Kalshi’s $40B Valuation Push
Hey FinTech Fanatic!
One of the biggest FinTech stories today is Kalshi reportedly heading toward a $40 billion valuation in a new funding round.
That would be a huge jump from the $22 billion valuation it reached in March, and almost four times the $11 billion valuation from last December.
What makes the story even more interesting is the scale behind it. Kalshi reportedly reached around $4 billion in annualized revenue run rate in August, while trading volume passed $40 billion.
The prediction market is clearly becoming a much bigger financial product, with sports now driving a large share of activity alongside politics, entertainment, and other events.
And because Kalshi operates as a federally regulated designated contract market, its model is quite different from traditional state-by-state sports betting.
The next question is whether that growth can justify a $40 billion valuation, and whether an IPO could be closer than previously expected.
Another story worth watching is how FinTechs are using AI to drive growth, with Ove Kreison from Tuum looking at its role across pricing, personalization, fraud, and customer support. And dLocal’s latest Paymentpedia explores the growing chargeback challenge in Latin America and why local infrastructure matters.
Anyway, plenty more happened in FinTech today.
Let’s dive in, and I’ll be back in your inbox on Monday!
Cheers,
🔴 LIVE FROM SIBOS
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Not at Sibos? I’ve got you covered.
I’m tracking the announcements, deals, and developments coming out of Sibos across banks, FinTechs, payments companies, and infrastructure providers, and filtering it all down to what I think you need to know.
Here’s what stood out today:
1. 🌍 Absa and Thunes deepen their alliance, selecting Thunes as a strategic Multicurrency Clearing partner across Africa and global markets. The expanded collaboration links Absa's Pan-African banking footprint to Thunes' network spanning over 140 countries, 90 currencies, and 220 payment methods with 24/7 liquidity.
2. 🌍 ProgressSoft launched Intelligence as it Stands, its approach to embedding AI directly within payment operations. The framework focuses on turning fragmented payment data into trusted insights, enabling real-time transaction evaluation and embedding intelligence into governed operational workflows.
3. 🇩🇪 Michael Diederich, Global Co-Head of Corporate Bank at Deutsche Bank, explains that international clients prioritize certainty, resilience, and 24/7 liquidity. As a global house bank, Deutsche Bank acts as a reliable partner, helping clients navigate market complexities and integrate technology seamlessly.
4. 🌐 Kelvin Li, General Manager of Platform Tech and Senior Vice President at Ant International, discusses the firm’s transition to AI-native, agentic treasury management solutions. By leveraging blockchain and real-time intelligence, Ant International helps global businesses optimize liquidity, having already achieved a 60% reduction in working capital and significant cost savings across its payment and FX operations.
5. 🌎 Participants in the Sibos Talent Accelerator Route (STAR) program - Ellen Licius (HSBC), Ayaka Fujikawa (Mizuho Bank), and Natalia Gomez (Deutsche Bank) - share their experiences at the conference. They highlight the importance of networking with industry leaders, discussing payment innovations, and gaining a broader perspective on the industry, all of which help them better understand client needs and develop their leadership skills.
That’s it for now. Back at it tomorrow with more from Sibos.
INSIGHTS
💰 Most banks point AI at cost reduction. The right architecture lets them use it to grow revenue, with Tuum showing how open APIs can connect AI to pricing, personalization, fraud and customer support. The result is more relevant products, smarter pricing and better customer experiences, without being locked into yesterday’s technology.
FINTECH NEWS
🌍 Commercial cards were already built for the agentic economy, argues Pliant CEO Malte Rau in a new analysis. The piece explores how existing card infrastructure can support autonomous AI agent transactions as agentic commerce scales.
🇮🇳 Algoquant FinTech passes all 12 resolutions at its 63rd Annual General Meeting held on September 30, 2026. Shareholders approved FY26 financial statements with 99.98% votes in favor. Special resolutions covered debt securities issuance and loan authorizations.
🇦🇷 Argentine FinTech Depay expands into Venezuela, adding its sixth market for QR payments and remittances. Banks and wallets on Depay's network can now send funds and complete transfers via Venezuelan payment systems without additional development, targeting the roughly 7 million Venezuelans living across Latin America.
PAYMENTS NEWS
🇧🇷 dLocal provides local payments for LinkedIn users, across Brazil, Mexico, Colombia and Chile. The collaboration enables local currency card payments, helping LinkedIn reduce friction at checkout for professionals across four Latin American markets.
🌍 MassPay eliminates the double conversion for cross-border payouts, enabling businesses to pay out to 180 countries in local currency with a single FX hop. Clients fund in the currency they hold and MassPay converts once into the payee's local currency, removing intermediary USD conversion.
🌍 The great payment rewiring is accelerating, as hyper-local rails like Pix, UPI and M-PESA reshape how global merchants access new markets, according to Unlimit. UPI alone processed 24.51 billion transactions in August 2026, reinforcing local payments as core infrastructure.
