Across payments, crypto, banking, infrastructure, and AI platforms, agents moved beyond pilots and into live financial environments. Use cases spanned agent-led payments, automated workflows, AI-assisted insights, and real-time compliance across financial systems.

✔ Card networks advanced authenticated agent-led payments.

✔ Crypto infrastructure providers enabled AI-native wallets and autonomous blockchain execution.

✔ Banks and digital wallets leveraged AI for internal operations and customer assistance.

Ready for the agentic signals that defined the final two weeks of March? 🔍⚡

🚨 Featured Story of the Week:

Visa Extends Card Payments Into Stripe and Tempo’s Machine Payments Protocol

On March 18, Stripe and Tempo launched the Machine Payments Protocol (MPP). This open standard defines how AI agents request, authorize, and settle payments with services programmatically. Tempo, the payments-focused blockchain incubated by Stripe and Paradigm, activated its mainnet on the same day. Visa, a design partner on MPP, simultaneously extended the protocol to support card-based payments across its global network.

Visa’s contributions include a card-based MPP specification, an SDK for developers building card transactions within MPP, and merchant access to Visa Intelligent Commerce and the Trusted Agent Protocol within MPP flows. On the same day, Visa Crypto Labs shipped Visa Command Line Commerce (CLI), a command-line tool that lets AI agents initiate card payments without API keys or pre-funded accounts.

The result: AI agents can now transact through a single open protocol spanning stablecoins, cards, wallets, and Bitcoin Lightning. Visa brought card rails. Stripe extended MPP to cards, wallets, and buy-now-pay-later through Shared Payment Tokens. Lightspark extended MPP to Bitcoin Lightning. At launch, over 100 services were already listed in Tempo’s payments directory, from model providers to compute platforms.

Why it matters

Visa’s agentic commerce strategy is now clearly readable. It mirrors Visa’s broader onchain playbook in 2026. On the stablecoin side, Visa expanded Bridge-linked cards to 100+ countries. It deepened Visa Direct integrations with Mercuryo and BVNK. It reached $4.6 billion in annualized stablecoin settlement on Ethereum. Each move routes new value flows through the existing Visa infrastructure. The agentic commerce approach follows the same logic: make sure the new payment flows settle on Visa rails.

Visa Intelligent Commerce now counts 100+ partners globally. Over 30 are building within the VIC sandbox. More than 20 agent enablers are integrating directly. AI-driven traffic to US retail websites surged over 4,700% in the past year. 47% of US shoppers already use AI tools for at least one shopping task.

Breaking down the strategy:

Three infrastructure layers came together on a single day.

• The protocol layer. MPP replaces ad hoc billing integrations with a single machine-readable standard. When an agent requests a resource from any HTTP endpoint, the server returns a payment request. Upon authorization, the resource is delivered instantly. MPP introduces “sessions,” a primitive that lets agents authorize a spending limit upfront and stream micropayments continuously. This is what makes sub-cent transactions viable for machine-to-machine commerce.

• The settlement layer. Tempo’s mainnet launched with public RPC endpoints and targets 100,000+ TPS with sub-second finality. Those numbers seem excessive for consumer checkout. They start to make sense when the buyers are machines executing thousands of microtransactions per second. Design partners include Visa, Mastercard, Deutsche Bank, Standard Chartered, Revolut, Nubank, Shopify, OpenAI, Anthropic, Ramp, and DoorDash.

• The developer layer. Visa-cli puts card payments directly in the developer’s terminal. Target use cases include on-demand payments for image generation APIs, music generation endpoints, and paywalled data feeds. Stripe’s PaymentIntents API now accepts MPP payments in a few lines of code. Both tools collapse the distance between building an agent and giving it the ability to spend.

What does it signal?

• Cards and stablecoins are converging inside a single protocol. MPP accepts both. USDC on Tempo. Cards via Visa. Lightning via Lightspark. Fiat via Stripe’s PaymentIntents. The rail distinction is dissolving at the protocol level.

• Tempo is doing double duty. The blockchain Stripe built for stablecoin settlement is now also the native settlement layer for machine payments. Stripe’s stablecoin stack and its agentic commerce stack share the same foundation.

• The standards race is intensifying. MPP joins a growing field alongside Coinbase’s x402, Google’s AP2, OpenAI’s Agentic Commerce Protocol, Klarna’s Agentic Product Protocol, Mastercard’s Verifiable Intent, and Circuit & Chisel’s Agent Transaction Protocol.

If the future of commerce is machines paying machines, someone still has to guarantee that the payment clears. Visa just made sure its rails run inside the protocol where those machines transact.

Curious about how payment processors are architecting for the agentic era? Our Adyen deep dive maps the full stack.

Thanks for reading Future of FinTech - Agentic AI Newsletter! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support our work.

Subscribe now

Thanks for reading Future of FinTech Newsletter! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support our work.

🚀 Startup Spotlight: Skyfire

This edition, we're spotlighting Skyfire, a San Francisco-based payments infrastructure company building the financial identity and wallet layer for AI agents. It gives every agent a unique digital wallet, a verifiable identity, and the ability to make and receive payments autonomously, without credit cards, bank accounts, or human intervention at the point of transaction.

Skyfire has raised $9.5 million in seed funding. The initial $8.5 million round in August 2024 was backed by Neuberger Berman, Brevan Howard Digital, DRW, Inception Capital, Circle, Gemini, Draper Associates, and Ripple. Coinbase Ventures and a16z’s Crypto Startup Accelerator (CSX) joined in October 2024, bringing the total to $9.5 million.

The company is already live inside Visa’s Intelligent Commerce closed beta. Under the hood, Skyfire converts deposited US dollars into USDC stablecoins, held in agent-specific wallets. Businesses set per-agent and per-transaction spending limits. If an agent attempts to overspend, Skyfire flags the transaction for human review. The platform collects 2–3% on every transaction and is building verification services as a second revenue stream.

Got something cool brewing in agentic finance? We’d love to feature you next- drop us a note at hello@whitesight.net 👋

Pledge your access to fintech analysis and exclusive insights ⚡

Unlock Elite Access ⭐

What’s on the fintech menu today?

• 🏁 Agentic Highlights: Biggest moves across agentic payments, agentic banking, and agentic commerce

• 🧩 ‘Byte’ Buzz: Agentic Finance updates, sorted by segment

• 🔗 Link Up: A curated set of reads worth your time

Sip on bite-sized agentic updates - fresh, sharp, and distilled to keep you ahead in just minutes. Subscribe now! 📨

Subscribe now

📢 We’re always seeking innovative voices in fintech to be our next guest feature!

With a community of 2100+ fintech enthusiasts, we’d love to amplify your insights. Reach out to us for features, sponsorships, or collaborations!

Drop us a hello here! 👋

Get Unlimited Access to Strategy Playbooks of Fintech Pioneers with WhiteSight Radar! 🚀

Unlock a treasure trove of fintech intel with a WhiteSight Radar subscription. See further with exclusive reports, industry trend breakdowns, and expert analysis on everything from Embedded Finance and Digital Banking to Open Finance and beyond.

Become a member and steer your business course with actionable intelligence on the winning strategies of leading companies like Apple, Stripe, Starling Bank, OakNorth Bank, Banco Inter, and Toast that propels your business to the forefront of fintech. (PLUS! More in our premium content pipeline - Amazon, Nubank, Grab, Wise, Shopify, Affirm, Mercado Libre… the list goes on!)

Supercharge your Fintech IQ with WhiteSight Radar, putting expert fintech intel at your fingertips! 🧭

Got to have Radar on my radar!

Edition 5 brings you the agentic finance stories that shaped how agents shaped the finance and fintech industry in the first two weeks of March.

March’s Top Agentic Tea!♨️

• Agentic Payments

⤷ Paradigm teamed up with Stripe to introduce Tempo, a blockchain designed specifically for payment use cases.

⤷ Stripe revealed it is enabling one-click checkout experiences within Facebook ads for merchants on Meta’s platform.

• Agentic Commerce

⤷ Shopify rolled out AI-driven storefront capabilities across leading AI ecosystems to support agent-led shopping experiences.

⤷ Gap collaborated with Google to allow customers to complete purchases directly within Gemini.

⤷ Solidgate confirmed support for merchants leveraging Google’s Universal Commerce Protocol for AI-enabled transaction flows.

• AI Platform Updates

⤷ Anthropic announced that it is exploring an initial public offering, potentially targeting a listing by late 2026.

⤷ NVIDIA launched NemoClaw, an enterprise-focused version of its OpenClaw AI agent platform for business applications.

Agentic payments scaled further as card networks moved from pilots to live, multi-market AI-driven transaction execution.

• Mastercard executes live agentic payments across Latin America and the Caribbean

Mastercard completed end-to-end agentic transactions across Latin America, with AI agents initiating and completing real purchases.

Industry implications: This demonstrates agentic payments can operate securely at scale on existing rails, accelerating real-world adoption across multiple markets.

• Mastercard completes Korea’s first live agentic transactions

Mastercard enabled South Korea’s first live agentic payments, validating AI-driven commerce within a regulated, high-tech payments ecosystem.

Industry implications: Expanding into advanced markets like Korea signals global standardisation of agentic payment frameworks across diverse regulatory environments.

Agentic crypto advanced as infrastructure players focused on securing autonomous execution and establishing trust in AI-driven transactions.

• MoonPay integrates Ledger security into AI agents

MoonPay introduced Ledger-backed signing for AI agents, ensuring transactions are hardware-approved without exposing private keys.

Industry implications: Hardware-backed signing addresses core security risks, enabling safe delegation of trading and payments to autonomous agents.

• World and Coinbase enable trusted AI shoppers

World and Coinbase launched a solution linking AI agents to verified human identities for trusted online transactions.

Industry implications: Combining identity verification with payments creates a trust layer, making AI agents acceptable participants in digital commerce.

Agentic commerce evolved as AI platforms enhanced product discovery and enabled agents to replicate real-world shopping behaviours.

• OpenAI enhances product discovery with visual shopping

OpenAI introduced visual shopping features that enable users to discover products through images in conversational interfaces.

Industry implications: Visual discovery strengthens AI’s role at the top of the funnel, improving relevance and accelerating intent-driven purchasing journeys.

• Google enables AI agents to shop like humans

Google updated its commerce protocol, allowing AI agents to build carts and access real-time product catalogues.

Industry implications: Replicating human shopping behaviours positions AI agents as full-stack participants in commerce, from discovery to checkout execution.

Agentic banking evolved as financial institutions embedded AI into customer engagement and real-time money management workflows.

• GCash launches AI financial coach within e-wallet

GCash introduced “Pera Coach,” an AI assistant delivering personalised financial guidance directly inside its e-wallet platform.

Industry implications: Embedding AI coaching into wallets signals a shift toward continuous, in-app financial guidance and behaviour-driven money management.

• Vivi Money launches AI-native financial platform with Visa and Pismo

Vivi Money launched an AI-driven platform combining payments, savings, and real-time financial optimisation on regulated banking infrastructure.

Industry implications: AI-native platforms integrating analysis and execution indicate banking is evolving toward proactive, agent-led financial decisioning systems.

AI platforms evolved as providers strengthened developer ecosystems and reorganised enterprise AI stacks around agentic execution.

• OpenAI acquires Astral to expand AI coding capabilities

OpenAI agreed to acquire Astral, integrating its Python developer tools into the Codex platform.

Industry implications: This signals a shift toward embedding AI agents directly into full software development workflows, beyond code generation.

• Alibaba launches Wukong amid AI restructuring push

Alibaba introduced its Wukong AI platform while consolidating AI units under a new enterprise-focused structure.

Industry implications: Consolidating AI assets highlights a move toward unified, enterprise-grade agent platforms competing across global AI ecosystems.

Agentic infrastructure evolved as platforms introduced trust frameworks and workflow automation to support secure, AI-driven financial operations.

• IXOPAY and Zip launch unified trust layer for agentic commerce

IXOPAY and Zip introduced an open framework to standardise identity, intent, and trust in AI-initiated transactions.

Industry implications: Establishing a shared trust layer signals a shift toward programmable identity and liability management in autonomous commerce ecosystems.

• Zocks launches AI assistant for life insurance workflows

Zocks introduced an AI assistant helping insurance producers automate client interactions and accelerate policy issuance processes.

Industry implications: Automating advisory and underwriting workflows highlights how agentic systems are streamlining regulated financial services operations.

AI funding accelerated as capital flowed into both frontier model expansion and sovereign-scale infrastructure buildout.

• SoftBank secures $40 billion loan to deepen OpenAI investment

SoftBank signed a $40 billion bridge loan to fund a $30 billion follow-on investment in OpenAI.

Industry implications: This scale of leveraged capital signals intensifying competition to control foundational AI infrastructure and model ecosystems globally.

• Mistral raises debt financing to build European AI infrastructure

Mistral secured $830 million in debt to build a large-scale AI data centre near Paris.

Industry implications: Sovereign AI infrastructure investments highlight Europe’s push to reduce dependence on US-dominated compute and cloud ecosystems.

And that’s a wrap 👋

We hope you enjoyed this edition of the Agentic Finance Brew!

As a reward for making it this far, here’s a curated set of agentic resources to keep your curiosity (and conviction) topped up. Cheers to continuous learning!

Link Up! –

• Artificial intelligence readiness assessment report: India - UNESCO

• The next frontier for UK investment platforms: Unlocking the AI advantage - BCG

• The Race to Agentic AI: Why Infrastructure Will Make or Break Workforce Transformation - CISCO

If you’re someone who likes to read think pieces, you will likely love our monthly blog, Fintersections, where our team members analyse the convergence of fintech with the world.

And lastly, to stay updated on everything fintech and web3, follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter, and don’t be shy to show some ❤️

Thanks for reading Future of FinTech Newsletter! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

✔ Tokenized markets are moving toward real trading infrastructure
✔ Payment and settlement rails are getting institutional depth
✔ Apps are getting smarter as data and automation stack up

Ready for the signals? 🔎

Subscribe now

🚨 Featured Story of the Week:

How Mastercard and Visa Are Expanding Geographically in Onchain Finance in 2026

Beyond Mastercard’s acquisition of BVNK - which grabbed massive headlines - another story is what both payment giants have been quietly building across markets. So far in 2026, Mastercard is doubling down on localized access through regional partners, while Visa is scaling cross-border payment flows through infrastructure. It’s two very different strategies for owning onchain finance.

Breaking it down, the contrast shows up across four clear themes:

• Localized Access: Mastercard is leaning into region-specific launches and local distribution.

• Globalizing Flows: Visa is building rails designed to move value across corridors.

• Consumer vs Rail: Mastercard is showing up closer to the user. Visa is showing up deeper in the payment stack.

Two Different Maps: Mastercard is building destinations. Visa is building highways.

Check out the full breakdown and join the conversation on LinkedIn here »»

🚀 Startup Spotlight: Startale

Startale is building the infrastructure layer for onchain finance, with products spanning blockchain networks, stablecoins, developer tooling, and consumer-facing apps. Its role is increasingly important because it is trying to connect tokenized assets, payments, and user activity into one more usable financial stack.

The company made news this week after raising $63 million in Series A funding backed by SBI Group and Sony Innovation Fund. Strategically, that matters because it gives Startale both capital and distribution across finance and consumer ecosystems, while signaling that the next phase of onchain finance will be shaped by infrastructure players that can bridge institutional rails, tokenized assets, and mainstream user products.

Building something interesting in onchain finance? We’d love to feature you next- drop us a note at hello@whitesight.net 👋

Pledge your access to fintech analysis and exclusive insights ⚡

Unlock Elite Access ⭐

📢 We’re always seeking innovative voices in fintech to be our next guest feature!

With a community of 2100+ fintech enthusiasts, we’d love to amplify your insights. Reach out to us for features, sponsorships, or collaborations!

Drop us a hello here! 👋

Get Unlimited Access to Strategy Playbooks of Fintech Pioneers with WhiteSight Radar! 🚀

Unlock a treasure trove of fintech intel with a WhiteSight Radar subscription. See further with exclusive reports, industry trend breakdowns, and expert analysis on everything from Embedded Finance and Digital Banking to Open Finance and beyond.

Become a member and steer your business course with actionable intelligence on the winning strategies of leading companies like Apple, Stripe, Starling Bank, OakNorth Bank, Banco Inter, and Toast that propels your business to the forefront of fintech. (PLUS! More in our premium content pipeline - Amazon, Nubank, Grab, Wise, Shopify, Affirm, Mercado Libre… the list goes on!)

Supercharge your Fintech IQ with WhiteSight Radar, putting expert fintech intel at your fingertips! 🧭

Got to have Radar on my radar!

Edition 9: The week onchain finance turned from momentum into market structure »

Last Week’s Top Onchain Tea!♨️

• Capital is getting allocated
  ↳ BNP Paribas opened crypto ETN access to retail and private banking investors in France
  ↳ ParaFi Capital raised a $125M fund to back the next wave of onchain finance

• Public markets go onchain
  ↳ Franklin Templeton partnered with Ondo to bring tokenized stocks and ETFs onchain
  ↳ NYSE tapped Securitize to power its new 24/7 tokenized stock trading platform

• The market stack is changing
  ↳ ICE doubled down on Polymarket with a fresh $600M investment
  ↳ Coinbase and Chainlink launched live exchange data onchain to power trading at scale

• Regulated rails are deepening
  ↳ Visa joined Canton Network as a governance super validator
  ↳ Ripple entered the MAS sandbox to test RLUSD for trade finance

• Crypto apps are leveling up
  ↳ Trust Wallet launched AI agents that can automatically execute crypto trades
  ↳ Lido rolled out Vaults and Earn products as DeFi staking yields keep compressing

Now, for the ‘byte’-sized onchain buzz -

Onchain Money 💸

Stablecoins are moving closer to everyday payment flows.

• The News: Paysend partnered with BVNK to add stablecoin settlement across its consumer and enterprise payments stack. It gives the company an always-on settlement rail alongside its existing fiat network.

Implication: Stablecoins are being plugged into real payment infrastructure, not treated as a side experiment.

• The News: Tether-backed USDT0 went live on Tempo, a payments-first Layer 1 focused on omnichain USDT liquidity. The move extends stablecoin liquidity deeper into payments-native infrastructure.

