Two phones, a quick screen tap, and a few dollars move between strangers at a restaurant table. That gesture is now a daily reflex for tens of millions of US adults, and the rails underneath have grown into one of the largest consumer-facing payment systems in the country. The companies running those rails are now […]Read the full article on TechBullion.

Dilip Asbe said that newer UPI apps could be more competitive with a viable commercial model

This week’s edition of Finovate Global looks at recent fintech headlines from India. CRED raises $900 million in round led by Meta CRED, a membership-based, credit rewards platform that offers solutions across payments, lending, insurance, wealth, and lifestyle, has secured $900 million in Series H funding. The round was led by Meta, and will be structured through a combination of primary and secondary share purchases. Meta will join the CRED cap table as a minority investor; CRED will earn a post-money valuation of $4.5 billion. With 1.7 million members engaging with its platform every month, CRED processes more than 40% of credit card bill payments in India, and has seen its lending business grow to more than $2.5 billion in managed assets. The investment will enable the company to accelerate growth, build “institutional muscle,” and extend its leadership across verticals. The company announced that its founder, Kunal Shah, will transition from his operating role as CEO to head WhatsApp internationally. India is WhatsApp’s largest market, with more than 500 million users. Miten Sampat, who has led strategy and finance for CRED since 2020, will take the helm as interim CEO. “I started CRED in 2018 with a belief that creditworthiness deserves to be rewarded,” Shah said. “In under eight years, that belief has turned into a new category: millions of members, $325 million in revenue, profitability, a full stack of licenses, and a strong brand. On this foundation, with additional capital and an extraordinarily talented team, CRED is poised to become an enduring institution for decades to come.” CRED is headquartered in Bengaluru, Karnataka, India. The company’s investment announcement comes as the firm launches a new AI-powered credit coaching solution for CRED members. The AI credit coach provides personalized, real-time guidance based on the user’s credit profile to help them better understand their credit status and improve their credit health. Navi UPI enhances fraud protection capabilities Navi UPI, a popular UPI app, has unveiled Navi Secure, a new unified framework that combines the platform’s existing fraud prevention, risk monitoring, and user protection capabilities. The offering is designed to help merchants and users deal with the proliferation of increasingly sophisticated fraud attacks that leverage social engineering, compromised devices, false merchants, and more. With intelligent risk signals, contextual alerts, and preventive safeguards embedded in the customer journey, Navi Secure helps firms reduce risk across a range of fraud scenarios, including scam-driven payments and manipulation-based fraud; compromised devices and apps; unsafe networks and environments; and high-risk entities and transaction behavior. “Given digital payments have become central to everyday life, fraud prevention needs to be real time and contextual. Navi Secure reflects our commitment to building trust-first financial infrastructure, where safety is embedded into every transaction, not added as an afterthought,” Navi Limited MD and CEO Rajiv Naresh said. “By combining advanced risk intelligence with user-friendly safeguards, we are ensuring that customers can use UPI with confidence, knowing that Navi is actively working in the background to protect their money.” Navi UPI is among the fastest growing financial services companies in India. The company’s UPI transaction volumes grew from more than 709 million to more than 824 million between January and May 2026. The company currently has 3.6% of India’s UPI market share; a market dominated by PhonePe (46.2%) and Google Pay (32.7%). Bengaluru-based Navi is a financial services company that provides personal and home loans, insurance, mutual funds, and gold investing, as well as UPI, India’s flagship instant real-time payments system (Unified Payments Interface). Navi UPI is the company’s money transfer solution, which leverages UPI to deliver money transfers anytime, anywhere. Navi was founded in 2018. Indian paytech Skydo expands to Canada Payments platform Skydo has won