Nerdcon | San Diego | 19-20 November (link here)

• Bitcoin MENA 2026 | Abu Dhabi | 7-8 December (link here)

• Abu Dhabi Finance Week 2026 | Abu Dhabi | 7-10 December (link here)

• TOKEN2049 Dubai 2027 | Dubai | 21-22 April, 2027 (link here)

• Money20/20 Asia 2027 | Bangkok | 27-29 April, 2027 (link here)

You have a cool event you want to mention or to sponsor? Feel free to send me a DM.

Founders to watch in fintech

I also wanted to start shining a light on the most interesting fintech founders out there, so I thought to start sharing how I look for ideas to invest on. Every week, I will start sharing the most interesting founders in fintech, divided per area.

This week I took a look at the most interesting fintech startups in Saudi Arabia, focusing on companies bootstrapped in the early stage (pre-seed and seed).

I usually use Spectre to scout for new ideas, the team is great and they also give me a free account once they learned I was a fan of the product. So if you wanna take a look at it, you can find it here.

VCs and PEs raising new funds now

I would like to leave this part of the newsletter as space for VC and solo GP that are launching new funds right now. I frequently speak with GPs and LPs, and I like the idea of giving them a showcase where to announce what they are doing. Here the new funds raising right now that I have been talking with:

• Parallax Ventures, a fintech VC fund focused on Latam. They closed Fund I with a strong +50% IRR and 0.7x DPI, and are now raising Fund II. Take a look here if you want to know more or reach out directly to the GP at gennari@parallax.vc for details.

• Founder Factor, VC focused on YC companies, that just closed investments on the latest YC W26. They are expanding the current vehicle to double down on the current batch. You can take a look here if you are interested.

• RedFish Capital Partners, a private equity investor focused on Italian SMEs in growth and mature capital phases, with a track record exceeding 40% IRR and with over €200M in Assets. Currently raising its brand new AIF, which has already secured a soft commitment from the European Investment Fund (EIF). You can check them out at redfish.capital or contact the team at investor.relations@redfish.capital.

Overall, very interesting to see where the VC ecosystem is heading recently, between new emerging managers, solo GP and micro funds.

Always happy to support if I can! If you are raising a fund and you want to be listed here send me a message on Linkedin.

And finally, take also a look at the last edition of the newsletter, Weekly update #142

Full episode here:

• YouTube

• Spotify

• Apple Podcast

• Amazon Podcast

TomoCredit, a San Francisco fintech company focused on expanding access to financial services through technology. Since launching the business in 2019, she has led its development and the introduction of TomoIQ, an AI-powered financial advisor designed to support consumers in managing their financial lives.

Before founding TomoCredit, Kristy worked in business development at Credit Sesame and held investment roles at Kenetic, Oasis Labs and Vault12. She previously founded and led a venture-backed e-commerce company and served as Head of Global Business Development at Com2us Corporation, where she worked on international growth initiatives. Earlier in her career, she advised technology companies on mergers and acquisitions at J. Moore Partners, which later merged with B. Riley Financial.

Kristy is also a member of the Forbes Finance Council, where she contributes perspectives on fintech and personal finance. She holds an MBA from the University of California, Berkeley’s Haas School of Business and has served as a lecturer at Haas, teaching entrepreneurship and blockchain. Her background brings together financial expertise, startup leadership and a strong understanding of emerging technologies.

With her, we will talk about credit scoring in the US, fintech services and the importance of being in San Francisco to build your fintech startup.

This is also the last episode for season 4, #Builders will pause releasing new episodes in August and come back with season 5 in September!

In this episode, I sit down with Kristy Kim, CEO and founder of Tomo Credit.

TomoCredit, a San Francisco fintech company focused on expanding access to financial services through technology. Since launching the business in 2019, she has led its development and the introduction of TomoIQ, an AI-powered financial advisor designed to support consumers in managing their financial lives.

Before founding TomoCredit, Kristy worked in business development at Credit Sesame and held investment roles at Kenetic, Oasis Labs and Vault12. She previously founded and led a venture-backed e-commerce company and served as Head of Global Business Development at Com2us Corporation, where she worked on international growth initiatives. Earlier in her career, she advised technology companies on mergers and acquisitions at J. Moore Partners, which later merged with B. Riley Financial.