Implication: Payment chains are starting to compete on stablecoin liquidity and usability, not only blockspace.

Onchain Assets 🏛️

Tokenized assets are expanding from standard wrappers into broader market exposure and new trading formats.

• The News: xStocks partnered with Fundrise to bring the newly public Fundrise Innovation Fund onchain through a tokenized asset called VCXx. That gives onchain investors another route into late-stage private market exposure.

Implication: The onchain asset menu is widening beyond Treasury products and blue-chip equities.

• The News: Wintermute launched 24/7 oil trading through OTC-style CFDs rather than the perp model popularized by exchanges like Hyperliquid. It is a more institutional trading format wrapped in crypto-native market hours.

Implication: Onchain-style markets are starting to absorb real-world commodities through structures that look more like traditional finance.

Onchain Markets 📈

Onchain market infrastructure is scaling fast, but regulation is arriving just as quickly.

• The News: Kalshi won approval to launch margin trading for professional clients, opening the door to more capital-efficient prediction market activity. At the same time, Washington sued the company, arguing its event contracts violate state gambling law.

Implication: Prediction markets are maturing into a bigger financial category, but the legal perimeter is still being fought in real time.

• The News: Bitpanda launched Vision Chain, a blockchain designed to connect EU banks and fintechs with tokenized assets under a more regulated framework. The pitch is clear: move tokenization out of pilots and into compliant financial plumbing.

Implication: The next market winners in Europe may be the platforms that make tokenized assets easy for regulated institutions to plug into.

Onchain Infra 🛠️

Infrastructure is getting more institutional, with trust and verification moving closer to the core stack.

• The News: Gems Trade adopted Fireblocks’ MPC infrastructure for digital asset custody, aiming to reduce single-key risk and tighten operational security across its exchange. The move targets the kind of infrastructure weaknesses institutions increasingly screen for.

Implication: Better custody is no longer a nice-to-have; it is a prerequisite for serious flow.

• The News: BlackRock’s tokenized BUIDL fund added Chronicle as a verification layer, bringing onchain visibility into the fund’s assets, valuation, and custody setup. It adds another trust layer around one of the biggest tokenized Treasury products in market.

Implication: Tokenized funds are moving beyond issuance into proof, transparency, and auditability.

Onchain Yield 🌾

Yield products are getting easier to access and more packaged for mainstream distribution.

• The News: BitMine launched MAVAN, its Ethereum staking platform, with ambitions to generate up to $300 million in annual yield. The product turns staking into a larger-scale institutional yield business.

Implication: Staking is being framed less like passive crypto income and more like a structured yield vertical.

• The News: Binance expanded Soft Staking to include ETH, letting users earn staking rewards directly from spot balances while keeping assets liquid for trading and withdrawals. It lowers the friction to participate in Ethereum yield.

Implication: The next growth leg for onchain yield is convenience, not complexity.

Onchain Lending 🏠

Lending is stretching in two directions at once: deeper real-world integration and fresh governance risk.

• The News: Fannie Mae partnered with Better and Coinbase to accept crypto-backed mortgages, allowing borrowers to use bitcoin or USDC-backed loans to fund a down payment on a Fannie-backed home loan. It brings crypto collateral into a major housing finance channel for the first time.

Implication: Crypto collateral is starting to enter mainstream credit markets, even if the structure is still more expensive than cash.

• The News: DeFi lender Moonwell faced a governance attack after an attacker reportedly spent about $1,800 on tokens to push a proposal that could put over $1 million at risk. The episode exposed how cheaply protocol control can still be contested.

Implication: Onchain lending growth still depends on governance hardening, not just TVL expansion.

And that’s a wrap 👋

We hope you enjoyed this edition of the Onchain Finance!

If you’re someone who likes to read think pieces, you will likely love our monthly blog, Fintersections, where our team members analyse the convergence of fintech with the world.

And lastly, to stay updated on everything fintech and web3, follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter, and don’t be shy to show some ❤️

Thanks for reading Future of FinTech Newsletter! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

✔️ Scale with stronger profitability
✔️ Expansion across markets and channels
✔️ AI, compliance, and infrastructure

Ready to connect the dots? 👀

🚨 Featured Story of the Week:

The numbers behind Revolut’s scale

Revolut reported stronger results for 2025, with revenue reaching $6B and PBT rising to $2.3B. Profit before tax margin also increased to 38%, up from 35% in 2024.

The results were supported by growth across the business. Customer balances rose to $67.5B, while retail customers reached 68.3M and business customers 767K. Revolut also said 11 product lines each generated more than c.$135M in revenue.

A few other indicators also moved up:
→ Total transaction volume reached $1.7T
→ Paid plan adoption increased by 42% YoY
→ The lending portfolio grew to $2.9B

For deeper context on what is driving these numbers, WhiteSight’s Revolut Deep Dive Report 2025 explores how that scale is being built country by country, alongside greater product depth and regulatory leverage in the UK.

The latest numbers put Revolut back in focus for us. Stay tuned as we revisit its progress with fresh context 😉

Thanks for reading Future of FinTech Newsletter! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support our work.

🚀 Startup Spotlight: WealthReach

This edition, we’re spotlighting WealthReach, a startup building AI-driven growth tools for financial advisors.

Financial advisors often manage discovery, content visibility, and outreach across separate systems. WealthReach is expanding this stack with Attract, an AI SEO agent designed to help advisors improve online visibility alongside its broader prospecting and outreach platform.

Got something cool brewing in fintech? We’d love to feature you next- drop us a note at hello@whitesight.net 👋

Pledge your access to fintech analysis and exclusive insights ⚡

Unlock Elite Access ⭐

What’s on the fintech menu today?

• 🌟 Fintech Fiesta: The Week’s Hot 10!

• 🌐 ‘Byte’ Buzz: Fintech highlights, sorted by segment!

• 🔗 Link Up: Your gateway to resourceful links!

Sip on bite-sized updates every week—fresh, hot, and brewed to keep you in the loop in just minutes. 📨

Subscribe now

📢 We’re always seeking innovative voices in fintech to be our next guest feature!

With a community of 2100+ fintech enthusiasts, we’d love to amplify your insights. Reach out to us for features, sponsorships, or collaborations!

Drop us a hello here! 👋

Get Unlimited Access to Strategy Playbooks of Fintech Pioneers with WhiteSight Radar! 🚀

Unlock a treasure trove of fintech intel with a WhiteSight Radar subscription. See further with exclusive reports, industry trend breakdowns, and expert analysis on everything from Embedded Finance and Digital Banking to Open Finance and beyond.

Become a member and steer your business course with actionable intelligence on the winning strategies of leading companies like Apple, Stripe, Starling Bank, OakNorth Bank, Banco Inter, and Toast that propels your business to the forefront of fintech. (PLUS! More in our premium content pipeline - Amazon, Nubank, Grab, Wise, Shopify, Affirm, Mercado Libre… the list goes on!)

Supercharge your Fintech IQ with WhiteSight Radar, putting expert fintech intel at your fingertips! 🧭

Got to have Radar on my radar!

Edition #186 focuses on the changes taking place across digital finance.

The Week’s Hot 10!♨️🔟

• Scale Turns Into Profit
  ⤷ Revolut reported $6B revenue up 46% YoY, and $2.3B profit before tax, up 57% YoY in FY2025.
  ⤷ GoCardless reported that more than 35K businesses are using its open banking payments products.

• Reaching the 1M Milestone
  ⤷ Openbank crossed 1M customers in Mexico within a year, processing 20M+ transactions as it deepens local offerings.
  ⤷ Klarna surpassed 1M merchants globally, after adding 285K merchants in 2025 and growing merchant count 47% YoY.

• Expansion Enters New Markets
  ⤷ J.P. Morgan Payments partnered with Mastercard to launch its B2B virtual card offering to Europe, expanding a product it had already scaled in NA.
  ⤷ Wise secured five licences in Thailand, allowing it to launch foreign-currency wallets and cards in-market and deepen its APAC expansion.

• AI Moves To The Core
  ⤷ Solaris to restructure around AI-led banking operations and a more standardized financial infrastructure model across Europe.
  ⤷ Yapily partnered with Cortena to bring AI-driven operations for SMEs, combining Yapily’s open banking connectivity with Cortena’s AI agents.

• Automation Meets Compliance
  ⤷ Unit21 partnered with Helix by Q2 to simplify AML monitoring for BaaS programmes and improve suspicious activity detection.
  ⤷ WealthReach launched Attract, an AI SEO and AEO engine for financial advisors to create compliant, search-optimised content.

Now, for the ‘byte’-sized fintech buzz –

Digital banking is being shaped by embedded compliance and regulated expansion, as banks add tax tools and enter new markets through approval processes.

• Starling launched a free Making Tax Digital for income tax tool for business customers, to let users submit quarterly tax updates directly to HMRC.

• IuteBank was approved to begin operations in Ukraine following a bridge bank process.

Digital payments is moving toward more embedded support, as providers add merchant tools and AI guidance directly into payment experiences.

• Fiserv partnered with Western Alliance Bank to deliver merchant commerce and payments technology including Clover to the bank’s clients.

• GCash launched Pera Coach, an AI financial coach embedded in its e-wallet to provide personalized financial guidance and literacy support in local languages.

Digital Wealth is seeing sharper strategic positioning, as firms divest non-core units and deepen platform-focused investment.

• Perpetual agreed to sell its wealth management arm to Bain Capital for AUD 500M, as it narrows focus to asset management and corporate trust services.

• Goldman Sachs bought a minority stake in GeoWealth for $42.5M, extending an existing partnership with the Chicago-based turnkey asset management platform for RIAs.

Embedded finance is extending into everyday workflows, as providers add payments to field sales and platform-based payout flows.

• Splitit launched Splitit Go to bring installment payments to in-person and field sales.

• MyGigsters partnered with SuperChoice to add superannuation payments into Australian gig platforms.

Open finance is becoming more integrated, as connected financial data flows directly into business software and payment journeys.

• Formance partnered with Powens to add bank connectivity from 2K+ European banks into Formance’s programmable ledger, so customers can sync bank transactions into their ledger.

• RedZed partnered with Fiskil to implement compliant open finance APIs and data-sharing infrastructure, enabling it to meet Consumer Data Right requirements.

Fintech infrastructure is becoming more automated and intelligent, as banks adopt AI for fraud operations and modernize core systems to support digital transformation.

• Cleafy launched Nyx, an AI-based fraud investigation platform for banks that automates the review of fraud alerts and attack patterns.

• Infosys Finacle partnered with Producers Savings Bank Corporation to upgrade the bank’s core banking and digital systems in the Philippines.
  

And that’s a wrap 👋

We hope you enjoyed this edition of the Weekly Fintech Brew!

If you’re someone who likes to read think pieces, you will likely love our monthly blog, Fintersections, where our team members analyse the convergence of fintech with the world.

And lastly, to stay updated on everything fintech and web3, follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter, and don’t be shy to show some ❤️

Thanks for reading Future of FinTech Newsletter! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

✔ Stablecoins are scaling into everyday finance.

✔ Tokenized assets are gaining real market rails.

✔ Onchain infra is turning capital into code.

Ready for the signals? 🔎

Subscribe now

🚨 Featured Story of the Week:

Wall Street Goes Onchain: Nasdaq vs NYSE

How are the biggest exchange operators starting to position for tokenized markets? This week’s featured story looks at how Nasdaq and NYSE are approaching the onchain transition from very different angles. While both are moving toward tokenized securities, onchain settlement, and new market infrastructure, their strategies reveal two very different visions for how Wall Street may evolve.

Breaking it down, the contrast shows up across four clear themes:

• The Market Structure Play: Nasdaq appears to be building from the rule path first, focusing on tokenized securities design, issuer compatibility, and regulated market structure.

• The Ecosystem Expansion Play: NYSE looks to be taking a broader route, stretching into tokenized venues, stablecoin flows, tokenized deposits, and crypto-native distribution.

• The Partnership Layer: Both are partnering aggressively, but in different directions - Nasdaq toward equity gateways and post-trade modernization, NYSE toward money movement rails and institutional onchain infrastructure.

• The Bigger Signal: This is not one exchange copying the other. It is two giants heading toward the same destination through very different blueprints for the future of finance.

Check out the full breakdown and join the conversation on LinkedIn here »»

🚀 Startup Spotlight: Brahma

Brahma is building the infrastructure layer that helps apps and institutions move capital, automate transactions, and manage onchain accounts more seamlessly. By combining smart accounts, execution, and settlement tooling, Brahma is making crypto systems easier to use in real financial workflows.

The company made headlines this week after being acquired by Polymarket, which is using the deal to deepen its product stack and tighten the infrastructure behind its fast-growing prediction market platform. The acquisition signals that Brahma’s tooling is becoming strategically important as major crypto apps race to own more of their backend rails.

Building something interesting in onchain finance? We’d love to feature you next- drop us a note at hello@whitesight.net 👋

Pledge your access to fintech analysis and exclusive insights ⚡

Unlock Elite Access ⭐

📢 We’re always seeking innovative voices in fintech to be our next guest feature!

With a community of 2100+ fintech enthusiasts, we’d love to amplify your insights. Reach out to us for features, sponsorships, or collaborations!

Drop us a hello here! 👋

Get Unlimited Access to Strategy Playbooks of Fintech Pioneers with WhiteSight Radar! 🚀

Unlock a treasure trove of fintech intel with a WhiteSight Radar subscription. See further with exclusive reports, industry trend breakdowns, and expert analysis on everything from Embedded Finance and Digital Banking to Open Finance and beyond.

Become a member and steer your business course with actionable intelligence on the winning strategies of leading companies like Apple, Stripe, Starling Bank, OakNorth Bank, Banco Inter, and Toast that propels your business to the forefront of fintech. (PLUS! More in our premium content pipeline - Amazon, Nubank, Grab, Wise, Shopify, Affirm, Mercado Libre… the list goes on!)

Supercharge your Fintech IQ with WhiteSight Radar, putting expert fintech intel at your fingertips! 🧭

Got to have Radar on my radar!

Edition 8: The week onchain finance turned from momentum into market structure »

Last Week’s Top Onchain Tea!♨️

• Washington is drawing the lines while Wall Street moves onchain.
  ↳ SEC and CFTC clarified how US securities laws apply to crypto assets, giving tokenized finance a clearer regulatory framework.
  ↳ Nasdaq won SEC approval for tokenized securities, pushing regulated equities further onto onchain rails.

• Stablecoins are becoming a real global payments product.
  ↳ PayPal expanded PYUSD to 70 markets globally, deepening its cross-border stablecoin reach.
  ↳ Mastercard moved to acquire BVNK, tightening the link between onchain payments and fiat settlement rails.

• Crypto is slipping into everyday finance through familiar consumer apps.
  ↳ Nubank launched a crypto rewards tool in Brazil, bringing digital assets into a mainstream banking experience.
  ↳ Coinbase Asset Management and Apex Group launched a tokenized Bitcoin yield fund, making crypto investment products easier to access through structured formats.

• The next institutional wave is about earning yield and managing risk onchain.
  ↳ BlackRock’s staked Ether fund crossed $250M AUM in its first week, showing strong demand for yield-bearing crypto exposure.
  ↳ Anchorage Digital launched collateral management services on Atlas, adding more risk and financing infrastructure for institutional crypto markets.

Now, for the ‘byte’-sized onchain buzz -

Onchain Money 💸

Crypto payment rails are getting more local, embedded, and consumer-facing.

The News: Nubank launched a crypto rewards tool in Brazil, adding another on-ramp between digital assets and everyday retail users.

• Implication: Banks and fintech apps are making crypto feel more like a native product, not a separate investing app.

The News: Bitget Wallet launched bank transfer support in Bangladesh, enabling stablecoin payouts into local financial rails.

• Implication: Stablecoins get more useful when users can move seamlessly between onchain dollars and domestic bank systems.

The News: Bybit Pay brought QR-based crypto payments to Bolivia through Yape-style merchant flows.

• Implication: Crypto payments work best when they plug into familiar checkout behavior instead of asking users to change habits.

Onchain Assets 🏗️

Tokenized market access is starting to move through regulated rails, not crypto workarounds.

The News: The CFTC cleared a pilot that lets registered derivatives firms use crypto assets like Bitcoin, Ether, and certain stablecoins as collateral under supervised conditions.

• Implication: This is a step toward making onchain assets usable inside real financial plumbing, where crypto is not just held but posted, margined, and recognized inside regulated markets.

The News: Phantom received CFTC no-action relief that lets its wallet connect users to regulated derivatives access without being treated like a traditional broker, as long as it stays non-custodial.

• Implication: Wallets are inching closer to becoming front ends for regulated financial products, which could make tokenized exposure much easier to distribute at scale.

Onchain Market

Public-market crypto exposure is getting more ambitious, even as exchange listings stay fragile.

The News: Ripple-backed Evernorth filed for a Nasdaq debut through a SPAC merger, aiming to become a listed XRP treasury company with more than $1 billion in gross proceeds.

• Implication: Public investors are being offered more direct balance-sheet exposure to crypto assets, which could turn token treasuries into a new listed market category.

The News: Kraken reportedly froze its multibillion-dollar IPO plan despite earlier filing progress, choosing to wait for a better market window.

• Implication: Crypto market infrastructure is maturing, but public listings still depend on timing, sentiment, and how much volatility equity investors are willing to absorb.

Onchain Infra

The new infra race is about stablecoin throughput and safe machine payments.

The News: Tempo, backed by Stripe and Paradigm, launched its stablecoin-focused blockchain mainnet with support for AI-agent transactions and machine payment flows.

• Implication: Payments infrastructure is being rebuilt around stablecoins and automation, which points to a future where software can move money as easily as it calls an API.

The News: MoonPay Agents introduced a Ledger-secured AI agent setup, letting automated agents transact while keeping signing tied to hardware-wallet security.

• Implication: Agentic finance only scales if users trust the security model, and hardware-backed signing is an early answer to that trust gap.

Onchain Yield

Yield is splitting into two tracks: fast-moving token incentives and clearer regulated staking rules.

