Democratic Senators Press Bowman on Fed Changes
Democratic senators sent two letters to Fed Vice Chair Michelle Bowman questioning recent supervisory changes, including a 30% staff cut in the Fed's supervision arm and the removal of bank examiners at banks' request. They also demanded answers on her decision to commission an external review of Silicon Valley Bank’s 2023 collapse, after criticizing her predecessor’s internal post‑mortem as inadequate. The lawmakers argue these actions could weaken bank oversight, increase bailout risk, and reflect political interference in the central bank. The Fed has not responded, and the senators seek replies by Feb. 25.
World Bank Chief's Role on Trump-Led Board of Peace Prompts Questions
World Bank President Ajay Banga joined President Donald Trump’s Board of Peace for Gaza reconstruction, igniting debate over the lender’s political neutrality. Critics warn his involvement could blur the Bank’s traditionally apolitical stance, while supporters argue his presence may temper...
TNS Launches Smart Routing Technology
Transaction Network Services (TNS) introduced TNSPay SmartRoute, a cloud‑based solution that lets merchants, processors and acquirers set real‑time routing rules for each transaction. The platform can route payments by geography, cost efficiency, processor performance or scheduled maintenance, and it automatically...
Earnings Season Made It Clear: Digitize Supply Chains or Fall Behind
Earnings season revealed that digitizing supply chains has shifted from a cost‑saving exercise to a strategic imperative. Executives at FedEx, Caterpillar, Dollar General and others highlighted upstream capex on supplier integration, AI‑enabled orchestration and real‑time visibility as growth enablers. The...
Square’s Quest for More Partners Looks to Add Merchant Appeal
Square, the POS arm of Block Inc., is set to expand its partner ecosystem beyond the roughly 1,000 collaborators it already supports. The move aims to bring more technology add‑ons, discounts and specialized services to merchants, accelerating Square’s merchant acquisition....
Jordan’s Banking Sector Now Accepts Sanad App as Valid Customer Identification
Jordan’s Central Bank issued a directive on Feb 16, 2026 that the Sanad mobile app’s digital identity credential is now legally equivalent to physical ID documents for banking transactions. The mandate applies to every bank in the kingdom, obligating them to accept...
Worldline Scales One Commerce Across Europe to Support Cross-Border Sales
Worldline is rolling out its One Commerce omnichannel retail platform beyond the United Kingdom, showcasing it at the EuroShop trade fair in Germany from Feb. 22‑26. The solution lets merchants manage in‑store and online payments, integrate new payment methods, and...
Upcoming Changes to the Euribor Panel
The European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) announced that Barclays Bank PLC will withdraw from the Euribor panel, with its final contribution date set for 27 February 2026. ESMA and the Euribor College of Supervisors assessed the impact and concluded...
Embedded Card Programmes Gain Momentum as European Firms Move Beyond Banks for Issuing
European firms are rapidly adopting embedded card programmes, bypassing traditional banks thanks to API‑driven platforms. Wallester’s recent webinar with Visa and GF Money shows launch times shrinking from a year to as little as 28 days. Regulatory clarity under PSD2 is...
GoDaddy’s Integration and Other Digital Transactions News Briefs From 2/20/26
GoDaddy announced an integration with Salesforce’s MuleSoft Agent Fabric to authenticate AI agents before they access sensitive corporate data. Advent International agreed to sell its Argentine payments firms Newpay and Group Prisma to Visa, expanding Visa’s footprint in Latin America....
Lunar Teams Up with Wolt on Subscription Benefit Expansion
Lunar, the Nordic challenger bank, has signed a strategic partnership with delivery platform Wolt across Sweden, Denmark and Norway. The deal embeds Wolt+ unlimited delivery into Lunar’s top‑tier Unlimited (personal) and Limitless (business) subscription plans, while lower‑tier customers can redeem...
European Central Bank Analysis Highlights Stabilizing Euro Area Property Investment Amid Mixed Drivers
The European Central Bank’s latest focus piece finds euro‑area property investment has likely bottomed out in late 2024, with a brief, modest rebound in early 2025 that quickly faded. After a sharp decline that began in 2022, housing investment remains about 7 %...
