Klarna Takes on Amex in Europe
Hey FinTech Fanatic!
Klarna is coming for Amex's lunch!
The Swedish FinTech giant is supercharging its European membership tiers, from €4.99 to €44.99 a month, packed with cashback, lounge access, and up to €6,000 in annual perks.
This follows the same playbook Klarna ran in the US about eight months ago, where it launched a tiered membership model to compete directly with premium card rewards programs. Now Europe gets the full treatment.
Also: There's no annual lock-in, neither interest charges.
Seems like Klarna is giving the prestige of a premium rewards program, none of the credit card baggage.
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Cheers,
INSIGHTS
🎤 Why the payment rail is the easy part by DashDevs. In this episode of the FinTech Garden Podcast, Dumitru Condrea speaks with Marwan Forzley, CEO and co-founder of Veem, about why the payment rail is the easy part, why compliance and risk management are where the real engineering happens, and where stablecoins actually make economic sense once the hype is stripped away. Watch the full podcast here
FINTECH NEWS
🇦🇪 Six AI startups advance in the Mastercard Lighthouse UAE program, supported by the UAE AI Office. The initiative aims to transform innovations into scalable enterprise solutions for global markets.
🇺🇸 Apex Fintech Solutions launches API technology to let firms run Kalshi-powered prediction markets from their own platforms. Apex handles clearing, custody, and account management while Kalshi provides the regulated marketplace; tastytrade is the first firm live on the platform.
🇺🇸 FlightAware withdraws its lawsuit against Kalshi over flight-cancellation markets, just one day after filing. The suit had accused Kalshi of using FlightAware's data and name without permission to host gambling markets on flight cancellations.
🇺🇸 Kalshi adds real-time market data feed through DoubleZero, covering sports contracts and crypto perpetual futures. The subscription delivers Level 1 and Level 2 data over DoubleZero's fiber network for institutional traders.
PAYMENTS NEWS
🇸🇪 Klarna supercharges its membership tiers, removing service fees and boosting cashback across four plans worth up to €6,000 annually. New perks include NordVPN, foodora, and airport lounge access with no year-long lock-in required.
🇺🇸 Plaid rolls out a wave of product updates across Open Finance, payments, fraud, and credit tools. New features include MCP for Data Partners in Early Access, one-click Identity Match with 99.5% precision, and OTP via phone call for ADA accessibility. Read more
🇦🇺 Verifone brings facial and palm-vein biometric payments to Australia with its Victa terminal suite. The opt-in system lets enrolled consumers verify identity at checkout by presenting their face or palm, with biometric profiles managed by the consumer's chosen service provider. Verifone plans to make the Victa devices available to merchants through banking and acquiring partners in the coming months.
🇬🇧 Zilch launches new membership tiers, expanding its BNPL model with structured paid plans. The UK FinTech introduces tiered options designed to differentiate its consumer offering in a competitive market.
🇮🇳 PayU launches India's first RBI-compliant accessible payments checkout, designed for blind and visually impaired users. The solution enables screen reader navigation through the full payment flow for visually impaired customers.
🇲🇽 tapi's payment infrastructure now reaches 92% of banked Mexicans, spanning global banks, regulated entities, and neobanks. The platform processes recurring utility payments and airtime top-ups while 80% of national transactions still occur in cash.
🇳🇱 Adyen reports H1 2026 net revenue of €1.3 billion, up 19% YoY, with processed volume reaching €803.8 billion. EBITDA margin hit 49% as the company launched Adyen Agentic and Intelligent Money Movement.
🇺🇸 Zelle tag adoption tops 1 million small businesses, with enrollments averaging 3,500 per day in H1 2026. Small businesses with a Zelle tag received nearly $5.8 billion during the period across all enrolled payment credentials.
🇺🇸 American Express expands virtual cards for corporate and business travel spending. The expansion targets corporate and business travel purchases with enhanced virtual card capabilities. Read more
#FINTECHREPORT
🚨 Mastercard's net revenue jumped 14% in Q2 2026.
Payments and Services drove the growth. Here are the key figures 👇
DIGITAL BANKING NEWS
🇬🇧 Revolut plans to expand its airport lounge network across Europe, adding new locations to its travel benefits offering. The rollout will give more Revolut cardholders access to airport lounges across the continent.
🇬🇧 Starling Bank targets students with a new AI-powered current account, offering automated budgeting tools and spending insights. The account is designed to help students manage money more effectively from day one.
🇸🇬 Trust Bank launches Freedom as Singapore's first stockback credit card, converting everyday spending into fractional US stock investments. Rewards auto-invest once they hit S$10, with an introductory 3% stockback rate until December 2026.
🇬🇧 Revolut chatbot goes rogue by charging users to cancel subscription. The AI assistant Rita imposed break fees on Ultra members trying to downgrade after WeWork perks were cut. Revolut apologized after the mischarges and confirmed the fees had been waived.
