Robinhood Ventures Fund I made early investments in Stripe and ElevenLabs, expanding its portfolio of private fintech and AI companies. The fund, which began trading earlier this month on the New York Stock Exchange, gives retail investors access to private market opportunities traditionally reserved for institutional and accredited investors. As part of its push to become a financial super app, Robinhood is building infrastructure to package and distribute private assets. Robinhood Ventures’ first fund, Robinhood Ventures Fund I (RVI), announced it has closed investments in Stripe and ElevenLabs, just days after the fund began trading on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol RVI. Last week, RVI purchased $14.6 million of Class B common stock of Stripe in secondary transactions, and days later bought $20 million of Series D preferred stock of ElevenLabs in a primary transaction. Founded in 2010, Stripe enables businesses to accept payments, manage billing, and embed financial services into digital platforms. UK-based ElevenLabs is an AI research and product company focused on audio, voice, and realistic speech. Robinhood launched Robinhood Ventures to enable its users to invest in private companies. The portfolio now includes Airwallex, Boom, Databricks, ElevenLabs, Mercor, Oura, Ramp, Revolut, and Stripe. Robinhood plans to add more private companies in the future. “We’re excited to add Stripe and ElevenLabs to Robinhood Ventures Fund I and are proud to offer retail investors access to these frontier companies,” said Robinhood Ventures Fund I President Sarah Pinto. “They are helping shape the future of fintech and AI, and reflect RVI’s focus on investing in innovative companies operating at the forefront of their industries.” In an era when valuable tech companies are staying private for longer, it is difficult for everyday investors to tap into that value. Instead, access has traditionally been limited to wealthy and institutional investors. But because Robinhood doesn’t require investors to be accredited or charge performance fees like traditional venture funds do, a wider variety of investors are able to participate. Expanding its investment infrastructure is a key piece for Robinhood, which has recently disclosed its goal of becoming a financial super app. The California-based company is offering more than just investment access. It is building the rails to package, price, and distribute traditionally illiquid assets to everyday investors. If this infrastructure model proves successful, Robinhood could expand beyond venture equity into other private market categories such as credit, real estate, and tokenized assets. Photo by Magda Ehlers The post Robinhood Ventures Invests in Stripe and ElevenLabs appeared first on Finovate.       

Pay by Bank infrastructure provider Token.io unveiled its Account on File feature this week. The new feature securely recalls a user’s preferred bank and accounts and presents these as defaults for future transactions, boosting the convenience of Pay by Bank. Token.io was founded in 2015 and made its Finovate debut the same year at FinovateSpring. Todd Clyde is CEO. Token.io launched its new Account on File feature this week. Designed to boost the convenience of Pay by Bank, the new offering securely recalls a user’s preferred bank and accounts and presents them as default selections for future transactions. Token.io said that Pay by Bank will be a boon to payment service providers (PSPs) and merchants across the UK and Europe, enhancing the customer experience and increasing checkout conversion rates. “For high-frequency transaction scenarios, such as e-commerce purchases or account top-ups, every extra step costs you customers,” Token.io Director of Product Sam French said. “With our new Account on File feature, Pay by Bank can become a one-tap experience for returning payers, driving high conversion rates for merchants, while giving consumers a secure, familiar way to pay straight from their bank accounts.” Like Card on File, Account on File helps streamline the typical Pay by Bank experience, removing up to two steps. This results in fewer clicks, faster checkouts, fewer drop-offs, and more completed transactions. Account on File will enable merchants to settle faster, experience lower processing costs, and benefit from the improved cash flow that comes with account-to-account (A2A) payments. Additionally, Token.io has put tokenization at the core of its new Account on File feature, enhancing both security and trust. Tokenization swaps sensitive account details for a non-sensitive token. This token is used to reference the user’s bank account(s) without exposing sensitive, underlying information. Token.io’s latest offering comes at a time when Pay by Bank is becoming increasingly popular. The company’s own research indicated that 90% of PSPs offer or expect to offer Pay by Bank in the near future. Token.io’s Account on File feature is currently available through the company’s latest API. Founded in 2015 and headquartered in London, Token.io made its Finovate debut at FinovateSpring 2015. The company most recently demoed its technology at FinovateEurope 2017. Today, Token.io is a leading A2A payment infrastructure provider with partners including three of Europe’s five largest financial institutions, as well as major payments companies such as fellow Finovate alums Mastercard and ACI Worldwide. Photo by www.kaboompics.com The post Token.io Unveils Account on File, Enhancing Pay by Bank appeared first on Finovate.       

Payouts and treasury platform PayQuicker launched its 1099 tax reporting solution, powered by fellow Finovate alum Avalara. The new offering helps reduce the complexity of 1099 filing while keeping companies compliant with the latest regulatory mandates. New York-based PayQuicker made its Finovate debut at FinovateFall 2022. Avalara is an alum of Finovate’s developer conference, FinDEVr Silicon Valley 2015. PayQuicker, a payouts and treasury platform that made its Finovate debut at FinovateFall 2022 in New York, has introduced its new 1099 tax reporting solution. Powered by agentic tax and compliance specialist—and fellow Finovate alum—Avalara, the new offering will help companies streamline and automate 1099 reporting while reducing both compliance risk and administrative burden. “Businesses need reliable automated solutions to stay compliant without slowing down operations,” PayQuicker CFO Joe Bertalli said. “By partnering with Avalara, we’re able to provide our customers with a robust 1099 solution that reduces complexity, increases accuracy, and gives them confidence in their compliance processes.” PayQuicker’s 1099 solution enables companies to collect W-9 and other W-series tax forms over the course of the year to help ensure accurate payee information at all times. PayQuicker’s solution also leverages real-time Taxpayer Identification Number (TIN) matching to validate data at the point of collection. This helps reduce the potential for costly backup withholding notices, penalties, and corrections at a time when regulatory requirements around tax reporting for businesses are becoming increasingly complex. Powered by Avalara’s tax compliance technology, PayQuicker’s 1099 solution provides scalable, secure, and compliant tax reporting for businesses managing sizable numbers of payees. The solution facilitates the accurate and efficient generation, filing, and distribution of 1099 forms supported by automated federal and state filing, electronic delivery, and ongoing regulatory updates. “PayQuicker is focused on making complex financial workflows easier for businesses,” Avalara General Manager for 1099 Reporting Queenie Lee said. “We’re excited to power their 1099 solution with Avalara’s compliance expertise, enabling customers to automate reporting and reduce risk while staying focused on growth.” An alum of Finovate’s developer conference, FinDEVr Silicon Valley 2015, Avalara leverages an expansive library of tax content and industry integrations to serve more than 200,000 direct and indirect customers in more than 75 countries. Avalara’s purpose-built AI agents automate compliance processes from tax calculations and return filings to exemption certificate management and more. Avalara has helped companies achieve an 85% reduction in time spent managing tax returns and a 50% reduction in time spent on exemption certificate management. Scott McFarlane is Co-Founder and CEO. Headquartered in Rochester, New York, PayQuicker made its Finovate debut at FinovateFall 2022. At the conference, PayQuicker demonstrated its Payouts OS solution which packages the company’s technology into an in-market payouts orchestration platform. Payouts OS leverages a single REST API that plugs into multiple banks and international payment rails to identify and facilitate the fastest, most cost-effective way for clients to make payouts to businesses and consumers around the world. Photo by Nataliya Vaitkevich The post PayQuicker Partners with Avalara to Launch New Tax Reporting Solution appeared first on Finovate.       

