Kraken, Bybit, and Robinhood Race to Tokenize Wall Street Stocks

Hey FinTech Fanatic!

Usually, I start the week with a team meeting, and this week we kicked it off with a question: What would make this newsletter even better?

After digging into the data (hello, stats!), we sat down to brainstorm. Some ideas were expected, such as more educational content, tighter headlines, and better pictures, but then we realized something: we don’t want to guess what you want. We’d rather ask.

So here it goes, what would you love to see more of in this newsletter? You can share your thoughts here, or just drop your answer in the comments, whatever’s easiest for you.

It’ll only take a minute, but your input helps us keep raising the bar.

I'll be sharing the most common and creative answers in the next few days, so stay tuned!

Cheers,

Marcel

INSIGHTS

🌍 Europe’s neobanks want to help customers buy a house. Mortgages are key to convincing customers to use challenger banks as their primary accounts. UK neobanks Revolut and Monzo are both looking into the home ownership space, while Germany’s N26 and Dutch challenger bank Bunq have launched mortgage products in recent years.

FINTECH NEWS

🌍 Pomelo's CEO at Endeavor 2025. Gastón Irigoyen, Pomelo’s CEO, joined global founders and investors at Endeavor’s 2025 Investor Meeting in London to explore how capital is flowing beyond traditional hubs. Continue reading

🇺🇸 Klarna accelerates shift to digital bank ahead of second IPO attempt. Klarna must prove to investors that it can be sustainably profitable as it prepares a second attempt to list in the US after earlier plans were thwarted in April by market turmoil linked to the US trade war.

🇮🇳 Slice rolls out UPI credit card and opens India’s first UPI-powered bank branch. The newly launched Slice Super Card functions like a UPI-based credit card. It has no joining or annual fees and allows users to scan QR codes or make UPI payments directly from a pre-approved credit line.

📈 Trustly reports strong 2024 financial results, driven by growth in both Europe and North America. The company processed a total payment value (TPV) of $87 billion in 2024, marking a 54% increase year-on-year. Net revenue grew by 32% to $239 million, while adjusted EBITDA rose by 50% to reach $73.2 million.

🌍 Robinhood launches stock tokens, reveals layer 2 blockchain, and expands crypto suite in EU and US with perpetual futures and staking. This gives eligible customers exposure to US equities with Robinhood Stock Tokens, featuring zero commissions or added spreads from Robinhood, dividend support, and 24/5 access. European customers will have access to 200+ US stocks and ETF tokens.

PAYMENTS NEWS

🌍 The Payments People Top 100. NORBr has released a list of 100+ experts shaping the future of payments, a helpful reference to understand where the industry is headed in 2025. View the full list here

🇺🇸 Klarna and Bolt announced a partnership that will see Klarna’s payment options integrated into Bolt’s checkout operating system. This deal means Klarna will show up as a buy now, pay later choice on Bolt devices. Merchants using Bolt can offer Klarna’s Pay in 4 or monthly financing options to shoppers in physical stores, and shoppers can choose that option with a single click.

🇰🇷 Naver Pay enters stablecoin race, but liquidity is the key to success. Naver Pay is entering the stablecoin race, becoming the latest South Korean FinTech heavyweight to move into blockchain-based payments. The company announced plans to issue its stablecoin for future use in payments and rewards.

🇨🇦 Nuvei goes live as direct payment acquirer in Canada. This launch empowers Canadian businesses to process domestic transactions locally through Nuvei, eliminating the need for third-party processors and enabling significantly higher payment approval rates.

🌎 Peruvian FinTech Do Payment expands in Latin America. With this innovation, the company addresses two critical challenges for the sector: faster liquidity for clients and eliminating reliance on intermediaries, which translates into unique advantages in speed, costs, and flexibility.

🇺🇸 Sezzle debuts budgeting and checkout tools amid low consumer confidence. Sezzle has introduced features it says are designed to help customers weather increased financial pressure. Among the new features are Sezzle Balance, designed to simplify the repayment process for consumers through a pre-loadable digital wallet.

REGTECH NEWS

🇸🇬 Singapore launches payments network entity to oversee national payment schemes. The Monetary Authority of Singapore has joined forces with the Association of Banks in Singapore to establish Singapore Payments Network, a new entity which will administer and govern Singapore’s national payment schemes.

🇸🇬 Monetary Authority of Singapore fines five payment firms S$960,000 over AML/CFT control failures. The enforcement action follows MAS examinations that found the firms lacked adequate AML/CFT controls, leading to multiple violations of MAS Notice PSN01, which sets out requirements for specified payment services. 

DIGITAL BANKING NEWS

🇦🇺 CommBank deploys AI-powered bots to fight scams. These bots are deployed by Apate.ai, a cyber-intelligence firm that spun out from Macquarie University. Apate.ai’s system is based on a “honeypot” system, said Dali Kaafar, CEO and founder of the company.

🇸🇬 Moneythor launches AI suite to deliver deep banking. The suite enables banks to leverage the full potential of their data to deliver experiences that resemble those of popular technology and media apps in terms of personalisation, proactivity, and engagement, a challenge which many of the region’s banks are currently struggling to deliver in practice.

🇦🇷 Revolut's plan in Argentina and the difference with Nubank's setback. Revolut is actively recruiting a "Head of Expansion" to build a local team within a year and secure necessary licenses, partnerships, and regulatory approvals. Meanwhile, Nubank is taking a more cautious approach.

