OpenPayd Is Taking 43 U.S. Licences Into Its Global Fintech Push
Hey FinTech Fanatic!
Expanding into the U.S. is one thing. Getting the regulatory infrastructure to actually operate there is another.
OpenPayd is making a serious move on that front.
The financial infrastructure provider has added 43 U.S. Money Transmitter Licences through the integration of MSB USA, giving its global clients access to a much broader share of the American market.
The timing is notable too. OpenPayd says ARR has passed $96M, annualized transaction volume is above $300B, and the company is profitable — while preparing for a potential Nasdaq listing later this year.
It’s a good example of how fintech growth increasingly depends on the regulatory rails behind the technology.
And speaking of expanding financial infrastructure, the 2026 LATAM Stablecoin Map from Stablecoin Insider & Pomelo looks at how stablecoins are moving into neobanking, payments, remittances, card issuance, and other everyday financial services across Latin America.
Let’s get into today’s FinTech stories. 👇 See you tomorrow!
Cheers,
INSIGHTS
💡 Stablecoin Insider & Pomelo: The 2026 LATAM Stablecoin Map. Latin America is emerging as a major testing ground for stablecoins, with dozens of companies building across neobanks, card issuance, B2B payments, remittances, infrastructure, yield, and compliance. High inflation, volatile currencies, remittance flows, and limited dollar access are accelerating adoption, turning stablecoins from a crypto use case into everyday financial infrastructure. Read the full story here
FINTECH NEWS
🇺🇸 OpenPayd strengthens its U.S. position through the acquisition of 43 state licences. The deal expands the embedded finance provider's regulatory coverage across the United States.
🇧🇷 Brazilian fintechs added R$1.6 trillion to GDP, according to a Reglab study covering 2016 through Q1 2026. The research attributes the impact to greater competition in credit and financial services, supported by regulatory changes such as Pix.
🇺🇸 Block opens up its Cash App Score to other lenders. The move lets external lenders access Cash App's proprietary credit scoring data to broaden lending decisions beyond traditional bureaus.
🇮🇱 PayPal lays off nearly a fourth of its employees in Israel, as part of a global plan to cut 20% of its workforce over two to three years. The restructuring targets $1.5B in annual savings and aims to accelerate AI use across company operations, with 60 to 75 Israeli roles affected.
🌍 Sumsub launches a Fraud Prevention Starter Kit, as sophisticated fraud attacks continue to rise. The toolkit is designed to help businesses deploy core fraud defenses quickly against evolving threats.
🌏 Juspay pilots Breeze Universal, enabling brand discovery across AI platforms including ChatGPT and Claude. The offering lets banks, fintechs, and brands deploy agentic shopping experiences without building complex infrastructure or altering existing operations.
🇦🇺 Emburse Spend expands globally, launching in Australia as its first market outside the US. Finance teams can now manage expenses with a platform tailored to local tax and card requirements.
🇨🇭 Freedom24 explores Geneva presence as part of long-term Swiss strategy. The European investment platform is assessing opportunities in wealth management, digital financial infrastructure, and AI. Read more
🇮🇳 GoCredit launches a free loan app checker, letting borrowers verify if a lending app is real, fake, or RBI-registered. The tool searches against 1,024 apps in the RBI's Digital Lending Apps directory.
🇺🇸 Fingerprint surpasses $50M ARR, scaling its AI-driven fraud defense platform. The company provides device identification technology to power the next generation of fraud prevention.
PAYMENTS NEWS
🇺🇸 Visa launches enhanced A2A Protect innovations, to help financial institutions stop fraud before money leaves accounts. The new capabilities detect and block suspicious A2A transfers in real time.
🇧🇪 Wise is the first company named under Belgium's AML regime. The National Bank of Belgium published the decision as part of its new name-and-shame strategy following FATF criticism.
🇮🇳 India is preparing to roll out agentic payments on UPI, allowing AI agents to initiate transactions autonomously on users' behalf. The move would make UPI one of the first major payment rails to natively support AI-driven payments.
🇫🇷 Orange becomes the first merchant in France to offer Wero for bill payments. The telecom giant enables customers to pay bills via the European A2A payment method.
🇱🇺 Wero launches in Luxembourg, expanding its instant payment solution to a fourth market. As Payconiq transitions to Wero, users will gain access to instant account-to-account and online payments.