Kristy is also a member of the Forbes Finance Council, where she contributes perspectives on fintech and personal finance. She holds an MBA from the University of California, Berkeley’s Haas School of Business and has served as a lecturer at Haas, teaching entrepreneurship and blockchain. Her background brings together financial expertise, startup leadership and a strong understanding of emerging technologies.

With her, we will talk about credit scoring in the US, fintech services and the importance of being in San Francisco to build your fintech startup.

Want to stay up to date with the market? Here my newsletter and my podcast:

Linkedin: https://tinyurl.com/fintech-weekly 

Substack: https://michelemattei.substack.com/

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@buildersinfintech 

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6L6L7uj3IIYEHbBStLXi8M?si=fa10d8cefe2741aa 

ApplePodcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/it/podcast/builders/id1767562838?l=en-GB

The latest episode of Builders was released last week! In this episode, I sit down with Eridian Alpha, product strategy lead at ETHGas . You can watch the full episode here on YouTube, or listen to it here on Spotify or here on Apple Podcast.

Eridian is the product strategy lead at ETHGas and an Ethereum builder focused on blockspace infrastructure, validator economics and the development of a real-time Ethereum network. At ETHGas, Eridian works on technology designed to transform Ethereum blockspace into a predictable and tradable commodity, supporting instant transaction settlement and applications that can shield users from volatile gas costs.

A long-standing participant in the Ethereum staking ecosystem, Eridian has operated solo validators and contributed educational resources for node operators, developers and community stakers. Eridian co-created the EthStaker Knowledge Base and maintains an extensive collection of open-source documentation covering Ethereum infrastructure, Solidity development, smart-contract security, MEV and decentralised finance.

Eridian has also built projects including High Signal, an engagement and reputation platform for Ethereum communities, and Pool Playground, an interactive tool for understanding decentralised exchange mechanics. Through technical development, education and ecosystem participation, Eridian works to make Ethereum faster, more accessible and easier to operate.

With him, we will talk about the current infrastructure behind many popular crypto projects, but about the future of the industry and the main trend in blockchain today.

Coming back to us, this week I’ve been reading a very interesting report, the “Venture Capital report - Italy Q2 and H1 2026” by Growth Capital and Italian Tech Alliance. The report is an overview on VC investments in the Italian startup ecosystem, divided by stage, amount and sector, shining a light on one of the most interesting emerging ecosystems in Europe. Here my main takeaways:

Q2 closed at €402M across 76 rounds, against €411M and 69 rounds in Q1. Strip out the mega rounds and Q2 2026 becomes the second best quarter ever recorded in Italy, with both average and median round size jumping.

That is the part I care about. A market that deploys the same capital over fewer, larger deals is not shrinking, it is repricing. Three new funds also closed in the semester for a combined €104M. Modest, but it keeps domestic dry powder topped up.

Pre-seed and seed still account for 59% of all rounds, but only €172M of capital (€37M and €135M respectively). Series A (€276M) and Series B+ (€274M) together take 68% of the money from just 21% of the transactions.

This is the barbell Italy has been missing for years, and it is finally showing up. The uncomfortable side is the other end. Pre-seed and seed deal counts have been contracting for several quarters now. We are fixing the late stage while the top of the funnel gets thinner, and you cannot run a Series A market in 2029 without a seed market in 2026.

By sector, software (which includes AI and machine learning) is the most active vertical, with 25% of all rounds and €214M raised. Smart city follows at €165M and fintech at €156M. Together they absorb close to two thirds of everything invested, with deeptech (€97M) and lifescience (€57M) completing the top five.

The fintech number deserves an asterisk. It leads on capital almost entirely thanks to Rent2Cash and its €100M+ round, a rental advance business that sits closer to structured finance than to classic venture-backed software. Take that out and Italian fintech had a quiet semester. AI and ML led on deal count instead, with 15 rounds, which is the healthier kind of leadership.

The largest Q2 deals were WeRoad (€50M Series C), Smartness (€47M Series B), Lexroom (€43M Series B), Niulinx (€38M seed) and MDOTM (€24M growth). A €38M seed round for autonomous driving would have been unthinkable in Italy three years ago.

Zooming out to Europe, the picture is one of extreme concentration. €44B raised across 5,330 rounds, the strongest half by value since 2022, with AI taking 60% of all capital deployed. Mega rounds were just 1.3% of transactions but captured 64% of the money. The UK alone raised €20B, 46% of the European total, more than France, Germany, Sweden and Switzerland combined.

