Hello Fintech Friends,

Welcome to the 1,099 new readers who’ve joined us since last week. You’re joining 174,000+ other subscribers. Today's newsletter is brought to you by our friends at Insense.

⚡Some great content from around the TWIFiverse this week:

The Weekly Stable (Vol 14)

Why Circle Payment Network Matters

This Week in FintechChuk Okpalugo

Signals Q1’25: Early-stage funding is back, AI agents now *do* stuff

A roundup of fintech fundraises, exits, and product launches in Q1. Also: IPO uncertainty, deregulation, and Deel spying on Rippling.

This Week in FintechSophie Vo

🎧Brex CBO Art Levy: The Partnerships Playbook, How Brex Went Founder Mode, and Why You Always ‘Get on the Plane’

In today’s episode, Ryan Zauk is joined by Art Levy, Chief Business Officer at Brex. 🎧Brex CBO Art Levy: The Partnerships Playbook, How Brex Went Founder Mode, and Why You Always ’Get on the Plane’Podcast Episode · This Week in Fintech’s Podcast · 04/23/2025 · 45mApple Podcasts Brex is

This Week in FintechRyan Zauk

Great conversation this evening with fintech luminaries Adrienne A… | Nik Milanović

Great conversation this evening with fintech luminaries Adrienne A. Harris, Martha Beard, and Jane Barratt at Fintech Book Club. Thank you MX and This Week in Fintech teams for setting it up!

LinkedInNik Milanović

It was a pleasure to sit down with PingPong Payments' CEO of Global… | Nik Milanović

It was a pleasure to sit down with PingPong Payments' CEO of Global Business, David Messenger, to talk about cross-border payments, navigating fraud, AI, and how to help businesses navigate supply chain changes more smoothly. Jason Samantha Shiv This Week in Fintech

LinkedInNik Milanović

Please enjoy another week of fintech and banking news below.

(👍👎 Have feedback for us? Let us know. Find me at @nikmilanovic, @twifintech, and @ndm)

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🏦 Financial Services & Banking

🚀 Product Launches

SWIFT launched a case management tool to streamline investigations of delayed international payments, aiming to reduce operational costs and resolution times for banks.

📰 Other News

Meanwhile! Circle partnered with Standard Chartered, Deutsche Bank, Société Générale, and Santander to develop a stablecoin-based cross-border payment network intended to rival SWIFT, the Circle Payments Network.

Circle and BitGo are also preparing to apply for U.S. banking licenses to gain regulatory clarity and expand their services within the traditional financial system. And Bank of America initiated efforts to launch its own cash-backed digital dollar, the "Bank of America coin," and lobbied for regulations that would restrict stablecoin issuance to banks.

The SEC approved the establishment of the Green Impact Exchange, the first U.S. stock exchange dedicated to companies committed to sustainable governance, set to begin trading next year.

Blackstone may be getting into the retail game? The private equity firm is partnering with Vanguard and Wellington in a strategic alliance aimed at expanding their presence in individual investors' portfolios.

Cantor Fitzgerald entered into a $3.6 billion cryptocurrency venture deal with SoftBank and Tether, focusing on bitcoin acquisition and related services.

💬 Quote of the Week

💻 Fintech

🚀 Product Launches

Circle launched the Refund Protocol, a smart contract enabling non-custodial refunds and dispute resolution for stablecoin payments.

Wise introduced the 'Spend with Others' feature, allowing users to create groups of up to five people to share spending directly through the Wise platform.

Zopa it will launch a current account following its second consecutive profitable year. The UK-based digital bank doubled its pre-tax profits to £34.2 million and expanded its customer base to 1.4 million.

Bill.com expanded its financial operations platform by adding procurement capabilities, integrating accounts payable, accounts receivable, spend management, and forecasting into a single solution.

Greenfi launched as a climate-friendly consumer financial brand, emerging from the acquisition of Aspiration's consumer fintech division.

Coinflow* added cryptocurrency purchase capabilities to its payment portfolio suite, enabling businesses to accept crypto payments alongside traditional methods.

Ziina* launched Tap to Pay on iPhone in the UAE, allowing businesses to accept in-person, contactless payments directly on their iPhones without additional hardware.

Lynq, a collaboration among digital asset industry leaders including Arca Labs, Tassat, tZERO, and U.S. Bank, announced the upcoming launch of a real-time, yield-bearing settlement network for institutional clients.

10x Banking unveiled a suite of AI-powered core banking products designed to automate the mapping of legacy banking data, accelerate core migration, and provide real-time insights.

Thunes launched its Business Payments platform, enabling faster cross-border transactions in over 30 currencies across more than 50 countries. The solution allows businesses to pay suppliers in local currencies, reducing exchange rate and reconciliation costs.