The Banking Revolution: Balancing Convenience and Security in the Digital Era
Digital banking has become the cornerstone of modern finance, delivering round‑the‑clock services through mobile apps. Consumers now deposit checks, transfer funds, and invest without stepping into a branch, enjoying lower fees and personalized experiences. At the same time, providers are...
Optimising Cross-Border Payments for Seamless APAC Expansion
APAC’s rapid digital growth is hampered by fragmented cross‑border payment ecosystems. Companies expanding from hubs like Singapore face higher merchant discount rates, FX volatility, and regulatory bottlenecks when transactions are processed through non‑local acquirers. Payment orchestration emerges as a unifying...
TD Aims to Retain Its Branch ‘Essence’ Amid Brand Refresh
TD Bank U.S. is launching a "More Human" brand refresh while pledging to keep its traditional branch‑centric ethos. New head of consumer deposit and payment products Marc Womack says the focus is on retaining customers amid fierce deposit competition and...
The Six Tech Trends Banks Need on Their Radar for 2026
Banks face mounting regulatory, economic and consumer pressures as digital expectations rise, and their technology choices will dictate future competitiveness. nCino outlines six 2026 tech trends, from AI‑driven mobile banking that acts as a personal financial command centre to AI‑powered...
Discover Network Shows How Sharing Data Can Turn the Tide on Fraud
Fraud is evolving into a fast‑moving, AI‑driven threat across e‑commerce, payments and identity, outpacing traditional, institution‑by‑institution defenses. Discover Network argues that sharing data through a consortium enables real‑time signal aggregation, tokenization and enhanced decisioning to spot patterns no single bank...
Middle-Market Confidence Splits in 2026 as Tariffs and Supply Chains Weigh on High-Uncertainty Firms
The 2026 Certainty Project surveyed CFOs of U.S. middle‑market firms (revenues $100 M‑$1 B) and found overall uncertainty stable, but a sharp split between goods and services sectors. Tariff policy shifts and supply‑chain exposure pushed high‑uncertainty among goods producers up 27% year‑over‑year,...
Everyone Has a Side Hustle Now. Not Everyone Has the Same Reason.
The Wage to Wallet Index reveals that roughly 60 million hourly workers earning $50,000 or less are turning to side work, with one in five performing regular gigs. While overall job‑security sentiment is rising, financial confidence is splitting: higher‑income salaried professionals...
Central Bank of Ireland Calls for Stronger Economic Initiatives and Strategic Investments in 2026
Ireland’s central bank warned that the country must deepen economic resilience as it enters 2026, despite current strength. Governor Gabriel Makhlouf and Deputy Governor Vasileios Madouros outlined five domestic priorities, including targeted infrastructure, stronger indigenous businesses, fiscal buffers, household market...
Why Punish the Mule, when You Want the Rider?
UK regulators recorded a surge in money‑muling, with 207,889 cases in 2024, up from 170,338 in 2023. Predominantly young adults are lured by promises of quick cash, only to become unwitting conduits for criminal proceeds. Banks, fearing fines, are now...
Google Threat Intelligence Report Highlights Growing Adversarial Exploitation of AI
Google’s Threat Intelligence Group released a new report detailing how adversarial AI is increasingly weaponized against enterprises. The study highlights a surge in model‑extraction attacks, where threat actors query commercial LLMs like Gemini to create compact replicas, and documents AI‑enhanced...
KPMG UK Shares Insights on Cooling Wages and Stabilizing Jobs Market Potentially Leading to March Rate Cut
KPMG UK analysts say the latest labour market data show wage growth slowing to 4.2% and unemployment edging up to 5.2%, signalling a cooling jobs market. The firm forecasts pay growth will dip to around 3% by year‑end and expects...
Banking’s Crisis of Meaning: When Purpose Disappears
Dharmesh Mistry warns that AI‑driven automation is stripping banking jobs of their intrinsic purpose, turning roles into mere button‑pressing tasks. He argues that a superficial brand slogan like “better banking” won’t survive when machines already deliver superior products. Instead, banks...