its first regulatory approval outside of its native India. The Bengaluru-based company has secured an international payment license in Canada that will enable the company to offer two-way payment flows, including local collections and payouts, between India and Canada. “Securing our first international license marks Skydo’s evolution from an India-focused cross-border payments platform to a multi-country payments operator,” Skydo CEO and Co-Founder Srivatsan Sridhar said. “With Canada, we are expanding beyond collections to enable seamless two-way payment flows and support growing India-Canada commerce.” Founded in 2022, Skydo is a cross-border B2B payments specialist, reducing foreign exchange charges for businesses by more than 50%. The company partners with leading banks around the world, providing businesses with their own foreign virtual accounts to enable them to receive payments without tax or compliance complications. Supporting more than 150 countries, Skydo’s platform processes more than 200,000 payments a year and is used by 40,000+ Indian exporters. Skydo has referred to Canada as a strategic market, given the scale of trade activity between India and Canada. In 2025, India and Canada reached $10.9 billion in bilateral merchandise trade. Both countries have indicated that they would like to more than double two-way trade, currently at just over $30 billion annually, to $70 billion by 2030. “Our ambition is to build for the world, from India,” Skydo Co-Founder Movin Jain said. “Canada strengthens our global footprint, enables local collections and payouts, and creates a strong foundation for future expansion across North America.” Skydo’s regulatory win in Canada comes just a month after the company received in-principle approval to operate as a Payment Service Provider (PSP) in the International Financial Services Centre (IFSC) at Gujarat International Finance Tec-City. Here is our look at fintech innovation around the world. Asia-Pacific Japanese financial giant SBI Holdings agreed to acquire crypto exchange Bitbank for $298 million. Singapore-based fintech platform Airwallex earned a valuation of $11 billion after securing $320 million in Series H funding. Mynt, the parent company Philippine mobile payments and finance superapp GCash, has filed for an $1.5 billion IPO on the Philippine Stock Exchange. Sub-Saharan Africa Nigerian fintech Daya secured $2.4 million in pre-seed funding to expand its stablecoin payments technology for African businesses. Kenya-based fintech WapiPay received a Money Services Business license from Canada’s Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Center (FINTRAC). Pan-African fintech DigiPay and French fintech Belmoney launched DigiTransfer, a mobile app that enables money transfers between France, Belgium, the Republic of the Congo, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Central and Eastern Europe Albania launched its first fully digital bank, Jet Bank. Mastercard and PrivatBank announced completion of Ukraine’s first payment executed by AI agent. Austrian-Swiss global payout infrastructure startup Talentir raised €4 million in seed funding in a round led by Redstone. Middle East and Northern Africa Egyptian fintech MNT-Halan announced plans for an IPO that could give the company a valuation of $1 billion. Lean Technologies and Ziina teamed up to launch the UAE’s first One-Tap Pay by Bank experience. Israeli fintech Payoneer agreed to be sold to Canadian firm Nuvei for $2.7 billion. Central and Southern Asia Indian fintech Cred secured $900 million in Series H funding in a round led by Meta. Karachi-based easypaisa digital bank inked a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Binance to “explore innovative opportunities” in fintech, digital savings, and investment solutions. Indian UPI app Navi UPI, unveiled a new unified safety framework, Navi Secure. Latin American and the Caribbean CSU Digital, the largest independent card processor in Latin America, has embarked upon its US expansion. Iupana looked at how new governments in Colombia and Peru are seeking to bolster the fintech sectors of their respective countries. Payward, financial infrastructure platform and parent company of Kraken, secured a Virtual Asset Service Provider (VASP) registrations from the British Virgin Islands Financial Services Commission (BVI FSC). Photo by Shiv Prasad on Unsplash The post Finovate Global India: Raising Capital, Fighting Fraud, and Innovating in Payments appeared first on Finovate.       