🇺🇸 Levl surpasses $10B in annualized payments volume, driven by growing stablecoin adoption across its platform. The milestone reflects rising demand for stablecoin-based payment flows. Read more
🌎 Caribbean central banks ditch CBDCs for fast payment systems, after low adoption rates for projects like DCash and Jam-Dex. Barbados launched BiMPay in June and the ECCB is pivoting toward instant payment rails to boost financial integration.
ARTICLE OF THE DAY
💡 dLocal: The Chargeback Challenge in Latin America. The latest Paymentpedia installment explores how chargebacks and friendly fraud are impacting eCommerce across LATAM, with chargebacks affecting 3.7% of regional orders. Brazil highlights the scale of the challenge, as Pix processed 42B+ transactions in 2024 while fraud prevention and dispute infrastructure continue to evolve. The key takeaway: managing chargebacks in LATAM is not just about fraud prevention - it requires local payments infrastructure, stronger controls, and market-specific dispute processes. Read the full article here
DIGITAL BANKING NEWS
🇬🇷 Trade Republic launches in Greece, offering zero-commission trading to Greek investors. The Berlin-based neobroker continues its European expansion, bringing its savings and investment products to a new market as it grows its footprint across the continent.
🇨🇭 W Group connects Web2 and Web3 through hashbank, a fully licensed universal digital bank. The app combines traditional banking with external crypto wallet connectivity, supporting over 150 digital assets in one mobile experience.
🇬🇧 Revolut expands RevPoints loyalty program, now letting UK customers transfer points to major global hotel groups. The feature gives paid plan holders the option to convert loyalty points into hotel rewards across premium hospitality partners.
BLOCKCHAIN/CRYPTO NEWS
🌏 Maple Finance unveils a brand evolution, reflecting its growth from a DeFi lending protocol into a broader institutional credit platform. The company says clients including Robinhood and Kraken already rely on its onchain lending infrastructure to power consumer and trading products.
🇧🇷 Ripple expands in Brazil through a partnership with CSD BR, using the XRP Ledger as an additional layer for recording and auditing financial assets. The collaboration brings together regulated infrastructure and blockchain technology to advance asset tokenization in the Brazilian market.
🇪🇺 The EU questions Binance over continued operations despite wind-down order, raising concerns about the exchange's activity after regulators instructed it to cease. The European Commission pressed Binance on its compliance with the wind-down directive amid ongoing scrutiny of its European market presence.
🌍 Polygon introduces crypto checkout in its Open Money Stack, letting merchants accept stablecoin payments at the point of purchase. Customers pay from their preferred wallet and merchants receive their chosen payout currency at the time of sale.
STABLECOINS NEWS
🇺🇸 Fiserv digital asset platform goes live with financial institution clients, advancing stablecoin-powered banking. Bank of North Dakota's Roughrider Coin is the first use case, enabling interbank money movement on Solana for over 90 banks and credit unions.
🌍 Kora adds stablecoin payments for African merchants through One Rail, supporting USDT and USDC alongside traditional fiat rails. Merchants can collect, hold, convert and settle funds in digital currencies to reduce cross-border costs.
🇬🇧 Luno pivots to crypto as a service, offering banks and asset managers digital asset infrastructure. The UK-headquartered exchange acquired GTXN in September and now enables institutions to mint stablecoins and move money across borders via its rails.
🇰🇷 Hana Card signs MOU with Tether, joining Hana Bank in a three-way agreement to explore linking stablecoins with South Korean financial services. Hana Financial Group is also expanding its digital asset business through BitGo Korea and recently secured VASP registration approval to broaden cooperation with major stablecoin issuers.
🇺🇸 Bloomberg launches a stablecoin dashboard on the Terminal, powered by onchain data from Allium. The new tool gives institutional users real-time visibility into stablecoin metrics directly within the Bloomberg Terminal environment.
🇸🇬 StraitsX plans XSGD and XUSD launch on Monad in 2027, expanding its stablecoin offerings to a new blockchain. The move would bring Singapore dollar and US dollar stablecoins to the Monad network. Continue reading
PARTNERSHIPS
🇬🇧 Noah partners with MakeBanc for on-chain asset management, providing fiat virtual accounts tied to self-custodial wallets. MakeBanc builds directly on Noah's infrastructure to enable fiat on-ramps into permissionless vaults for independent asset managers.
🇬🇧 payabl. and London Lions extend their partnership for the 2026/27 season, expanding beyond sponsorship into operational payments. The club will use payabl.'s multi-currency business accounts and corporate cards to manage domestic and international financial activity from a single platform.
🌐 OKX and BitGo expand off-exchange settlement infrastructure, making institutional-grade custody and settlement services available globally. The partnership aims to provide institutions with secure, transparent trading workflows across digital asset markets.
🇳🇱 ClearBank Europe partners with emoni, the Dutch EMI serving compliance-intensive businesses. ClearBank provides the infrastructure and regulatory confidence emoni needs to support businesses that are often underserved by traditional banks.
🌎 Regula and Bernini.ai enable identity verification in AI-powered conversations, integrating document and biometric checks into customer-facing AI agents. The joint solution targets regulated industries including banking, insurance and telecommunications.