The News: Playnance launched GCOIN staking and said users locked more than 250 million tokens within hours of going live.

• Implication: Retail appetite for onchain yield is still strong, especially when token communities can turn staking into an immediate liquidity and loyalty event.

The News: New U.S. CFTC guidance clarified how staking and mining are treated under federal crypto rules, giving the sector a more defined regulatory footing.

• Implication: Clearer rules make staking easier to package into mainstream products, which is what institutions need before treating onchain yield as a real allocation bucket.

Onchain Lending

Credit is moving onchain from both directions: real-world loan pools and Bitcoin-backed finance.

The News: Figure launched Forge to bring private credit loans onchain, starting with tokenized exposure to real loan pools through its Provenance-based infrastructure.

• Implication: Private credit becomes more liquid and easier to distribute when loan exposure can be wrapped into standardized onchain instruments.

The News: Hashi launched on Sui with backing from BitGo and FalconX, aiming to let Bitcoin holders borrow, lend, and put BTC to work inside a finance protocol.

• Implication: Bitcoin is being pushed beyond passive holding into productive credit markets, which could unlock a much larger collateral base for onchain lending.

And that’s a wrap 👋

We hope you enjoyed this edition of the Onchain Finance!

If you’re someone who likes to read think pieces, you will likely love our monthly blog, Fintersections, where our team members analyse the convergence of fintech with the world.

And lastly, to stay updated on everything fintech and web3, follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter, and don’t be shy to show some ❤️

Thanks for reading Future of FinTech Newsletter! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

Across payments, crypto, banking, infrastructure, and AI platforms, agents moved beyond pilots and into live financial environments. Use cases spanned agent-led payments, automated lending workflows, AI-driven trading, and real-time compliance across financial systems.

✔ Card networks and fintech processors formalized authenticated agent-led payments.

✔ Crypto infrastructure providers enabled AI-native wallets and autonomous blockchain execution.

✔ Lenders are integrating agents into underwriting, servicing, and bureau-driven decisioning to accelerate credit workflows.

Ready for the agentic signals that defined the first two weeks of March? 🔍⚡

🚨 Featured Story of the Week:

Mastercard Expands Agentic Commerce Across APAC

Mastercard is rapidly scaling agentic commerce across the Asia Pacific, moving from pilots to live, authenticated AI-driven transactions across multiple markets. In Singapore, it completed its first live agentic transaction with DBS and UOB, where an AI agent successfully booked a ride using its Agent Pay framework.

This builds on parallel deployments across Malaysia, Australia, New Zealand, and India, where Mastercard is working with banks, processors, and platforms to embed AI agents directly into payment flows. In Malaysia, pilots with CIMB, Maybank, and RHB demonstrated secure, consent-driven transactions using tokenization and passkey-based authentication.

Why it matters

APAC is a calculated beachhead for Mastercard. The region’s e-commerce market is projected to exceed $7 trillion by 2030, the world’s largest. 74% of APAC consumers already use AI-powered tools for product discovery. India leads global GenAI adoption at 73%. In Australia alone, agentic commerce could influence 55% of all consumer transactions by 2030, worth A$670 billion. The infrastructure preconditions, tokenization, contactless penetration, and super-apps are already built.

Competitive urgency accelerates the timeline. DBS piloted agentic payments with Visa in February and Mastercard in March; same bank, rival networks, weeks apart. Both are racing to embed their trust standard in the highest-AI-adoption commerce region on earth. The standard that wins here sets the default everywhere else.

Breaking down the regional strategy:

• The Mobility & Travel Hub (Singapore & Malaysia): Mastercard completed its agentic transactions in Singapore (with DBS and UOB) and Malaysia (CIMB and RHB), targeting the mobility sector. Using the Hoppa platform and CardInfoLink as the processor, agents can now autonomously book and pay for transport, proving that cross-border frameworks can maintain regional compliance.

• The High-Frequency Retail Engine (India): In India, the strategy focuses on retail and quick commerce. It partnered with Axis Bank and RBL Bank, and integrated with dominant platforms like Swiggy, Zepto, and Zomato. Mastercard is testing the high-concurrency limits of agentic payments in one of the world’s most digitized payment markets.

• The Lifestyle & Leisure Integration (Australia & New Zealand): Down Under, the focus shifts to hospitality and entertainment. Working with Westpac and Commonwealth Bank, Mastercard has embedded agentic flows into Thredbo (hospitality) and Event Cinemas. This signals a move to capture discretionary spend through AI assistants that manage a user’s social and travel calendar.

What does it signal?

• Tokenization as the agent’s ID: Mastercard assigns each AI agent a unique Agentic Token. Raw card numbers never touch the agent layer. The agent itself becomes the authenticated bearer of the credential. This collapses the fraud surface area of autonomous commerce by design.

• Consent-as-a-Service: Agent Pay introduces a new identity management layer between the consumer and the transaction. Banks like DBS and Westpac are evolving from money custodians to consent managers. Their role: verify that a specific AI agent has permission to spend a specific amount. This rewires the bank’s position in the agentic value chain entirely.

If the future of commerce is an AI placing orders on your behalf, someone still has to guarantee that the transaction is authentic. Mastercard just pitched in, with a unique token for every agent and a passkey for every purchase.

Curious about how payment processors are architecting for the agentic era? Our Adyen deep dive maps the full stack.

Thanks for reading Future of FinTech - Agentic AI Newsletter! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support our work.

Subscribe now

Thanks for reading Future of FinTech Newsletter! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support our work.

🚀 Startup Spotlight: Cognition AI

This edition, we’re spotlighting Cognition AI, a San Francisco-based applied AI lab that built Devin, the first autonomous AI software engineer. It’s an agent that plans, codes, tests, debugs, and deploys software end-to-end in a sandboxed environment.

Cognition bets that AI agents capable of long-horizon reasoning and tool use can automate entire engineering workflows.

Devin’s ARR grew from $1 million in September 2024 to $73 million by June 2025. Cognition then closed a $400 million round at a $10.2 billion valuation, with total funding now standing at $896 million. In July 2025, Cognition acquired Windsurf, an AI coding integrated development environment (IDE). Combined enterprise ARR jumped over 30% in just seven weeks post-acquisition. Total net burn has stayed under $20 million since founding.

Enterprise customers include Goldman Sachs, Citi, Dell, Cisco, Palantir, Nubank, and Mercado Libre.

Got something cool brewing in agentic finance? We’d love to feature you next- drop us a note at hello@whitesight.net 👋

Pledge your access to fintech analysis and exclusive insights ⚡

Unlock Elite Access ⭐

What’s on the fintech menu today?

• 🏁 Agentic Highlights: Biggest moves across agentic payments, agentic banking, and agentic commerce

• 🧩 ‘Byte’ Buzz: Agentic Finance updates, sorted by segment

• 🔗 Link Up: A curated set of reads worth your time

Sip on bite-sized agentic updates - fresh, sharp, and distilled to keep you ahead in just minutes. Subscribe now! 📨

Subscribe now

📢 We’re always seeking innovative voices in fintech to be our next guest feature!

With a community of 2100+ fintech enthusiasts, we’d love to amplify your insights. Reach out to us for features, sponsorships, or collaborations!

Drop us a hello here! 👋

Get Unlimited Access to Strategy Playbooks of Fintech Pioneers with WhiteSight Radar! 🚀

Unlock a treasure trove of fintech intel with a WhiteSight Radar subscription. See further with exclusive reports, industry trend breakdowns, and expert analysis on everything from Embedded Finance and Digital Banking to Open Finance and beyond.

Become a member and steer your business course with actionable intelligence on the winning strategies of leading companies like Apple, Stripe, Starling Bank, OakNorth Bank, Banco Inter, and Toast that propels your business to the forefront of fintech. (PLUS! More in our premium content pipeline - Amazon, Nubank, Grab, Wise, Shopify, Affirm, Mercado Libre… the list goes on!)

Supercharge your Fintech IQ with WhiteSight Radar, putting expert fintech intel at your fingertips! 🧭

Got to have Radar on my radar!

Edition 4 brings you the agentic finance stories that shaped how agents shaped the finance and fintech industry in the first two weeks of March.

March’s Top Agentic Tea!♨️

• Agentic Payments

⤷ Santander and Visa successfully ran a controlled trial of AI-driven commerce transactions across several Latin American regions.

⤷ Mirakl collaborated with J.P. Morgan Payments to support merchants with enterprise-grade AI-enabled commerce capabilities.

⤷ Nexi Group introduced a Model Context Protocol, allowing AI agents to interact with its payment systems through conversational inputs.

• Agentic Commerce

⤷ Mastercard partnered with Google to launch a ‘Verifiable Intent’ framework aimed at improving trust and authorization in AI-driven commerce.

• AI Platform Updates

⤷ Anthropic rolled out a dedicated marketplace designed to provide enterprises with access to AI tools and solutions.

⤷ OpenAI introduced GPT-5.4, targeting automation of complex, high-skill professional tasks across industries.

⤷ Databricks unveiled Genie Code, an autonomous AI agent built to manage advanced data engineering, analytics, and data science workflows.

Now, for the ‘byte’-sized fintech buzz –

Agentic payments advanced as AI agents expanded into enterprise finance workflows and card network-led ecosystem readiness programmes

• Payhawk launches AI agents for automated invoice retrieval

Payhawk introduced AI agents that autonomously collect invoices from vendor portals and process them within finance systems.

Industry implications: Automating invoice retrieval highlights agentic payments extending beyond checkout into back-office finance and operational workflows.

• Visa launches agentic payments programme in Europe

Visa rolled out “Agentic Ready” in Europe to help issuers test and validate AI-initiated transactions at scale.

Industry implications: Visa’s programme signals networks formalising infrastructure for agent-led payments, embedding trust, authentication, and scalability into existing rails.

Agentic crypto progressed as blockchain networks and exchanges enabled AI agents to transact and trade autonomously.

• TRON joins Agentic AI Foundation to support open AI infrastructure

TRON became a governing member of the Agentic AI Foundation, advancing open standards for autonomous AI systems and transactions.

Industry implications: This move positions blockchain networks as settlement layers for AI agents, enabling high-frequency, low-cost machine-driven transactions at scale.

• Bybit launches AI trading skill for agentic crypto execution

Bybit introduced an AI trading skill allowing users to execute trades, manage assets, and access data via natural language commands.

Industry implications: AI-native trading interfaces signal a shift toward autonomous portfolio management, reducing reliance on manual trading tools and complex interfaces.

Agentic credit evolved as AI systems embedded into lending workflows, automating decisioning, servicing, and borrower engagement

• Eltropy launches agentic AI platform for credit unions

Eltropy introduced a governed AI platform enabling credit unions to build, deploy, and manage agents across lending and servicing workflows.

Industry implications: Centralised agent governance signals lenders prioritising compliance, auditability, and controlled automation across credit lifecycle operations.

• Algebrik AI integrates with TransUnion for smarter lending

Algebrik AI partnered with TransUnion to embed bureau data directly into its AI-powered loan origination platform.

Industry implications: Embedding credit bureau intelligence into AI workflows enables faster underwriting, improved risk assessment, and more inclusive lending decisions.

AI platform innovation continued as providers focused on securing agentic systems and enabling enterprise-grade autonomous workflow execution.

• OpenAI plans acquisition of Promptfoo to secure agentic AI systems

OpenAI announced plans to acquire Promptfoo, integrating automated testing, red-teaming, and risk monitoring into its Frontier agent platform.

Industry implications: This signals security becoming foundational to agentic AI, embedding governance, compliance, and risk controls directly into development workflows.

• Colt and Microsoft develop agentic AI engine for enterprise workflows

Colt partnered with Microsoft to build an AI engine automating enterprise quoting processes and reducing response times.

Industry implications: Enterprise AI is shifting toward autonomous execution, replacing manual workflows with agent-driven systems embedded across business operations.

Agentic infrastructure advanced as compliance and security layers adapted to support autonomous AI-driven financial and commerce workflows

• iDenfy launches AI reviewer for automated KYB onboarding

iDenfy introduced an AI reviewer that automates business verification by cross-checking documents, registries, and compliance signals in real time.

Industry implications: Automating KYB processes highlights how agentic infrastructure is reducing manual compliance overhead while improving speed, consistency, and auditability.

• Darwinium launches intent-based authentication for agentic commerce

Darwinium released an authentication framework that evaluates agent intent and behavior to distinguish trusted AI activity from malicious automation.

Industry implications: Intent-based security signals a shift toward real-time trust frameworks, enabling safe scaling of AI agents across financial and commerce ecosystems.

Funding continued to flow in agentic infrastructure as startups building enterprise AI operating layers secured early-stage investment

• Handle raises $6 million to expand enterprise AI agent platform

Handle secured $6 million in funding to scale its AI agent platform targeting enterprise operations, initially focusing on insurance workflows.

Industry implications: Funding highlights investor confidence in agentic platforms as core enterprise infrastructure, automating complex workflows across industries and functions.

And that’s a wrap 👋

We hope you enjoyed this edition of the Agentic Finance Brew!

As a reward for making it this far, here’s a curated set of agentic resources to keep your curiosity (and conviction) topped up. Cheers to continuous learning!

Link Up! –

• Supply Chain Financing: Durable Global Trade in the Age of AI - CITI

• Agentic AI untangled: Navigating the build, buy, or borrow decision - KPMG

• The automation curve in agentic commerce - McKinsey

• How Agentic AI Can Power Core Insurance IT Modernization - BCG

If you’re someone who likes to read think pieces, you will likely love our monthly blog, Fintersections, where our team members analyse the convergence of fintech with the world.

And lastly, to stay updated on everything fintech and web3, follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter, and don’t be shy to show some ❤️

Thanks for reading Future of FinTech Newsletter! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

✔️ Banks file stablecoin trademarks and launch institutional staking ETFs.

✔️ Exchange partnerships unlock 24/7 programmable stock trading.

✔️ Federal agencies synchronize as states pass the first stablecoin laws.

Ready for the signals? 🔍

Subscribe now

🚨 Featured Story of the Week:

February Funding Roundup: Architecture for the New Money Era

How is venture capital quietly re-engineering global finance? Our February deep dive reveals a massive shift from speculative apps to the deep infra of the onchain economy. The focus has moved to building the stablecoin rails and compliance engines necessary for the next trillion dollars of institutional capital.

Breaking it down the five strategic themes:

• The Payments & Liquidity Play: Levl and Avenia are scaling stablecoin rails, while LayerZero unifies fragmented liquidity across chains.

• The Compliance Frontier: TRM Labs’ $70M raise highlights that institutional monitoring is now the bedrock of any regulated onchain strategy.

• The Credit Architecture: Platforms like STBL and Birch Hill are transforming onchain money into yield-backed, productive collateral.

• The Compliance & Control Play: Kresus and TRM are securing the “entry points” for institutions through secure wallets and control systems.

• Funding the Funders: Heavyweights like Dragonfly ($650M) and Pantera are reloading war chests to accelerate the next phase of blockchain-native startups.

Check out the full breakdown and join the conversation here »»

🚀 Startup Spotlight: Cryptio

Cryptio is bridging the gap between decentralized ledgers and traditional finance by providing a robust crypto ERP layer for the institutional world. By integrating directly with established systems like NetSuite and Oracle, Cryptio allows banks, exchanges, and corporations to manage digital assets with the same accounting rigor as fiat currency.

The firm recently reached a significant milestone by securing $45 million in Series B funding, capital that was largely provided by a syndicate of high-conviction crypto and fintech backers. The round saw heavy participation from crypto-native powerhouses like 1kx, BlueYard Capital, and Ledger Cathay, and will be used to accelerate Cryptio’s expansion into regulated loan and treasury management tools.

Building something interesting in onchain finance? We’d love to feature you next- drop us a note at hello@whitesight.net 👋

Pledge your access to fintech analysis and exclusive insights ⚡

Unlock Elite Access ⭐

📢 We’re always seeking innovative voices in fintech to be our next guest feature!

With a community of 2100+ fintech enthusiasts, we’d love to amplify your insights. Reach out to us for features, sponsorships, or collaborations!

Drop us a hello here! 👋

Get Unlimited Access to Strategy Playbooks of Fintech Pioneers with WhiteSight Radar! 🚀

Unlock a treasure trove of fintech intel with a WhiteSight Radar subscription. See further with exclusive reports, industry trend breakdowns, and expert analysis on everything from Embedded Finance and Digital Banking to Open Finance and beyond.

Become a member and steer your business course with actionable intelligence on the winning strategies of leading companies like Apple, Stripe, Starling Bank, OakNorth Bank, Banco Inter, and Toast that propels your business to the forefront of fintech. (PLUS! More in our premium content pipeline - Amazon, Nubank, Grab, Wise, Shopify, Affirm, Mercado Libre… the list goes on!)

Supercharge your Fintech IQ with WhiteSight Radar, putting expert fintech intel at your fingertips! 🧭

Got to have Radar on my radar!

Edition 7: The signals defining the new era of money, markets, and assets »

Last Week’s Top Onchain Tea!♨️

• Traditional giants pivot from observation to integration

↳ Wells Fargo filed a WFUSD trademark covering crypto wallets and tokenization, signaling a major move toward bank-issued stablecoins and digital payments.

↳ The SEC and CFTC signed a historic coordination agreement to harmonize digital asset oversight, ending years of jurisdictional overlap and providing a clear rulebook for US institutions.

• Global networks scale through regulated infrastructure and local rails

↳ Mastercard launched a massive Crypto Partner Program with 85+ firms to bridge digital assets with global payment networks and real-world merchant rails.

↳ Bybit introduced direct AED trading pairs funded via local UAE bank transfers, deepening the integration between crypto markets and regional sovereign currencies.

• Tokenized equities and futures bridge the gap for global traders

↳ Nasdaq and Kraken partnered to launch 24/7 programmable tokenized equities, allowing stocks to trade with the speed and flexibility of onchain assets.

↳ Coinbase secured regulatory approval to launch crypto and equity-index futures across 26 European nations, significantly expanding its institutional derivatives footprint.

• Institutional yield and AI-driven growth draw record capital

↳ BlackRock debuted its Staked Ether ETF (ETHB), allowing investors to capture both Ethereum’s price appreciation and its native staking rewards in one fund.

