Earnings Show Banks Turning Transaction Banking Into a Platform Business
The 2025 earnings season showed major U.S. banks turning transaction banking into a digital platform rather than a back‑office utility. Investments in cloud‑native cores, APIs and event‑driven architectures now deliver real‑time cash visibility and faster cross‑border settlement. Executives highlighted revenue growth in treasury and trade services, citing Citi’s $21 billion services revenue and JPMorgan’s 9 % rise in payments revenue. The shift is creating operating leverage, allowing banks to scale volumes without proportional cost increases.
JPMorgan Chase Forms Team Focused on Helping Companies Raise Private Capital
JPMorgan Chase announced the formation of a Private Capital Advisory and Solutions team to help companies raise private financing, including early‑stage equity, preferred stock and convertible bonds. The unit will link investors with firms seeking capital and explore secondary fund...
China-Backed Cross-Border Payments Platform Has Processed 3.48 Billion Transactions
Project mBridge, a China‑backed cross‑border payments platform, has processed 3.48 billion transactions worth $55.49 billion as of November 2025, up from just 160 transactions in October 2022. The digital yuan now accounts for over 95% of settlement volume, reflecting its growing role...
Only 24% of Americans Saved More in 2025
PYMNTS Intelligence’s September Paycheck‑to‑Paycheck Report finds only 24% of Americans increased savings in the first half of 2025, while 68% remain living paycheck to paycheck. Liquid buffers are sharply uneven: struggling households hold just $2,336 versus a national average of...
BlackRock Says AI Partnership Raises $12.5 Billion Toward $30 Billion Goal
BlackRock and Microsoft have secured $12.5 billion for their AI partnership, moving the joint venture closer to its $30 billion private‑equity target. The collaboration, launched in 2024, also brings Nvidia, xAI and UAE‑based MGX into the fold. A $40 billion acquisition of Aligned...
Kroger Teams With Uber as Food Prices Pressure Consumers
Kroger is extending its grocery delivery footprint by integrating nearly 2,700 of its stores into Uber's ecosystem, including Uber Eats and Postmates, for same‑day service. The move mirrors its existing DoorDash partnership and aims to capture shoppers seeking convenience amid...
Alibaba Adds Agentic and Payments Capabilities to Consumer AI App
Alibaba has equipped its consumer AI platform, the Qwen App, with agentic functions that let users order food, book travel, and make payments directly within the chat interface. The new capabilities are powered by deep integration with Alibaba’s ecosystem, including...
Stripe Completes Purchase of Billing Firm Metronome
Stripe has completed its acquisition of Metronome, a billing firm known for a powerful usage‑based metering engine used by AI leaders such as OpenAI, Anthropic, and Nvidia. The deal, announced on Jan. 14, positions Stripe to embed Metronome’s capabilities into...
Thredd and Paywith Team to Launch Australian Card Programs
Thredd has partnered with Australian payment‑orchestration platform Paywith to launch flexible, customer‑centric card programs. The joint solution leverages Thredd’s API suite, tokenization, 3DS, push provisioning, and fraud monitoring to deliver prepaid cards with earn‑and‑redeem capabilities. Paywith can now bring these...
Central Banks Hit Next Stage in Agora Cross-Border Payment Project
Central banks and commercial banks have entered the next testing phase of Project Agora, a BIS‑led initiative to build a multicurrency unified ledger that tokenizes commercial bank deposits alongside wholesale central bank money. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York...
Insurance Policyholders Now Rate Insurers by How Fast They Pay
Insurers are shifting focus to claim‑payout speed as a core loyalty driver. A PYMNTS Intelligence and Ingo Payments study finds half of claimants rank speed above cost or choice, and 23% would pay a fee for instant access to $500‑$1,000...
Critical Moment: The AI Imperative for Credit Unions
Artificial intelligence is rapidly moving from novelty to necessity for credit unions as younger members increasingly expect AI-driven budgeting, planning and transaction tools. While 55% of members already rely on AI for financial planning and 42% feel comfortable using it...