Oracle's surging spending, negative free cash flow and $130 billion debt pile are weighing on the stock.

Tradeweb Markets, which is also a minority investor in Kalshi, has launched a dedicated prediction market data suite on its platform, integrating real-time event probabilities from Kalshi alongside traditional fixed-income, credit, and equity market data. The launch expands Tradeweb’s market data offering and gives institutional clients access to prediction market probabilities within the same workflows they already use for pricing and execution.Today we announced the launch of a dedicated @Kalshi pricing page on the Tradeweb platform, giving U.S. institutional clients access to key event contract data alongside the existing tools and information they use to analyze markets and manage risk. The pricing page will also… pic.twitter.com/g69Rei67pr— Tradeweb (@Tradeweb) June 24, 2026Today’s launch represents the first operational phase of the partnership announced earlier this year, with Tradeweb initially integrating Kalshi’s market data into its existing institutional workflows.Tradeweb and Kalshi have also said they plan to develop analytics combining event probabilities with pricing, liquidity, and macroeconomic data, extending the integration beyond a standalone market data feed.From Market Signals to Event Probabilities Institutional investors have traditionally relied on instruments such as inflation swaps or interest rate futures to infer market expectations. The Tradeweb-Kalshi integration allows clients to monitor market-implied probabilities for specific political, economic, and financial events directly within the platform.“Investors want to trade on real events, not proxies,” said Andy Ross, Head of Institutional at Kalshi. “Integrating prediction market data into one of the world’s leading institutional platforms is an important step toward more accurately pricing the future.” Tradeweb will also add support for Kalshi’s American Power Index, which combines market-implied probabilities across the US presidency, House, and Senate into a single indicator of political and policy risk. The index is designed to give institutional users a consolidated view of political developments that can influence rates, credit, and equity markets. What It Means for Brokers For Tradeweb clients, the practical benefit is workflow integration. Prediction market data can now be monitored alongside other market signals without leaving the platform. “Our clients want access to that signal within the workflows they already use,” said Troy Dixon, Co-head of Global Markets at Tradeweb. The integration also reflects a broader trend of financial market infrastructure providers adding prediction market data alongside traditional market information.The rollout also comes as Kalshi continues to attract institutional backing. The company is reportedly in talks to raise fresh funding at a valuation of around $40 billion, less than two months after completing a $1 billion round at a $22 billion valuation.For brokers and trading platforms, the question increasingly becomes whether prediction market probabilities should be treated as another market data feed available within existing trading workflows. This article was written by Tanya Chepkova at www.financemagnates.com.

This week, we tracked more than 75 tech funding deals worth over €2.1 billion and over 5 exits, M&A transactions, rumours, and related news stories across Europe. If email is more your thing, you can always subscribe to our newsletter and receive a more robust version of this round-up delivered to your inbox. Either way, let's get you up to speed. ? Notable and big funding rounds ?? Stark bags €500M in new funding ??  Health insurance outfit Alan agrees €480M funding round ?? Chip gear maker Nearfield Instruments raises $380M ??‍?? Noteworthy acquisitions and mergers ??  LiveKid acquires Aldea to expand in Latin America ?? House of Gaia Group is acquiring Codio Impact ??  Withings acquires the Rennes-based medtech company Biosency ? Interesting moves from investors ? Revolut and Synthesia early backer Seedcamp raises $320M, invests in US ?  Main Capital doubles down on enterprise software with €5.25 billion fund close ? New €34M Nucleo Ventures fund targets startups and SMEs across Central and Eastern Europe ? Blue Lake VC closes in on first fund with British Business Bank backing for immigrant-led startups ? ARX Robotics and Roboneers form ARX Industries to scale unmanned ground vehicle production ? European tech startups to watch  ??  SuperPlane secures $2.6M to turn production operations into an AI-native workflow layer ?? Wakeline lands €2.1M to bring continuous learning to AI ?? Serpier raises €1.4M to help online retailers improve digital visibility ?? Superpal raises €500,000 for AI coworker platform built inside Slack ?? LabCycle secures £430,000 to commercialise lab plastic recycling system and cut incineration waste