↳ Eightco (ORBS) secured $125M in institutional funding led by Bitmine, ARK Invest, and Payward to accelerate the development of next-generation AI and blockchain infrastructure.

Now, for the ‘byte’-sized onchain buzz -

Onchain Money

Stablecoin regulation is shifting from federal debates to state-level action and clarified insurance boundaries.

The News: Florida became the first US state to pass a comprehensive stablecoin regulatory bill, establishing a clear legal framework for issuers within the state.

• Implication: State-led regulation creates a laboratory for stablecoins; Florida’s move could force a federal standard as more states seek to attract digital dollar issuers.

The News: The FDIC officially ruled out deposit insurance for stablecoins under the Genius Act, confirming they will not be treated like traditional bank deposits.

• Implication: This draws a hard line between bank money and stablecoin money, pushing issuers to prove their stability through 1:1 reserves and transparency rather than government backstops.

Onchain Assets

The tokenization wave is turning into a licensed reality as global platforms secure the permits needed to move trillions onchain.

The News: Standard Chartered’s Libeara platform secured a Capital Markets Services (CMS) license in Singapore to facilitate institutional asset tokenization.

• Implication: One of the world’s largest banks now has a regulated green light to bring traditional securities onchain, legitimizing RWAs for the world’s most conservative wealth managers.

The News: BTC Markets is aggressively pursuing an RWA trading license to meet growing investor demand for tokenized real-world assets.

• Implication: Native crypto exchanges are evolving into multi-asset platforms, signaling that the future of trading is anything that can be tokenized.

Onchain Markets

Prediction markets and blockchain-based securities are becoming the new standard for institutional hedging and settlement.

The News: Prime brokers are moving to open Kalshi’s regulated prediction markets to institutional hedge funds for high-stakes event hedging.

• Implication: Prediction markets are graduating from retail ‘betting’ to professional ‘hedging’ tools, providing a more accurate real-time gauge of global risk than traditional polling.

The News: Swiss crypto bank Amina become the first fully regulated bank to join 21X for tokenized securities operating under the European Union’s DLT pilot regime, marking another step toward integrating digital asset infrastructure with traditional capital markets.

• Implication: The collaboration aims to address a key barrier to institutional adoption of tokenized assets by connecting regulated banks with the issuance and trading of tokenized securities.

Onchain Infra

The backend of the digital economy is being fortified with institutional-grade custody and advanced security layers.

The News: BitGo was named the primary custodian for StableX Technologies’ planned M-stablecoin crypto treasury.

• Implication: As corporate treasuries move onchain, the role of a ‘crypto vault’ becomes as critical as a central bank, with BitGo setting the gold standard for institutional safety.

The News: Shift Markets partnered with Guardrail to integrate advanced security infrastructure across its global exchange network.

• Implication: With exchange hacks becoming more sophisticated, “infra-level” security partnerships are becoming a mandatory requirement for any platform handling user funds.

Onchain Yield

The battle for yield is moving into automated DeFi vaults and regulated staking vehicles.

The News: Lido launched “earnUSD” stablecoin vaults, allowing users to automatically capture optimized yields across the DeFi ecosystem.

• Implication: Liquid staking is expanding beyond ETH; Lido is now positioning itself as the ‘yield layer’ for the entire stablecoin economy.

The News: Grayscale launched a dedicated Avalanche (AVAX) staking ETF to provide investors with a regulated path to staking rewards.

• Implication: The “ETF 2.0” era has arrived, where the value proposition is not limited to holding an asset, but capturing the network-native yield that comes with it.

Onchain Lending

Cross-chain protocols and liquidity glitches are testing the resilience of decentralized credit markets.

The News: Morpho Network collaborated with WheelX FI to bring cross-chain applications to its DeFi lending protocol, enhancing liquidity access.

• Implication: The future of lending is ‘chain-agnostic’; users will soon borrow and lend assets across multiple networks without ever realizing they are moving between blockchains.

The News: Aave experienced $27 million in liquidations following a rare price-feed glitch that triggered automated health-factor shutdowns. '

• Implication: While DeFi is efficient, this event serves as a reminder that ‘oracle risk’ remains the Achilles’ heel of automated lending, requiring even more robust fail-safes as the sector scales.

And that’s a wrap 👋

We hope you enjoyed this edition of the Onchain Finance!

If you’re someone who likes to read think pieces, you will likely love our monthly blog, Fintersections, where our team members analyse the convergence of fintech with the world.

And lastly, to stay updated on everything fintech and web3, follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter, and don’t be shy to show some ❤️

Thanks for reading Future of FinTech Newsletter! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

✔️ Regulatory progress and growth capital
✔️ Cross-border expansion and treasury tools
✔️ Data, AI and infrastructure at scale

Ready to connect the dots? 👀

🚨 Featured Story of the Week:

Anchoring product depth and expansion with licences

Revolut has been in the news across multiple fronts, and the clearest thread running through these developments is expansion with greater depth. In the past few weeks, Revolut has:

• Secured its full UK banking licence, allowing it to begin offering deposit accounts and lending products

• Joined the FCA’s stablecoin sandbox as part of the UK’s supervised testing framework for digital money

• Opened a digital payments waitlist in India ahead of its planned market entry

• Introduced a travel-focused corporate card for business customers in the UK and surpassed 1 million customers in Belgium

The significance is that Revolut is building the pieces needed to compete more directly with incumbent banks and payment providers across multiple markets at once.

Want the deeper context? WhiteSight’s Revolut Deep Dive Report 2025 explores how the fintech is expanding country by country, while building greater product depth and regulatory leverage in the UK.

Thanks for reading Future of FinTech Newsletter! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support our work.

🚀 Startup Spotlight: Wavvest

This edition, we’re spotlighting Wavvest, a startup founded in 2024 that is building an all-in-one, AI-driven operating system for financial advisors.

Financial advisory workflows are often fragmented across separate tools for planning, investments, estate management, insurance, and tax. Wavvest is focused on bringing these functions into one system to reduce manual work and make financial planning more integrated and consistent.

Got something cool brewing in fintech? We’d love to feature you next- drop us a note at hello@whitesight.net 👋

Pledge your access to fintech analysis and exclusive insights ⚡

Unlock Elite Access ⭐

What’s on the fintech menu today?

• 🌟 Fintech Fiesta: The Week’s Hot 10!

• 🌐 ‘Byte’ Buzz: Fintech highlights, sorted by segment!

• 🔗 Link Up: Your gateway to resourceful links!

Sip on bite-sized updates every week—fresh, hot, and brewed to keep you in the loop in just minutes. 📨

Subscribe now

📢 We’re always seeking innovative voices in fintech to be our next guest feature!

With a community of 2100+ fintech enthusiasts, we’d love to amplify your insights. Reach out to us for features, sponsorships, or collaborations!

Drop us a hello here! 👋

Get Unlimited Access to Strategy Playbooks of Fintech Pioneers with WhiteSight Radar! 🚀

Unlock a treasure trove of fintech intel with a WhiteSight Radar subscription. See further with exclusive reports, industry trend breakdowns, and expert analysis on everything from Embedded Finance and Digital Banking to Open Finance and beyond.

Become a member and steer your business course with actionable intelligence on the winning strategies of leading companies like Apple, Stripe, Starling Bank, OakNorth Bank, Banco Inter, and Toast that propels your business to the forefront of fintech. (PLUS! More in our premium content pipeline - Amazon, Nubank, Grab, Wise, Shopify, Affirm, Mercado Libre… the list goes on!)

Supercharge your Fintech IQ with WhiteSight Radar, putting expert fintech intel at your fingertips! 🧭

Got to have Radar on my radar!

Edition 185 focuses on the developments setting the pace for digital finance.

The Week’s Hot 10!♨️🔟

• Growth Gets Institutional
  ⤷ Revolut received its full UK banking licence, allowing it to begin offering deposit accounts and formally start lending to retail and business customers.
  ⤷ Ualá raised $195M in an Allianz X-led funding round at a $3.2B post-money valuation to scale its financial ecosystem across Latin America.

• Cash Flow Finds Yield
  ⤷ Airwallex launched Yield in the US to let businesses move idle cash balances into money market funds and earn higher returns within its financial platform.
  ⤷ Liberis partnered with eBay to launch Flexible Growth Financing for UK business sellers, enabling access to working capital through eBay Seller Capital.

• Cross-Border Gets Simpler
  ⤷ Mastercard launched Mastercard Global Commerce Suite for SMBs in APAC to support cross-border through capabilities powered by Mastercard Move.
  ⤷Thunes partnered with Absa to launch Absa Global Pay, a digital remittance service that lets customers send money internationally.

• Capital Becomes Innovative and Accessible
  ⤷ Airwallex launched Yield in the US to let businesses move idle cash balances into money market funds and earn higher returns within its financial platform.
  ⤷ Liberis partnered with eBay to launch Flexible Growth Financing for UK business sellers, enabling access to working capital through eBay Seller Capital.

• Expansion Needs Local Infrastructure
  ⤷ TrueLayer acquired Zimpler to expand its Pay by Bank network across the Nordics.
  ⤷ Mambu was selected by Nyla to power its digital banking infrastructure as Nyla launches in Ghana and prepares to expand across West Africa.

Now, for the ‘byte’-sized fintech buzz –

Digital banking is being shaped by market entry and regulatory approval, as fintech use licences, launches, and acquisitions to expand their footprint.

• Revolut opened a waitlist to roll out digital payment services in India, including an INR prepaid wallet with UPI integration and Visa cards for domestic and international use.

• Advent International completed its acquisition of tbi bank after receiving approval from the European Central Bank.

Digital payments is moving toward more automated and multi-rail execution, combining virtual card flows with core bank payment infrastructure.

• Mastercard partnered with Travelsoft Pay to integrate the Mastercard Wholesale Program for virtual card number-based B2B paymentsl by automating pay-ins and pay-outs.

• Worldline extended its payments partnership with ABN AMRO to provide card issuing, SEPA credit transfers, instant payments and related support services.

Digital wealth is becoming more operational and institutional, with AI being applied to advisor workflows while market infrastructure attracts new capital.

• Guardian partnered with Avantos to add AI tools to its wealth management business, focused on advisor onboarding, workflow management and client servicing

• Apex Fintech Solutions partnered with Wavvest to deliver AI-powered financial planning using real-time custodial data, letting advisors generate plans, tax analysis and portfolio transition recommendations with less manual data entry.

Embedded finance is moving deeper into business workflows, bringing funding and financial admin tools directly into the software used by end users.

• Construct CRM partnered with U.S. Bank Avvance to add embedded financing to its white-label software, giving more than roofing contractors access to home-improvement installment loans.

• SumUp partnered with Sage to embed accounting and Making Tax Digital filing tools into its platform for UK sole traders.

Open finance is becoming more practical, as connected financial data starts feeding directly into business software and payment journeys.

• Loop partnered with Wave to launch a direct API integration that automatically syncs Loop business banking data into Wave’s accounting software for Canadian SMBs.

• Wero went live for e-commerce payments in Belgium, extending its A2A payment app from P2P into merchant payments.

Fintech infrastructure is being built for scale, with providers extending long-term payment processing capabilities while expanding cloud capacity into new regions.

• Worldline extended its payments partnership with ABN AMRO to provide card issuing, SEPA credit transfers, instant payments and related support services.

• Tencent Cloud partnered with iyzico to support iyzico’s European expansion and launch its cloud-based production platform in Europe.

And that’s a wrap 👋

We hope you enjoyed this edition of the Weekly Fintech Brew!

If you’re someone who likes to read think pieces, you will likely love our monthly blog, Fintersections, where our team members analyse the convergence of fintech with the world.

And lastly, to stay updated on everything fintech and web3, follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter, and don’t be shy to show some ❤️

Thanks for reading Future of FinTech Newsletter! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

✔️ Sovereign debt and institutional portfolios officially migrated to the ledger

✔️ Prediction markets pivoted from niche betting to a regulated Wall Street asset class

✔️ The “Agentic Economy” arrived as AI-ready data infra met native onchain execution

Ready for the signals? 🔍

Subscribe now

🚨 Featured Story of the Week:

Adyen – The Unified Commerce Powerhouse

How did a single-platform strategy turn a fragmented payment stack into a €1.4 Trillion processing engine? Our latest deep dive into Adyen explores how the Dutch giant is moving beyond simple acquiring to dominate the next era of financial services.

Inside this premium report, we unpack the “Adyen Formula” for global scale:

• The Unified Advantage: How one platform manages online, in-store, and in-app payments to create a single source of truth for enterprise data.

• The Embedded Frontier: A look at Adyen’s expansion into Accounts, Capital, and Issuing—turning a payment gateway into a full-scale financial ecosystem.

• Agentic Commerce: Why Adyen is positioning its infrastructure for the future of AI agents that authenticate and transact without human intervention.

• Strategic Moats: How they use localization and bank-grade licenses to outpace competitors without adding merchant complexity.

One platform, every touchpoint: Discover how Adyen’s 'Unified Commerce' architecture is turning simple transactions into a high-velocity flywheel for Accounts, Capital, and Issuing.

Download the Full Report Here to see how Adyen is rewriting the rules of global commerce.

🚀 Startup Spotlight: KAST

KAST is building the next generation of borderless banking by turning stablecoins into a primary spending and savings layer for a global audience. Through its intuitive platform, KAST enables users to move value instantly and spend digital dollars via physical and virtual cards, effectively merging the high-yield benefits of onchain assets with the convenience of traditional fintech.

The firm recently solidified its position as a major player in the space by successfully raising $80 million in a fresh funding round, capital that will be used to scale its payment infrastructure and expand its card issuance services across emerging and developed markets alike.

Building something interesting in onchain finance? We’d love to feature you next- drop us a note at hello@whitesight.net 👋

Pledge your access to fintech analysis and exclusive insights ⚡

Unlock Elite Access ⭐

📢 We’re always seeking innovative voices in fintech to be our next guest feature!

With a community of 2100+ fintech enthusiasts, we’d love to amplify your insights. Reach out to us for features, sponsorships, or collaborations!

Drop us a hello here! 👋

Get Unlimited Access to Strategy Playbooks of Fintech Pioneers with WhiteSight Radar! 🚀

Unlock a treasure trove of fintech intel with a WhiteSight Radar subscription. See further with exclusive reports, industry trend breakdowns, and expert analysis on everything from Embedded Finance and Digital Banking to Open Finance and beyond.

Become a member and steer your business course with actionable intelligence on the winning strategies of leading companies like Apple, Stripe, Starling Bank, OakNorth Bank, Banco Inter, and Toast that propels your business to the forefront of fintech. (PLUS! More in our premium content pipeline - Amazon, Nubank, Grab, Wise, Shopify, Affirm, Mercado Libre… the list goes on!)

Supercharge your Fintech IQ with WhiteSight Radar, putting expert fintech intel at your fingertips! 🧭

Got to have Radar on my radar!

Edition 6: The signals defining the new era of money, markets, and assets »

Last Week’s Top Onchain Tea!♨️

• Legacy giants build the “Gold Standard” for digital custody

↳ Morgan Stanley selected Coinbase and BNY Mellon as its primary partners to provide institutional-grade custody for its expanding digital asset portfolio.

↳ SWIFT and BNY Mellon launched a joint blockchain-based payment ledger to synchronize global cross-border settlements with real-time transparency.

• Stablecoins evolve into global spending and savings rails

↳ Visa and Bridge expanded their partnership to roll out stablecoin-linked debit cards across more than 100 countries.

↳ Bybit and Tether deepened their collaboration to launch gold-backed stablecoin products, providing investors with a hedge against volatility using onchain precious metals.

• Exchanges and institutions collide to create hybrid “Super-Markets”

↳ NYSE and OKX partnered to integrate institutional-grade market data, allowing professional traders to bridge the gap between traditional equities and crypto markets.

↳ BitGo expanded its MiCA-compliant “Crypto-as-a-Service” across 30 European markets, providing the licensed backend for banks to launch digital assets without building their own stack.

• Prediction markets go mainstream

↳ Nasdaq submitted a filing for SEC approval to launch “Outcome Related Options” on the Nasdaq-100, bringing binary event-betting to the heart of Wall Street.

↳ DriveWealth and Kalshi integrated regulated event contracts into mainstream brokerage APIs, allowing retail investors to trade real-world outcomes alongside stocks.

Now, for the ‘byte’-sized onchain buzz -

Onchain Money

Stablecoin adoption is evolving from speculative trading toward a core function of the global banking system.

The News: Western Union and Crossmint partnered to support the USDPT stablecoin on Solana, enabling seamless cross-border transfers and digital asset network integration.

• Implication: The entry of a legacy remittance giant like Western Union into the Solana ecosystem suggests that stablecoins are finally displacing slower, traditional rails for global money movement.

The News: SoFi selected BitGo to provide the custodial infrastructure for its upcoming bank-issued stablecoin, bridging the gap between digital assets and consumer banking.

• Implication: Bank-issued stablecoins represent the next phase of “Onchain Money,” where FDIC-insured institutions lend their credibility to the blockchain to drive mass retail adoption.

Onchain Assets

Real-world assets (RWAs) are migrating to the ledger as major financial institutions shift from testing “digital twins” to launching live, interest-bearing onchain vehicles.

The News: Northern Trust launched a tokenized Money Market Fund (MMF) specifically designed for short-term Treasury portfolios to enhance settlement speed.

• Implication: Large-scale asset managers are prioritizing liquidity and efficiency; tokenizing the safest assets (Treasuries) provides the foundation for all other Onchain Assets to follow.

The News: Canada’s Scotiabank expanded its wealth offerings by adding a multi-crypto ETF via 3iQ, providing clients with diversified exposure to digital assets.

• Implication: Traditional brokerage platforms are no longer ignoring the demand for crypto, normalizing digital assets as a standard component of institutional and retail portfolios.

Onchain Markets

The competitive landscape for digital markets is shifting as platforms prioritize regional regulatory licenses to capture the next wave of institutional capital.

The News: Binance is pursuing five new licenses across Asia to capitalize on the rapid acceleration of crypto adoption in the APAC region.