Italy sits at roughly 1.8% of European capital. That gap is the benchmark that matters, and it is not closing quickly. France is mobilising €13B of institutional money through the third phase of the Tibi initiative, aiming at €15B by 2030, explicitly to back scaleups and IPOs.

But let’s take a closer look at the main news of the last seven days. Revolut expanded Polish operations with a Varsaw office and get a banking license in Australia, Mollie commits $100M to Italian expansion, Apple partners with Klarna for device lease to own program and Stripe explores $10B acquisition of OpenRouter. But also, OpenAI adds Nubank founder David Vélez and BNY CEO Robin Vince to its advisory board, PayPal rejects Stripe acquisition offer, Viva.com integrates Wero as payment method and Ramp releases stablecoin accounts and payments to all customers. In the VC market, British Business Bank committed $100M to a new aerospace fund, Resist.UA launched a $50M defence tech fund and DIMENSION Capital closed a $800M third fund. And finally, some very interesting funding rounds from fintech startups like Ant International, Cashea, Cordant, Natural, Augustus, Zeom and many others.

Let’s take a closer look:

Rounds

• Pinbank Brasil raises $19.6M to expand acquiring operations

• Zalando joins Sereact’s $116M Series B

• CuspAI raises €393.2M at €2.2B valuation

• Natural raises $30M to build payment infrastructure for AI agents

• Augustus raises $180M at $1B valuation to build a global dollar bank

• Ant International raises $1.2B series A to expand global payments

• Cashea secures $100M to expand credit access in Venezuela

• Djamo targets $40M Series C to accelerate West African expansion

• Veriqus Partners raises $40.2M to build an AI enabled wealth management platform

• Fina secures $75M Shariah compliant facility from Fasanara Capital

• Fawry secures $10.8M to expand digital SMEs lending in Egypt

• Zeom raises $2.7M to bring global investing to Brazil’s mass market

• Cordant raises $8M to build a command center for financial infrastructure

VC funds

• British Business Bank plans £100M Aerospace fund

• Resist.UA launches €50M European fund for Ukrainian defence technology

• DIMENSION Capital raises $800M third fund to invest on intersection of science and computing

News on the market

• Revolut expands Polish operations with new Warsaw office and 300 jobs

• Contents acquires Spanish fintech Balio in sixth European deal

• Mollie commits €100M to expand in Italy

• OpenAI adds BLIK as recurring payments method inside ChatGPT

• France blocks Polymarket over illegal gambling concerns

• Chime launches integrated investing for millions of US members

• Revolut secures full Australian banking licence

• Samsung Electronics launches its first US credit card with Barclays and Visa

• Nubank is getting its own banking license in Brazil

• MoonPay acquires Glide to expand crypto deposit infrastructure

• Affirm brings B2B installment payments to Amazon business

• LemFi and BVNK move cross border payments onto stablecoin rails

• Apple reportedly partners with Klarna for device lease to own program

• Revolut just confirmed $115B valuation in secondary share sale

• PayPal rejects $53.4B offer from Stripe and Advent

• India and Spain are talking about UPI-Bizum payment interoperability

• Talos integrates Kalshi Markets into institutional trading infrastructure

• Sifted acquires startup and venture platform Onstage

• Viva.com joins EPI Company and adds Wero across European markets

• Ripple invests in Notabene to scale compliant stablecoin payments

• Ramp makes stablecoin accounts and payments available to all customers

• Expensify and Marqeta partner to expand corporate card offering across EU

• OpenAI adds Nubank founder David Vélez and BNY CEO Robin Vince to its boards

• Al Etihad Payments and Mastercard launch UAE’s first co-badged credit card

• zerohash and Marqeta partner to bring stablecoin spending to global card networks

• Stripe explores $10B acquisition of OpenRouter

And here some useful resources for everyone involved in the ecosystem:

Events you don’t want to miss

• Money 20/20 Middle East | Riyadh | 14-16 September (link here)

• European blockchain week | Barcelona | 16-17 September (link here)

• Nordic fintech week | Copenhagen | 23-24 September (link here)

• Money 20/20 USA | Las Vegas | 18-21 October (link here)

• Hong Kong fintech week | Hong Kong | 02-06 November (link here)

• Fintech Nerdcon | San Diego | 19-20 November (link here)

You have a cool event you want to mention or to sponsor? Feel free to send me a DM.

