PayPal Moves Fast Into AI Commerce with Cymbio Acquisition

PayPal Moves Fast Into AI Commerce with Cymbio Acquisition
PayPal Moves Fast Into AI Commerce with Cymbio Acquisition

Hey FinTech Fanatic!

PayPal is acquiring Cymbio to accelerate its agentic commerce strategy.

Cymbio helps merchants make their product catalogs discoverable across AI-powered surfaces like Microsoft Copilot and Perplexity. Checkout stays with PayPal. Merchants remain the merchant of record. Customer relationships stay intact.

This is a distribution play for the AI era. Tens of millions of merchants. Products surfaced where consumers are already searching and buying.

PayPal is positioning itself as the commerce layer behind AI-native shopping journeys. The deal is expected to close in H1 2026.

"Acquiring Cymbio's technology and team will enhance our agentic commerce capabilities and accelerate the expansion to more of our merchants",  said Michelle Gill, Executive Vice President and General Manager of Small Business and Financial Services at PayPal.

Gaming payments keep scaling quietly ...


ZBD just raised $40M to build payment rails for video games.

No NFTs. No speculative gameplay. Just payments. Bitcoin and stablecoins as infrastructure for in-game economies and microtransactions.

As blockchain payments mature, gaming is emerging as one of the most practical real-world use cases.

If you’re watching how the FinTech industry is evolving, scroll down to see what else is moving 👇 I'll be back next week with more updates in your inbox.

Cheers,

Marcel


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FINTECH NEWS

🇮🇳 PhonePe India IPO set to see Walmart cut stake as Tiger Global and Microsoft exit. PhonePe, which competes with Google Pay and Paytm in India, had received regulatory approval for its stock market listing ‌after confidentially filing for an IPO in September. 

🇺🇸 Interactive Brokers plans to sell institutions on prediction markets. Interactive Brokers said it plans to onboard utility companies into prediction markets in 2026, enabling institutional clients to hedge energy exposure through contracts such as temperature-linked electricity and natural gas markets.


PAYMENTS NEWS

🇮🇳 Payoneer receives in-principle authorization as a cross-border payment aggregator in India. This enables Payoneer to expand its operations in the country and provide end-to-end cross-border payment solutions to Indian importers and exporters for inward and outward cross-border transactions.

🇺🇸 IXOPAY launches ‘Token-First’ packages to tackle payment stack fragmentation. The new packaged options are intended to remove the “build-it-yourself” burden, providing payments teams with a standardized starting point that scales as they add new processors, geographies, and payment methods.


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REGTECH NEWS

🇺🇸 Banks get more flexibility to display the FDIC Logo in digital tools. A final rule adopted will give banks more flexibility in how they present the agency’s logo. Lenders will only have to display the logo on “screens and pages where signage would be most relevant to consumers,” the agency said.


DIGITAL BANKING NEWS

🇹🇭 Kakao Bank teams up with SCBX to launch the first digital bank in Thailand. Under the agreement, Kakao Bank will initially take a 10% stake in the new entity and plans to gradually increase its holding to 24.5%. SCBX will lead the project, with Kakao Bank and China’s WeBank joining as partners.

🇮🇪 Revolut says its Irish mortgage launch is still in development despite previously setting a 2026 introduction date. The bank is adapting its mortgage model locally while stressing strong fraud prevention as it seeks to expand beyond payments into core banking services.

🇧🇷 Bradesco launches Pix installment payments outside of credit card limits. Customers can make a Pix payment and choose to pay in monthly installments, which are automatically debited from their checking account. This model tends to give banks more flexibility in setting rates, terms, and risk policies.

🇵🇰 Raqami to roll out Pakistan’s first Islamic digital bank, commits $100m investment. CEO Umair Aijaz said Pakistan presents a strong opportunity for digital banking, particularly in SME financing. He said the bank was focused on building scale through technology-led solutions rather than physical branches.

🇬🇧 Revolut offers Gen Z premium perks worth over £400 a year. The initiative provides eligible Revolut Kids & Teens users with complimentary access to a curated selection of premium digital services from leading brands, helping young people build confidence and practical life skills beyond everyday money management.


PARTNERSHIPS

🇺🇸 Gr4vy and Ecommpay partner to deliver multiple payment methods through a single integration. The integration expands Gr4vy’s orchestration capabilities by enabling card payments, Apple Pay, Google Pay, and more than 100 alternative payment methods, helping ensure each transaction is routed through the most effective payment option for customers worldwide.

🇬🇧 Checkout.com powers digital payments behind Freenow by Lyft’s journeys across Europe. The partnership provides acquiring services and AI-driven payment insights to improve authorization rates and reliability, supporting Freenow’s growth while enhancing complex post-paid payment flows with smarter retries and digital wallet options.