Embedded finance platform Array has been on a truly remarkable acquisition pace in recent weeks. The company, which won Best of Show in its Finovate debut at FinovateFall 2021 and again in its return to the Finovate stage for FinovateSpring 2022, acquired fellow Finovate alum—and fellow Best of Show winner—Penny Finance in late February. This move came just a few days after Array announced its acquisition of another Finovate alum and Best of Show winner, Chimney. And just to show that Array’s appetites are not limited to Best of Show-winning Finovate alums, the company also announced its acquisition of paytech EarnUp less than a month ago. What do these acquisitions mean for Array? Overall, these deals represent the company’s strategy to provide its financial institution partners with modular, embeddable tools and data that enable them to boost engagement, improve retention, and secure measurable value. Designed to complement the solutions currently offered by fintechs, financial institutions, and digital brands, Array’s embedded, invisible-by-design approach allows consumers to enjoy a wider range of financial solutions and services while still relying on the brands they know and trust. Consider Penny Finance. Penny Finance is an online financial planning engine that enables credit unions and community banks to provide personalized education, resources, and services to their members and customers. Headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts, and founded in 2020 by CEO Crissi Cole, Penny Finance helps individuals and families pay off debt, begin investing, and build wealth—all within a unified, integrated solution. Array Founder and CEO Martin Toha said that acquiring Penny Finance will enable Array to serve consumers the same way that they experience financial challenges and responsibilities: “as part of a single, ongoing journey.” “Penny Finance strengthens our ability to support that full picture,” Toha said, “enabling our partners to deliver more holistic, consumer-first financial experiences directly within the products people already use.” The acquisition will empower Array to help its clients address a broader range of consumer needs and complements the company’s current credit, identity, and privacy offerings with solutions to help consumers enhance their financial wellness through better savings behavior and financial planning. “Penny was built to give people confidence in how they spend, save, and plan—without judgment or complexity,” Penny Finance’s Cole said. “By joining Array, we can scale that mission and integrate financial education and planning tools into trusted experiences that already play a meaningful role in people’s financial lives.” Array’s acquisition of Chimney will add the fintech’s modern financial calculators and home value tracking tools to its platform offerings. Founded in 2020 and based in Brooklyn, New York, Chimney helps more than 160 financial institutions in the US leverage real-time property data and predictive analytics to engage homeowners and grow loans. Chimney’s technology identifies high-propensity opportunities for home equity, refinancing, new mortgages, and more, enabling financial institutions to target the right customers and members at the right time with personalized offers delivered inside their banking apps and platforms. In his statement, Chimney CEO and Co-Founder Matthew Covi underscored this last point, highlighting the value of embedded finance in helping consumers get the resources they need while remaining engaged with the brands they trust. “Traditional financial institutions are where the majority of Americans manage their finances,” Covi said. “By empowering these institutions with personalized, data-driven solutions that modernize the banking experience, we’ve realized our mission of helping millions of Americans live healthier financial lives.” Lastly, EarnUp is a payments technology firm that helps consumers better manage debt and bills by aligning mortgage, loan, and bill payments with pay cycles. By enabling them to disaggregate large, inflexible monthly payments into smaller contributions aligned with their paychecks, EarnUp helps lower the amount of missed payments to creditors and financial stress for debtors. Headquartered in San Francisco, California, and founded in 2015, EarnUp has completed 50 million transactions with a cumulative value of $43 billion since inception. Brad Woodcox is CEO. “EarnUp is a long-standing proven product in the home loan space, having supported millions of US mortgage borrowers through deep integrations with leading mortgage servicing platforms,” Toha said. “We hope to use this distribution and product to extend Array’s reach into the home loan payments space. This acquisition strengthens our ability to help financial services providers deliver more practical, consumer-centric experiences—especially for households managing tight margins and multiple debt obligations.” Founded in 2020 and headquartered in New York City, Array most recently demoed its technology at FinovateSpring 2023. At the conference, the company demonstrated two of its latest financial solutions—HelloPrivacy (now Privacy Protect) and Subscription Manager—to help banks and other financial institutions generate noninterest income and boost engagement while providing customers with resources to help them stay safe online and save money. Privacy Protect helps defend users from identity theft and privacy risks by monitoring and removing personal information from the web. Subscription Manager helps users manage their subscriptions better, canceling unused subscriptions and negotiating lower rates on select subscriptions. FinovateSpring 2026 will take place at The Sheraton San Diego on May 5-7. Register today using this link and save 20%. Photo by Toomas Tartes on Unsplash The post Embedded Finance Platform Array Acquires Penny Finance, Chimney, EarnUp appeared first on Finovate.       

Mastercard is acquiring stablecoin infrastructure provider BVNK for up to $1.8 billion to bridge fiat and on-chain payments within a single network. The deal positions Mastercard to connect cards, bank rails, stablecoins, and tokenized deposits to create a unified, multi-rail payments ecosystem. While competitor Visa relies on a partnership-led approach to stablecoin integration, Mastercard is seeking to own the infrastructure layer outright. Mastercard is making a move to own the rails that bridge stablecoins and fiat this week. The payments giant is acquiring stablecoin infrastructure provider BVNK for up to $1.8 billion, including $300 million in contingent payments.  The announcement comes at a time when the current stablecoin market capitalization exceeds $316 billion, a figure that is up 2.5x from 2023. It also comes as users across the globe are increasingly open to holding stablecoins. In a recent survey of over 4,000 stablecoin and crypto holders, BVNK found that 56% of participants expressed plans to acquire more stablecoins within the next 12 months. This increased utility of stablecoins is creating a need in the traditional financial space as users require a bridge between fiat and stablecoins. As a result, banks and fintechs need to offer their customers payment options enabled by stablecoins and tokenized deposits. Mastercard anticipates that acquiring BVNK’s stablecoin infrastructure will allow it to become the bridge between fiat and stablecoins. The company will connect stablecoin rails to its own network to offer consumers the accessibility and interoperability they have come to expect in the traditional finance realm. “We expect that most financial institutions and fintechs will in time provide digital currency services, be it with stablecoins or tokenized deposits. We want to support them and their customers with a best-in-class, highly compliant, interoperable offering that brings the benefits of tokenized money to the real world,” said Mastercard Chief Product Officer Jorn Lambert. “This acquisition reinforces what we have always done, using innovation and technology to power economies and empower people. Adding on-chain rails to our network will support speed and programmability for virtually every type of transaction.” Mastercard isn’t the first traditional card network making a move to establish a foothold in the stablecoin space. Visa has formed partnerships with Circle and Bridge to support USDC payments and enable on-chain settlement flows. Mastercard, however, is taking things a step further. Instead of relying on a partnership-led approach, the network giant is acquiring the stablecoin infrastructure outright. Bringing the infrastructure in-house will allow Mastercard to connect traditional finance, on-chain assets, and enterprise payment flows within a single network. BVNK was founded in 2021 and currently processes over $25 billion each year on behalf of enterprises and payment service providers. The UK-based company leverages stablecoins to enable businesses to move value instantly across borders and networks. Through its partnerships with global licensing bodies and Tier 1 banks, BVNK serves clients such as Worldpay, Deel, and dLocal. “This partnership is about complementary strengths: Mastercard brings 200+ countries and territories, institutional trust and settlement rails. BVNK brings proven stablecoin infrastructure, deep expertise and an enterprise customer base,” said BVNK Co-founder and CEO Jesse Hemson-Struthers in a post on LinkedIn. “More trust attracts more users. More users attract more businesses. More businesses attract more developers. And suddenly, moving money on stablecoin rails becomes as routine as moving money on traditional rails—accessible to everyone.” Once the acquisition is finalized later this year, Mastercard will be able to offer a single network to connect cards, bank rails, stablecoins, and tokenized deposits. The new, multi-rail approach will let customers choose the solutions that work best for them without tying them down to a single platform. “This deal brings together complementary capabilities to define and deliver the future of money,” said Hemson-Struthers. “Together, we’re able to deliver an unprecedented infrastructure for digital currency-based financial services.” The post Mastercard Acquires Stablecoin Infrastructure BVNK for $1.8 Billion appeared first on Finovate.       