Founders to watch in fintech

I also wanted to start shining a light on the most interesting fintech founders out there, so I thought to start sharing how I look for ideas to invest on. Every week, I will start sharing the most interesting founders in fintech, divided per area.

This week I took a look at the most interesting fintech startups in Italy, focusing on companies bootstrapped in the early stage.

I usually use Spectre to scout for new ideas, the team is great and they also give me a free account once they learned I was a fan of the product. So if you wanna take a look at it, you can find it here.

VCs and PEs raising new funds now

I would like to leave this part of the newsletter as space for VC and solo GP that are launching new funds right now. I frequently speak with GPs and LPs, and I like the idea of giving them a showcase where to announce what they are doing. Here the new funds raising right now that I have been talking with:

• Parallax Ventures, a fintech VC fund focused on Latam. They closed Fund I with a strong +50% IRR and 0.7x DPI, and are now raising Fund II. Take a look here if you want to know more or reach out directly to the GP at gennari@parallax.vc for details.

• Founder Factor, VC focused on YC companies, that just closed investments on the latest YC W26. They are expanding the current vehicle to double down on the current batch. You can take a look here if you are interested.

• RedFish Capital Partners, a private equity investor focused on Italian SMEs in growth and mature capital phases, with a track record exceeding 40% IRR and with over €200M in Assets. Currently raising its brand new AIF, which has already secured a soft commitment from the European Investment Fund (EIF). You can check them out at redfish.capital or contact the team at investor.relations@redfish.capital.

Overall, very interesting to see where the VC ecosystem is heading recently, between new emerging managers, solo GP and micro funds.

Always happy to support if I can! If you are raising a fund and you want to be listed here send me a message on Linkedin.

And finally, take also a look at the last edition of the newsletter, Weekly update #141

The latest episode of Builders was released last week! In this episode, I sit down with Eridian Alpha, product strategy lead at ETHGas . You can watch the full episode here on YouTube, or listen to it here on Spotify or here on Apple Podcast.

Eridian is the product strategy lead at ETHGas and an Ethereum builder focused on blockspace infrastructure, validator economics and the development of a real-time Ethereum network. At ETHGas, Eridian works on technology designed to transform Ethereum blockspace into a predictable and tradable commodity, supporting instant transaction settlement and applications that can shield users from volatile gas costs.

A long-standing participant in the Ethereum staking ecosystem, Eridian has operated solo validators and contributed educational resources for node operators, developers and community stakers. Eridian co-created the EthStaker Knowledge Base and maintains an extensive collection of open-source documentation covering Ethereum infrastructure, Solidity development, smart-contract security, MEV and decentralised finance.

Eridian has also built projects including High Signal, an engagement and reputation platform for Ethereum communities, and Pool Playground, an interactive tool for understanding decentralised exchange mechanics. Through technical development, education and ecosystem participation, Eridian works to make Ethereum faster, more accessible and easier to operate.

With him, we will talk about the current infrastructure behind many popular crypto projects, but about the future of the industry and the main trend in blockchain today.

Coming back to us, this week I will start sharing some interviews I made during Money20/20 in Amsterdam this year. The second one is with Ben Goldin , CEO and founder of Plumery .

Ben is a financial technology pioneer and the CEO & Founder of Plumery, a digital banking experience platform that’s revolutionising how financial institutions build and enhance mobile and web applications.

With over 20 years of experience in banking technology, Ben has held leadership roles at Mambu (CTPO, CTO) and Backbase (Chief Architect), shaping industry-defining innovations. His expertise in core banking architecture, cloud native, API-driven solutions, and digital modernisation has helped Plumery secure nearly $8 million in funding and expand across Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Southeast Asia.

Plumery is positioning itself as a banking development platform that enables banks to modernise their digital channels without replacing their existing core banking infrastructure. In this interview, Plumery CEO Ben Goldin discusses the company’s approach, the growing role of conversational banking and why fully autonomous financial agents may remain difficult to implement.

M: Could you begin by introducing Plumery?