🇨🇳 Thunes and UnionPay International launch instant money transfers to China’s mainland. By establishing a direct technical connection to UnionPay’s infrastructure, Thunes now offers real-time or near-real-time pay-to-card transfers to UnionPay debit cards across 79 major Chinese banks, simplifying remittances with upfront FX rates and eliminating manual fund declarations.

🇧🇷 Noah and Picnic bring USD-native payroll and settlement to Brazil’s global workforce. By embedding dollar-native accounts, payroll, and settlements inside the Picnic app, the partnership gives Brazilian professionals a direct way to earn, hold, and use USD without relying on US banks, say the partners.

🇦🇪 NEOPAY and Nymbl bring contactless order-and-pay experience to UAE F&B. Through this collaboration, NEOPAY merchants can offer customers the ability to browse menus, place orders, and complete payments directly from their table using a QR code.

🇪🇹 Oromia Bank and Visa sign a strategic partnership to expand digital payments in Ethiopia. The collaboration will support Oromia Bank’s plans to expand modern, convenient, and streamlined international payment card services, enhancing customer access to global payment solutions.

🇬🇧 Kani powers TransactPay’s next chapter with a partnership. With the addition of Kani’s Data‑as‑a‑Service offering, TransactPay now gains real‑time access to standardised, structured data across thousands of daily files from multiple processors and card schemes, including Mastercard and Visa.

🌍 Flutterwave partners with Turnkey and Nuvion to deploy stablecoin infrastructure. The collaboration aims to establish stablecoins as a primary pillar of Africa’s financial ecosystem, offering a faster and lower-cost alternative to traditional cross-border transactions.

🇦🇷 Telecom Argentina surges on bold FinTech expansion deal. Shares of Telecom Argentina rose after it announced a strategic alliance with Banco Macro to boost the growth of its Personal Pay FinTech platform, combining banking expertise with Telecom’s large user base.

🇬🇧 Mercuryo Unveils partnership with Visa to support global expansion of Visa Direct off-ramping service. The integration will allow millions of users to obtain access to an intuitive crypto-to-fiat conversion tool without leaving the platforms that they trust.


DONEDEAL FUNDING NEWS

🇺🇸 Crypto firm BitGo raises $212.8 million in US IPO. The listing comes amid regulatory uncertainty and market volatility for crypto firms, positioning BitGo as an early test of investor appetite as others like Coinbase, Grayscale, and Kraken consider IPOs.

🇺🇸 SurgePays prices $2.5m public offering to support growth. The company confirmed that the offering consists of 2,000,000 shares of common stock, priced at $1.25 per share. Before deducting underwriting discounts and other offering-related expenses, the transaction is expected to generate around $2.5m in gross proceeds.

🇺🇸 Crypto startup ZBD raises $40 million to power video game payments. Based in New Jersey, the company sells access to video game payment software that can process a variety of transactions, including Bitcoin ones. Read more


M&A

🇺🇸 PayPal to acquire Cymbio, accelerating agentic commerce capabilities. Acquiring Cymbio's technology and team will enhance PayPal's agentic commerce capabilities and accelerate the expansion to more of our merchants. By making their product catalogs discoverable on AI surfaces, merchants can increase sales while expanding product choice to the millions of consumers shopping on AI platforms today.

🌍 Nedbank bids $856m for control of Kenya’s NCBA in East Africa push. Under the terms of the transaction, shareholders will receive 20% in cash and 80% in newly issued Nedbank ordinary shares listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange, a structure that limits Nedbank’s immediate cash outlay while binding the two banks’ fortunes together.


MOVERS AND SHAKERS

🇦🇺 Mastercard hires Alexandra Sloane as VP of Integrated Marketing and Communications. Based in Sydney, Sloane will guide brand strategy and integrated communications across the region, working closely with business leaders to support Mastercard’s long-term growth agenda.

🇺🇸 CompoSecure has appointed Graham Robinson as President and Chief Executive Officer of CompoSecure, L.L.C., an indirect, wholly owned subsidiary and reporting segment of the Company, effective January 22, 2026. Robinson’s career spans 30 years across the technology and industrial sectors, including at multiple world-class public companies.

🇩🇪 Token.io today announced that Gideon Fourie, Managing Director of Token GmbH, has been appointed to the Berlin Group’s openFinance Advisory Board. With more than 25 years of experience in financial services and payments, Gideon brings deep expertise spanning strategy, operations, and regulation.

🇳🇱 Fleur de Roos promoted to Chief Operating Officer at Fourthline. In her new position as COO, de Roos will oversee Fourthline's operational functions, including legal, compliance, risk management, HR, and business operations, with a focus on scaling the company's infrastructure.

🇺🇸 ebankIT appoints Jerry Reese as Senior Solutions Engineer for North America, strengthening the company’s technical leadership as it accelerates its expansion. In his new role, Reese will work closely with North American financial institutions to design and deliver API-first, omnichannel digital banking solutions that bridge legacy core systems with modern customer experiences.


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