Multi-rail payments infrastructure platform BVNK recently published a report on stablecoin utility that examines how consumers actually use stablecoins. The report found that consumers’ desire to obtain stablecoins is rising, and that stablecoins are becoming a fixture of consumers’ savings portfolios. Published in partnership with YouGov, Coinbase, and Artemis, the report is the result of a survey of 4,658 crypto and stablecoin holders across 15 countries. Here are four major findings from the survey: Stablecoin holdings increasing Of the stablecoin holders surveyed, almost half (49%) increased their holdings within the past 12 months, while only 7% of people decreased their holdings. More than half (56%) of crypto or stablecoin holders expressed plans to acquire more stablecoins in the next 12 months. This shows that stablecoins are transitioning from a niche tool into a mainstream asset. Crypto owners are diversifying The report also surveyed crypto holders who do not yet own stablecoins. Among this subset of non-owners, 13% said that they intend to acquire stablecoins in the next 12 months. In low and middle income economies such as Africa, consumers showed a higher interest in acquiring stablecoins for the first time. In fact, in Africa in particular, 76% of respondents said that they plan to acquire stablecoins in the next 12 months. This is a reflection of the utility of stablecoins in lower income regions. Stablecoins and crypto are becoming a core element of savings The stablecoin and crypto holders surveyed reported allocating around one-third (34%) of their savings to crypto and stablecoins. Almost half (48%) of respondents allocate up to a quarter of their savings to stablecoins and crypto. This shows that many consumers are beginning to treat digital assets not as speculative, but as a meaningful component of their long-term savings strategies. Stablecoin holders are relatively young Not surprisingly, more than half (54%) of those surveyed who own stablecoins are aged 18 to 34 years old. Of the respondents in the older age bracket of 55+, only 8% said that they currently hold stablecoins, while 17% of people in that age range said that they plan to acquire crypto within the next 12 months. This shows that stablecoin adoption is being driven largely by younger consumers who are more comfortable incorporating new financial technologies into their everyday financial lives. Overall, the findings suggest that stablecoins are evolving beyond their early role as a trading tool within crypto markets and are beginning to function as a practical financial instrument for everyday users. As access to digital wallets and crypto infrastructure improves, stablecoins are increasingly positioned to bridge traditional finance and digital assets by offering consumers a way to store value, move money globally, and participate in global markets with lower barriers than traditional finance. Photo by DS stories The post What BVNK’s Report Reveals About How Consumers Are Using Stablecoins appeared first on Finovate.       

Regtech Napier AI unveiled Insights AI, its new solution to help companies enhance their anti-money laundering (AML) screening processes. The new offering will help financial crime compliance teams close key gaps in AML investigations by providing behavioral analytics and AI-enabled explanations of contributing activity. Headquartered in London, Napier AI made its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope 2018. AI-powered financial crime compliance solutions provider Napier AI announced new functionality in its Transaction Monitoring solution that will help firms with their anti-money laundering (AML) screening. The new offering, Insights AI, provides behavioral analytics and natural language explanations for use in financial crime compliance, closing what Napier called “critical gaps” in anti-money laundering investigations. The new functionality comes courtesy of an innovation partnership between Napier AI and the UK Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), with the company leveraging the FCA’s Supercharged Sandbox to test new models and strategies. The goal was to provide financial crime compliance teams with a tool that would surface clear, AI-enabled explanations of customer behavior beyond the initial alert. These insights would be available directly within transaction monitoring tasks, highlighting behavioral patterns and illuminating potential new or emerging risks during the investigation. This is because, for most compliance teams, the challenge is less total alert volume and more about investigation inefficiency. To this end, Insights AI identifies relevant behavioral patterns, explains contributing activity in context, reduces the amount of time spent on manual data analysis, and enables compliance teams to focus on more complex issues during the investigation process. Napier Chief Data Scientist Janet Bastiman underscored the value of the relationship between the company and the FCA. “Participating in the FCA Supercharged Sandbox allowed us to design and run new approaches to testing AI models for anti-money laundering,” Bastiman said. “One of the biggest historical challenges in tackling complex money laundering typologies is the disconnected nature of the data required for pattern analysis along the complete lifecycle of customer behavior or transaction flows.” Under the name “Project Theseus,” the technology was tested for pattern mining and fluid dynamics as part of the FCA Supercharged Sandbox Showcase. This involved the deployment of frequency-based AI algorithms on large-scale synthetic financial data sets to identify money laundering typologies more effectively than traditional rules-based systems—while using significantly less computing power. The tested AML transaction monitoring models now form part of the Napier AI Continuum platform and support the company’s newly announced Insights AI feature. “The embedding of Insights AI into our Transaction Monitoring solution is all about ensuring the incredible data science behind the scenes is surfaced in a way that puts power into the hands of AML analysts, to make the best possible human-in-the-loop decisions for the alerts,” Napier AI Chief Product Officer Will Monk said. “We lead with a compliance-first approach to AI in AML by partnering closely with the FCA so we can ensure our product aligns with regulatory guidance and meets policy goals around reducing the impact of economic crime on the UK.” Founded in 2015, Napier AI made its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope 2018 in London. At the conference, the company demonstrated how its customer screening and transaction monitoring enhancement software enables firms to enhance their AML and client screening processes. The company’s technology helps reduce false positives by up to 80% while significantly lowering operational risk and cost. Napier AI began the year with the launch of MV Shield—Powered by Napier AI. The fruit of a partnership between Napier AI and banking technology provider Mutual Vision, MV Shield is a compliance-as-a-service (CaaS) solution built specifically for building societies and credit unions in the UK and Canada. MV Shield provides an alternative to standard AML systems, aligning its controls, reporting, and risk models to the specific needs of membership-based financial institutions. Photo by Thomas Windisch The post Napier Unveils Insights AI to Enhance AML Screening appeared first on Finovate.       

Ramp is acquiring travel and expense startup Juno to expand its capabilities in managing complex travel spending, particularly for non-employees. Integrating Juno’s platform will help Ramp coordinate booking, payments, reimbursements, and reconciliation for guest travel alongside employee expenses within a single platform. The new capabilities will help Ramp compete with other business finance software tools like Brex. Corporate card and expense management platform Ramp is buying Colorado-based Juno, a travel and expense management company. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Founded in 2024, Juno helps businesses coordinate complex travel and expenses. Organizations can book travel, reimburse out-of-pocket expenses, and reconcile travel payments quickly. Juno’s platform is particularly helpful for organizations that pay for travel for non-employees. “We’ve spent the better part of a decade working on the guest travel problem,” said Devon Tivona, co-CEO and founder of Juno. “These aren’t anonymous business travelers. They’re candidates, customers, partners. The trip is part of the impression. Ramp has the platform, the customers, and the ambition. That’s why we’re here.” Ramp will use Juno to expand its travel and expense capabilities, especially for companies that manage travel for contractors, partners, and other non-employees. Integrating Juno’s technology into its platform will allow Ramp to streamline the coordination, payment, and reconciliation of guest travel alongside employee expenses. These new capabilities give Ramp a more comprehensive travel solution that will help businesses manage a wider range of travel-related spending within a single financial operations platform. “Guest travel is a hard problem. It’s messy, operationally heavy, and has real business consequences,” said Ramp co-founder and CTO Karim Atiyeh. “A bad candidate travel experience can cost you a hire. Juno built something strong in a category that matters. Our job now is to give them leverage and stay out of the way.” Business finance software heated up earlier this decade, receiving hundreds of millions in VC investment during a time when the rest of fintech was in a funding downturn. To keep competitive, corporate card and expense platforms such as Ramp and Brex have increasingly added travel capabilities, while travel-focused companies like Navan have expanded into expense management. By adding guest travel capabilities through Juno, Ramp is positioning itself to manage an even broader category of corporate travel spending. Ramp was founded in 2019 and has experienced notable growth, most recently fueled by a $300 million financing round that valued it at $32 billion. The company powers over $100 billion in purchases annually for its more than 50,000 customers, which range from family farms to space startups. Photo by Gustavo Fring The post Ramp Acquires Guest and Travel Expense Company Juno appeared first on Finovate.       