ARTICLE OF THE DAY
📰 Incognia: Fraudsters can reset a device, but not the world around it. Passwords, OTPs, IP addresses, GPS, and device IDs are all increasingly easy to manipulate. André Ferraz, CEO of Incognia, argues that precise location intelligence supplies the missing physical context, linking mule account farms and post-reset devices that look unrelated on paper while approving more legitimate customers with less friction. Read the full article here
BLOCKCHAIN/CRYPTO NEWS
🇺🇸 BitGo launches a free public Bitcoin quantum risk checker, scoring addresses based on whether public keys have been exposed onchain. Users can enter wallet addresses to assess vulnerability to future quantum attacks.
🇦🇪 Deribit receives a Broker-Dealer Licence from Dubai's VARA, connecting clients to Coinbase Exchange liquidity. The licence lets Deribit expand spot trading with access to deeper liquidity and hundreds of new assets.
🇺🇸 Bitwise cuts 14% of jobs with crypto industry under pressure. The asset manager reduced headcount as market conditions weigh on the broader crypto sector.
🇨🇭 Swissquote cuts full-year guidance as first-half crypto income plunges 66%. Crypto trading volume fell 63.5% to 2.58 billion Swiss francs, prompting a 30 million franc revenue outlook reduction. Shares slid 14% following the announcement.
STABLECOIN
🇺🇸 Base emerges as a dominant force in stablecoin card payments, now handling roughly 19% of all tracked crypto card spending. Visa's stablecoin settlement pilot has hit a $7B annualized run rate across nine supported chains.
🇬🇮 Bullish launches tokenized equity trading on its regulated exchange, settling trades of its own shares against a USD stablecoin. The listing marks the first tokenized equity traded on a GFSC-regulated digital asset exchange.
PARTNERSHIPS
🇳🇬 Mastercard and TeamApt strike deal to expand digital payments across Africa. TeamApt will operate on Mastercard's network as a non-bank acquirer, expanding card acceptance for merchants across in-store, online and mobile channels.
🇳🇬 Flutterwave and Caliza partner to expand global payment access for African businesses. The collaboration gives Flutterwave customers dedicated USD accounts connected to ACH, Fedwire, RTP and SWIFT rails. Transactions can span retail remittances to treasury transfers exceeding $1M.
🇺🇸 Gate partners with Alpaca to support expansion into U.S. stocks, ETFs, and tokenized stocks. The partnership enables IPO access and traditional equity trading alongside crypto offerings. Continue reading
🇺🇸 Lithic and Monavate partner to power card programs across the U.S. and Europe. Keep reading
🇺🇸 Knot and Venmo team up to make Venmo the effortless way to pay. Knot's merchant connectivity platform lets Venmo users set Venmo as their saved payment method at favorite merchants directly from the app. The partnership marks the first time Knot has provisioned a proprietary checkout solution as the default payment option.
🇲🇹 finby deploys Wero for its e-commerce merchants, integrating the pan-European A2A payment solution backed by 18 banks. Wero already serves over 57 million users across Belgium, France, and Germany.
🇺🇸 Crypto.com and Solidus Labs expand partnership, adding market surveillance support for Crypto.com's U.S. prediction markets offering. Keep reading
DONEDEAL FUNDING NEWS
🇺🇸 Robinhood Ventures Fund II raises $200 million in its NYSE debut. The closed-end business development company listed under the ticker RVII. Read more
🇮🇳 Flipkart founder's Navi said to hire banks for $315 million IPO, marking a significant milestone for the Indian digital lending firm. The move signals Navi's readiness to tap public markets for growth capital.
🇺🇸 Edge Focus closes growth equity raise led by Atlas Merchant Capital, strengthening the financial services firm's expansion plans. The funding will support Edge Focus's next phase of growth across its platform.
🇺🇸 Uber invests in Chilean FinTech in a push into motorcycle lending. The strategic investment expands Uber's financial services footprint into Latin American vehicle financing.
🇦🇪 Naran secures $10 million in debt and equity financing, backing the mobility FinTech's expansion across the Middle East. The raise will fund Naran's motorcycle lending operations in the region.
🇺🇸 PointsKash secures up to $100M to fuel national rollout, backed by Hawk Capital Investors in a two-phase structure. An initial $35M tranche will fund the deployment of roughly 2,100 KashPoint financial services kiosks ahead of a wider national launch.
🇺🇸 Bank of America plans to invest $250 billion in critical infrastructure projects, signaling a major push into large-scale financing. The commitment spans energy, transportation, and technology sectors as the bank expands its infrastructure lending portfolio.
🇬🇧 Wintermute plans $1 billion AI investment to compete on Wall Street. The crypto market maker aims to deploy capital across AI infrastructure and trading technology.
MOVERS AND SHAKERS
🇨🇾 Revolut Cyprus CEO Costas Michael departs, stepping down after four years leading Revolut Digital Assets Europe. He will remain as a Board Advisor after securing the firm's CySEC MiCA license and scaling operations across all 27 EEA jurisdictions.
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