Future of Fintech: Adyen’s M&A Era
Future of Fintech – Edition #189 (1st–15th June’ 26)
In June, fintech momentum was shaped by Adyen’s shift into strategic M&A, stronger digital banking engagement, AI-led wealth infrastructure, and open finance moving closer to payment utility.
✔ Digital banks are extending into telecoms, investing, and credit access
✔ AI, stablecoins, and tokenisation are reshaping payment execution
✔ Wealthtech and infrastructure platforms are scaling advisor, banking, and embedded finance use cases
Ready to connect the dots? 👀
🚨 Story of the Week: Adyen’s M&A Shift Reaches Billing
Adyen agreed to acquire Orb, an enterprise billing platform, for $335M, marking its second acquisition after the Talon.One deal and a clear break from its long-held build-not-buy approach.
The move shows Adyen is expanding beyond payments acceptance into the wider commerce operating layer. Talon.One added real-time loyalty, promotions, and shopper decisioning, while Orb brings billing infrastructure for usage-based and complex pricing models across AI and SaaS businesses.
Together, the deals point to Adyen building a broader commerce intelligence stack, where payments, identity, pricing, loyalty, and billing sit closer together inside one platform.
Want the full picture? WhiteSight’s Adyen report breaks down how Adyen built its global payments engine, why its acquisition shift matters, and where the platform is heading next.
Download the full report here.
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🚀 Startup Spotlight: SyntheticFi
This edition, we’re spotlighting SyntheticFi, a wealthtech startup founded in 2023 that helps RIAs and wealth management firms unlock portfolio-backed financing for clients without disrupting long-term investment strategies. SyntheticFi recently entered the spotlight after raising over $13M and crossing $2B in assets, highlighting growing demand for advisor-led lending infrastructure.
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Edition #189 connects the dots across the latest developments shaping the future of digital finance.
The Hot 10 that formed June’s first half !!♨️🔟
Fintech giants lean into capital-led expansion
⤷ Revolut is reportedly planning a secondary share sale at a $115B valuation, allowing early investors and employees to sell shares.
⤷ Plata secured $300M in funding from institutional lenders to support credit growth and expand its digital investing products in Mexico.Merchant payments become more embedded and flexible
⤷ Stripe partnered with Lloyds to launch Lloyds Accept, a payments suite for UK SMBs, offering Tap to Pay, payment links and card terminals.
⤷ dLocal expanded BNPL Fuse to help merchants offer local instalment payment options across emerging markets through one integration.AI-era infrastructure drives new fintech monetisation models
⤷ Adyen to acquire Orb for $335M, to add billing infrastructure for usage-based and complex pricing models across AI and SaaS businesses.
⤷ Titan raised $3M led by Entropy Ventures to scale its banking-focused AI platform for regulated financial institutions.Credit infrastructure attracts fresh institutional and crypto-native backing
⤷ Morpho raised $175M in a funding round co-led by Paradigm, a16z crypto and Ribbit, to expand its blockchain-based credit infrastructure.
⤷ Mastercard partnered with Backbase to help banks launch faster cross-border payments through Mastercard Move inside Backbase’s Banking OS.Open banking moves from data access to embedded action
⤷ Plaid partnered with Fin to bring Plaid Link into Fin’s AI support agent, so users can connect or reconnect bank accounts directly inside chat.
⤷ FirstOntario Credit Union went live on open banking with FIS Everlink and Flinks, enabling secure data sharing with third-party apps.
Now, for the ‘byte’-sized fintech buzz –
Digital banks are deepening customer engagement by combining deposit incentives with credit and investing expansion.
Revolut launched a 5% boosted savings rate for new UK customers, offering the promotional rate on Instant Access Savings Accounts.
Plata secured $300M in expanded financing to grow its lending business and support digital banking and investing products in Mexico.
Digital payments players are expanding checkout and cross-border payment infrastructure by improving access to local and preferred payment methods.
Zelle is expanding internationally, starting with India, and is preparing ZelleUSD, a dollar-backed stablecoin, to support future cross-border payment capabilities
Ecommpay added Apple Pay and Google Pay Express Checkout, letting merchants show wallet payment options earlier in checkout to reduce friction for guest shoppers.
Digital wealth platforms are using AI to modernise investment operations and improve access to client intelligence.
Linedata launched Optima, an AI-enabled fund services platform, to help investment firms connect back-office systems, automate workflows and manage operational controls.
Aiviq launched an AI-powered app on Snowflake Marketplace, giving investment managers access to client data, analytics and automated dashboards.
Embedded finance is expanding into everyday financial access, with fintechs embedding wage access and customer protection tools inside existing banking and app-based relationships.
Klarna launched Klarna Inbox in its app, giving customers a verified place to check whether emails, and SMS claiming to be from Klarna are genuine, helping reduce impersonation scams.
Reset raised $6M to expand its embedded earned wage access platform for credit unions and community banks.
Open finance is shifting toward payment utility, with firms improving consent-based data connectivity and building regulated A2A payment schemes for recurring business use cases.
Alkami integrated Yodlee’s FDX API to give US financial institutions more reliable, consent-based open banking data connections with fewer login disruptions
UK banks and fintechs launched the UK Payments Initiative, a new open banking payment scheme for recurring and automated A2A payments.
Fintech infrastructure modernisation is accelerating as banks replace legacy systems with cloud-native platforms and upgrade payment capabilities for faster, more flexible money movement.
Mastercard partnered with Backbase to help banks launch faster cross-border payments through Mastercard Move in Backbase’s Banking OS.
Woodforest National Bank adopted Jack Henry for a digital and core banking upgrade, moving to modernise its banking infrastructure and customer channels.
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.
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Hey, great to connect. I’m also active in the fintech and crypto space, writing and working on projects in the industry. Happy to support each other—just subscribed. Would you be open to collaborating down the line if there’s a good fit?