Tariffs Force Firms to Rethink Technology as a Survival Tool
Tariff volatility has become a daily operational risk, prompting product leaders at goods firms to confront peak uncertainty. Nearly half view tariffs as a financial drag, while 88% plan supply‑chain reconfiguration and 70% anticipate higher costs. Mid‑sized companies ($100‑$400 million revenue)...
44% of Consumers Hit a Wall When Paying Medical Bills
A PYMNTS Intelligence survey of 2,021 U.S. consumers shows that 44% encountered at least one problem paying for their most recent healthcare service. The issue is especially acute for younger generations, with nearly 70% of Gen Z patients reporting billing...
Lawsuit Alleges Oracle Made Misleading Statements Around Debt Sale for AI Infrastructure
Oracle faces a class‑action lawsuit alleging it misled bond investors in the offering documents for an $18 billion debt sale. The suit claims the company overstated its financial position after announcing a $300 billion, five‑year AI infrastructure contract with OpenAI. Seven weeks...
AI and Embedded Finance Are New Medicine for Healthcare Supply Chains
Healthcare procurement, long dominated by static forecasts and delayed payments, is being reshaped by artificial intelligence and embedded finance. AI-driven platforms now analyze consumption data to fine‑tune inventory buffers, prioritizing life‑critical items and moving toward just‑in‑time replenishment. Embedded finance integrates...
Bank of America CEO Says AI Paying Off as Bank Cuts Costs
Bank of America reported that its AI-driven platforms, especially the Erica virtual assistant, are delivering measurable cost and productivity gains in Q4 2025. Erica logged 169 million interactions with 20.6 million users, while Zelle transaction volume rose to $144 billion, underscoring the bank’s...
Affirm Adds Account Balances and Cash Flow Trends to Underwriting
Affirm is enhancing its underwriting engine by incorporating real‑time account balances and cash‑flow trends from linked bank accounts and its own Money Account. The new data layer is already live for Affirm Card users and will soon roll out to...
Visa Moves to Fix What Consumers Hate About Subscriptions
Visa is launching a subscription management hub that gives consumers real‑time visibility into their recurring payments and automatically transfers credentials when cards change. The platform leverages AI‑driven decisioning and near‑real‑time data to alert users to price changes, upcoming charges, and...
Legal Expert Says Bank Charters Are Crypto’s Credibility Play
FinTech and cryptocurrency firms are accelerating their pursuit of bank charters, favoring national trust bank charters as the most practical route to scale and credibility. The OCC’s recent openness to innovative activities has made federal charters attractive, offering nationwide reach...
Walmart’s Closing the Amazon Online Sales Gap
Walmart’s e‑commerce business is rapidly closing the distance with Amazon, though the gap remains wide. In Q3 2025 Amazon captured 56% of U.S. online retail spend while Walmart held 9.6%, but Walmart’s sales grew 27.2% year‑over‑year, nearly three times Amazon’s rate....
Card Program Complexity Puts Scale-or-Stall Pressure on Issuers
Card programs are evolving into intricate, multi‑party financial products that require coordination among banks, networks, processors, compliance, fraud and support teams. PYMNTS Intelligence’s December Embedded Finance Tracker highlights two primary build strategies—owning program management in‑house or outsourcing to specialist partners,...
Visa Turns to BVNK to Power Stablecoin Payments
Visa announced a partnership with stablecoin infrastructure provider BVNK to integrate stablecoin capabilities into its Visa Direct network. The collaboration will enable select business customers to pre‑fund payouts and receive payments in stablecoins, expanding beyond traditional fiat. BVNK, backed by...
Klarna App Enables Peer-to-Peer Payments in Europe
Klarna’s app now supports peer‑to‑peer payments across 13 European markets, letting users send money via phone number, email, QR code or saved contacts. The feature is initially limited to transfers between existing Klarna users, with plans to open it to...
France Reminds Crypto Companies of MiCA Licensing Deadline
France's financial regulator warned that only 30% of crypto firms without a MiCA licence have applied for one, while 40% are not seeking a licence and another 30% have not disclosed their plans. The EU’s Markets in Crypto‑Assets Regulation requires...