With St. Patrick’s Day at the beginning of the week and the first day of spring at the end, it feels as if we are truly leaving winter behind us. Cacti are blooming here in the desert southwest and the fintech news —from new offerings in wealth management to the latest innovations in agentic AI—is flowing. Be sure to check back here at Finovate’s Fintech Rundown all week long for updates. Digital banking BankDhofar launches Neo Corporate Internet Banking (Neo CIB), its next-generation digital banking platform. DNERO, a neobank that caters to Latino customers, readies for a March 24 launch. Wealth management Wealth management platform OneVest launches AI-native wealth relationship workspace for RIAs, OneVest GO. German financial institution Scalable Capital introduces its Scalable Overnight account that offers 2.50% interest. Payments Visa and Fiserv announce an expansion in their partnership to deliver the Visa Acceptance Platform within Fiserv’s merchant acquiring and processing solutions in Europe. Identity Verification iDenfy partners with Ukrainian mobile sports-tech company Fifteen Soft. DeFi Digital asset wealth management platform Abra announces plans to go public via SPAC merger with New Providence Acquisition Corp at a valuation of $750 million. Agentic AI Lithuanian fintech Chaseit.ai introduces AI agents to automate loan servicing and call center communications. Small business financial management Integrated financial management platform for freelancers and gig economy workers, Finom, launches its embedded interest account. Iwoca introduces free financial health resources, including its Credit Compass, for small businesses in the UK. Credit analytics Experian launches its AI-powered Experian Virtual Assistant (EVA) to deliver real-time, personalized financial insights and recommendations on financial products such as credit cards, loans, and insurance. Photo by Susan Gold on Unsplash The post Fintech Rundown: A Rapid Review of Weekly News appeared first on Finovate.       

Mexican neobank Ualá has tapped DriveWealth’s fractional investing infrastructure to launch “Acciones,” enabling Mexican customers to invest in US stocks. The offering aims to expand investment access in Mexico, where only 4.4% of the population currently invests in financial instruments. For DriveWealth, the partnership continues to expand the reach of its brokerage infrastructure across Latin America. Latin American neobank Banco Ualá has selected digital trading and brokerage company DriveWealth for its new launch called Acciones (Stocks) that will enable Mexican consumes to invest in US equities. Leveraging DriveWealth’s brokerage-as-service platform that allows for fractional investing, Ualá allows users to invest in corporate shares starting at $1.12 ($20 MXN), enabling Mexican investors to own shares of companies like Apple, Amazon, and Tesla. This new accessibility is a big deal in Mexico, a region in which only 4.4% of the population currently invests in any financial instrument. This low participation rate is partly due to the perceived complexity of investing and the assumption that investing is only available to those with significant capital. However, thanks to DriveWealth’s fractional investing infrastructure, Ualá can now allow customers to purchase fractions of US equities. This not only lowers barriers-to-entry, but it also allows investors to build diversified portfolios with smaller amounts of capital. For DriveWealth, the launch is evidence of global demand for investment access to new markets. By powering fractional US stock investing for Ualá in Mexico, the company continues to expand the reach of its brokerage infrastructure across Latin America. “DriveWealth was built to democratize access to financial independence and expand access to financial markets through trusted, regulated brokerage infrastructure,” said DriveWealth CEO Naureen Hassan. “Partnering with Ualá allows us to bring US equities to a broader population of investors in Mexico through a secure, fractional investing experience. We’re committed to working together to offer innovative investment solutions to Ualá customers, and helping make investing simple and inclusive, while maintaining the highest standards of execution, custody, and investor protection.” Ualá’s Acciones (Stocks) onboards users after they answer a series of questions to determine their risk profile and receive portfolio recommendations. Investors will have the choice of three portfolio options, including US stocks and ETFs. To make investing even more approachable, the neobank will not charge any account opening or transaction fees. “With the launch of Acciones, we are opening the doors of the global market to millions of Mexicans who previously saw these opportunities as unattainable,” said Ualá Regional Director of Wealth Management  Pablo Savoldelli. “Now, starting from 20 pesos and with just a couple of clicks, our clients will be able to protect their savings, obtain dividends, and participate in the growth of the world’s largest companies.” Ualá’s move is an example of how digital banks are expanding beyond payments and into broader financial tools such as lending and wealth-building. As more neobanks seek to deepen customer relationships and increase engagement, offering investment access is a natural next step. DriveWealth was founded in 2012 to allow third parties to enable access to US equities, fixed income, and other asset classes through scalable, compliant solutions via its suite of APIs. Last year, the New York-based company teamed up with Moment Technology to make fixed-income investing more accessible to a broader range of investors, and partnered with Walmart’s OnePay to power the neobank’s embedded investing tool. Photo by Erol Ahmed on Unsplash The post Ualá Taps DriveWealth to Launch of US Stock Investing in Mexico appeared first on Finovate.       