B: Plumery is an AI assisted digital banking development platform. A useful comparison would be Shopify for banking. We help traditional and modern financial institutions improve their customer facing experiences across mobile, web and conversational banking. Some customers also use our technology to build internal interfaces for employees.

The platform can serve as a foundation for agentic AI, although banks do not need to begin with AI. They can first modernise their digital infrastructure and introduce additional AI capabilities when they are ready. Our primary objective is to help banks build modern experiences on top of their existing core banking systems while retaining control over their own product vision. They should not have to contact Plumery every time they want to make a change.

This is why we describe Plumery as a development platform. Customers can build on top of it while using the functionality, components and accelerators that we provide.

M: Does that mean banks can use the platform to develop their own front end?

B: Correct. However, Plumery is specifically designed for digital banking rather than being a generic development platform. It includes prebuilt banking functionality through a loosely coupled architecture. Customers can decide which components they want to use and which elements they prefer to develop independently.

We sit above systems such as core banking, payments and Know YourCustomer (KYC) infrastructure. We integrate those systems and provide the functionality required for customer facing mobile and web channels. Many of these capabilities do not exist within traditional core banking systems, and they do not necessarily belong there. Banks still need them to deliver a strong digital experience.

M: What types of financial institutions use Plumery?

B: We work primarily with traditional banks, fintechs and credit unions that operate on legacy core banking infrastructure. These institutions may not be ready to replace their core systems, but they still want to provide a modern, Revolut style customer experience.

One recent customer consolidated six separate internet and mobile banking solutions into one platform powered by Plumery. Everything was launched in 8 months, when a project like that can take 24 months or more. The bank can now build distinctive mobile and web experiences without starting from the beginning, using our event driven and decoupled architecture. We provide the standard functionality, while the bank focuses its resources on the features that differentiate its business.

M: Is demand for the platform mainly being driven by AI adoption?

B: Not necessarily. AI is a natural use case that we can support, but the primary driver is the continuous modernisation of the customer experience. Consumers increasingly view their bank as another mobile application. Banks are therefore competing for user attention against other banks and against the broader digital experiences offered by technology companies.

Many banking applications developed during the past ten years no longer meet current consumer expectations. Banks need to launch better experiences and continue improving them at a much faster pace. Plumery gives them the infrastructure to do that.

M: Which trends do you expect to reshape digital banking?

B: Conversational banking and voice banking could experience a renaissance. The industry previously experimented with chatbots and integrations involving technologies such as Siri and Alexa, but the underlying technology was not sufficiently advanced. With the emergence of generative AI and large language models, conversations with computers have become significantly more natural.

This could make conversational and voice banking much more relevant. Banking services are also likely to become more personalised. Customers may eventually interact with an AI system in a similar way to speaking with a personal banker who has known them for years. The products and services offered to each customer could also be tailored much more precisely.

AI can analyse a customer’s lifestyle, transactions, cash flows, savings habits and broader financial position. This could allow banks to provide support relating to spending, financial health, wealth creation and retirement planning. Banks already possess much of this customer context. The difficulty has traditionally been interpreting it effectively. Generative AI makes that process more accessible.

M: What challenges could prevent banks from delivering this type of experience?

B: The effectiveness of generative AI depends heavily on the quality of the underlying data foundation. Customer data and context must be consolidated in a form that AI systems can understand, process and use. That is one of the areas Plumery addresses.

Banks must also consider how AI systems execute actions after interpreting the data. This is where the discussion moves towards agentic AI. I am skeptical about fully autonomous agents. If banks want predictable and deterministic outcomes, there will probably need to be a human involved.

Generative AI was not designed for determinism. It was designed to produce coherent responses, rather than consistently establish objective truth. The same system may provide different responses or decisions when presented with the same context. AI as a broader field may eventually achieve greater determinism through other technologies, but generative AI by itself is unlikely to provide it.

M: Could autonomy improve through the use of multiple agents?

B: Multiple agents could validate one another’s work, which may improve quality and reliability. However, that does not remove the fundamental limitations of generative AI. Accountability also requires traceability and a degree of predictability. It is difficult to make an agent accountable when its behaviour cannot be predicted consistently across different situations.

This is particularly important in financial services, where institutions must be able to explain decisions and establish who is responsible for them.

M: Where could AI agents still provide value to banks?