🇦🇪 Vision Bank launches SME financing, to support cross-border trade from its ADGM base. The Islamic bank will originate short-term trade finance through digital platform partnerships.
🌎 Marcura closes the procurement-to-payment loop, with a new platform connecting purchase orders to supplier payments in maritime. The solution eliminates manual reconciliation across the shipping procurement cycle.
DIGITAL BANKING NEWS
🇮🇪 Revolut launches AIR, an in-app AI assistant across Ireland and Europe. Users can ask about spending, manage subscriptions, and plan trips through a conversational interface.
🇮🇪 Revolut welcomes the Irish government's savings account roadmap. The neobank expressed support for the initiative as it continues expanding its banking services across European markets. Read more
🇪🇬 OPay applies for a digital banking license in Egypt, signaling a major expansion beyond its existing payment infrastructure. The company already operates licensed electronic payment services with over 300,000 merchant points of sale across all Egyptian governorates.
🌍 Mambu launches Intelligent Core, connecting AI to core banking through its composable platform. Mambu Agentic brings specialised agents and autonomous workflows directly into deposits, lending, and payments.
🇺🇸 Fifth Third launches the Truly Simple® Credit Card, a no-annual-fee product offering 18 months of 0% APR on purchases and balance transfers. The Mastercard-network card lets customers consolidate higher-rate debt through the Fifth Third mobile app.
🇬🇧 Allica Bank enhances residential AVM bridging proposition, raising the maximum LTV from 70% to 75% and the loan cap from £750,000 to £2 million. The change removes the need for a physical valuation on eligible residential bridging deals.
🇮🇳 Axis Bank introduces a safety tool, letting customers set UPI limits and declare overseas travel before their trip. The feature gives users greater control over transaction security and international card usage.
BLOCKCHAIN/CRYPTO NEWS
🇺🇸 Hyperliquid Strategies boosts its equity facility to $2.5B, up from $1B with Chardan Capital Markets. The company has raised $647M so far and expanded its treasury to about 29.3M HYPE tokens.
🇺🇸 Broadridge brings G7 securities to institutional tokenized repo. Its DLR solution processed $7.4 trillion in August, now enabling cross-border atomic settlement across G7 markets.
🇻🇬 Binance adds US stock options to its multi-asset platform. Users outside the US can now trade options on 1,000+ stocks and ETFs, with TradFi futures volume reaching $433.4B in August 2026.
🇦🇪 FAB completes live tokenized deposit milestone with Citi, using Swift's Ledger MVP for 24/7 cross-border payments. FAB is the first bank in the Middle East and Africa to reach this stage in Swift's tokenized money initiative.
STABLECOINS NEWS
🌍 21 financial firms, including BofA, Citi, and Goldman, plan to form a company and launch a US dollar stablecoin by H1 2027. The consortium has more than doubled since an initial 10-bank effort last October.
🌍 Tether releases open-source AI translation models, for 19 African and 9 European languages. The models run offline on everyday devices, with the smallest outperforming far larger systems to unlock local-language education for underserved communities.
🌍 Circle and OKX expand USDC liquidity, across spot, margin, and futures markets. The partnership deepens USDC integration on the exchange to broaden stablecoin access for traders.
PARTNERSHIPS
🇺🇾 dLocal and Alternative Airlines partner on flexible payments, for travel bookings in emerging markets. The deal connects Alternative Airlines to local BNPL providers in Colombia and Brazil via dLocal's BNPL Fuse platform, with more markets planned.
🇬🇧 Checkout.com selects Thrive as its new learning platform, covering compliance onboarding and skills development. The payments processor, which handles over $300B in global payments, will use Thrive's AI-powered tools across its global team.
🇺🇸 Klarna and Rare Carat team up, to bring flexible payments to engagement ring shopping. U.S. customers can now choose Pay in 4 or 0% APR financing on purchases that average $5,000 to $6,500.
🇺🇸 NordVPN becomes a new privacy perk for Klarna members, adding encrypted connectivity to the membership ecosystem. Premium members receive NordVPN Basic while Max members get NordVPN Standard, both included at no additional cost.