This week’s edition of Finovate Global looks at recent fintech headlines from Scotland. AutoRek Launches RegToolKit Automated reconciliation and financial control solutions provider AutoRek has launched its AutoRek RegToolKit. The new offering will help financial services companies simplify, track, and demonstrate their compliance with complex regulations. AutoRek RegToolKit maps client products and services against regulatory requirements to ensure that companies can become compliant as well as prove their compliance with regulatory authorities. The solution features an applicability matrix across regulatory requirements, business risks, and mitigating controls, providing a comprehensive overview for all legal entities and product lines and reducing the audit burden. AutoRek RegToolKit uses an in-built breach register to identify compliance breaches, assign ownership, and track the process through to remediation, avoiding reliance on both spreadsheets and manual audits. The new offering complements the company’s data management, reconciliation, and reporting platform providing a consolidated data, governance, and oversight solution. “Firms are required to not only control their data, but also evidence that their processes align with regulatory rules,” AutoRek Chief Product, Technology, and Operations Officer Jim Sadler said. “RegToolKit takes the complexity out of compliance by mapping rules to controls, tracking non-conformity, and providing a complete audit trail. Combined with our reconciliation platform, it allows firms to achieve full end-to-end financial control and compliance.” Founded in 1994, AutoRek made its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope 2023. At the conference, the Glasgow, Scotland-based regtech demonstrated how its intuitive, configurable dashboards help firms manage the pain points in the reconciliation process. The company’s machine learning-based technology monitors the performance of reconciliations, disaggregating and categorizing outstanding balances, highlighting escalation points, and more. AutoRek helps institutions transition away from spreadsheets and manual processes toward greater control and efficiency. FreeAgent Integrates with Sodium Software, Active | UK Edinburgh, Scotland-based fintech FreeAgent has announced a handful of integrations in recent days. First, the company reported that it had integrated with cloud-first workpapers and accounts platform Active | UK. Active works with core accounting systems to boost accuracy and standardize workflows. The partnership will enable users to automatically import data from FreeAgent into Active Workpapers, reducing the potential for human error and enabling faster, more consistent reporting. Second, just this week FreeAgent reported that it has integrated with accounting practice management platform Sodium Software. The partnership is designed to help accounting professionals and teams in the UK streamline CRM, proposals, workflows, invoicing, and more. Connecting FreeAgent accounts to Sodium will enable accountants and teams to sync client data instantly and directly monitor the status of clients. In a LinkedIn post, FreeAgent added that further functionality, including automated billing and bookkeeping insights, is “coming soon.” Founded in 2001, Active | UK is celebrating its 25th year as a technology partner for accounting firms. A division of Active by Business Australia, Active | UK helps companies standardize processes and workflows to ensure that all team members are working in the same way. Active | UK offers automated accounting workflows to seamlessly populate and sync data, and an intuitive Excel split pane that gives users greater control and transparency over figures and calculations. Officially in public beta, Sodium Software was launched in late 2025 as a practice management platform for UK accountants. While seeing practice management as “the foundation,” the company has noted that its roadmap extends beyond this to include AML, payments, accounts production, and more. Sodium Software recently unveiled new features including unlimited custom fields, pricing tiers, and the ability to make both client and bulk updates. FreeAgent made its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope 2013 in London. Founded in 2007, the company today has more than 200,000 small businesses, accountants, and bookkeepers using its accounting software Insurtech Wrisk Acquires Atto, formerly DirectID Here’s some M&A news from last month that slipped under our radar: Independent embedded insurtech platform for the automotive OEM sector Wrisk has acquired real-time financial intelligence platform Atto. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed. Atto enables companies to make context-aware credit and risk decisions within live customer journeys. Leveraging open banking to securely access and analyze transaction-level data, Atto’s technology transforms it into actionable insights that can be embedded into regulated, enterprise-grade customer experiences. Wrisk, which partners with automotive OEMs to embed insurance directly into the consumer journey, will use Atto’s financial intelligence solution to offer greater flexibility in how financing and protection products are designed and delivered. The acquisition will also enable Atto to take advantage of Wrisk’s OEM relationships, delivery capability, and regulated operating framework to deploy its capabilities across a broader range of markets and use cases. “Atto has built a credible financial intelligence and credit scoring platform with real-world enterprise use,” Wrisk Chief Executive Officer Nimesh Patel said. “Joining Wrisk allows us to combine that intelligence with a delivery layer that serves brands and other partners at scale.” Edinburgh, Scotland-based Atto rebranded from DirectID in 2024. DirectID was launched in 2016 as the flagship product of James Varga’s The ID Company (which itself was a rebrand of Varga’s miiCard, a digital verification company and Finovate alum founded in 2011). “Joining Wrisk represents a natural next phase in Atto’s growth,” Atto Strategic Programme Advisor Rob Knight said. “We have proven the value of open banking-driven credit intelligence with enterprise clients, and Wrisk brings the regulated operating framework and delivery capability required to deploy that intelligence at scale. Together we can embed credit decisioning, affordability, and actionable insights directly into live finance and protection journeys.” Here is our look at fintech innovation around the world. Middle East and Northern Africa We Are Tech Africa profiled Algerian fintech platform Gifty, which offers a single app for shopping, billpay, mobile top-ups, and digital gift cards. MENA-based fintech Network International and ADCB Egypt went live with FICO Falcon Fraud Manager. The Times of Israel looked at how momentum from 2025 will drive the Israeli fintech industry in 2026. Central and Southern Asia State Bank of India forged a strategic partnership with Japan’s MUFG to bolster financial collaboration between India and Japan. Uzbekistan’s leading digital ecosystem, Uzum, secured a strategic investment of more than $130 milllion. Pakistan-based fintech JazzWorld acquired a controlling stake in TPL Insurance. Latin America and the Caribbean Santander teamed up with Visa to test agentic payments in markets in Latin America. DriveWealth announced a partnership with Latin American neobank Banco Ualá to help it launch a new stock investing service for customers in Mexico. Jamaica Observers profiled financial wellness app Quatta which goes live this month. Asia-Pacific Mizuho Financial Group chose FIS’ Balance Sheet Manager to help it navigate new regulatory reporting requirements in Japan. Indonesia-based digital credit unicorn Kredivo acquired Vietnamese digital bank Timo. Mastercard announced a collaboration between its money movement platform, Mastercard Move, and Bank of Shanghai. Sub-Saharan Africa UK-based international credit information and risk management service provider Creditinfo announced its entry into the Uganda market. African Islamic neobank Nyla partnered with Mambu as it goes live in Ghana and readies for West African expansion. Nigerian fintech Thrifto launched a platform to help digitize traditional group savings scheme such as Ajo and Esusu, Central and Eastern Europe Commerzbank and Berlin, Germany’s Hawk announced a collaboration to leverage AI to optimize internal banking processes such as fighting money laundering. Berlin-based AAZZUR forged a partnership with Estonian electronic money institution Wallester. Romanian P2P lending platform Fagura secured investment from Bravva Angels, named “FinTech of the Year” at 2026 Romanian Startup Awards. Photo by Jure Tufekcic on Unsplash The post Finovate Global Scotland: Innovations in Regtech, Accounting, and Insurtech appeared first on Finovate.       

Have you been keeping up with the conversations on the Finovate Podcast? Podcast host and Finovate VP Greg Palmer has interviewed an interesting range of guests in the first few months of 2026. From Best of Show winners to venture capitalists to fintech founders, Palmer’s podcast guests provide great insights into some of the most compelling innovations and the most important trends in our industry. Below are some of the conversations Greg has hosted so far this year. Greg Palmer interviews FinovateEurope Best of Show winner Tweezr on updating legacy systems through LLMs and AI. EP 288: FinovateEurope Best of Show winner Tweezr Finovate podcast host Greg Palmer talks with FinovateEurope Best of Show winner Serene on behavioral intelligence and early risk indicators. EP 287: FinovateEurope Best of Show winner Serene Greg Palmer and Dor Eligula, co-founder and Chief Business Officer at Bridgewise, talk about the evolution of AI in the investment space. EP 286: Bridging the wisdom gap: AI in the investment space In this podcast conversation Greg Palmer sits down with Matt Ober, Managing Partner at Social Leverage, for a perspective on fintech investment trends in 2026. EP 285: A VC perspective on fintech investment trends and advice on how to stand out from the crowd Finovate podcast host Greg Palmer interviews Joel Blake, OBE, founder and CEO of GFA Exchange on the challenge and reward of democratizing access to finance. EP 284: From grassroots to the policy table—Joel Blake’s human-centric journey into fintech Photo by Jacob Hodgson on Unsplash The post The Conversation Continues: Catching Up with the Finovate Podcast appeared first on Finovate.       

Squarespace is launching Squarespace Balance, a new financial account that lets merchants manage earnings, spending, and cash flow directly within Squarespace Payments. Balance builds on Squarespace’s growing suite of financial tools that help entrepreneurs run and scale their businesses online. Bringing business banking capabilities into its platform helps Squarespace compete with companies like Ramp and Shopify. Website building and hosting platform Squarespace unveiled its latest tool to help entrepreneurs run their businesses online. The New York-based company is debuting Squarespace Balance this week, a new account designed to help merchants manage business finances and earn rewards. Balance sits within Squarespace Payments, the company’s payment solution that integrates with a business’ online store, allowing merchants to accept payments through Squarespace. With Balance, merchants can access funds within hours, earn rewards on their balances, and spend using their Squarespace Visa Commercial card. Balance offers a unified view of a business’ earnings, spending, and cash flow management on the same platform as the rest of the business. “Squarespace Balance rounds out our suite of financial tools by offering a native financial account that helps merchants manage their business finances and earn rewards, all in one place,” said company SVP of Commercial Dan Chandre. “It reflects our belief that financial services should feel like a natural extension of running a business, not another system entrepreneurs have to manage.” Because it brings banking capabilities in-house, Balance allows merchants to receive and spend their money in the same platform where they run their business, without needing external banking integrations. The move will help Squarespace compete with other software platforms that are embedding financial services directly into their products. Companies such as Ramp, Shopify, and Stripe have all expanded into financial accounts, corporate cards, and cash management tools that keep businesses operating inside their ecosystems. Offering a native financial account alongside payments and financing tools like Squarespace Capital, Squarespace is positioning itself to capture more of the financial activity of its existing customers while simplifying financial management for small businesses that would otherwise rely on multiple providers. Squarespace Balance is currently available to new users in the US and will be expanded to the company’s existing users in the coming months. Squarespace launched Payments in 2023, and has since been focused on growing its financial tools available to support small businesses. As part of this expansion, the company launched Squarespace Capital in 2025 to offer merchants flexible financing to help them grow their business. Additionally, Squarespace offers tools such as Pay Links, which helps merchants accept payments via links; Tap to Pay, which allows merchants to accept in-person payments without additional hardware, as well as shipping tools, invoicing capabilities, and more. Originally founded in 2003, Squarespace’s platform has helped millions of customers across more than 200 countries build and run their businesses online. In addition to payments capabilities, the company also offers websites, domains, marketing tools, and appointment scheduling. Photo by MART PRODUCTION The post Squarespace Launches Balance to Bring Business Banking In-House appeared first on Finovate.       