DONEDEAL FUNDING NEWS
🇺🇸 Kalshi valuation set to hit $40 billion in a pre-IPO funding push, nearly quadrupling its $11 billion December valuation. Sequoia Capital and Wellington Management are in discussions to co-lead the incoming round, with an IPO anticipated as early as next year.
🇬🇧 Airtel Money backers are seeking to raise $529 million in a UK IPO, listing the African mobile money operator on the London Stock Exchange. The offering would give institutional investors direct exposure to Airtel Money's pan-African payments network across multiple high-growth markets.
🇮🇳 Moneyboxx Finance secures ₹84 crore in fresh debt, adding Bandhan Bank as a new lender alongside Indian Overseas Bank and two NBFC partners. Including an earlier NCD issuance, total September funding reached ₹144 crore to scale MSME and solar lending across India.
🇧🇷 EMGA arranges a EUR 100 million debt facility for BTG Pactual, provided by Spain's development finance institution COFIDES. The funding will support BTG Pactual's sustainable and impact-oriented financing initiatives in Brazil, bringing EMGA's total facilitated investment in the country to nearly $2 billion.
🇮🇳 Seeds Fincap raises $10.4M Series B led by Dell Foundation, with participation from Z47, Lok Capital, Norinchukin Capital and Alteria Capital. The Gurugram-based NBFC serves underserved individual and MSME borrowers and targets Rs 1,000 crore in AUM by March 2027.
🇺🇸 ZeroDev secures $6.7 million in funding, aiming to scale its ERC-4337 smart account infrastructure. The raise will support development of account abstraction tools designed to simplify onchain user experiences for developers and institutions.
🇧🇷 FinTech Stay raises $5.7M to expand corporate pension plans in Brazil, in a round led by Citrino. The startup connects employers with insurers and has clients including Claro, iFood and Milky Moo across the Brazilian market.
🇺🇸 Walapay raises $4.6M seed round, aiming to put global payments on local terms. The funding will support the company's efforts to expand cross-border payment capabilities. Keep reading
🇺🇸 VolCorp announces $2.66M strategic investment in InvestiFi, a credit union service organization offering embedded digital investing. InvestiFi has grown from five signed credit unions in 2024 to over 60 financial institution clients representing more than five million online banking users.
🇪🇬 Egypt's first FinTech unicorn MNT-Halan plans to sell a 20% stake via IPO on the Egyptian stock exchange. The offering covers 320 million shares split between institutional and public investors, with completion expected this month subject to regulatory approval.
🇺🇸 Cross River backs GoodLeap's HELOC card, with a $50M credit facility. The facility supports GoodLeap's home equity line of credit card product. Read more
M&A
🇺🇸 TransPerfect acquires Synterex to expand medical writing and AI-enabled regulatory solutions. Synterex's AgileWriter.ai® platform supports AI-assisted authoring and content management for biotech and pharma. The deal creates an integrated workflow from authoring through regulatory submission.
🇬🇧 Brazil's Nubank says it is not pursuing a deal with Monzo, dismissing speculation about a potential tie-up with the UK neobank. The statement puts to rest reported acquisition talks between two of the world's most prominent digital banking names.
🇨🇿 Czech FinTech founder Adam Šoukal sells his company again but stays on as a senior executive across the Orbian group. Šoukal founded invoice-financing firm Roger in 2013; Orbian acquired it last summer, and he will now oversee the group's expansion in southern Europe from Madrid.
🇯🇵 SBI Holdings completes full acquisition of Bitbank for approximately JPY 46.7 billion, making the licensed crypto exchange a wholly owned subsidiary. CEO Noriyuki Hirose remains in place, and Bitbank plans to expand its digital asset business by leveraging SBI's resources and customer base.
🇺🇸 Monarch hits $100M in ARR and acquires MBI, formerly HMBradley, to accelerate its next growth phase. The personal finance platform has surpassed 1 million members actively managing finances and will form Monarch Labs with the MBI team.
🇬🇧 Barclays completes acquisition of GoHenry, the youth financial education platform. The deal scales Barclays' offering in youth money management across the UK market. Continue reading
MOVERS AND SHAKERS
🇺🇸 Polymarket taps Goldman Sachs veteran Lisa Mantil, as head of institutional growth. Mantil spent nearly three decades at Goldman, most recently as a partner leading the bank's ETF accelerator platform for clients.
🇪🇺 Qonto appoints Anja Urlichs as VP Upmarket, leading its strategy for established and fast-growing SMEs across Europe. Urlichs will head the unit dedicated to businesses that have outgrown basic banking and need sophisticated tools as they scale.
🇬🇧 Tokenovate names William L'Heveder as Chief Revenue Officer, joining from market data firm BMLL. He will focus on expanding the commercial pipeline for Tokenovate's post-trade and settlement products for derivatives and securities financing.
🇬🇧 Trading 212 compliance head Victoria Mears departs, effective September 30. Mears joined the FCA-regulated broker in 2022 and was promoted to Head of Compliance and MLRO the following year.
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