• Implication: Regulation is becoming a competitive advantage; by securing local approvals, Binance aims to entrench itself as the primary gateway for Asian institutional “Onchain Markets.”

The News: BitGo Europe expanded its “Crypto-as-a-Service” across the EEA, providing the infrastructure for regional firms to offer regulated trading and custody.

• Implication: The standardization of market access across Europe allows any traditional financial firm to become a crypto player overnight without building the tech from scratch.

Onchain Infra

Blockchain data is being overhauled for the machine-learning era, turning raw onchain transactions into high-speed intelligence for AI-driven ecosystems.

The News: Sentio and Chainbase partnered to build AI-ready onchain data infrastructure, enabling real-time indexing and sophisticated analytics for developers.

• Implication: As AI agents begin to trade and manage funds, “Onchain Infra” must evolve from simple ledgers into “intelligent” data streams that can feed automated decision-making.

The News: Bitget launched its “Blockchain-as-a-Service” (BaaS) solution to simplify enterprise deployment of private and public ledger technology.

• Implication: Lowering the technical barrier for corporations ensures that the next generation of business logic will be built directly onchain rather than being retrofitted later.

Onchain Yield

Yield dynamics are reaching a tipping point as institutional-grade products like ETFs adjust their fees to compete for a growing queue of staking participants.

The News: BlackRock slashed its Ethereum ETF staking fee from 18% to 10% following internal warnings and market pressure to remain competitive.

• Implication: The fee war for “Onchain Yield” has officially begun; institutional investors will migrate to whichever provider offers the highest net return in a regulated wrapper.

The News: The Ethereum staking queue reached a record backlog as large investors chose to lock up ETH for passive rewards rather than selling on the open market.

• Implication: A massive supply crunch is forming; as more ETH is staked for yield, the available liquid supply drops, creating a structural tailwind for long-term asset value.

Onchain Lending

Regulatory breakthroughs in major financial hubs are finally unlocking the ability for licensed firms to offer Bitcoin and stablecoin-backed credit at scale.

The News: Strike secured a New York BitLicense, allowing the firm to offer Bitcoin-based financial services and lending to one of the world’s most regulated markets.

• Implication: Passing the “BitLicense” hurdle signals that “Onchain Lending” is ready for prime time in the US, opening the door for mainstream credit services backed by BTC.

The News: APX Lending received regulatory approval to offer USDC-denominated loans from coast to coast across Canada.

• Implication: Cross-border lending is becoming standardized; the ability to borrow against digital assets with full regulatory backing provides a critical tool for tax-efficient liquidity.

And that’s a wrap 👋

We hope you enjoyed this edition of the Onchain Finance!

If you’re someone who likes to read think pieces, you will likely love our monthly blog, Fintersections, where our team members analyse the convergence of fintech with the world.

And lastly, to stay updated on everything fintech and web3, follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter, and don’t be shy to show some ❤️

Thanks for reading Future of FinTech Newsletter! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

Across payments, crypto, banking, infrastructure, and AI platforms, agents moved beyond pilots and into live financial environments. Use cases involved initiating transactions, processing invoices, assisting customers, automating compliance, and operating inside secure government systems.

✔ Card networks and fintech processors formalized authenticated agent-led payments.

✔ Crypto infrastructure providers enabled AI-native wallets and autonomous blockchain execution.

✔ Banks and insurers embedded agents directly into onboarding, servicing, and operational workflows.

Ready for the agentic signals that defined the first two weeks of February? 🔍⚡

🚨 Featured Story of the Week:

Razorpay and NPCI Bring Agentic Payments to Everyday Commerce

Razorpay and the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) have launched an agentic payments pilot on Anthropic’s Claude. This enables conversational AI to complete UPI transactions, from food delivery in Swiggy and Zomato to quick commerce in Zepto. This capability integrates Razorpay’s payment stack, NPCI’s UPI rails, and Claude’s natural language understanding to interpret intent, present options, and execute payments within a single conversation.

Why it matters

Agentic Payments bridges discovery and purchase, transforming AI assistants from suggestion engines into transaction executors. By operating on India’s widely adopted UPI infrastructure, the pilot anchors autonomous payments to familiar, trustworthy rails.

What does it signal?

• Conversational commerce inches toward reality: Users can shop and pay via AI without intermediary checkout screens, flattening the journey from intent to settlement.

• UPI as an agentic backbone: NPCI’s mandate-driven model provides the secure, consent-based plumbing necessary for autonomous AI execution.

• Behavior-driven payments scale: Early integrations with platforms like Zomato, Swiggy, and Zepto show that high-frequency use cases are fertile ground for AI-native purchase flows.

If agentic payments are to move beyond novelty, embedding them into ubiquitous, regulated payment rails could become the proving ground for scalable, secure autonomous commerce.

If agentic AI needs mass-scale validation, India’s UPI ecosystem may be it.

Thanks for reading Future of FinTech - Agentic AI Newsletter! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support our work.

Subscribe now

Thanks for reading Future of FinTech Newsletter! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support our work.

🚀 Startup Spotlight: Jump

This edition, we’re spotlighting Jump, an AI-native assistant and intelligence engine purpose-built for financial advisors and wealth management professionals. Fresh off an $80 million Series B, Jump is scaling what it calls an AI operating system for advisory firms. It is embedding automation directly into the daily workflows of client-facing financial professionals.

Jump plugs directly into advisory tech stacks, turning meetings, emails, and documents into structured intelligence. Advisors get automated summaries, compliance-ready documentation, and task generation in real time.

Got something cool brewing in agentic finance? We’d love to feature you next- drop us a note at hello@whitesight.net 👋

Pledge your access to fintech analysis and exclusive insights ⚡

Unlock Elite Access ⭐

What’s on the fintech menu today?

• 🏁 Agentic Highlights: Biggest moves across agentic payments, agentic banking, and agentic commerce

• 🧩 ‘Byte’ Buzz: Agentic Finance updates, sorted by segment

• 🔗 Link Up: A curated set of reads worth your time

Sip on bite-sized agentic updates - fresh, sharp, and distilled to keep you ahead in just minutes. Subscribe now! 📨

Subscribe now

📢 We’re always seeking innovative voices in fintech to be our next guest feature!

With a community of 2100+ fintech enthusiasts, we’d love to amplify your insights. Reach out to us for features, sponsorships, or collaborations!

Drop us a hello here! 👋

Get Unlimited Access to Strategy Playbooks of Fintech Pioneers with WhiteSight Radar! 🚀

Unlock a treasure trove of fintech intel with a WhiteSight Radar subscription. See further with exclusive reports, industry trend breakdowns, and expert analysis on everything from Embedded Finance and Digital Banking to Open Finance and beyond.

Become a member and steer your business course with actionable intelligence on the winning strategies of leading companies like Apple, Stripe, Starling Bank, OakNorth Bank, Banco Inter, and Toast that propels your business to the forefront of fintech. (PLUS! More in our premium content pipeline - Amazon, Nubank, Grab, Wise, Shopify, Affirm, Mercado Libre… the list goes on!)

Supercharge your Fintech IQ with WhiteSight Radar, putting expert fintech intel at your fingertips! 🧭

Got to have Radar on my radar!

Edition 3 brings you the agentic finance stories that shaped how agents shaped the finance and fintech industry in the first two weeks of February

February’s Top Agentic Tea!♨️

• Agentic Payments

⤷ Mastercard and Westpac successfully executed New Zealand’s first AI-enabled transactions using Mastercard’s Agent Pay framework.

⤷ Gnani.ai joined forces with Razorpay to introduce an AI-driven debt recovery solution powered by agentic technology.

⤷ Pine Labs entered into a collaboration with OpenAI to embed OpenAI’s APIs within its core payments ecosystem.

• Agentic Commerce

⤷ PadUp Ventures teamed up with Unicity Labs to support Indian startups in developing AI-agent-based commerce solutions.

• AI Platform Updates

⤷ Anthropic rolled out specialized finance-focused plugins for Claude Cowork, aimed at streamlining operational processes within financial institutions.

⤷ AWS and OpenAI partnered to build a Stateful Runtime Environment, helping AWS clients develop and deploy generative AI applications and intelligent agents.

⤷ Google Cloud unveiled new agentic AI capabilities alongside updates to Cloud Spanner Graph and Vertex AI, targeting telecom industry applications.

Now, for the ‘byte’-sized fintech buzz –

Agentic payments continued to mature as real-world deployments demonstrated AI systems executing financial transactions with minimal human involvement.

• 

  Razorpay and superU AI launch conversational AI payment system

Razorpay teamed up with superU AI to unveil a live agentic payment solution that lets users initiate and complete transactions using natural voice or chat interactions.

Industry implications: By enabling voice- and chat-based payments that close the loop instantly, this collaboration underscores a shift toward payments that are implicitly triggered by contextual understanding.

• Mastercard and Westpac complete agentic transactions in NZ

Mastercard, in collaboration with Westpac, completed agentic transactions in New Zealand using its Agent Pay framework, processing purchases such as cinema tickets and hotel bookings.

Industry implications: Card networks and banks are formalising frameworks for AI-initiated transactions, embedding standards and authentication into the rails.

Agentic crypto infrastructure progressed as protocols enabled AI systems to autonomously execute blockchain interactions.

• MoonPay launches MoonPay Agents for AI-driven crypto transactions

MoonPay introduced MoonPay Agents to let AI systems autonomously initiate, approve, and complete crypto transactions on users’ behalf.

Industry implications: MoonPay’s agentic layer signals a shift toward intelligent transaction execution, reducing manual wallet interactions and enabling more seamless AI-orchestrated crypto flows.

• Alchemy unveils autonomous infrastructure access for AI agents

Alchemy released support for the X402 standard, allowing AI agents to interact autonomously with blockchain infrastructure for execution and data retrieval.

Industry implications: Standardised agentic infrastructure access points towards broader developer adoption and unified agent behaviour across protocols, accelerating autonomous blockchain usage.

Agentic banking capabilities expanded as institutions leveraged AI agents to automate customer engagement and core operations.

• CoverGo deploys AI agents to automate insurance workflows

CoverGo introduced autonomous AI agents to streamline policy processing, claims handling, and risk assessments across insurance operations.

Industry implications: This deployment signals insurers’ move toward AI-driven operational automation, reducing manual processing and accelerating service delivery.

• CaixaBank launches AI agent to assist customers

CaixaBank rolled out its first AI agent to help customers select and buy banking products directly within its mobile app.

Industry implications: CaixaBank’s in-app agent reinforces personalized digital engagement and points to broader adoption of conversational AI in retail banking.

AI platform innovation continued as foundational model providers expanded tooling, enabling autonomous task execution and defense partnerships.

• OpenAI agrees Pentagon deal amid Anthropic dispute

OpenAI secured a Pentagon agreement to supply advanced AI capabilities for defense applications amid tensions with Anthropic.

Industry implications: This agreement underscores increasing government reliance on commercial AI platforms for mission-critical workloads and competitive positioning among model providers.

• Microsoft reveals agentic Copilot Tasks for background execution

Microsoft introduced Copilot Tasks, enabling its AI assistant to autonomously execute multi-step tasks behind the scenes.

Industry implications: Background task automation pushes AI beyond interactive assistance toward autonomous workflow orchestration across productivity ecosystems.

Agentic infrastructure advanced as enterprise platforms rolled out autonomous agents to handle critical backend workflows and compliance operations.

• Basware launches AI agents for autonomous invoice processing

Basware introduced AI agents that autonomously manage invoice intake, classification, and processing across enterprise finance systems.

Industry implications: Autonomous invoice agents signal a shift toward hands-off accounts payable automation, reducing manual bottlenecks and accelerating finance operations.

• Sumsub launches AI Copilot for compliance and fraud workflows

Sumsub unveiled an AI Copilot to automate compliance checks and assist in fraud investigations across identity verification pipelines.

Industry implications: Embedding agentic tooling into compliance frameworks highlights real-time risk detection and reduced analyst workload in fraud and regulatory controls.

Funding continued to flow in agentic finance as generative AI infrastructure and autonomous computing ventures secured major investment rounds.

• OpenAI raises $110 billion to build global AI infrastructure

OpenAI secured a massive $110 billion funding commitment aimed at expanding global AI infrastructure and model development capabilities.

Industry implications: This unprecedented capital infusion underscores confidence in foundational AI as critical infrastructure and accelerates the competitive buildup of agentic platforms worldwide.

• ChipAgents secures $50 million to accelerate agentic chip design

ChipAgents closed a $50 million financing round to advance bespoke hardware tailored for autonomous AI agent workloads.

Industry implications: Targeted funding for agentic-optimized silicon highlights investor belief that specialized hardware will underpin next-generation autonomous compute ecosystems.

Anthropic vs. the US Department of War

Anthropic’s Claude models have been integrated into sensitive U.S. national security environments under a major defense contract, positioning the company as a strategic AI supplier rather than a purely commercial vendor. The dispute emerged over deployment boundaries. While Anthropic supported lawful defense applications, it sought explicit restrictions on large-scale domestic surveillance and fully autonomous weapons. The Department of War reportedly pushed for unrestricted use of the models across all lawful military contexts, framing vendor-imposed limits as operational constraints. Tensions escalated when the Department threatened to classify Anthropic as a supply chain risk, shifting the conflict from contractual negotiation to regulatory pressure. Such a designation could affect procurement eligibility and signal institutional disapproval. Anthropic rejected the move, arguing it lacked precedent and emphasizing that its stance reflects risk management, not disengagement from national security work. The company also clarified that any designation would not affect commercial customers.

And that’s a wrap 👋

We hope you enjoyed this edition of the Agentic Finance Brew!

As a reward for making it this far, here’s a curated set of agentic resources to keep your curiosity (and conviction) topped up. Cheers to continuous learning!

Link Up! –

• Supply Chain Financing: Durable Global Trade in the Age of AI - CITI

• Agentic AI untangled: Navigating the build, buy, or borrow decision - KPMG

• The automation curve in agentic commerce - McKinsey

• How Agentic AI Can Power Core Insurance IT Modernization - BCG

If you’re someone who likes to read think pieces, you will likely love our monthly blog, Fintersections, where our team members analyse the convergence of fintech with the world.

And lastly, to stay updated on everything fintech and web3, follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter, and don’t be shy to show some ❤️

Thanks for reading Future of FinTech Newsletter! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

✔️ DeFi matured from sandbox to a $1T global liquidity utility

✔️ Regulators moved from “wait and see” to active enforcement playbooks

✔️ AI agents officially entered the payment flow with native infra

Ready for the signals? 🔍

Subscribe now

🚨 Featured Story of the Week:

Aave Crosses the $1T Rubicon

Aave, the decentralized lending protocol, officially surpassed $1 trillion in total lending volume. This milestone is a validation of decentralized liquidity pools as a mature alternative to traditional credit markets.

Driven by a aggressive push into institutional-grade services through Aave Arc and its growing V3 deployment, the protocol has proven that smart-contract-based lending can operate at the scale of global systemically important banks.

What it signals?

• The “Protocol-as-a-Bank” Model is Validated: Crossing the trillion-dollar mark proves that liquidity can be sourced and distributed globally without a centralized balance sheet.

• Institutional Adoption has Found its “Home”: A significant portion of this growth stems from Aave’s focus on compliance-ready features. The “Institutional Push” is a shift in user base. As traditional firms seek yield in a high-rate environment, Aave’s transparent risk parameters are becoming the gold standard for “onchain prime brokerage.”

• DeFi’s “Lindy Effect” is Peaking: In finance, longevity and volume breed trust. By handling $1T in volume without a major exploit of its core logic, Aave is cementing itself as a “too big to fail” piece of the onchain financial stack, making it the default starting point for any fintech looking to integrate onchain lending.

We broke down why Aave’s $1T milestone is a watershed moment! Decentralized lending has officially hit the scale and reliability of global banking infrastructure. Have a look.

🚀 Startup Spotlight: Infinite

Infinite is building the global settlement network for the stablecoin era. They provide businesses with turnkey APIs and SDKs to move money cross-border instantly, bypassing the high fees and T+3 delays of traditional SWIFT rails without forcing companies to manage the underlying crypto complexity.

The team, led by former product and tech leads from Coinbase and Sardine, has raised $6M in total funding to date, including support from Y Combinator and a suite of strategic fintech investors.

Building something interesting in onchain finance? We’d love to feature you next- drop us a note at hello@whitesight.net 👋

Pledge your access to fintech analysis and exclusive insights ⚡

Unlock Elite Access ⭐

📢 We’re always seeking innovative voices in fintech to be our next guest feature!

With a community of 2100+ fintech enthusiasts, we’d love to amplify your insights. Reach out to us for features, sponsorships, or collaborations!

Drop us a hello here! 👋

Get Unlimited Access to Strategy Playbooks of Fintech Pioneers with WhiteSight Radar! 🚀

Unlock a treasure trove of fintech intel with a WhiteSight Radar subscription. See further with exclusive reports, industry trend breakdowns, and expert analysis on everything from Embedded Finance and Digital Banking to Open Finance and beyond.

Become a member and steer your business course with actionable intelligence on the winning strategies of leading companies like Apple, Stripe, Starling Bank, OakNorth Bank, Banco Inter, and Toast that propels your business to the forefront of fintech. (PLUS! More in our premium content pipeline - Amazon, Nubank, Grab, Wise, Shopify, Affirm, Mercado Libre… the list goes on!)

Supercharge your Fintech IQ with WhiteSight Radar, putting expert fintech intel at your fingertips! 🧭

Got to have Radar on my radar!

Edition 5 brings you the onchain finance stories that shaped how money, markets, and assets moved this week »

Last Week’s Top Onchain Tea!♨️

• The great institutional ‘in-housing’ of digital assets

↳ Citi and Morgan Stanley expanded their digital asset footprint, scaling institutional custody, trading, and tokenization services to meet growing client demand.

↳ Barclays is exploring blockchain-based payments and tokenized deposits to streamline high-frequency settlement processes.

• “Tokenization-as-a-service” becomes the new standard for liquidity

↳ HashKey launched a one-stop RWA (Real-World Asset) tokenization platform, designed to help businesses bring tangible assets onto the blockchain.