US Market | Credit Concerns Mount: Blue Owl Shake-Up Weighs on US Financial Stocks
Blue Owl Capital announced the sale of $1.4 billion of assets across three credit funds and permanently halted redemptions in one fund to return capital and reduce leverage. The announcement triggered a broad sell‑off in listed alternative‑asset managers such as Apollo,...
Coin Center Highlights Decisive Shift in Congressional Debates Over Digital Assets Market Structure
Coin Center’s executive director Peter Van Valkenburgh says the Senate is now confronting the core issue of the Digital Asset Market CLARITY Act – whether developers of non‑custodial blockchain infrastructure will receive legal protection under the Blockchain Regulatory Certainty Act....
Things Worth Reading: 20th February 2026
Chris Skinner’s roundup highlights a wave of fintech activity on February 20, 2026. Forbes lists the 50 hottest fintech startups, while Santander signals a push to scale its global investment bank. Regulatory pressure mounts as the ECB sanctions JPMorgan for capital‑misreporting, and...
First Citizens, Buyer Of Collapsed SVB, Weighs Another Target
Wells Fargo Advisors Lures Former J.P. Morgan Advisor Duo With $3.1B
Can MAS Financial Sustain Its Outperformance on Strong Growth Momentum?
MAS Financial Services (MFSL) posted double‑digit year‑on‑year growth in assets under management, revenue and net profit for the December 2025 quarter and the first nine months of FY 26, driving its stock up 9% versus the BSE Financial Services index. The...
M&T Says Tricolor-Related Lawsuit Could Lead to Losses
M&T Bank’s Wilmington Trust subsidiary is defending a New York lawsuit alleging it failed to fulfill custodial duties for several Tricolor‑related trusts. Plaintiffs claim the bank breached contracts and fiduciary obligations, seeking unspecified damages, interest and fees. M&T reports that...
FBI Says ATM ‘Jackpotting’ Attacks Are on the Rise, and Netting Hackers Millions in Stolen Cash
ATM jackpotting has shifted from a security demo to a lucrative crime, with hackers now pulling millions from cash dispensers. The FBI reports over 700 attacks in 2025 alone, netting at least $20 million in stolen cash. The primary tool, Ploutus...
Medallion Stresses Home Improvement to Drive 2026 Growth
Medallion Financial, the former taxi‑medallion lender, is pivoting to accelerate home‑improvement loan growth, aiming for mid‑teens percentage expansion in 2026. The strategy is anchored by hiring veteran consumer lender Joel Cannon from Regions Financial to lead a dedicated home‑improvement team....
Kentucky First Federal Bancorp Announces Termination of the Agreement By and Between First Federal Savings Bank of Kentucky and the...
Kentucky First Federal Bancorp announced that the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency has terminated its formal written agreement with First Federal Savings Bank of Kentucky, ending a regulatory oversight period that began in August 2024. The termination, achieved...
Global Payments' Turnaround Gets Off on the Right Foot
Global Payments reported fourth‑quarter net revenue of $2.3 billion, a 6 % year‑over‑year increase, while net income fell to $217.5 million, missing consensus forecasts. The results sparked a 13 % surge in the stock as the company completed its Worldpay acquisition and announced a...
Stablecoins Expand in Payments, Yet Most Activity Remains Internal
The episode examines a McKinsey-Artemis Analytics report showing that while stablecoins process roughly $35 trillion a year, only about $390 billion is tied to real‑world payments, with most activity still internal to exchanges, custodians, and protocols. External payment use is growing fast,...
Metropolitan Commercial Bank Forges Partnership with Finzly
Metropolitan Commercial Bank (MCB) has partnered with Finzly to replace its legacy ACH mainframe with a cloud‑native, API‑first payment platform that consolidates ACH, wires and real‑time payments on a single system. The bank is the first to adopt Finzly’s unified...
Anchorage Digital Launches Regulated 'Stablecoin Solutions'
Anchorage Digital has introduced Stablecoin Solutions, a federally regulated service that lets banks settle USD transactions globally in near‑real time via blockchain. The offering bundles minting, redemption, custody, treasury and settlement under Anchorage Digital Bank, N.A., overseen by the OCC,...
