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.

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.

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.

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.

Banks, payment networks, and fintechs moved beyond copilots and pilots, deploying agentic systems that could investigate risk, execute transactions, and complete commerce flows inside regulated environments.

✔ Agentic payments moved from concept to live card transactions across major banks

✔ AI agents got their own infrastructure, from payment APIs to blockchain identities to AML investigation suites

✔ Standards and alliances emerged to make agentic commerce interoperable

Ready for the agentic signals that mattered in January? 🔍⚡

🚨 Featured Story of the Week:

Google Introduces the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP)

Google launched UCP, allowing AI agents to handle shopping from discovery to post-purchase without custom integrations.

Google co-developed UCP with Shopify, Etsy, Wayfair, Target, and Walmart. It has also secured endorsements from 20+ global players across payments, including Visa, Mastercard, Stripe, Adyen, and Walmart.

Klarna became the latest member to join UCP, extending its existing partnership with Google across Google Pay, Google Cloud, and the Agent Payments Protocol (AP2).

What changes now

• AI agents (e.g., Google’s Gemini) can query merchant inventory, build carts, and complete payments using UCP primitives, without bespoke engineering for every store or payment partner.

• UCP standardizeds how agents request pricing, calculate totals, and initiate checkout, allowing integrated payment flows that financial products (cards, wallets, BNPL) can support natively.

• Platforms built on Shopify, BigCommerce, and major retail chains automatically gained a path to be usable by agentic systems, reducing integration overhead.

Why this matters for financial players

By defining a common protocol, Google and partners helped ensure that commerce and payments can be realized by agents without each fintech reinventing connectivity.

• Payment and settlement can be exposed to agents in controlled ways

• Cards, wallets, and BNPL can be orchestrated by AI agents with standardized APIs

• Agents can orchestrate value movement instead of merely recommending actions

If agents are becoming the interface to money and commerce, UCP became one of the first serious attempts to define the rails they run on!

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: Resistant AI

This edition, we’re shining a light on Resistant AI, an AI-native fraud detection and financial crime prevention platform.

The pitch is simple: instead of ripping out legacy systems, firms can plug in modular AI agents and use an agentic assistant to orchestrate tasks end-to-end, lowering operational cost while strengthening controls and scalability.

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 1 brings you the agentic finance stories that shaped how agents shaped the finance and fintech industry in January »

January’s Top Agentic Tea!♨️

• Agentic Payments

⤷ Mastercard completed Australia’s first agentic payment transactions using its Agent Pay technology, where AI agents can shop and pay on behalf of consumers.

⤷ Visa and Inception partnered to accelerate the rollout of agentic commerce across Central & Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa (CEMEA) by integrating Visa Intelligent Commerce into agentic commerce solutions.

• Agentic Banking

⤷ Revolut made Revolut Pay compatible with Google’s Agent Payments Protocol (AP2), positioning it to support secure agent-initiated, AI-led payments across agentic commerce platforms in the UK and European Economic Area.

• AI Platform Updates

⤷ Google unveiled the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP), an open standard that lets AI agents work across the entire shopping journey, from discovery to purchase to post-sale support.

⤷ Amazon is reportedly in advanced talks to invest $50M amount in OpenAI, as part of a broader capital-raising effort by OpenAI ahead of a possible future IPO.

⤷ Apple and Google entered a multi-year partnership where Apple’s next-generation Foundation Models will be based on Google’s Gemini models and cloud technology.

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

Agentic payments saw card networks and core processors start wiring “shopping agents” into payment rails.

• Mastercard launches Agent Suite:

Mastercard launched a specialized suite of tools designed to provide the underlying infrastructure for AI agents to authorize and execute payments autonomously. The suite includes digital “Agent Credentials” and spending-limit controls that allow businesses to delegate financial authority to AI agents while maintaining strict security protocols.

Industry implications: This launch fits into the broader industry trend of networks starting to productize agent readiness, including identity, controls, security, and orchestration, so agent-led transactions could scale without breaking trust and fraud protections.