↳ Coinbase expanded its platform to include Stock and ETF trading, moving beyond its crypto roots to become a comprehensive financial super-app.

↳ Kraken debuted tokenized stock futures for non-U.S. traders, allowing users to gain exposure to traditional equity markets using onchain collateral.

• Blockchain settlement rails picked up institutional momentum

↳ Deutsche Bank partnered with Ripple to enhance cross-border payments and settlement via blockchain.
↳ Robinhood’s Layer-2 testnet logged 4M transactions in its first week as it ramped its onchain infrastructure.

• The rise of high-stakes onchain utility

↳ Aave crossed a historic $1T in total lending volume, driven by a significant push into institutional-grade DeFi services.

↳ MetaMask and Mastercard launched a self-custody U.S. crypto card, enabling users to spend their onchain assets while earning rewards directly on the ledger.

↳ The Ethereum Foundation began staking 70,000 ETH, signaling a long-term commitment to network security and capital efficiency.

Now, for the ‘byte’-sized onchain buzz -

Onchain Money

From “Wait and See” to “Write and Enforce” 🛡️💵

The U.S. is establishing a formal playbook for how stablecoins must behave to earn their place in the banking stack, moving regulators into an active enforcement phase.

• The News: The U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) unveiled the “GENIUS Act” rulebook, setting strict standards for payment stablecoin issuers regarding reserve transparency and operational resilience.

  • Implication: This signals the “banking-ification” of stablecoins; by providing a clear regulatory path, the OCC is preparing the ground for traditional banks to finally integrate stablecoin rails into their core settlement systems.

• The News: A new proposal from U.S. banking regulators seeks to restrict certain “stablecoin rewards” programs, targeting yield-bearing features that mimic unregulated interest-bearing accounts.

  • Implication: Regulators are drawing a hard line between payment tools and investment tools, forcing issuers to choose between being a high-utility medium of exchange or a highly regulated security.

Onchain Assets

Bridging Wall Street to the Web3 Ledger 🌉🏛️

Institutional tokenization is moving beyond the pilot phase as fund managers and sovereign hubs build the interconnected pipes needed for global digital liquidity.

• The News: WisdomTree received SEC approval to trade its tokenized fund, allowing the asset manager to bring real-world fund structures directly onto the blockchain for streamlined secondary trading.

  • Implication: SEC approval validates that onchain records can satisfy federal oversight, paving the way for a wave of traditional mutual funds to migrate toward 24/7 onchain settlement.

• The News: Hong Kong is launching a new digital bond platform designed to link with regional tokenization hubs, creating a cross-border network for digital debt instruments.

  • Implication: Fragmented “digital islands” are beginning to connect; Hong Kong is positioning itself as the primary router for institutional onchain capital flowing between East and West.

Onchain Markets

The Institutional Consolidation of the European Frontier 🇪🇺🏗️

Market players are securing their “European Passports” and beefing up infrastructure as the race for compliant, institutional-grade trading intensifies.

• The News: Gate secured a Maltese payments license, a strategic move that enables the exchange to expand its fiat-to-stablecoin gateways across the entire EU.

  • Implication: As MiCA (Markets in Crypto-Assets) kicks in, licenses are becoming the most valuable asset a player can own, turning “crypto exchanges” into “full-stack digital banks.”

• The News: Bitwise acquired staking infrastructure pioneer Chorus One, integrating institutional-grade validator services directly into its asset management suite.

  • Implication: Asset managers are vertically integrating to capture underlying network rewards, turning passive funds into active, yield-generating machines.

Onchain Infra

Giving AI Agents a Digital Wallet (and the Keys) 🤖💳

The next phase of the internet involves autonomous agents paying each other, and the infrastructure for “Agentic Commerce” is officially going live.

• The News: MoonPay launched a dedicated infrastructure suite specifically for AI agent crypto payments, providing the tooling for non-human entities to off-ramp and transact.

  • Implication: This solves the “last mile” problem for AI; by giving agents a way to pay for their own compute and data, we move toward a truly autonomous machine-to-machine economy.

• The News: Alchemy introduced autonomous payment rails for AI agents on Base, allowing developers to bake “payment logic” directly into their AI bots.

  • Implication: By lowering the barrier for agents to spend on Layer 2s, we will likely see an explosion of micro-services where AI acts as both the consumer and the provider in a closed loop.

Onchain Yield

The Great Institutional Migration Toward Network Rewards 🌏📈

Yield generation is becoming a game of scale and geography, with heavyweights moving into the APAC region to capture the next wave of staking demand.

• The News: Pantera Capital is leading a major buildout of Solana staking infrastructure across the APAC region, focusing on institutional-grade validator sets.

  • Implication: Large-scale capital is betting on Solana as the “high-frequency” yield engine of the future, targeting tech-forward markets in Asia to anchor their liquidity.

• The News: Flare and Xaman launched an integration enabling one-click DeFi access for over 2 billion XRP tokens previously sitting idle in self-custodial wallets.

  • Implication: By abstracting away the complexity of bridging and gas tokens, Flare is positioning itself as the “utility layer” for the XRP ecosystem, potentially unlocking $3 billion in dormant liquidity for onchain yield strategies.

Onchain Lending

Mortgages and UTA Loans - The Final Frontier of Credit 🏠🏦

Lending is maturing from simple crypto-backed plays to sophisticated credit products that include real-world assets and long-term fixed rates.

• The News: Rate unveiled “RateFi Mortgages,” a new product that allows borrowers to count their crypto holdings as reserves for traditional home loans.

  • Implication: This is a major step in wealth integration; by treating crypto as a legitimate reserve asset, the friction between onchain wealth and real property ownership is dissolving.

• The News: Bybit introduced fixed-rate Unified Trading Account (UTA) loans, offering up to 10x leverage with borrowing periods extending up to 180 days.

  • Implication: Fixed-rate lending brings predictability to a volatile market; this maturity is what sophisticated traders need to treat onchain markets like traditional treasury desks.

And that’s a wrap 👋

We hope you enjoyed this edition of the Onchain Finance!

If you’re someone who likes to read think pieces, you will likely love our monthly blog, Fintersections, where our team members analyse the convergence of fintech with the world.

And lastly, to stay updated on everything fintech and web3, follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter, and don’t be shy to show some ❤️

Thanks for reading Future of FinTech Newsletter! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

✔️ Supervised innovation in digital money
✔️ More direct cross-border delivery
✔️ AI in core workflows and maturity signals

Ready to connect the dots? 👀

🚨 Featured Story of the Week:

Revolut Enters FCA Stablecoin Sandbox

Revolut was selected by the UK Financial Conduct Authority as one of four firms admitted to the FCA’s stablecoin cohort within its Regulatory Sandbox, chosen from 20 applicants. The sandbox allows limited, supervised testing with real users and safeguards, and the FCA has positioned it as a way to validate proposed policy in practice ahead of final UK stablecoin rules.

Revolut has already been pushing stablecoin utility within its app.

• Expanded crypto access for users with features like staking and crypto transfers.

• Launched Revolut X, a standalone crypto trading platform aimed at more active traders.

  

This reflects Revolut’s intent to own more of the crypto stack rather than simply distribute tokens.

Want the deeper context? WhiteSight’s Revolut Deep Dive Report 2025 explains the strategy behind Revolut’s global expansion, from subscriptions and licensing to payments and SME growth.

Thanks for reading Future of FinTech Newsletter! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support our work.

🚀 Startup Spotlight: Otto Money

This edition, we’re spotlighting Otto Money, a startup building an AI-led wealth guidance platform. The company recently raised USD 1.3M in a pre-seed round to strengthen the product, expand personalisation, and grow the team.

Otto Money is targeting a familiar gap in wealth services. Turning fragmented user data and generic advice into more consistent, guided decision support. The focus is on using AI to make day-to-day guidance more actionable, while keeping the experience personalised as users’ needs change over time.

Got something cool brewing in fintech? We’d love to feature you next- drop us a note at hello@whitesight.net 👋

Pledge your access to fintech analysis and exclusive insights ⚡

Unlock Elite Access ⭐

What’s on the fintech menu today?

• 🌟 Fintech Fiesta: The Week’s Hot 10!

• 🌐 ‘Byte’ Buzz: Fintech highlights, sorted by segment!

• 🔗 Link Up: Your gateway to resourceful links!

Sip on bite-sized updates every week—fresh, hot, and brewed to keep you in the loop in just minutes. 📨

Subscribe now

📢 We’re always seeking innovative voices in fintech to be our next guest feature!

With a community of 2100+ fintech enthusiasts, we’d love to amplify your insights. Reach out to us for features, sponsorships, or collaborations!

Drop us a hello here! 👋

Get Unlimited Access to Strategy Playbooks of Fintech Pioneers with WhiteSight Radar! 🚀

Unlock a treasure trove of fintech intel with a WhiteSight Radar subscription. See further with exclusive reports, industry trend breakdowns, and expert analysis on everything from Embedded Finance and Digital Banking to Open Finance and beyond.

Become a member and steer your business course with actionable intelligence on the winning strategies of leading companies like Apple, Stripe, Starling Bank, OakNorth Bank, Banco Inter, and Toast that propels your business to the forefront of fintech. (PLUS! More in our premium content pipeline - Amazon, Nubank, Grab, Wise, Shopify, Affirm, Mercado Libre… the list goes on!)

Supercharge your Fintech IQ with WhiteSight Radar, putting expert fintech intel at your fingertips! 🧭

Got to have Radar on my radar!

Edition 184 focuses on the trends with the strongest implications for digital finance.

The Week’s Hot 10!♨️🔟

• Regulators Test New Money
  ⤷ Revolut was selected by the UK FCA to participate in a stablecoin trial via its regulatory sandbox programme.
  ⤷ TrueLayer rolled out pay-by-bank at checkout in the UK, signalling accelerating adoption of account-to-account rails in a tightening compliance environment.

• AI Becomes The Engine
  ⤷ Allica Bank raised $155M to scale beyond the UK and deploy AI across SMB lending processes.
  ⤷ BridgeWise acquired Context Analytics to strengthen AI-driven analysis of unstructured market data.

• Wallets Replace Bank Details
  ⤷ Thunes partnered with Banco Cathay to launch Pay-to-Wallet payments via Swift, enabling cross-border transfer through Thunes’ Direct Global Network.
  ⤷ Mambu expanded its payments platform beyond the EU into EMEA, LATAM, and APAC with connectivity to local and global payment schemes.

• Fintechs Hit New Milestones
  ⤷ Klarna reported over 55 million monthly active users globally and 9 million daily users, with daily engagement up 53% YoY.
  ⤷ Plaid completed an employee tender offer that valued the company at $8B, marking a 31% increase from its valuation in 2025.

• Back-End Modernisation Wave
  ⤷ Engine by Starling partnered with SBS Bank in New Zealand to upgrade SBS Bank’s core banking to Engine’s cloud-native platform.
  ⤷ Liberis enabled faster access to flexible funding for restaurants and food businesses via a pre-approved capital programme.

Now, for the ‘byte’-sized fintech buzz –

Digital banking is being shaped by licensing and compliance boundaries while platforms add richer operational tooling!

• Revolut closed approximately 14k accounts across New Caledonia, French Polynesia, and Wallis & Futuna, due to EU regulatory constraints on its Lithuanian banking licence.

• State Bank of Texas (SBT) and BankCherokee went live with Alkami’s digital banking platform, rolling out upgraded retail/business digital features such as mobile check deposit, real-time alerts, and Positive Pay and ACH reporting for business customers.

Digital payments is making acceptance and recipient delivery simpler, with mobile-first merchant enablement on one side and wallet-linked transfers on the other!

• MineSec and BSD Enterprise signed an MoU to form a joint venture in Mexico to deliver a mobile-first payment acceptance platform for Latin America.

• DBS Bank and Tenpay Global launched a DBS Remit service in DBS digibank that lets customers send money directly to recipients’ Weixin Pay wallet balance or bank cards linked to Weixin Pay.

Digital wealth is moving closer to everyday banking and institutional-grade operations!

• Heartland Credit Union partnered with InvestiFi to embed digital investing tools into its existing digital banking platform, giving customers access to guided investing, self-directed trading, crypto access, and financial education.

• BSE selected ITRS to strengthen real-time monitoring across its trading infrastructure by deploying ITRS Geneos for end-to-end visibility and proactive issue detection.

Embedded finance is broadening how credit is delivered and accessed, combining faster availability of funds with pay-over-time options!

• Jaris expanded its partnership with Paysafe to offer Instant Payouts to U.S. SMB merchants, enabling near-real-time push-to-card funding so merchants can access eligible funds instantly.

• Affirm partnered with H&R Block Canada to bring BNPL/installment payments to professional tax preparation.

Open finance is shifting from data access to practical automation, supported by standardisation efforts for portability and product integrations!

• Open Finance Network Canada (OFNC) partnered with the Digital Governance Standards Institute (DGSI) to develop a consensus-driven technical specification for a Data Portability Framework to support open banking in Canada.

• Bankfeed integrated Salt Edge’s Open Banking data aggregation into its Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central add-on to give EU/UK businesses access to account balances and transaction data.

Fintech infrastructure is prioritising resilience and risk reduction, combining tighter cyber defence and threat visibility!

• Conferma integrated with Oracle OPERA Cloud to automate corporate travel payments using virtual cards embedded into hotel systems.

• Cloudflare partnered with Mastercard to extend cyber defence for businesses by combining attack-surface intelligence with Cloudflare application security controls.
  

And that’s a wrap 👋

We hope you enjoyed this edition of the Weekly Fintech Brew!

If you’re someone who likes to read think pieces, you will likely love our monthly blog, Fintersections, where our team members analyse the convergence of fintech with the world.

And lastly, to stay updated on everything fintech and web3, follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter, and don’t be shy to show some ❤️

Thanks for reading Future of FinTech Newsletter! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

✔️ Stablecoins moved from “treasury idea” to day-to-day payments UX

✔️ Institutions leaned into onchain rails + regulated wrappers

✔️ Credit + market infrastructure kept filling in the gaps

Ready for the signals? 🔍

🚨 Featured Story of the Week:

Bridge Pushed Stablecoins Toward “Bank-Grade” Infrastructure

Bridge (Stripe-owned stablecoin infrastructure) received conditional OCC approval to organize a federally chartered national trust bank - a major signal that stablecoin plumbing was moving closer to traditional financial supervision.
Simultaneously, Bridge’s rails also showed up in mainstream distribution: Payoneer embedded stablecoin receive/hold/send powered by Bridge inside its global business payments platform.

Why it matters

This is not yet another “stablecoin partnership”- it connected regulated infrastructure + real distribution: Bridge aims to operate under a clear federal framework, while fintechs could ship stablecoin features to millions of businesses without building the stack themselves.

What it signals?

• A credible compliance lane is forming: Bridge says the charter path (once fully approved) would let it run stablecoin products under direct federal oversight, covering functions like issuance, custody, orchestration, and reserves management.

• Stablecoins are becoming a default fintech feature: Payoneer’s launch plan framed stablecoins as day-to-day operating money for global businesses-receive, hold, send - inside the same platform they already use.

  We broke down why Bridge’s conditional OCC trust-bank approval matters industry-wide: stablecoin infrastructure is moving closer to the regulated banking perimeter. It gives enterprises a cleaner compliance and audit path, makes stablecoin rails easier to embed into payouts and treasury workflows, and supports nationwide scale under one federal wrapper, speeding up mainstream adoption. Have a look.

🚀 Startup Spotlight: Brich Hill

Birch Hill is building institutional-grade onchain credit infrastructure for onchain lending and tokenized asset markets, with an emphasis on capital preservation, structured risk controls, governance, and real-time collateral risk monitoring.

This week, Birch Hill raised $2.5M pre-seed in a SAFE round co-led by ParaFi Capital and Castle Island Ventures, with participation from Nascent, FalconX Ventures, JST Digital, and Flowdesk.

Why it looks like early product–market fit: Birch Hill is launching institutionally curated lending strategies on Morpho and plans to expand to additional protocols such as Euler, positioning itself as a “compliant wrapper + risk engine” for institutions that want onchain yield without cowboy risk.

Building something interesting in onchain finance? We’d love to feature you next- drop us a note at hello@whitesight.net 👋

Pledge your access to fintech analysis and exclusive insights ⚡

Unlock Elite Access ⭐

What’s on the onchain menu today?

• 🏁 Onchain Highlights: Biggest moves across money, markets, and tokenization

• 🧩 ‘Byte’ Buzz: Onchain Finance updates, sorted by segment

• 🔗 Link Up: A curated set of reads worth your time

Sip on bite-sized onchain updates - fresh, sharp, and distilled to keep you ahead in just minutes. Subscribe now! 📨

📢 We’re always seeking innovative voices in fintech to be our next guest feature!

With a community of 2100+ fintech enthusiasts, we’d love to amplify your insights. Reach out to us for features, sponsorships, or collaborations!

Drop us a hello here! 👋

Get Unlimited Access to Strategy Playbooks of Fintech Pioneers with WhiteSight Radar! 🚀

Unlock a treasure trove of fintech intel with a WhiteSight Radar subscription. See further with exclusive reports, industry trend breakdowns, and expert analysis on everything from Embedded Finance and Digital Banking to Open Finance and beyond.

Become a member and steer your business course with actionable intelligence on the winning strategies of leading companies like Apple, Stripe, Starling Bank, OakNorth Bank, Banco Inter, and Toast that propels your business to the forefront of fintech. (PLUS! More in our premium content pipeline - Amazon, Nubank, Grab, Wise, Shopify, Affirm, Mercado Libre… the list goes on!)

Supercharge your Fintech IQ with WhiteSight Radar, putting expert fintech intel at your fingertips! 🧭

Got to have Radar on my radar!

Edition 3 brings you the onchain finance stories that shaped how money, markets, and assets moved this week »

Last Week’s Top Onchain Tea!♨️

• Stablecoins reached the “last mile” (payouts + business operations)

↳ Payoneer to launch a suite of stablecoin capabilities embedded within the Payoneer platform, powered by Bridge.
↳ Wirex launched stablecoin push-to-card payouts via Visa Direct, enabling stablecoin-funded disbursements to eligible cards globally.