Warren Warns Fed, Treasury Against Crypto Bailout
Senate Banking Committee ranking member Elizabeth Warren sent a letter to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell demanding a written commitment that the government will not bail out the crypto industry. She cited Bitcoin’s roughly 50%...
Saving Banks From Technical Debt: How Atruvia Built Secure, Self-Service Infrastructure
Atruvia, the backbone of over 900 German cooperative banks, tackled massive technical debt by adopting HashiCorp Terraform and Vault. The shift to infrastructure‑as‑code slashed cluster provisioning from three months to two hours and cut network setup from weeks to minutes....
Fast Calculation of Cheapest-to-Deliver Curves
Multi‑currency collateral agreements create optionality that requires discounting with a cheapest‑to‑deliver (CTD) curve. While Monte‑Carlo simulation can price this exactly, it is computationally heavy. Researchers propose an analytic approximation that combines the Clark algorithm and Gauss‑Hermite quadrature, delivering near‑Monte‑Carlo accuracy...
Visa to Buy Prisma in Argentina
Visa announced it will reacquire Argentina’s Prisma Medios de Pago and Newpay from Advent International, bringing the payment processors back under its control. The acquisition, expected to close by the end of March, restores Visa’s card‑issuer processing, real‑time payments, ATM...
Remitly Co-Founder CEO Exits
Remitly announced that former Santander executive Sebastian J. Gunningham will replace co‑founder Matt Oppenheimer as chief executive effective Thursday. Oppenheimer, who led the company for nearly 15 years, will move to board chair and focus on strategic initiatives. The leadership...
Remitly Hires Santander Alum as Its Next CEO
Remitly announced Sebastian Gunningham, a former Santander Consumer Finance chair with executive experience at Amazon, Apple and Oracle, will become its chief executive on Thursday. Co‑founder Matt Oppenheimer will transition to board chair as the company reported a strong 2025...
Subprime Demand Drives US Loan Growth to New Heights
Subprime borrowers propelled U.S. unsecured loan balances to a record $276 bn, a 10% increase year‑over‑year, with 26.4 million consumers holding such loans. Credit‑card issuers expanded lending to lower‑income customers, pushing total balances 4% higher to $1.15 trillion, but responded by trimming initial...
British Business Bank Explores Private Equity with £60m Deal
The British Business Bank announced a £60 million commitment to NorthEdge IV, marking its first foray into private‑equity investments under a new growth‑equity strategy. The government‑owned development bank will back the Manchester‑based firm’s fourth fund, which targets founder‑led SMEs across technology, healthcare...
Criminals Outpacing Banks as Firms Struggle with AI Defence, Report Warns
A new State of Financial Crime 2026 report from ComplyAdvantage reveals that financial institutions are falling behind AI‑enabled criminal networks. Over 600 senior compliance leaders reported 99% detection weaknesses, with only 33% employing AI for core AML functions and manual...
World Briefs | Rwanda Hikes Lending Rate on Higher Inflation
Rwanda’s central bank raised its key lending rate by 50 basis points to 7.25% on Thursday, reacting to a jump in consumer price inflation to 8.9% year‑on‑year in January. The move aims to bring inflation back within the bank’s 2‑8%...
Toast Courts Fast-Food Restaurants
Toast, the Boston‑based restaurant point‑of‑sale provider, announced it will launch a drive‑thru product aimed at quick‑service restaurants later this year. The move marks a strategic shift from its traditional focus on casual‑dining chains such as Applebee’s and Potbelly. In 2025...
Clip’s Tap to Pay and Other Digital Transactions News Briefs From 2/19/26
Clip, the Mexico‑based payments‑tech firm, introduced tap‑to‑pay for Android devices, extending the functionality of its recently launched Clip Total 3 POS. In parallel, Wirex rolled out Stablecoin Push‑to‑Card using Visa Direct, while Justt announced an AI‑driven chargeback solution for franchise networks....