• FIS integrates agentic commerce capabilities into the global banking ecosystem

FIS partnered with Visa and Mastercard to enable banks to participate in agentic commerce, positioning issuers to work with AI shopping agents.

Industry implications: Issuers are pushing to keep top-of-wallet status by adding fraud checks, KYA-style signals, and authorization controls around agent-driven checkout flows.

Agentic Crypto rails started formalizing agent identity and machine-executable standards so autonomous agents could transact and settle on-chain.

• Ethereum brings AI agent economy standard on mainnet

Ethereum introduced ERC-8004 to the mainnet to support AI agents interacting with entities on Ethereum and participating in an agentic economy.

Industry implications: Standards for agent interaction are shifting from app-level conventions to protocol-level primitives, enabling more portable, composable agent activity across on-chain venues.

• LG CNS introduces agentic AI auto-payment with digital currency

LG CNS and the Bank of Korea demonstrated Korea’s first agentic AI-based digital currency auto-payment, where AI handled search-to-purchase-to-payment.

Industry implications: Digital currency pilots are increasingly being tested for agent-driven purchase and payment automation, raising new needs for limits, authorization, and audit trails.

Agentic banking trends show that banking operations are evolving from automated workflows to autonomous decision-making units.

• ThetaRay launches investigation suite

ThetaRay launched Ray, an agentic AI investigation suite to automate and standardize transaction monitoring investigations amid rising alerts and regulatory scrutiny.

Industry implications: Compliance is shifting towards structured, explainable, regulator-ready workflows where agents assemble narratives and evidence while analysts retain control.

• Revolut introduces AI voice agents in customer support

Revolut deployed ElevenLabs Agents for customer support across the UK and Europe, covering 4M+ customers, 30+ languages, and cutting resolution time by 8x+.

Industry implications: Digital banks and fintechs have started treating voice agents as a production channel, increasing the bar for compliance, monitoring, and safe-handling of sensitive customer interactions.

Agentic commerce trends show that retail is moving away from a search and click model toward a delegated intent model.

• Google powers Walmart’s agentic commerce aspirations

Walmart partnered with Google to embed Walmart andSam’s Club inventory into Gemini, supporting agent-led shopping and transactions.

Industry implications: Merchants are moving on to agent-accessible surfaces so they can capitalise on distribution when AI agents choose where to buy.

AI platforms are pushing agentic adoption through vertical-first products that emphasize secure deployment and operational integration.

• OpenAI launches ChatGPT Health

  OpenAI launched ChatGPT Health, a dedicated service to securely connect health data and apps, with privacy controls and a phased rollout.
  Industry implications: AI platforms are accelerating domain workspaces that bundle data connections and controls, setting expectations that future agentic products must ship with privacy, governance, and integrations locked in.

• NTT DATA and AWS scale enterprise agentic AI adoption

  NTT DATA and AWS expanded a strategic collaboration to accelerate enterprise cloud modernization and responsible agentic AI adoption at scale.
  Industry implications: The market is shifting from pilots to industrialization, with systems integrators and hyperscalers packaging reference architectures, compliance patterns, and talent pipelines for agent deployments.

Regulatory bodies are proactively establishing frameworks that emphasize human accountability and fair competition.

• UK HMRC setting standards for genAI in tax software

  HMRC issued guidance for commercial tax software providers on the appropriate use of generative AI in tools that support submissions to HMRC.

  Industry implications: Software providers are facing clearer accountability expectations, signaling a move toward use-case-specific AI rules rather than generic principles.

• South Korea introduces the AI Basic Act

  The South Korean government has passed a landmark “AI Startups Law” aimed at protecting smaller innovators in the agentic economy from being crowded out by tech giants.

  Industry implications: National AI regimes are increasingly creating operational requirements that directly affect how agentic products are shipped and scaled.
  

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! –

• Agentic AI Payments: Navigating Consumer Protection, Innovation, and Regulatory Frameworks - Consumer Bankers Association (CBA)

• Start realizing ROI: A practical guide to agentic AI - IBM

• Is India ready for Agentic AI? - EY

• AI Agent Trends 2026 - Google

• The human advantage: Stronger brains in the age of AI - McKinsey

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.