Agentic AI infrastructure company Lyzr AI has raised $14.5 million in Series A+ funding. The round was led by Accenture and gives the company a valuation of $250 million. This week’s investment follows Lyzr AI’s successful $8 million Series A round in October. Headquartered in Jersey City, New Jersey, Lyzr AI made its Finovate debut at FinovateFall 2025 in New York. Agentic AI infrastructure platform Lyzr AI has secured $14.5 million in a Series A+ round led by Accenture. The investment gives the Jersey City, New Jersey-based startup a valuation of $250 million, and comes less than a year after the company’s $8 million Series A round in October. In a statement on its LinkedIn page, Lyzr AI noted that the investment will help it further develop its “foundational technology platform to power the post-generative AI landscape.” “Enterprise AI adoption is accelerating,” the company’s note continued. “But not the kind that lives in slide decks and conference rooms. The kind that passes 300-question technical audits. The kind that runs inside a customer’s own VPC. The kind that survives VAPT and red teaming before it ever touches production. That is the standard Lyzr was built for.” Lyzr’s platform enables companies to build, design, and deploy AI agents that can complete tasks, interact with enterprise tools and data sources, and automate workflows including customer onboarding, loan servicing and origination, regulatory monitoring, claims processing, and more. With more than 100 production-ready AI agents available, Lyzr’s technology streamlines processes for banking, insurance, human resources, marketing, and sales, and is used by companies including AWS, Hitachi, NTT Data, and Nvidia. “The true strength of Lyzr’s enterprise platform lies in the compounding value of our ecosystem,” the company wrote. “We have built an architecture designed to drive mutual growth and strategic alignment across the board, delivering measurable success for our customers, consulting partners, hyperscalers, and LLM providers alike.” Founded in 2023, Lyzr made its Finovate debut at FinovateFall 2025 in New York. At the conference, the company demonstrated how its Lyzr Studio enables customers to build agents, knowledge graphs, responsible AI guardrails, and agent evaluation in a single location. The builder-focused platform offers businesses an open source framework with embedded Safe & Responsible AI guardrails. Lyzr’s fundraising announcement comes just days after the company announced a strategic partnership with business AI transformation and enterprise integration firm Pronix Inc. The two companies will work together to help accelerate the adoption of agentic AI by businesses, combining Lyzr’s technology with Pronix’s expertise in digital transformation and modernization. Lyzr also recently announced that it is working with data infrastructure and agentic AI company GWC Data.AI, which joined Lyzr’s Partner Accelerator for Lyzr (PAL) program in late February. Photo by Franco Paganini The post Agentic AI Infrastructure Firm Lyzr AI Raises $14.5 Million at $250 Million Valuation appeared first on Finovate.       

Bilt is acquiring travel commission platform Sion for $30 million, marking the company’s second acquisition in less than a year. Bilt expects that the deal will strengthen its travel rewards offering. Integrating Sion’s technology will help Bilt connect travel advisors to its hospitality platform, helping members book travel experiences while creating a more differentiated rewards program. Loyalty platform Bilt has acquired commission management platform Sion for $30 million to strengthen its travel rewards. Today’s acquisition marks Bilt’s second acquisition in under a year. Founded in 2018, Sion offers commission reconciliation for travel agencies. The New Jersey-based company manages more than $7 billion in travel booking revenue, helping more than 8,000 travel advisors get paid faster and operate more efficiently. “Travel businesses don’t need another intermediary trying to compete with them,” said Sion Co-Founder Irving Betesh. “They need modern infrastructure and software that solves real operational problems. Sion has built a best-in-class experience around one of the biggest pain points in travel, commissions. We’re excited to join the Bilt team, allowing us to further accelerate what we can deliver for travel businesses and advisors serving travelers around the world.” Bilt will leverage Sion’s technology and team to further extend its hospitality platform to travel advisors which will be used to build a network of advisors who can deliver travel experiences for Bilt Members. The company said that buying the commission reconciliation platform helps Bilt build a hospitality platform that offers a more robust rewards experience for cardholders. What started with housing payments and neighborhood services now extends to travel. Through Sion, travel advisors will be able to leverage Bilt’s platform to manage their workflows, serve clients, and grow their businesses. Advisors will also have access to commission reconciliation and tracking, invoice follow-up automation, and new tools for managing bookings and payments more efficiently. “Bilt’s hospitality platform already helps properties and merchants deliver their best customer experience, and with Sion, we’re extending that to travel advisors,” said Bilt Founder and CEO Ankur Jain. “By giving travel advisors the tools to run their entire business more effectively, we’re building a network of the world’s best travel advisors, and our members benefit from that. This is what building a membership truly centered around where you live looks like.” As the popularity of embedded banking rises, so does competitive pressure in the space. Loyalty platforms are evolving beyond simple credit card points programs into robust ecosystems that influence how consumers book, shop, and experience services. By bringing travel advisor infrastructure into its platform, Bilt is positioning itself to play a larger role in how its members plan for and purchase travel, which ultimately creates a more differentiated and sticky rewards experience. Once the acquisition closes, Sion will operate independently under the leadership of its co-founders. The company will maintain its existing clients and services. Bilt was founded in 2021 to offer a loyalty rewards program and credit card that allows renters to earn points when they pay their rent, building credit with every payment. With no annual fee, the Bilt Mastercard credit card also allows cardholders to earn points on select dining experiences, rideshare purchases, and travel purchases. These points can be redeemed for travel, fitness classes, home decor, and even a down payment on a future home. Photo by Jessica Bryant The post Bilt Acquires Travel Commission Management Platform Sion for $30 Million appeared first on Finovate.       