Swiss digital asset infrastructure provider SCRYPT has integrated Franklin Templeton‘s tokenised money market fund into its internal treasury operations. The company is using the BENJI token to gain round-the-clock liquidity for its idle cash reserves, reducing its reliance on traditional settlement cycles. SCRYPT is using the BENJI token, which represents shares in the Franklin OnChain US Government Money Fund (FOBXX). The integration allows the Swiss-licensed firm to manage its treasury with continuous on-chain access to a yield-bearing asset. Conventional money market funds typically settle on a T+1 basis and operate within standard banking hours. This creates a settlement mismatch for digital asset firms that manage liquidity in markets that operate around the clock. By deploying its idle capital into a tokenised fund, SCRYPT can achieve more immediate liquidity for its treasury. The firm executes these transactions on the same institutional infrastructure it uses for trading, settlement, and custody. Sylvan Martin “Integrating BENJI into SCRYPT’s treasury gives us 24/7 intraday liquidity in a tokenised money market fund issued by one of the world’s most established asset managers,” said Sylvan Martin, Founder and Chief Growth Officer at SCRYPT. The deployment shows how regulated counterparties are placing their internal treasuries on tokenised cash rails before offering similar models to their clients.     Featured image credit: Edited by Fintech News Switzerland, based on image by agilimam107 via Magnific The post SCRYPT Uses Franklin Templeton’s BENJI Token for 24/7 Treasury Access appeared first on Fintech Schweiz Digital Finance News - FintechNewsCH.

The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) is setting up a Future of Finance Institute to help financial firms move AI and tokenisation projects beyond pilots. The institute will initially focus on AI and tokenisation, bringing together financial institutions, technology firms, researchers and fintech players to support wider adoption across the sector. The Future of Finance Institute will build on existing MAS-led initiatives in AI and tokenisation, including the MindForge AI Risk Management Toolkit, PathFin.ai, Project Guardian and Project Orchid. MAS said the institute will act as a coordinating body for the next phase of Singapore’s financial innovation efforts. While MAS will continue to set policy and regulatory frameworks, the institute will work with industry to reduce adoption barriers and support deployment across institutions of different sizes. Its work will include maintaining a knowledge hub of validated use cases, deployment guides and solution providers. It will also support industry collaboration through an innovation garage, provide sandboxes for testing technologies such as programmable money, tokenised assets and AI-enabled workflows, and develop toolkits for areas such as agentic AI and programmable compliance. The institute will have a board comprising representatives from MAS, major financial institutions, technology firms and academia. It will also draw on practitioners with industry and technology experience. More details on the Future of Finance Institute’s strategy and governance will be announced later this year.   The post MAS Sets Up Future of Finance Institute to Move AI, Tokenisation Beyond Pilots appeared first on Fintech Singapore.

Fintech users often contact support when payments or connections fail. Plaid Link now offers an AI tool to address these problems right away. The Fin AI Agent steps in to guide users through fixes. Table of Contents Key Facts Simple Breakdown Why This Matters What's Next Key Facts The Fin AI Agent is now part of Plaid Link. It helps when users report issues with connections or payments. Most support questions involve things not working as expected. The tool aims to speed up responses for fintech customers. Plaid focuses on open banking links between banks and apps. Simple Breakdown Plaid Link lets apps connect to bank accounts safely. This is key for open banking and Digital Payments. The new AI agent acts like a smart helper. It answers questions about errors or failed links. Users get quick tips without waiting for a person. The system spots common problems in real time. Why This Matters Support teams handle many calls about broken links or payment fails. This AI tool cuts wait times for answers. It lets human staff focus on hard cases. Fintech apps can keep users happy with faster help. Better support builds trust in digital payments and embedded finance tools. What's Next More fintech firms may add similar AI helpers soon. The tool could grow to cover more payment types. Users might see even quicker fixes as the AI learns. Watch for updates in open banking services over the coming months. ⚡ Key Takeaways Plaid Link now has an AI agent for support tasks. The tool targets common issues like failed connections. It reduces time spent on basic support questions. Fintech users gain faster help with payments. The change supports open banking and digital finance. Teams can handle more complex problems with AI aid. Expect similar tools in other payment platforms. FAQ What does the Fin AI Agent do in Plaid Link? It helps users fix issues like failed bank links or payment errors. Why add AI to fintech support? AI handles simple questions fast so staff can focus on tough cases. Is this change only for US users? The update applies to Plaid Link users in supported regions. How soon can users try the AI agent? It is now live in Plaid Link for immediate access. Conclusion The Fin AI Agent marks a step toward quicker help in payments. Fintech firms will likely build on this idea. Users should see smoother experiences ahead. Sources Finextra (2026-06-04)