Insense matches fintech brands with country-native UGC creators in 35+ countries worldwide, delivering authentic, multilingual content at scale. Find your perfect creators and run diverse collaborations from UGC to influencer posts, and influencer ads on Meta and TikTok. Manage your campaigns from end-to-end directly in the Insense platform - from sourcing, to brief, automated influencer agreements, and receive fully-licensed content.

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🍻 Upcoming Events

Founders & VC Mixer @ WebSummit Rio by Flourish Ventures, Accion Venture Lab, Honey Island Capital, QED & TWIF · Luma

Join us for the first edition of our Fintech Founders & VC Event at the Web Summit Rio 2025. For this event, we’re co-hosting an intimate happy hour for…

This Week in Fintech

💼 Jobs of the Week

This Week in Fintech Job Board

Search job openings across the This Week in Fintech network.

This Week in Fintech

📰 Other News

Neobank Revolut reported pre-tax profits of $1.4 billion and net profit at $1 billion for 2024.

Ramp is pursuing a contract with the U.S. General Services Administration's SmartPay program after noticing a tweet from the DOGE. The potential $25 million pilot aimed to modernize the government's $700 billion expense card system.

PayPal will now pay a 3.7% APY on PayPal USD (PYUSD) balances for U.S. users of PayPal and Venmo.

A group of senators is demanding that the Federal Reserve release records it has related to the failure of Synapse, a fintech firm that collapsed last year and left thousands of people without access to their savings.

#openbanking #mcp #agenticai #openfinance #opendata #modelcontextprotocol… | Federico Suarez Rendon

✍🏽AI Agents + Open Banking: The Next Frontier Needs a Framework🤖 In the digital economy, data is the new gold. But what happens when AI Agents become the miners, administrators, and spenders of that gold on our behalf? While #OpenBanking has revolutionized permissioned data sharing, and the newly developed Model Context Protocol (#MCP) by Anthropic created new standards for connecting AI systems to data sources, we lack a unified framework that combines these powerful approaches. The integration challenge can be significant: How can AI agents act on our behalf while ensuring security, transparency, and proper consent management? Universal Data Access Framework (UDAF) A Framework that leverages existing Open Banking standards and enhances them with the capabilities of model-context protocols. This framework would enable: ❄️ Explicit, granular consent management with clear audit trails ❄️ Standardized APIs that support secure data connections across domains ❄️ Robust security protocols with strong encryption and authentication ❄️ Regulatory compliance with data protection laws ❄️ Consumer empowerment through transparency and control ❄️ Proper identification and verification of AI agents Why This Matters Now🤔 Financial procrastination costs us dearly. How often have you delayed important financial decisions due to the burdensome processes involved? AI agents could eliminate this friction by analysing options aligned with your circumstances, executing decisions with minimal effort—but only if we build the right consent architecture first. AI agents are here to empower us! As builders in this space, we have a responsibility to ensure that consent remains the cornerstone of this evolution. Borrowing from the quote in the article: 💠With great power comes responsibility💠. For Builders, Developers, and Innovators For those building the next generation of fintech and AI tools: we require standardized consent flows that work for both humans and their AI agents. The good news❓ We're not starting from scratch. The robust frameworks developed for Open Banking across multiple jurisdictions have proven resilient against growing cybersecurity challenges. By applying these lessons to agentic AI, we can shape a more secure future where consumers benefit from AI without sacrificing control. The future where agents act on our behalf is coming—but only with your expertise can we ensure it arrives with proper consent, security, and transparency at its core. This is an invitation to join the conversation about building bridges between two transformative technologies [Document in the Comments👇🏽] . #AgenticAI #OpenFinance #OpenData #ModelContextProtocol #ConsentFramework #FinancialInnovation #AIFinance #DataPrivacy #FutureOfFinance #DigitalTransformation #AIRegulation #APIStandards #DataAccess #FinancialInclusion #UDAF #Web3 #DataSecurity

LinkedInFederico Suarez Rendon

🤝 Partnership Corner

Moneygram is partnering with Plaid to enable U.S. customers to authenticate their bank accounts for faster and more secure domestic and cross-border payments.

Spark is collaborating with Brale to introduce fiat-backed stablecoins natively on the Bitcoin network, enabling instant, fee-free transactions. (Come see them both on-stage at Stablecon!)

Klarna sealed a deal with eBay to roll out its flexible payment options to millions of shoppers across the US.

👎 The Bad News

Adyen suffered three distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks on Easter Monday, disrupting payment services across Europe.

The FDIC ordered Discover Bank to pay over $1.2 billion in restitution to merchants overcharged on interchange fees due to misclassified credit cards.