Amazon Brings Just Walk Out Tech to Pop-Up Stores
Amazon announced on Jan. 13 that its next‑generation Just Walk Out RFID lanes are now ready for pop‑up shops, festivals and other temporary venues. The upgraded lanes add in‑lane screens, motorized gates and dynamic pre‑authorization to speed the checkout experience....
LSEG Debuts Trade Surveillance to Help Spot Financial Crime
London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG) unveiled Trade Surveillance, a new analytics platform designed to detect market abuse and financial crime. The service leverages LSEG’s proprietary technology to process billions of trade and order messages across its venues each day. It...
U.S. Bancorp Aims to Grow Capital Markets Business With BTIG Acquisition
U.S. Bancorp announced a $725 million acquisition of BTIG, a boutique investment‑banking firm, with an additional earn‑out of up to $275 million tied to performance targets. The deal, slated to close in the second quarter of 2026, expands U.S. Bancorp’s capital‑markets footprint...
Revolut Adds Call Identification Feature to Combat Impersonation Scams
Revolut has launched a call identification feature that alerts users when they are on a phone call with the app, indicating whether the caller is a legitimate Revolut agent. The tool displays a banner in real time, offering guidance to...
Longevity Rewrites the Economics of Inheritance
The article highlights a demographic shift as Americans 80 and older are set to increase 28% by 2030, while advances in AI‑driven health care are extending both lifespan and healthspan. This longevity boom is reshaping inheritance patterns, pushing the timing...
Citi Links Regulation and Reality in the Next Phase of Digital Assets
Citi’s global head of digital assets, Ryan Rugg, discussed how the GENIUS Act and a presidential executive order are turning regulatory clarity into actionable pathways for banks. He argued that the real breakthrough is not stablecoins but the ability to...
Behind the Top Scams Consumers Face and the Defenses That Work
A PYMNTS Intelligence report, based on a survey of over 15,000 U.S. consumers, finds that nearly one‑in‑five adults have fallen victim to a financial scam in the past five years. Contrary to conventional wisdom, millennials and Gen Z experience the highest...
Consumers Pay the Price as State Regulation Fractures FinTech Scale
State regulators are increasingly imposing their own licensing, fee‑cap and disclosure rules on fintech products such as buy‑now‑pay‑later (BNPL), earned‑wage access (EWA) and AI‑driven credit tools. The resulting patchwork forces firms to redesign a single national offering into dozens of...
HSBC Establishes Asset Management Business in UAE
HSBC has launched an asset‑management business in the United Arab Emirates, registering ten new on‑shore investment funds with the Securities and Commodities Authority. The platform will serve both retail and institutional clients, offering globally diversified strategies managed by HSBC’s investment...
Citigroup to Cut 1,000 Jobs in Ongoing Restructuring Effort
Citigroup announced it will eliminate 1,000 positions this week, accelerating a restructuring plan that targets 20,000 job cuts by the end of 2026. The bank says the reductions align staffing levels, locations and expertise with current business needs and technology‑driven...
Capital One Gains Preliminary Approval for Revised Settlement in Class Action
Capital One secured preliminary judicial approval for a revised class‑action settlement that combines a $425 million cash payment with higher interest rates for 360 Savings account holders. The revised deal is projected to deliver roughly $530 million in total value to depositors,...
B2B Payments Make the Leap to Real Time in Latin America
Instant‑payment rails such as Brazil’s Pix and Mexico’s CoDi, originally built for consumers, are now powering B2B transactions across Latin America. December 2025 saw Pix handle over 263 million business transfers worth 1.5 trillion reais, a 50% jump from the previous year....
WEX and Health-E Commerce Team to Ease HSA and FSA Reimbursements
WEX has partnered with Health‑E Commerce to embed its FSA Store and HSA Store directly into the WEX benefits portal, allowing users to purchase IRS‑eligible health products and telehealth services with a single click. The integration eliminates the need to...