• Asset managers brought onchain exposure into regulated products

↳ BlackRock started acquiring ETH to seed its upcoming Ethereum staking ETF.
↳ BNP Paribas AM piloted tokenized money-market fund shares on Ethereum under a permissioned model.

• Blockchain settlement rails picked up institutional momentum

↳ Deutsche Bank partnered with Ripple to enhance cross-border payments and settlement via blockchain.
↳ Robinhood’s Layer-2 testnet logged 4M transactions in its first week as it ramped its onchain infrastructure.

• Regulated crypto market expanded

↳ Crypto.com received conditional approval from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) to create a national trust bank in the United States.
↳ Coinbase expanded U.S. crypto-backed lending to support XRP, DOGE, ADA, and LTC.

Now, for the ‘byte’-sized onchain buzz -

Onchain Money felt very “payments-native” this week - cards, licences, and machine-to-machine checkout all tightened the loop from onchain balance!

• Quantoz became a Visa principal member for stablecoin cards - Quantoz partnered with Visa to issue virtual Visa debit cards for spending e-money and stablecoins, and to act as a BIN sponsor for fintech partners.
  ↳ Implication: stablecoin spending is sliding into regulated card issuance i.e. principal membership and BIN sponsorship, making “stablecoin accounts” behave like normal card balances.

• BVNK secured a MiCA CASP licence in Malta -BVNK obtained a MiCA licence from Malta’s MFSA, enabling it to passport regulated crypto-asset services across the EEA.
  ↳ Implication: Europe is rewarding firms that can run EUR rails + stablecoin settlement inside one compliance wrapper.

• XRPL shipped x402 payments for AI agents - an x402 “facilitator” went live on XRP Ledger, enabling AI agents to pay per-request using XRP and RLUSD via HTTP 402 “Payment Required.”
  ↳ Implication: agentic commerce is getting a native checkout pattern (HTTP-native micropayments) that can plug straight into onchain settlement.

Onchain Assets pushed deeper into capital-markets territory - tokenized equity started looking less like a demo and more like market structure.

• Figure debuted tokenized stock alongside a $150M secondary offering - Figure launched a tokenized stock product tied to an upsized $150M offering to expand its trading platform and digital-asset services.
  ↳ Implication: tokenized equity is being packaged with real liquidity events (offerings and distribution), not only tech rails.

• BitGo + Figure completed first tokenized equity trades on Figure’s ATS - the firms executed blockchain-native equity trades through integrated infrastructure on Figure’s FINRA/SIPC-member Alternative Trading System.
  ↳ Implication: regulated venues (ATS) are becoming the bridge for tokenized equities to trade with familiar compliance guardrails.

Onchain Markets focused on two institutional basics: 24/7 access and regulated, venue-ready infrastructure.

• CME announced 24/7 crypto derivatives trading starting May 29 - CME launched regulated crypto futures and options would trade 24/7 on Globex (pending regulatory review).
  ↳ Implication: continuous market hours are becoming table-stakes for regulated crypto, narrowing the gap with crypto-native venues.

• Antier launched a VARA-ready white-label crypto exchange stack for UAE/MENA - Antier introduced a compliance-forward exchange software suite designed for financial institutions entering regulated digital-asset markets under VARA-style requirements.
  ↳ Implication: exchange infrastructure is getting productized for licensing, making it faster for banks/brokers to launch regulated venues instead of building from scratch.

Onchain Infra was all about interoperability and 24/7 settlement, making movement across chains and between fiat rails less painfu

• Enso integrated Chainlink CCIP for cross-chain minting in production: Enso announced live deployments using Chainlink CCIP to move assets cross-chain and deploy them into strategies in a single transaction flow.
  ↳ Implication: cross-chain execution is shifting from bridges-as-a-risk to composable messaging + atomic execution as a product primitive.

• Lightspark + Cross River teamed up for 24/7 real-time fiat settlement - the partners combined Lightspark’s Bitcoin-native payments stack with Cross River’s multi-rail banking infrastructure.
  ↳ Implication: regulated banks are plugging into crypto-native infra to offer always-on settlement without waiting for bank hours.

Onchain Yield got more “asset-manager-grade” - staking yield was being operationalized as a product

• Bitwise to acquire staking provider Chorus One to deepen its onchain yield/staking strategy (Chorus One manages billions in staked assets).
  ↳ Implication: crypto asset managers want native yield capability in-house as staking becomes a core portfolio feature.

• Canary and Grayscale debuted their SUI ETF withstaking rewards (SUIS) - offering investors direct exposure to the token’s price along with the ability to earn staking rewards.
  ↳ Implication: ETFs are starting to blend spot exposure + protocol yield, pulling staking into familiar wrappers.

Onchain Lending expanded the collateral and credit toolkit - more ways to finance activity without dragging capital back into slow rails

• Voltage launched a USD-settled revolving credit line integrated with Lightning - Voltage Credit let businesses send Lightning-style payments with instant finality, while repaying the facility in USD from a bank account.
  ↳ Implication: credit is being embedded inside payment rails, letting firms use Bitcoin/Lightning without holding BTC balance-sheet risk.

• Franklin Templeton and Binance rolled out tokenized MMF shares as off-exchange collateral - eligible institutions could use tokenized money market fund shares as collateral for Binance trading.
  ↳ Implication: yield-bearing RWAs are becoming prime-broker-style collateral for 24/7 crypto market structure.

And that’s a wrap 👋

We hope you enjoyed this edition of the Onchain Finance!

If you’re someone who likes to read think pieces, you will likely love our monthly blog, Fintersections, where our team members analyse the convergence of fintech with the world.

And lastly, to stay updated on everything fintech and web3, follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter, and don’t be shy to show some ❤️

Thanks for reading Future of FinTech Newsletter! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

Banks, payment networks, crypto rails, and AI platforms wired agents directly into infrastructure rails, checkout, wallets, and compliance stacks. This resulted in agents operating directly within core financial infrastructure, analyzing risk, making decisions, and executing transactions.

✔ Financial institutions deployed agents into core workflows, onboarding, AML investigations, accounting, CRM, and mortgage origination

✔ Crypto positioned itself as the native settlement layer for agents, with agent wallets, micro-payment standards, and programmable transaction controls

✔ Agentic payments went live across stablecoins and card networks, from programmable USDC rails to Mastercard pilots and checkout optimization at scale

Ready for the agentic signals that defined the first two weeks of February? 🔍⚡

🚨 Featured Story of the Week:

UiPath Acquires WorkFusion to Scale Agentic AI in Compliance

UiPath acquired WorkFusion, doubling down on agentic AI in financial crime and compliance workflows.

WorkFusion already deploys AI agents across AML, sanctions screening, and regulatory review. UiPath brings global enterprise distribution and automation infrastructure. Together, they are positioning compliance as the first scalable beachhead for agentic AI inside banking.

What changes now

• AI agents can move into standardized compliance products, embedded directly into core banking workflows.

• Financial crime investigations and regulatory review processes can shift from manual case handling to repeatable, agent-led execution models.

• Enterprise automation platforms gain domain-specific intelligence, reducing reliance on bespoke AI implementations.

Why this matters for financial players

Compliance is rules-heavy, costly, and measurable, making it ideal for agent deployment.

• Banks can reduce compliance costs while improving speed and auditability.

• Agentic systems can operate within regulatory guardrails.

• AI shifts from workflow assistant to operational co-worker in regulated environments.

The broader signal indicates consolidation around domain intelligence is accelerating. From Cube’s acquisition of Kodex AI to Themis buying Pasabi, the race is on to embed specialized AI directly into financial infrastructure.

If agentic AI needs a proving ground in finance, compliance may be it.

Thanks for reading Future of FinTech - Agentic AI Newsletter! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support our work.

Subscribe now

Thanks for reading Future of FinTech Newsletter! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support our work.

🚀 Startup Spotlight: Sarvam AI

This edition, we’re spotlighting Sarvam AI, an India-built full-stack “sovereign AI” platform designed for enterprise and government use cases, with models tuned for India’s languages and local context.

The pitch is simple: Sarvam provides India-first language, voice, and document intelligence APIs and pairs them with forward-deployed engineers to ship production-ready agents inside real workflows.

Got something cool brewing in agentic finance? We’d love to feature you next- drop us a note at hello@whitesight.net 👋

Pledge your access to fintech analysis and exclusive insights ⚡

Unlock Elite Access ⭐

🚀 Country Spotlight: AI in India

India is positioning itself as both a massive AI adoption market and a long-term builder of sovereign AI capability.

• Anthropic deepens its India commitment: Anthropic opened a Bengaluru office to support regional customers, policy engagement, and partnerships across India.

  It also partnered with Infosys to accelerate enterprise adoption of Claude across banking, retail, and regulated industries.

• Capital flows accelerate: Public and private capital are converging to build long-term AI capacity. India has approved a $1.1 billion state-backed AI venture program, with plans to attract more than $200 billion over the course of two years. Neysa, an Indian AI infrastructure startup, secured backing from U.S. private equity firm Blackstone in a $1.2B financing round. Additionally, Indian conglomerate Adani Group revealed plans to invest $100 billion over the next decade to build data centers specialized for AI across the country.

• The India AI Summit reinforced three defining themes:

  1. Healthcare as a proving ground: AI is being positioned as a force multiplier in diagnostics, efficiency, and national productivity.

  2. Sovereignty as strategy: Emphasis on India-first datasets, governance frameworks, and localized model development.

  3. Accessibility as policy: A push to democratize AI access for developers, enterprises, and public services.

For more updates and insights from the India AI Summit, follow us on LinkedIn and stay tuned to our website.

What’s on the fintech menu today?

• 🏁 Agentic Highlights: Biggest moves across agentic payments, agentic banking, and agentic commerce

• 🧩 ‘Byte’ Buzz: Agentic Finance updates, sorted by segment

• 🔗 Link Up: A curated set of reads worth your time

Sip on bite-sized agentic updates - fresh, sharp, and distilled to keep you ahead in just minutes. Subscribe now! 📨

Subscribe now

📢 We’re always seeking innovative voices in fintech to be our next guest feature!

With a community of 2100+ fintech enthusiasts, we’d love to amplify your insights. Reach out to us for features, sponsorships, or collaborations!

Drop us a hello here! 👋

Get Unlimited Access to Strategy Playbooks of Fintech Pioneers with WhiteSight Radar! 🚀

Unlock a treasure trove of fintech intel with a WhiteSight Radar subscription. See further with exclusive reports, industry trend breakdowns, and expert analysis on everything from Embedded Finance and Digital Banking to Open Finance and beyond.

Become a member and steer your business course with actionable intelligence on the winning strategies of leading companies like Apple, Stripe, Starling Bank, OakNorth Bank, Banco Inter, and Toast that propels your business to the forefront of fintech. (PLUS! More in our premium content pipeline - Amazon, Nubank, Grab, Wise, Shopify, Affirm, Mercado Libre… the list goes on!)

Supercharge your Fintech IQ with WhiteSight Radar, putting expert fintech intel at your fingertips! 🧭

Got to have Radar on my radar!

Edition 2 brings you the agentic finance stories that shaped how agents shaped the finance and fintech industry in the first two weeks of February

February’s Top Agentic Tea!♨️

• Agentic Payments

⤷ Fiserv deepened ties with Mastercard to support AI-driven commerce across global merchant networks.

⤷ Adyen rolled out an AI-powered system that tailors checkout experiences in real time.

⤷ Stripe launched a USDC-based payment rail built for autonomous AI agents.

• Agentic Commerce

⤷ Klarna aligned with Google’s Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) to support AI-driven shopping journeys spanning search, checkout, and post-purchase interactions.

• AI Platform Updates

⤷ OpenAI introduced Codex, an AI agent built to assist developers with software creation tasks.

⤷ Oracle revealed a banking-focused AI platform featuring ready-made agent frameworks.

⤷ Google debuted Gemini 3, enhancing reasoning capabilities for complex autonomous workflows.

Now, for the ‘byte’-sized fintech buzz –

Agentic payments continued to evolve as AI intelligence was woven into real-time checkout and commerce systems.

• Adyen introduces real-time personalized checkout

Adyen launched Personalize, an AI-powered capability that adjusts checkout flows on the fly based on individual shopper behavior and context.

Industry implications: By embedding dynamic intelligence directly into payments UX, Adyen positions checkout optimization as a native layer of commerce, enabling smoother agent-orchestrated transactions with fewer abandoned carts.

• Fiserv and Mastercard expand agent commerce support

Fiserv extended its collaboration with Mastercard to equip issuers and processors with tools for interacting with autonomous shopping agents in payments flows.

Industry implications: This move signals issuers’ intent to layer fraud signals, authorization controls, and bank-level decisioning into experiences where AI systems initiate or complete transactions.

Agentic crypto continued to build infrastructure for autonomous value movement and Web3-native payments.

• Hedera launches Web3 rails for AI agent payments

Hedera unveiled a set of Web3-oriented standards and primitives designed to support micropayments and autonomous payments by AI agents on its network.

Industry implications: By defining agent-friendly settlement flows native to a public ledger, Hedera aims to make programmable payment execution part of the foundational crypto stack.

• Stripe unveils a crypto-based payment system for AI agents

Stripe introduced a dedicated digital dollar payment rail built on stablecoins to facilitate value transfers initiated by autonomous agents.

Industry implications: This positions stablecoins as a settlement layer for AI-driven commerce, potentially lowering barriers for agents to move value without traditional intermediaries.

Agentic commerce continued to shape how AI systems interact with shopping experiences and merchant partnerships

• Klarna backs Google’s Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP)

Klarna joined Google’s UCP initiative to enable interactions between AI agents and merchant checkout systems.

Industry implications: By aligning with a common protocol, Klarna is positioning its products to be natively orchestrated by agentic systems across diverse shopping surfaces.

• Debenhams opts for PayPal in agentic retail experiences

Debenhams selected PayPal as its preferred partner to integrate AI-driven commerce capabilities into its digital storefront.

Industry implications: Retailers are choosing partners that can support agentic workflows while maintaining trusted checkout experiences, signaling demand for payments that work across both human and autonomous shopper journeys.

Agentic banking saw institutional players embed AI agents into compliance workflows and customer relationship systems

• Goldman Sachs deploys AI agents for accounting and risk tasks

Goldman Sachs partnered with Anthropic to integrate advanced AI models into internal accounting processes and risk analysis functions.

Industry implications: By bringing agentic systems into core finance and compliance workflows, institutional banks are ready to leverage AI for operational execution under strict controls.

• ANZ launches agentic CRM to enhance business banking

Australia’s ANZ introduced an AI-powered CRM platform that uses autonomous agents to automate client engagement and service tasks.

Industry implications: Embedding agentic capabilities into customer relationship systems allows banks to reallocate human staff toward higher-value advisory roles while maintaining oversight and governance.

AI platform developments continued to push agentic capabilities deeper into infrastructure and developer workflows.

• IBM updates FlashSystem with agentic automation features

  IBM announced its next-generation FlashSystem portfolio, embedding AI capabilities that enable autonomous storage optimization and predictive workflows.
  Industry implications: By adding agentic intelligence to core storage infrastructure, IBM is positioning autonomous operations as part of enterprise data stacks.

• OpenAI launches a new agentic coding model

  OpenAI rolled out its latest agentic model tailored for developer coding tasks, intensifying competition in developer-oriented autonomous systems.
  Industry implications: Launches in agentic development tools signal a race to define the default platforms for autonomous software creation.

Agentic infrastructure continued to expand platform foundations and accelerate domain-specific innovations.

• Bevri unveils AI-powered point-of-sale for loan origination

  Bevri launched a new agentic POS platform that uses AI to automate and streamline loan origination workflows at the point of customer interaction.
  Industry implications: By bringing agentic capabilities to the front line of lending, Bevri is reducing friction in credit conversion by enabling consistent underwriting decisions.

• Rezolve AI acquires Reward to boost AI solutions in banking

  Rezolve AI completed an acquisition of Reward for $230 million to accelerate its development of AI-driven banking and commerce infrastructure.
  Industry implications: This consolidation signals that building end-to-end agentic systems is now a priority for infrastructure providers aiming to offer fully integrated platforms.

Regulatory activity highlighted emerging policy priorities around AI safety and workforce readiness.

• UK government launches deepfake detection initiative

  The UK announced a national priority program to develop tools and frameworks for detecting deepfakes and AI-generated content.

  Industry implications: Establishing proactive detection standards signals regulators are preparing to mitigate misinformation risks to monitor agentic systems that generate or manipulate media.

• U.S. Department of Labor releases AI literacy framework

  The U.S. Department of Labor unveiled a framework aimed at improving AI literacy and skill readiness across the workforce.

  Industry implications: By focusing on education and workforce adaptation, regulators are pushing institutions to prepare workers for roles in an AI-dominated economy.

Funding activity underscored continued capital momentum across both foundational AI platforms and agent-oriented infrastructure.

• Anthropic closes massive funding round

  Anthropic secured a $30 billion financing round at a reported $380 billion valuation, backed by major investors including Coatue and Singapore’s GIC.

  Industry implications: This raise reinforces the strategic importance of agent-oriented foundational models, signaling that deep-tech capital is still flowing into platforms that can anchor the agentic stack.

• Databricks raises $7 billion to scale agent-oriented AI services

  Databricks announced a $7 billion funding round to expand its AI database and infrastructure capabilities, with significant equity and debt commitments.

  Industry implications: Investment into agentic data infrastructure suggests that building scalable, production-grade environments for autonomous systems is a priority for both enterprise adoption and ecosystem growth.

  ---

And that’s a wrap 👋

We hope you enjoyed this edition of the Agentic Finance Brew!

As a reward for making it this far, here’s a curated set of agentic resources to keep your curiosity (and conviction) topped up. Cheers to continuous learning!

Link Up! –

• Supply Chain Financing: Durable Global Trade in the Age of AI - CITI

• Agentic AI untangled: Navigating the build, buy, or borrow decision - KPMG

• The automation curve in agentic commerce - McKinsey

• How Agentic AI Can Power Core Insurance IT Modernization - BCG

If you’re someone who likes to read think pieces, you will likely love our monthly blog, Fintersections, where our team members analyse the convergence of fintech with the world.