In 2026, financial services have jumped well beyond the AI experimentation phase. At this point, firms are no longer considering whether or not to adopt AI, and are instead thinking about deployment strategies that will improve operations, decision-making, and internal productivity. When organizations apply AI to their everyday processes, they can analyze data more effectively, automate workflows, glean insights, and help teams make better decisions with less manual effort. Regardless of the subsector, AI-driven platforms are becoming essential to creating modern banking infrastructure. At FinovateSpring 2026, a fresh group of five companies will demonstrate their newest technologies that help banks turn AI from a buzzword into a practical tool for operational intelligence and efficiency. Ventus AI Founded in 2025, Ventus AI transforms raw banking transaction data into semantic customer intelligence to enable personalized experiences, smarter analytics, and human-centered digital banking without changing core infrastructure. The Delaware-based company helps banks and wealth managers turn transactions into dynamic personas, proactively detect customer life events, and offer plug-in intelligence for any core banking system. Zengines Zengines addresses data transformation challenges to modernize mainframes without losing logic. The platform helps organizations work with legacy code to seamlessly migrate data into modern systems. The company offers two products: Data Lineage, which offers critical and easy-to-understand insights into firms’ legacy systems; and Data Migration, which empowers business analysts to drive the entire process without coding expertise. Headquartered in Bedford, Massachusetts, Zengines’ modern approach makes legacy systems searchable, which helps firms satisfy auditors faster so transformation and compliance don’t stall. Lyzr AI Lyzr Architect is an enterprise AI platform that converts natural language into governed, production-ready agentic applications. Founded in 2023, the company offers a platform that enables secure, compliant deployment across banking, financial services, and insurance enterprises. The New Jersey-based company helps convert natural language into production-grade multi-agent applications, provides deterministic validation with governance and audit logging, and offers full-stack apps, exportable code, and GPU-optimized model execution. Saris AI Founded in 2024 and headquartered in San Francisco, California, Saris AI is an agentic AI solution that builds and launches AI agents to automate back-office workflows. The company helps banks and credit unions scale their operations without adding headcount by automating 90% of their tasks with zero change management. Saris AI securely integrates with core banking platforms, loan origination systems, document repositories, and communication tools to help organizations lower workflow costs. Syntex Syntex’s digital onboarding software helps banks and credit unions verify documents, track approvals, and reduce small-business onboarding to a matter of days. Founded in 2025, the company offers a self-serve client intake with document verification; provides real-time tracking of documents, approvals, and ownership; and reduces onboarding from weeks to days with a Reg B audit trail. Why banks should care For financial institutions, the promise of AI extends well beyond simply delivering a better customer experience. In 2026, fintechs are bringing great opportunities to help firms modernize legacy operations without dramatically increasing costs or headcount. Banks face mounting pressure to process more data, respond faster to customers, and maintain compliance in today’s increasingly complex regulatory environment. AI platforms that can surface insights from transaction data, automate internal workflows, and help teams navigate complex systems bring a practical way to improve productivity and decision-making. FinovateSpring 2026 will take place at The Sheraton San Diego on May 5 through 7. Register today using this link and save 20%. Finovate attracts 600 bankers from across the spectrum—afrom the largest US banks to regional banks, community banks, and credit unions. Photo by Google DeepMind The post Five AI Platforms Reimagining Banking Operations and Intelligence appeared first on Finovate.       

Embedded finance orchestration platform AAZZUR has announced a partnership with electronic money institution Wallester. Wallester will integrate its card issuing infrastructure into AAZZUR’s regulated partner ecosystem. Headquartered in Berlin, Germany, AAZZUR made its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope 2026 in London. Embedded finance orchestration platform AAZZUR has teamed up with EU-based electronic money institution (EMI) and Visa Principal Member Wallester. The partnership will integrate Wallester’s card issuing infrastructure into AAZZUR’s partner ecosystem. This will allow AAZZUR to offer Wallester’s card issuing capabilities to its clients, enabling them to access issuing services via a single integration. “Our focus is on simplifying access to regulated financial infrastructure,” AAZZUR CEO Philipp Buschmann said. “Businesses increasingly require flexibility in how they structure and deploy financial services, and partnerships like this ensure we can provide broader issuing capability through a single, coordinated framework.” AAZZUR’s platform works as an orchestration layer that connects businesses to regulated partners offering payments, banking, and other financial services. AAZZUR consolidates these connections in a unified operational framework to streamline the deployment of financial products and services and reduce the amount of operational fragmentation often experienced by companies building embedded finance offerings. This week’s partnership with Wallester adds to the issuing options available through AAZZUR’s ecosystem and will be valuable for those companies operating in the European market that want compliant and scalable card programs. “By integrating our capabilities into AAZZUR’s orchestration layer, we are creating a seamless path for their clients to access Visa Principal Member services,” Jana Marinkovikj, Wallester White Label and Direct Partners Affiliate Manager, said. “This collaboration ensures that businesses seeking a complete financial stack can easily incorporate our scalable card programs as a core component of their solution.” Headquartered in Estonia, Wallester is an electronic money institution (EMI) and Visa partner that specializes in digital financial solutions and card issuance in the European Economic Area (EEA) and the UK. Founded in 2016, Wallester offers a white-label embedded finance solution that enables businesses to integrate financial services directly into their platforms, as well as a corporate expense management solution, Wallester Business, that provides instant access to virtual and physical Visa cards, expense tracking, budget analytics, and seamless integration with accounting systems. Sergei Astafjev is Co-Founder, CEO, and Chairman of the company’s management board. Founded in 2020, AAZZUR made its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope 2026 in London. At the conference, the Berlin-based fintech demonstrated the effectiveness of its Smart Finance Blocks. This solution is a suite of modular, plug-and-play fintech components that enable businesses to build and/or embed financial services into their customer journeys. Smart Finance Blocks can be combined, deployed, and branded for specific use cases, turning complex API services into ready-to-use solutions. Users can deploy Smart Finance Blocks without investing in a tech stack, making embedded finance products and services easier and faster to launch as well as less expensive. AAZZUR’s partnership with Wallester comes just a month after the firm reported that it was working with financial education platform, and fellow Finovate alum, Doshi. The collaboration combines Doshi’s education-led engagement engine with AAZZUR’s orchestration technology to enable banks and other institutions to leverage customer engagement with financial education content to help customers use the financial products and services more effectively. “Doshi turns financial education into real engagement, empowering corporates, banks, and fintechs alike to advise their customers on how to make better use of the services available to them,” Buschmann said. “AAZZUR’s job is to make sure this engagement can be acted upon instantly, connecting the right customers to the right products and facilitating the launch of the financial services customers want and need, rapidly and with minimal integration work. To put it another way, AAZZUR’s middleware and frontend makes Doshi’s insights actionable.” Photo by Sebastian Herrmann on Unsplash The post Embedded Finance Innovator AAZZUR Forges Partnership with Wallester appeared first on Finovate.       