Route Acquires Frate Returns to Bolster Package Protection
Route, the post‑purchase eCommerce platform, announced the acquisition of Frate Returns, a specialist in exchange‑first returns technology. The integration will merge Route’s package protection and visual order tracking with Frate’s AI‑driven image verification, flexible shipping options, and exchange‑first optimization. By...
Samsung, Ingenico and Talus Team on Mobile Payments
Samsung, Ingenico and Talus have formed a partnership to launch a mobile‑first business operating solution in North America. The offering leverages Ingenico’s SoftPOS tap‑to‑pay software and Talus’s mobile app to turn NFC‑enabled Samsung phones into secure payment terminals, eliminating the...
CFPB and DOJ Say Creditors Can Consider Borrowers’ Immigration or Citizenship Status
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Department of Justice withdrew their 2023 joint statement that warned lenders against using a borrower’s immigration or citizenship status in credit decisions. In a new press release, the agencies clarified that the Equal...
Fiserv and Synchrony Enable Healthcare Providers to Offer Patient Financing Solution
Fiserv’s Clover platform now fully integrates Synchrony’s CareCredit, allowing health and wellness providers to accept CareCredit cards and process financing applications at the point of sale. The expansion adds roughly 40,000 new providers to CareCredit’s network, joining the 2,000 already...
AI Rewrites Lending for Borrowers FICO Scores Miss
Traditional credit scores leave roughly 25 million U.S. adults unscored, limiting their access to mainstream loans. Lenders are turning to AI‑driven alternative data, especially cash‑flow analysis, to evaluate repayment capacity in real time. Major banks and fintechs, such as Chase and...
Robinhood Takes On Coinbase as Stock and Crypto Overlap
Robinhood is rapidly outpacing Coinbase as the two firms converge on both stock and crypto trading. Robinhood’s shares jumped 186% in 2025 while Coinbase fell 12%, despite a crypto‑friendly U.S. administration. Crypto now accounts for roughly one‑fifth of Robinhood’s Q3...
Why SMBs Can’t Afford Cash Flow Blind Spots as Bankruptcies Hit 15-Year High
Bankruptcies among small‑ and medium‑sized businesses have surged to a 15‑year high in 2025, according to S&P data. The spike reflects tighter credit, higher borrowing costs, and sticky inflation that have eroded the cash‑flow cushions once available to SMBs. While...
Obol to Expand Cash Flow Management Platform to Australia
Obol, an AI‑driven cash‑flow management provider, announced it will launch its platform in Australia in February, after opening pre‑release sign‑ups on Jan 12. The solution, already operating in the United States, consolidates cash planning, monitoring and reporting by linking banks, ERP...
The KYA Moment: Why Knowing Your Agent Is Becoming Table Stakes
The article introduces "Know Your Agent" (KYA) as a trust layer that authenticates software agents in delegated, machine‑initiated commerce. By leveraging W3C Verifiable Credentials and NIST digital‑identity standards, Visa’s Trusted Agent Protocol (TAP) lets merchants flag transactions as originating from...
Chain Reaction: Regulatory Clarity as the Catalyst for Blockchain Adoption
Regulatory clarity, led by the EU’s MiCA/MiCAR framework, is turning blockchain from experimental to mainstream. The phased rollout—initial rules in 2023, stable‑coin obligations in 2024, and full compliance by end‑2024—defines licensing, reserve and disclosure standards for crypto‑asset service providers. These...
Treasury Fraud Probe Seeks Info From Minnesota Money Transmitters
U.S. Treasury, through FinCEN, launched a probe into alleged benefits fraud in Minnesota, focusing on money transmitters in Hennepin and Ramsey counties. A Geographic Targeting Order now requires reporting of cross‑border transfers of $3,000 or more. Officials say the scheme...
Agibank May Postpone US IPO After Brazil’s Social Security System Finds Irregularities
Agibank, a Brazilian fintech, may postpone its planned U.S. initial public offering after the country's social security agency, INSS, suspended the bank's payroll‑deduction loan program over alleged irregularities. The regulator found contracts signed without beneficiaries' consent, prompting a halt on...