And lastly, to stay updated on everything fintech and web3, follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter, and don’t be shy to show some ❤️

Thanks for reading Future of FinTech Newsletter! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

UAE-style regulated issuance, enterprise stablecoin settlement, and tokenized treasuries trading/serving as collateral all pushed the stack forward, while AI agents got their own payment tools.

✔️ Stablecoin settlement moved deeper into regulated and enterprise workflows

✔️ Tokenized treasuries looked more like collateral and trading inventory

✔️ Agentic wallets + automated payments pushed crypto UX into new default surfaces

Ready for the signals? 🔍

🚨 Featured Story of the Week:

Stablecoin Cards Go Mainstream: Quantoz × Visa 💳🪙

Quantoz partnered with Visa to become a direct Visa principal member, enabling it to issue virtual Visa debit cards and act as a BIN sponsor for third-party fintechs - so customers can spend regulated e-money/stablecoin balances anywhere Visa is accepted (including Apple Pay/Google Pay).

This matters because the “stablecoin moment” is shifting into a familiar distribution channel: cards, where compliance, settlement, and acceptance already exist - and stablecoins can ride that infrastructure into everyday spend.

What changes now

• Regulatory: Principal membership + BIN sponsorship puts stablecoin-linked spend inside the same governance, controls, and program standards used for mainstream card issuance.

• Market structure: Stablecoin balances start behaving like a spendable account layer, while merchants still receive local currency through existing card rails.

• Institutional adoption: Fintechs can launch card products faster because the “heavy lifting” (network access + issuing sponsorship) sits with regulated intermediaries like Quantoz.

How the runway was set

• Visa’s card playbook: Visa already rolled out stablecoin-linked card issuance via Bridge (Stripe company), letting developers issue cards funded by stablecoin balances via API.

• Mastercard’s parallel push: Mastercard positioned end-to-end stablecoin acceptance: wallet enablement, card issuing, and merchant settlement, through partners like OKX and Nuvei.

• Network-level expansion: Mastercard also partnered with Fiserv to support stablecoin-linked cards and merchant settlement in FIUSD across its acceptance footprint.

Stablecoin adoption is increasingly a distribution race, and cards are becoming the fastest bridge from onchain balances to everyday spending.

Thanks for reading Future of FinTech Newsletter! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support our work.

🚀 Startup Spotlight: STBL

STBL is building stablecoin + yield infrastructure that lets ecosystems launch their own programmable, yield-sharing stablecoins, anchored to USST (its universal over-collateralized stablecoin backed by high-quality RWAs).

This week’s OKX Ventures investment and the X Layer partnership signaled strong product–market fit: institutions want regulated, tokenized collateral + programmable settlement, and STBL is positioning itself as the infrastructure layer that packages that into deployable “ecosystem-specific” stablecoins.

Building something interesting in onchain finance? We’d love to feature you next- drop us a note at hello@whitesight.net 👋

Pledge your access to fintech analysis and exclusive insights ⚡

Unlock Elite Access ⭐

What’s on the onchain menu today?

• 🏁 Onchain Highlights: Biggest moves across money, markets, and tokenization

• 🧩 ‘Byte’ Buzz: Onchain Finance updates, sorted by segment

• 🔗 Link Up: A curated set of reads worth your time

Sip on bite-sized onchain updates - fresh, sharp, and distilled to keep you ahead in just minutes. Subscribe now! 📨

📢 We’re always seeking innovative voices in fintech to be our next guest feature!

With a community of 2100+ fintech enthusiasts, we’d love to amplify your insights. Reach out to us for features, sponsorships, or collaborations!

Drop us a hello here! 👋

Get Unlimited Access to Strategy Playbooks of Fintech Pioneers with WhiteSight Radar! 🚀

Unlock a treasure trove of fintech intel with a WhiteSight Radar subscription. See further with exclusive reports, industry trend breakdowns, and expert analysis on everything from Embedded Finance and Digital Banking to Open Finance and beyond.

Become a member and steer your business course with actionable intelligence on the winning strategies of leading companies like Apple, Stripe, Starling Bank, OakNorth Bank, Banco Inter, and Toast that propels your business to the forefront of fintech. (PLUS! More in our premium content pipeline - Amazon, Nubank, Grab, Wise, Shopify, Affirm, Mercado Libre… the list goes on!)

Supercharge your Fintech IQ with WhiteSight Radar, putting expert fintech intel at your fingertips! 🧭

Got to have Radar on my radar!

Edition 3 brings you the onchain finance stories that shaped how money, markets, and assets moved this week »

Last Week’s Top Onchain Tea!♨️

• Institution-grade settlement rails go on-chain

↳ IHC and First Abu Dhabi Bank launched the dirham-backed stablecoin DDSC on ADI Chain under UAE central bank licensing.
↳ Visa began settling USDC stablecoin transactions on Ethereum for real-world payment flows.
↳ Fiserv launched INDX to move USD 24/7/365 for digital-asset firms via a single custodial account.

• Tokenized cash becomes tradable + usable as collateral

↳ BlackRock’s BUIDL tokenized MMF became tradable on Uniswap via Securitize’s compliance/whitelisting layer.
↳ Binance and Franklin Templeton activated tokenized money market funds as off-exchange collateral for institutions.

• Public experiments

↳ The Bank of England teamed with Chainlink to test settling tokenized assets alongside central bank money.
↳ Robinhood launched a public testnet for Robinhood Chain, an Arbitrum-based Ethereum L2 aimed at compliant tokenized finance.

• AI + agentic crypto payments stack

↳ Stripe introduced an AI-agent payment system using automated USDC payments on Base via x402.
↳ Coinbase introduced Agentic Wallets so AI agents could transact with configurable controls.

Now, for the ‘byte’-sized onchain buzz -

Onchain Money put stablecoins deeper into regulated banking rails!

• OKX snags EU payments license for stablecoin rails
  ↳ OKX secured a Payment Institution license in Malta to expand stablecoin payments and its crypto card push across Europe.
  ↳ Implication: stablecoin checkout and card products are becoming “license-first” utilities as EU compliance deadlines kick in.

• Japan’s megabanks test stablecoins for securities settlement
  ↳ Nomura and Daiwa launched a PoC with MUFG, SMBC, and Mizuho to use stablecoins for securities settlement inside Japan’s FSA sandbox.
  ↳ Implication: stablecoins are moving toward DvP-style settlement in traditional markets, not just remittances.

Onchain Assets kept tokenization inside familiar wrappers - sovereign-style issuance and regulated derivatives access.

• UK taps HSBC Orion for tokenized gilt pilot (DIGIT)
  ↳ HM Treasury selected HSBC Orion to run the UK’s digital gilt pilot, testing blockchain rails for government bond issuance/settlement.
  ↳ Implication: tokenized sovereign debt is edging toward “real issuance,” which upgrades tokenization from demos to market infrastructure.

• Thailand clears crypto as underlyings for regulated derivatives
  ↳ Thailand approved changes to let crypto/digital assets be used as underlying assets in the regulated derivatives framework.
  ↳ Implication: the “regulated perimeter” expands — more crypto exposure can move into licensed venues instead of offshore products.

Onchain Markets looked more like “licensed market access” - major players getting regulatory stamps.

• Blockchain.com gets FCA registration in the UK
  ↳ Blockchain.com was registered with the UK FCA to operate as a crypto asset business, enabling regulated brokerage/custody services in-market.
  ↳ Implication: UK market structure is increasingly defined by who can operate under FCA supervision - raising the bar for credible distribution.

• Animoca Brands secures VARA VASP license in Dubai
  ↳ Animoca received a VARA VASP licence to provide broker-dealer and management/investment services in/from Dubai for institutional and qualified investors.
  ↳ Implication: Dubai keeps pulling Web3 into a regulated hub model - licensing becomes a growth lever, not a constraint.

Onchain Infra shifted toward enterprise-grade rails - custody stacks and settlement plumbing for institutions.

• Ripple upgrades institutional custody with security + staking integrations
  ↳ Ripple expanded Ripple Custody via partnerships with Securosys (HSM security) and Figment (staking for ETH/SOL) plus compliance integrations.
  ↳ Implication: custody is bundling into a “full stack” (security + compliance + yield) that banks can adopt without building it all.

• LSEG plans an on-chain settlement platform (DSD)
  ↳ LSEG announced plans for a Digital Securities Depository (DSD) to support on-chain settlement connecting traditional and digital markets.
  ↳ Implication: major market infrastructure is now building for multi-chain settlement workflows, not just token issuance.

Onchain Yield packaged yield into safer wrappers!

• BitGo × 21Shares deepen staking + custody for ETPs
  ↳ BitGo and 21Shares expanded their partnership across the US and EMEA to support custody and staking services for crypto ETP products.
  ↳ Implication: staking yield keeps moving into broker-native/regulatory-friendly wrappers, widening access without validators or wallets.

• Bybit launches an institutional-style XRP Earn with Doppler
  ↳ Bybit partnered with Doppler Finance to bring XRP yield products to Bybit Earn (positioned as a staking alternative since XRP has no native staking).
  ↳ Implication: exchanges are productizing “compliant yield” for major assets - even when the base chain doesn’t support staking.

Onchain Lending pushed institutional participation without losing custody - TradFi capital meets DeFi rails.

• Morpho × Apollo: cooperation agreement around MORPHO exposure
  ↳ Morpho signed a cooperation agreement with Apollo, allowing Apollo affiliates to acquire up to 90M MORPHO tokens over 48 months (with restrictions).
  ↳ Implication: large asset managers are taking structured exposure to DeFi lending protocols - a signal that “onchain credit” is entering institutional portfolios.

• Anchorage × Kamino: tri-party model for borrowing against staked SOL
  ↳ Solana, Anchorage Digital, and Kamino launched a tri-party structure letting institutions borrow against natively staked SOL while keeping qualified custody.
  ↳ Implication: the “don’t move custody” constraint is getting solved - which is key for institutional-scale DeFi lending participation.

And that’s a wrap 👋

We hope you enjoyed this edition of the Onchain Finance!

If you’re someone who likes to read think pieces, you will likely love our monthly blog, Fintersections, where our team members analyse the convergence of fintech with the world.

And lastly, to stay updated on everything fintech and web3, follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter, and don’t be shy to show some ❤️

Thanks for reading Future of FinTech Newsletter! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

✔️ Scale moves across markets
✔️ Faster cross-border money flow
✔️ Agents and stronger controls

Ready to connect the dots? 👀

🚨 Featured Story of the Week:

Revolut Survives Australia 🔥

Revolut crossed 1 million retail customers in Australia and plans to invest nearly $400M over the next five years. That stands out in a market where several local neobanks struggled to reach sustainable scale, with some exiting or being absorbed after funding and regulatory pressure.

Revolut’s approach was to win on everyday pain points first. It led with FX, travel, and international transfers, and says Australians have saved $250M+ in FX fees. It also followed a phased regulatory path, securing an AFSL in 2020 and a credit licence in 2022, while building local depth with a 100+ team and 30+ Australia-specific features.

Now it is expanding the footprint beyond retail:

• Launched merchant acquiring inside Revolut Business, supporting online, in-person, and account-to-account payments within the business account.

• Reported a 235% increase in monthly Revolut Business transaction volume in Australia over the past 12 months, signalling rising merchant adoption.

Want the deeper context? WhiteSight’s Revolut Deep Dive Report 2025 explains the strategy behind Revolut’s global expansion, from subscriptions and licensing to payments and SME growth.

Thanks for reading Future of FinTech Newsletter! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support our work.

🚀 Startup Spotlight: Goodfin

This edition, we’re spotlighting Goodfin, a platform using AI agents to support private-market and pre-IPO investing for accredited investors, helping reduce the manual work involved in finding, evaluating, and progressing deals.

The idea is to bring more structure and speed to a process that is often research-heavy and fragmented, by using specialised agents to assist across sourcing, diligence support, and execution workflows.

Got something cool brewing in fintech? We’d love to feature you next- drop us a note at hello@whitesight.net 👋

Pledge your access to fintech analysis and exclusive insights ⚡

Unlock Elite Access ⭐

What’s on the fintech menu today?

• 🌟 Fintech Fiesta: The Week’s Hot 10!

• 🌐 ‘Byte’ Buzz: Fintech highlights, sorted by segment!

• 🔗 Link Up: Your gateway to resourceful links!

Sip on bite-sized updates every week—fresh, hot, and brewed to keep you in the loop in just minutes. 📨

Subscribe now

📢 We’re always seeking innovative voices in fintech to be our next guest feature!

With a community of 2100+ fintech enthusiasts, we’d love to amplify your insights. Reach out to us for features, sponsorships, or collaborations!

Drop us a hello here! 👋

Get Unlimited Access to Strategy Playbooks of Fintech Pioneers with WhiteSight Radar! 🚀

Unlock a treasure trove of fintech intel with a WhiteSight Radar subscription. See further with exclusive reports, industry trend breakdowns, and expert analysis on everything from Embedded Finance and Digital Banking to Open Finance and beyond.

Become a member and steer your business course with actionable intelligence on the winning strategies of leading companies like Apple, Stripe, Starling Bank, OakNorth Bank, Banco Inter, and Toast that propels your business to the forefront of fintech. (PLUS! More in our premium content pipeline - Amazon, Nubank, Grab, Wise, Shopify, Affirm, Mercado Libre… the list goes on!)

Supercharge your Fintech IQ with WhiteSight Radar, putting expert fintech intel at your fingertips! 🧭

Got to have Radar on my radar!

Edition 183 is your front-row seat to the digital revolution transforming how we move money.

The Week’s Hot 10!♨️🔟

• Scale Plays, Different Paths

⤷ Revolut passed 1 million retail customers in Australia and plans to invest nearly AUD $400M over the next five years.

⤷ NatWest agreed to acquire wealth manager Evelyn Partners for £2.7B to scale its private banking and wealth business.

• SME Money Management

⤷ TBC Uz launched Business and Business Pro tiers, a subscription-based SME banking service.

⤷ Intuit integrated BNPL via Affirm into QuickBooks Payments for eligible U.S. merchants.

• Payments Go Borderless

⤷ Visa Direct and UnionPay International enabled cross-border remittances and B2C payouts into mainland China.

⤷ Yuno integrated BVNK’s stablecoin rails to allow merchants to accept and process stablecoin transactions.

• Agents Enter the Workflow

⤷ Klarna joined Google’s Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP), enabling AI shopping agents to interact with merchants and payment providers.

⤷ Goodfin launched Goodfin Go, an AI agent platform for private-market and pre-IPO investing aimed at accredited investors.

• Building Stronger Foundations

⤷ Sumsub joined the Financial Data and Technology Association (FDATA) to support more secure open finance in North America.

⤷ ila Bank migrated core retail and lending systems to Temenos Core Banking on AWS.

Now, for the ‘byte’-sized fintech buzz –

Digital banking is adding business control layers and regulated digital-asset capabilities, expanding what customers can manage from one platform beyond basic accounts.

• STC Bank launched a Business Portal for businesses, entrepreneurs and freelancers, providing a single digital platform to onboard, manage users/authorisations, and run services such as payments, remittances, statements, and payroll.

• Zand Bank partnered with Ripple to explore regulated stablecoin and blockchain-based use cases including support for RLUSD in Zand’s regulated digital-asset custody, AEDZ–RLUSD liquidity, and issuing AEDZ on XRPL.

Digital payments is improving in-person acceptance at both ends of the market, with simpler devices for small sellers and more reliable in-store infrastructure for large merchants.

• SumUp introduced the Solo Lite card reader for UK merchants, a low-cost (£25) and portable device aimed at helping small businesses accept card payments

• Adyen partnered with Starbucks to power its in-store payments across 943 stores in the UK, Austria, and Switzerland, deploying around 2,375 payment terminals.

Digital wealth is focusing on institutional workflows, bringing cash investment access and market-grade trading and surveillance upgrades into modern platforms.

• Clearwater Analytics integrated with TreasurySpring to let institutional clients access 1,000+ fixed-term cash investment products directly within the Clearwater platform.

• Osaka Exchange selected Nasdaq to upgrade its next-generation derivatives trading infrastructure using Nasdaq Eqlipse Trading and Nasdaq Market Surveillance.

Embedded finance is widening access to credit through platforms, combining faster working-capital for small businesses with pay-over-time options expanding into new countries.

• Adyen partnered with Fresha to launch Fresha Capital, offering fast working-capital loans to SMBs, live in seven markets with $5.5M+ in loans issued so far.

• Affirm and Wayfair expanded their partnership to the UK and Canada, allowing approved Wayfair shoppers in both markets to split purchases into instalments at checkout.

Open finance is being used to automate switching and improve decisions, enabling digital credit portability and applying AI to turn consented data into real-time risk and lending signals.

• CAIXA launched a fully digital personal-loan portability process via Open Finance, enabling customers to transfer eligible personal loans to CAIXA more quickly and securely.

• Belvo launched an AI-powered Intelligent Ecosystem of open finance tools in Latin America, designed to turn consented data and payment signals into real-time decisions for use cases such as lending, payments, and fraud/risk management.

Fintech infrastructure is strengthening the foundations, pairing real-time financial crime controls with cloud-based core modernisation to support faster, more reliable services

• SME Bank partnered with Flagright to centralise real-time transaction monitoring, watchlist screening, and investigations, aiming to strengthen AML controls

• Banco de la Microempresa S.A (Mibanco) selected Temenos SaaS to modernize its core banking infrastructure and expand access to finance for small businesses across the country.

And that’s a wrap 👋

We hope you enjoyed this edition of the Weekly Fintech Brew!

If you’re someone who likes to read think pieces, you will likely love our monthly blog, Fintersections, where our team members analyse the convergence of fintech with the world.

And lastly, to stay updated on everything fintech and web3, follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter, and don’t be shy to show some ❤️

Thanks for reading Future of FinTech Newsletter! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

✔️ Regulated stablecoin frameworks are turning into live licensing regimes
✔️ TradFi is testing “crypto exposure inside the account you already use”
✔️ Compliance and market infrastructure are getting fresh capital and deeper integrations

Ready for the signals? 🔍