B: Agents can proactively analyse information and provide suggestions. However, even in these cases, banks cannot assume that an autonomous system has reviewed every relevant item. Consider periodic KYC checks. An AI system may generate strong results, but the bank cannot automatically assume that it has not missed an application or excluded certain information through summarisation.

As a result, the work cannot be transferred entirely to an agent. Someone may still need to verify that the system reviewed every case. AI could also support areas such as lending by analysing whether an applicant may qualify for a credit line or loan. However, I would describe this as assistance rather than autonomy.

M: How do you distinguish an autonomous agent from an AI assistant?

B: An autonomous agent should initiate and complete a process independently. It would identify when to begin, analyse the relevant data, make a prediction about the appropriate outcome and execute an action from beginning to end.

When a person manually opens a credit application and asks an AI system whether the customer should receive credit, the system is operating as an assistant or copilot. It is not acting autonomously because a human initiated the process.

M: Are traditional banks becoming more open to AI and other forms of digital innovation?

B: Traditional banks are our primary customers, but we tell them that they do not need to begin with agentic AI or generative AI. Many institutions still need to address more immediate requirements, particularly the quality of their mobile and web experiences. Once that foundation has been modernised, they should ensure that the platform can also support their current or future AI strategy.

The objective should be to create one foundation for digital banking rather than building separate platforms or point to point integrations for every new AI solution. Banks are becoming more open to experimentation, but the process remains difficult. We want to reduce that friction and enable institutions to test new AI applications without launching programmes that take an entire year.

The market is changing so rapidly that a technology selected today may no longer be relevant in twelve months. Companies such as OpenAI and Anthropic continue to modify their strategies, pricing structures and product portfolios. I expect the market to remain dynamic until approximately 2029. Banks therefore need infrastructure that supports rapid experimentation and iteration rather than tying them to a single technology.

M: Which markets are showing the strongest demand for banking modernisation?

B: The need to modernise digital channels is global. Almost any small or medium sized bank operating on legacy infrastructure is likely to require better mobile and web capabilities. This demand is not limited to one region.

When it comes specifically to AI, I have not yet encountered many traditional banks that are extremely bullish. However, we work with an AI native neobank in Southeast Asia that has a much more ambitious AI strategy.Its customers can ask an AI system to prepare a payment. The system identifies the relevant beneficiary and completes the payment details. Before the transaction is executed, it asks the customer to confirm the payment.

I would not describe this as fully agentic because the customer remains in control of the final action. It is better understood as conversational banking implemented properly.

But let's take a closer look at the main news of the last seven days. Revolut is targeting 2027 launch for its US bank, Nubank secures banking license approval in Mexico, Stripe and Advent submit a $53B offer for PayPal and Stripe enters sport partnerships with Mercedes-Benz AG Formula 1 deal. But also, Klarna faces Dutch class action, Uber acquires Delivery Hero in a $13B deal, Fourthline and Veridas merge and Kraken launches a crypto debit card in the UK and EU. In the VC market, Greylock Partners closed a $1.5B fund, Acurio Ventures a $115M fund for secondaries, Norrsken Evolve a $62M fund. But also new vehicles from CriteriaCaixa, Buenavista Equity Partners, and Soho Square Capital. And finally, some very interesting funding rounds from fintech startups like Nopan, Velocity, Flex, Float, Cyclops, Alpaca, Crypto.com, Skalar and many others.

Let’s take a closer look:

Rounds

• Moneybox plans £45M employee share sale at £800M valuation

• Digitt secures $50M credit facility to expand in Mexico

• Nopan reaches €7.2M to scale account and wallet payments across Europe

• Skalar raises €12M to rebuild tax and accounting around AI

• Velocity raises $38M to build stablecoin infrastructure for global enterprises

• Flex reaches $1.2B valuation with $70M Series B

• JULO secures up to $5M as it prepares for larger funding round

• Float raises €4.5M to build an AI native financial platform for European tech SMEs

• Tether.io leads $7M Series A in Pact Labs to bring USA₮ into payroll and payments