BLOCKCHAIN/CRYPTO NEWS

🇪🇺 Gemini launches tokenized US stocks in the EU, starting with MicroStrategy. With additional blockchain support, the asset will be available on the Arbitrum Network. The new feature allows European customers to invest in US equities directly from their app.

🇺🇸 Anchorage to phase out USDC, Agora USD citing risks, stirring fierce Backlash. The move came at a time when competition in the stablecoin market is heating up with global banks, payments firms, and crypto companies jockeying for position in the rapidly growing sector.

🇺🇸 Kraken and Bybit, two mega crypto exchanges, entered the space nearly 2 hours apart and unveiled their listings of tokenized U.S. stocks. The launches mark a significant milestone in efforts to bring traditional equities onto blockchain rails and offer global investors access to Wall Street in crypto-native form.

🇺🇸 Coinbase patent tracks AI contributions with blockchain. The company is seeking to patent a system for “tracking machine learning data provenance via a blockchain,” essentially recording all data that goes in and out of an AI model throughout its lifecycle.

PARTNERSHIPS

🌍 Investec simplifies SEPA Connectivity with PagoNxt Payments and Banco Santander. The PagoNxt Payments platform, combined with Santander’s in-house payments expertise, aligns well with Investec's payment infrastructure and business needs.

🇪🇺 Bourgeois Bohème brings Apple Pay to customers, simplifying payments for dispersed assets and large households. It offers an option to embed a chip in accessories for simplified transactions across devices. Utilising AI algorithms, BOBO increases security by identifying and flagging fraud risks.

🇺🇸 Alibaba.com taps Balance for flexible B2B ‘Pay Later’ for US SMEs. The collaboration aims to help businesses manage cash flow and access instant credit at checkout. Under the new arrangement, Alibaba.com’s US business customers can now select Balance’s ‘Pay Later for Business’ solution when placing orders.

🇳🇱 MPS partners with Salt Edge to launch PSD2-compliant open banking APIs for retail and corporate accounts. Initially available in the Netherlands and France for both retail and corporate accounts, these APIs will be accessible to all licensed third-party providers (TPPs) throughout the European Economic Area.

🇦🇪 eToro launches target-date portfolios in partnership with Franklin Templeton. Target-date portfolios are built to help investors work towards a financial goal over a specific time horizon. The portfolios automatically adjust their asset allocation and resulting risk profile over the course of the investment period.

🇬🇧 Wollette partners with Ordo to optimise the A2A experience. Through Ordo’s infrastructure, WollettePay users can fund their payment accounts instantly and securely from their bank accounts, without needing to enter card details. This enables consumers to enjoy a more efficient and flexible way to pay and manage their money.

DONEDEAL FUNDING NEWS

💰 Over the last week, there were 9 FinTech deals in Europe, raising a total of €215 million, two deals each in France, Germany, and the Netherlands, and one deal each in Italy, Denmark, and the UK.

🇲🇽 Klar raises $190 million at $800 million valuation. Klar has positioned itself as an alternative to legacy institutions by offering lower-cost, app-based financial products to a broad swath of Mexican consumers and small businesses. Read more

🌍 NymCard raises $33M to scale embedded finance across MENA. With this investment, it is deepening its presence across 10+ markets in MENA, strengthening its payment infrastructure solutions to better serve banks, enterprises, FinTechs, telecom providers, and more across its three core verticals: Card Issuing Processing, Embedded Lending, and Money movement.

🇺🇸 Niural lands $31M to streamline global payroll. Niural offers services like accounts receivable, accounts payable, and cash flow reporting, which reduces the need for managing multiple vendors. Read more

🇺🇸 Crypto giant Galaxy raises $175 million for first venture fund. Galaxy general partner Mike Giampapa said the firm decided to grow its venture capital operations in order to broaden its bets into startups working on the growing intersection between traditional finance and crypto, including stablecoins and decentralized finance applications.

🇺🇸 Finofo raises $3.3M to transform cross‑border financial operations for mid‑market companies. The platform is especially relevant for energy, manufacturing, and logistics firms with international vendor and customer bases and multi-entity operations.

🇬🇷 Natech secures $33 million ahead of the launch of the Greek digital bank. The company says it is already actively preparing for the next funding round to deepen its presence across key European markets and support the scale-up of its modular Banking-as-a-Service product suite.

🇬🇧 London-based Ferovinum bottles €468 million to expand global funding for the drinks trade. The new debt facility will allow Ferovinum to extend its services beyond its home market in the United Kingdom to key territories across the United States, European Union, and Australia.

🌍 Wave raises $137 million to expand mobile money services across Africa. The funding will scale its mobile money operations and broaden financial access for underserved communities across the continent. Read more

MOVERS AND SHAKERS

🇩🇰 Lunar co-founder and CTO exit, in a cost-cutting move. Peter Andreasen, Lunar’s Co-Founder and CIO, and Kåre Kjelstrøm, the CTO of Lunar, have both left. Ken Villum Klausen, Lunar’s CEO and co-founder, said: “These changes reflect a deliberate shift as we move from a phase of rapid growth and expansion into one of operational maturity and profitability”.

🇮🇳 Indian FinTech firm MobiKwik elevates Saurabh Dwivedi to CTO role. As CTO, Dwivedi will lead engineering efforts across four key verticals: Payments, Financial Services, Core Platform, and Infrastructure & Information Security. Keep reading

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