🇱🇻 Handwave announces expanded agreement with Visa, to support biometric payments across Europe. The FinTech will integrate Visa's tokenisation, authentication, and fraud tools to scale palm-based card onboarding securely across European markets.
🇬🇧 Paymentology and Maxim target Africans in the UK, with a credit card for those with limited local credit histories. The programme aims to serve financially established individuals who lack a UK credit footprint despite active financial lives elsewhere.
🇿🇦 Canva partners with EBANX and Capitec Pay, to unlock cardless subscriptions for South Africans. Canva becomes the first international company to offer recurring payments via Capitec Pay, reaching 44 million consumers without credit cards.
🇸🇬 OCBC, Visa, and Doxa deploy Singapore's first deep-tier financing solution. The platform expands working capital access for subcontractors deeper in the construction supply chain.
🇪🇺 Handwave expands its agreement with Visa, to support biometric payments across Europe. The deal integrates Visa's tokenisation and authentication to securely link cards to a user's palm.
🇺🇸 IBM partners with Lending Labs, to offer an AI-ready sovereign lending solution to banks and financial institutions. The collaboration delivers compliant, data-sovereign AI across the lending lifecycle.
DONEDEAL FUNDING NEWS
🇭🇰 Citi joins FundPark's ABS programme with a $250M commitment, expanding FundPark's funding capacity to over $1.25B. The facility supports SMEs in cross-border trade and digital commerce.
🇺🇸 Cari raises over $30 million in its first funding tranche, backed entirely by banks including all six Design Partner Banks. The bank-governed digital money network is building infrastructure to bring money on-chain for regional and community banks.
🇺🇸 Huskeys raises $27M Series A led by Blackstone, to tackle growing complexity at the network edge. Total funding reaches $35M as the cybersecurity startup builds tools to manage security across fragmented edge environments.
🇺🇸 SciFin emerges from stealth with $44M in seed funding, to help revenue teams with AI-powered tools. The round positions SciFin to scale its platform for go-to-market operations.
M&A
🇺🇸 ACI Worldwide to acquire Cranium Ventures, adding microservices card switching to ACI Connetic for Cards. The cloud-native technology strengthens ACI's payments orchestration platform.
🇺🇸 Figure completes its acquisition of Kiavi, the top residential transition loan lender. Kiavi's platform will be integrated across Figure's network of 480+ ecosystem partners.
🇩🇰 Jyske Bank agrees to acquire Formuepleje, one of Denmark's largest independent wealth managers. The deal adds roughly 14,000 investors and DKK 40B in assets under management.
🇺🇸 Solifi acquires Inovatec, extending its platform across retail automotive and specialty finance. The deal adds cloud-based origination and servicing across automotive, powersports, and equipment lending.
🇬🇧 Shackleton completes its acquisition of Argentis, the advice firm formerly known as Hurst Point. The combined business will serve 44,000 clients with 233 advisers across the UK.
🇺🇸 Accounting startup Accrual is acquiring Puzzle, consolidating two players in the startup accounting space. The deal combines both platforms as Accrual looks to expand its automated bookkeeping capabilities.
MOVERS AND SHAKERS
🇦🇹 Bitpanda strengthens its Executive Committee, to accelerate European growth and reinforce risk management. The exchange appointed two new members to drive expansion and oversight across its European operations.
🇮🇳 Pine Labs appoints Jayaram Karthik as COO. He brings 25 years of experience from American Express, Citibank, Amazon, and Razorpay to lead operations across 20+ countries.
🇦🇺 Zenith Payments appoints Anthony Drury as CEO. Drury previously held executive roles at American Express, easyJet, Zip, and PayPal, and will lead the company's next growth phase.
🇫🇷 Ingenico strengthens its global leadership team, naming Maria Parpou as CPO, Paul Gardiner as CTO, Ieuan Owen as CRO, and Oliver Moore as CXO. The appointments follow a €150M investment from a PIMCO-led group.
🇦🇪 Bybit names Sean Ballard as Head of Derivatives and Institutional Business. Ballard joins from Jump Trading with 25 years of experience in derivatives and high-frequency trading across global markets.
🇺🇸 Bank of America hired the head of engineering, for JPMorgan's blockchain arm Kinexys. Sudhir Upadhyay joins as MD to lead a newly formed global markets digital assets technology team after two decades at JPMorgan.
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