• Cyclops raises $20M to build stablecoin infrastructure for payments companies

• Bibby Financial Services secures €250M HSBC credit facility

• ORA TECHNOLOGIES extends Series A to $10M

• Prolo raises £4.2M to bring AI and flexible credit to construction procurement

• Hadrius raises $27M to build AI native compliance infrastructure

• SAIBLE raises £2.9M to tackle the UK’s £11B construction payment crisis

• Lumin Digital reaches $1.6B valuation after $115M capital raise

• Glacis Labs raises $6.8M to scale digital asset clearing infrastructure

• Tether.io invests $20M in Ualá as Latin American fintech strategy expands

• Alpaca raises $135M to expand tokenized market and AI brokerage infrastructure

• Crypto.com secures $400M investment from Citadel Securities at $20B valuation

VC funds

• Acurio Ventures closes €115M European VC secondaries fund

• British Business Bank adds £10M to SFC Capital partnership

• CriteriaCaixa Venture arm targets €300M for Iberian deeptech fund

• Greylock Partners raises $1.5B fund to back the next generation of AI native companies

• British Business Bank commits €58M to Soho Square Capital Fund II

• Norrsken Evolve closes €62M fund and establishes Amsterdam base

• Buenavista Equity Partners secures €75M for third Spanish buyout fund

News on the market

• Revolut targets 2027 launch for its US bank

• Nubank Mexico secures approval to become the country’s largest digital bank

• Mastercard expands airport fast track access across Europe

• Kraken launches crypto debit card across the UK and Europe

• Glovo integrates Revolut Pay across seven European markets

• 카카오페이증권(Kakaopay Securities) secures license to enter Korea’s IPO market

• Webull Securities Limited secures MiCAR approval to launch crypto services in the EU

• Klarna faces Dutch class action seeking more than €500M

• Stripe and Advent submit $53B joint bid for PayPal

• Revolut secures initial approval for Dubai crypto licence

• Gemini expands beyond crypto with commission free US stock trading

• Uber agrees €13B acquisition of Delivery Hero

• Tabby | تابي launches cashback account as it expands beyond BNPL

• Fourthline and Veridas to merge into global identity and compliance platform

• Revolut named world’s best digital bank for second consecutive year

• Stripe enters sports sponsorship with Mercedes-Benz AG Formula 1 deal

And here some useful resources for everyone involved in the ecosystem:

Events you don’t want to miss

• Money 20/20 Middle East | Riyadh | 14-16 September (link here)

• European blockchain week | Barcelona | 16-17 September (link here)

• Nordic fintech week | Copenhagen | 23-24 September (link here)

• Money 20/20 USA | Las Vegas | 18-21 October (link here)

• Hong Kong fintech week | Hong Kong | 02-06 November (link here)

• Fintech Nerdcon | San Diego | 19-20 November (link here)

You have a cool event you want to mention or to sponsor? Feel free to send me a DM.

Founders to watch in fintech

I also wanted to start shining a light on the most interesting fintech founders out there, so I thought to start sharing how I look for ideas to invest on. Every week, I will start sharing the most interesting founders in fintech, divided per area.

This week I took a look at most interesting fintech startups in France, focusing on companies bootstrapped in the early stage.

I usually use Spectre to scout for new ideas, the team is great and they also give me a free account once they learned I was a fan of the product. So if you wanna take a look at it, you can find it here.

VCs and PEs raising new funds now

I would like to leave this part of the newsletter as space for VC and solo GP that are launching new funds right now. I frequently speak with GPs and LPs, and I like the idea of giving them a showcase where to announce what they are doing. Here the new funds raising right now that I have been talking with:

• Parallax Ventures, a fintech VC fund focused on Latam. They closed Fund I with a strong +50% IRR and 0.7x DPI, and are now raising Fund II. Take a look here if you want to know more or reach out directly to the GP at gennari@parallax.vc for details.

• Founder Factor, VC focused on YC companies, that just closed investments on the latest YC W26. They are expanding the current vehicle to double down on the current batch. You can take a look here if you are interested.

• RedFish Capital Partners, a private equity investor focused on Italian SMEs in growth and mature capital phases, with a track record exceeding 40% IRR and with over €200M in Assets. Currently raising its brand new AIF, which has already secured a soft commitment from the European Investment Fund (EIF). You can check them out at redfish.capital or contact the team at investor.relations@redfish.capital.

Overall, very interesting to see where the VC ecosystem is heading recently, between new emerging managers, solo GP and micro funds.

Always happy to support if I can! If you are raising a fund and you want to be listed here send me a message on Linkedin.

And finally, take also a look at the last edition of the newsletter, Weekly update #140