JP Morgan Payments and Mirakl are partnering up to offer agentic commerce to JP Morgan Payments’ merchant customers. The companies are integrating Mirakl’s Nexus platform with JP Morgan Payments’ infrastructure to enable secure transactions when AI agents shop on behalf of consumers. Mirakl will manage product discovery, order lifecycle, and marketplace orchestration, while JP Morgan Payments provides payment processing, tokenization, and fraud protection for autonomous purchases. JP Morgan Payments is teaming up with intelligent commerce operating system Mirakl to enable agentic commerce for merchants. The new infrastructure is designed to support autonomous transactions for consumers seeking to use AI agents to execute purchases on their behalf. Specifically, JP Morgan Payments will integrate Mirakl Nexus into its payments infrastructure to power secure transactions when AI agents shop on consumers’ behalf. Mirakl’s AI commerce engine Nexus connects shoppers and merchants to agentic platforms, facilitates autonomous discovery, and enables transactions and post-sales management. “Agentic commerce requires both intelligent commerce infrastructure and trusted payment infrastructure working in concert,” said Mirakl Co-founder and Co-CEO Adrien Nussenbaum. “Mirakl Nexus is key to unlocking agentic commerce—optimizing product catalogs for AI discovery and enabling merchants to sell directly through LLM channels like Gemini, Copilot, and Perplexity, and JP Morgan Payments brings the payment and risk management capabilities that enable AI agents to support user-verified purchases securely and at enterprise scale.” Mirakl and JP Morgan Payments are partnering to support agentic commerce by enabling AI agents to autonomously discover, evaluate, and purchase products. Mirakl’s Nexus platform will manage commerce orchestration and the full order lifecycle, while JP Morgan Payments will provide secure payment processing, fraud protection, and global payment infrastructure. Together, the companies aim to deliver a unified solution that allows merchants to integrate agentic commerce capabilities at scale, combining eCommerce management with reliable payment and risk systems across markets and channels. Mirakl was founded in 2012 and helps brands such as Macy’s, Decathlon, Carrefour, Asos, and Airbus Helicopters compete in the platform economy. Mirakl’s operating system enables 450+ marketplaces and a network of over 100,000 third-party marketplace sellers to launch, scale, and operate marketplaces. The company also offers AI-powered multichannel selling tools, as well as retail media products. JP Morgan Payments anticipates that combining these capabilities with its own infrastructure will make agentic commerce more approachable for merchants. This infrastructure includes secure payment processing, tokenization for AI agent transactions, and fraud protection to ensure consumer safety, merchant control, and brand integrity. Merchants using JP Morgan Payments will be able to create differentiated shopping experiences. By serving AI agents and Model Context Protocol Apps, offering richer product information, more sophisticated recommendation capabilities, and seamless autonomous purchasing flows, retailers will stand out to both AI agents and their end customers. “We are entering an era where AI agents won’t just assist with shopping, they will transact,” said JP Morgan Payments Global Head of Merchant Services Mike Lozanoff. “As agents move from browsing to buying, the differentiator won’t be ‘AI’—it will be governance: identity, consent, limits, and interoperability at global scale. Our job is to make that autonomy safe and auditable, with verified agent identity, user-controlled permissions, and bank-grade risk management built into every payment. We are working in earnest to guide our merchants as they engage with agentic commerce, help agents create a scalable experience, and work with the industry to define standards.” Agentic commerce is on the rise and there is no doubt that it will reshape how consumers shop online. As AI agents begin to handle product discovery, research, and purchasing on behalf of consumers, merchants will need new systems designed for both consumers as well as agent-driven interactions. With Mirakl’s commerce orchestration tools, JP Morgan Payments will help provide the infrastructure for this new frontier of commerce. The company is currently working with select retailers and merchants in a closed beta program, and plans to offer broader availability later this year. Photo by www.kaboompics.com The post JP Morgan Payments Taps Mirakl to Enable Agentic Commerce appeared first on Finovate.       

Mastercard is launching a Virtual C-Suite for small business customers this week, introducing agentic AI agents that act as digital executives to provide strategic insights and decision-making support. The new Virtual C‑Suite is a set of agentic AI-powered tools that are specifically focused on small and medium-sized businesses, which represent roughly 90% of enterprises across the globe and more than half of global employment. By introducing AI agents that mimic executive roles such as CFO, Mastercard is aiming to close the gap between the resources available to large enterprises and those accessible to small businesses. Mastercard is using its vast experience in payments, data, and security to bring a deeper understanding of how a customer’s money moves. Virtual C-Suite brings intelligence into small businesses’ accounting systems, business software, and banking applications to analyze business performance, identify risks and opportunities, predict likely outcomes, and recommend actions. The tool relies on insights from the billions of transactions processed on Mastercard’s network annually, combined with a business’ financial activity to provide relevant, trusted recommendations on how businesses pay, get paid, and manage working capital. “Small businesses are the cornerstones of communities, but it’s easy for owners to lose sight of the passions that inspired them when they’re buried in spreadsheets and stretched across multiple roles,” said Mastercard Global Head of Small and Medium Enterprises Mark Barnett. “We hear these pressures from entrepreneurs every day. With Virtual C-Suite, we are bringing the innovative technology, quality data at scale, and strategic expertise usually available to large enterprises to small business owners. Our goal is to turn operational complexity into clarity—helping entrepreneurs regain time, make smarter decisions, and translate their ambition into measurable growth.” After integrating the new tool, business users and their teams will have access to dashboards and natural language conversational platforms through which they can ask agents direct questions about their accounts, trends, or recommended actions. Virtual C-Suite will initially launch with a Virtual CFO capability. Mastercard will make additional executive-function roles over time, delivered through financial institutions, accounting platforms, and software providers. The launch is part of Mastercard’s broader push into agentic AI. The company’s Virtual C-Suite is an advancement beyond basic analytical capabilities, recommending and executing actions across the commerce lifecycle. The new offering highlights how payments networks are adding value by bringing AI intelligence layers to small businesses, combining transaction data with agentic AI to deliver financial insights that traditionally required dedicated finance teams. Virtual C-Suite’s small business focus is among a series of Mastercard’s recent initiatives aimed at SMEs. In 2024, the company introduced Biz360, a platform designed to help entrepreneurs consolidate and manage the digital tools they rely on to run their operations. Mastercard also rolled out Small Business Navigator to connect business owners with productivity services and remote talent resources, and introduced an SME credit card with built-in cybersecurity protections to help small businesses defend against growing digital threats. Photo by Pavel Danilyuk The post Mastercard Launches Virtual C-Suite to Offer Small Businesses Executive-Level Insight appeared first on Finovate.       

Digital analytics platform Quantum Metric launched its Felix Agentic solution this week. The new offering analyzes digital experiences to uncover critical insights, explain behavioral changes, and quantify business impacts. Founded in 2015 and headquartered in Colorado Springs, Colorado, Quantum Metric won Best of Show in its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope 2021. Quantum Metric, which won Best of Show at FinovateEurope 2021, unveiled its Felix Agentic solution this week. Built inside Quantum Metric, Felix Agentic is an autonomous insight engine that analyzes digital experiences to reveal critical insights, explain changes, and quantify impacts across workflows and KPIs. One challenge for organizations looking to use agentic systems is having the requisite deep, contextual data to operate reliably at scale. Even those organizations that have the data they need face hurdles when it comes to transforming that data into actionable insights. Felix Agentic offers a range of features to help convert complex customer behavior and other signals into clear insights about how that behavior is impacting the business. This enables companies to uncover potential areas of friction or complexity that are inhibiting revenue growth or creating customer churn. These features include Felix Chat, an agentic conversational interface that delivers instant, quantified answers to queries involving customer experience and behavior analysis, performance and operational metrics, business impacts, product and feature insights, and more. Felix Chat takes analytics beyond basic AI copilots and represents a growing shift toward natural language, insight-first interactions with enterprise data. Felix Agentic also provides AI agents to automatically monitor, analyze, and alert users to opportunities that can improve key business metrics. Working in the background, Felix Agentic’s AI agents provide a transition away from dashboards that ‘report’ change to intelligent systems that ‘explain’ change. Felix Agentic also features an in-UI assistant, or Copilot, that enables users to build and update dashboards, metrics, and cards directly within their workflow using natural language. The Copilot enables users to ask for contextual explanations about changes in behavior, why those changes matter, and the size of the impact. “For years, teams have relied on insights and dashboards alone to understand what happened,” Quantum Metric noted on its LinkedIn page this week. “Felix Agentic changes that with intelligent, proactive guidance that helps teams prioritize what matters and drive impact faster.” Quantum Metric won Best of Show in its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope 2021, and returned later the same year for FinovateSpring. The company’s technology helps banks differentiate their digital experience, enhance digital adoption, and boost internal efficiency. With use cases for product, engineering, customer support, marketing, and UX teams, Quantum Metric’s digital analytics platform helps companies capture data, uncover the “why” behind customer behavior, and take insight-driven action. Quantum Metric began 2026 with significant momentum. The company noted that 2025 was its strongest expansion year to date, including its best performance growth yet in the EMEA region. Quantum Metric also announced that Felix AI adoption had reached 25% of its largest enterprise customers, with deployments evolving from pilot programs to core operations. With financial services companies such as Western Union and Bank of Montreal among its customers—as well as 20% of the Fortune 500—Quantum Metric today captures high-fidelity experience insights from approximately half of the world’s Internet users. Founded in 2015, Quantum Metric is headquartered in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Mario Ciabarra is CEO. Photo by Peter Wang on Unsplash The post Quantum Metric Launches Felix Agentic to Help Firms Turn Insights into Action appeared first on Finovate.