Revolut Commits at Least $1B to Latin America, With Brazil in Focus
Hey FinTech Fanatic!
Revolut has big plans for Latin America.
The company has set aside at least $1 billion to invest in the region, executives told journalists in São Paulo. The money covers Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, Peru and Argentina, and will be spent over several years.
"This isn't the maximum," said Carlos Urrutia, Revolut's general manager of international expansion. "It's a number we're committed to for now, and it can grow."
The region is moving quickly. Revolut's Mexican bank reached 1 million customers in eight months, Colombia has a full banking licence and is close to launch, and in Argentina Banco Cetelem is becoming Revolut Bank Argentina.
Brazil is the one to watch. Revolut launched there in 2023, and it is now the company's biggest expansion market and one of its three fastest-growing, according to Brazil CEO Glauber Mota.
What I find interesting is the timing. It comes just days after the $115 billion valuation I wrote about last week, and Revolut expects one in four new customers worldwide next year to come from Latin America and the US.
The big question is when Revolut gets a full banking licence in Brazil. Mota says that's the plan, and "the question is timing".
Anyway, plenty more happened in FinTech today.
Let's dive in, and I'll be back in your inbox tomorrow!
Cheers,
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FINTECH NEWS
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🇺🇸 Payoneer's Q3 revenue rises 2% YoY to $276.9M. Volume grew 13% to $25.3B, with B2B volume up 59% to $5.0B. Net income rose 6% to $14.9M, while adjusted EBITDA fell 4% to $68.3M.
🇸🇬 Tazapay's FY2026 revenue jumps 71% as net loss widens to $7.36M. Revenue reached $21.19M in the year to March 2026, according to its audited filings with ACRA. Circle agreed in September to buy the Singapore firm in an all-stock deal valued at $400M.
HOW FINTECH PERFORMED LAST WEEK
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PAYMENTS NEWS
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🇪🇸 MONEI launches Tap to Pay on iPhone for merchants in Spain. Merchants can accept contactless cards, Apple Pay and other digital wallets using only an iPhone and the MONEI Pay app, without extra hardware. MONEI offers more than 40 payment methods, including Bizum.
🇪🇺 Segpay expands Pay by Bank to eight European markets. The service, powered by TrueLayer, is now available in Belgium, Finland, France, Ireland, the Netherlands and Spain, alongside the UK and Germany, supporting one-time purchases in GBP and EUR.
#FINTECHREPORT
💡 American Express: Q3 2026 Results: Revenue Reaches $20.1B as Billed Business Hits $454B. American Express reported revenue of $20.1B (+9% YoY), net income of $3.7B (+28%) and billed business of $454B (+8%). Card fee revenue approached $3B, growing 16%, while credit loss provisions declined to $985M from $1.3B. However, the headline profit growth needs context: Amex recorded a $982M pre-tax gain from selling its stake in Global Business Travel Group. Excluding this gain and restructuring items, adjusted net income increased 11%. The premium card business also remains resilient, with nearly all U.S. Platinum cardholders reportedly retaining their cards after the annual fee rose from $695 to $895. Management also raised its full-year 2026 EPS guidance. Read the full Q3 results breakdown here
DIGITAL BANKING NEWS
🇦🇪 Wio Bank launches Kids Savings Spaces with 10% annual interest. Parents on Wio Family can add children aged 8 to 17 to a dedicated savings Pocket to help them save towards goals and build money habits, with interest paid out rather than added to the balance.
🇪🇺 Klarna prepares a successor to its legacy open banking API. The company's XS2A v2 documentation outlines a planned rollout, with a sandbox release targeted for October and production scheduled for November 2026. Both dates remain tentative and subject to change.
🇧🇷 Nubank suspends crypto deposits and withdrawals. The bank cited instability at an external data provider, while a post on X claimed a hacker attack on one of its providers. The attack has not been confirmed, and no restoration timeline was given.
🌎 Revolut to invest at least $1B in Latin America, with Brazil its biggest market. The commitment spans several years. Revolut has full bank authorisation in Colombia, is converting Banco Cetelem into Revolut Bank Argentina and plans Chile next. Its Mexico unit reached 1 million customers in eight months.
🇰🇿 VEON plans a digital bank in Kazakhstan. The telecoms group plans to launch a digital bank to take on top lenders in Kazakhstan, Bloomberg reports. Its Beeline unit signed a payments memorandum with the National Bank of Kazakhstan in September.
🇬🇧 Starling launches a fee-free business credit card. The card offers uncapped 1% cashback, credit limits from £2,000 to £100,000 and no FX fees, with early access by invitation for select limited companies. It is Starling's first credit card.
🇩🇰 Nordea faces almost $1B fine in Danish money laundering case. A Copenhagen court is due to rule on whether the bank must pay the DKK6.6B fine prosecutors are seeking over anti-money laundering failures between 2012 and 2015. Nordea denies the charges.
BLOCKCHAIN/CRYPTO NEWS
🇺🇸 Mastercard secures patents to assess money laundering risk before crypto transfers. The US Patent and Trademark Office granted the two patents on 3 November, covering pre-transfer AML risk assessment and private processing with double-spend prevention.
🌐 Hackers paid $15 to drain $2.5B from Binance in a single transaction. The fee registered an EIP-7702 permission that gave attacker-controlled code control of Binance's main hot wallet, Blockaid found. The transfer included 167,464 ETH and $1.6B in USDT.
🇺🇸 US regulators check bank systems after the Binance hack. Supervisors from the Federal Reserve and the OCC have been calling banks about unusual activity or disruptions, people familiar told Reuters. Neither regulator has issued new guidance.
🇺🇸 Chainalysis says breach exposed password hashes and live tokens. The blockchain analytics firm widened its earlier disclosure, which listed names and email addresses. Affected accounts are locked, and there is no evidence that investigation data was accessed.
🇺🇸 Payward and its clients buy an AAVE token stake. A Payward-affiliated fund and clients acquired an undisclosed amount of AAVE through secondary market purchases, with further acquisitions possible. Aave has $33B in net deposits and $11B in active loans.
🌐 Zcash's NU7 upgrade goes live, cutting block times to 25 seconds. The upgrade activated at block 3,543,405, reducing target block times from 75 seconds. It also directs 60% of fees to a reserve that will fund block rewards from around 2031.
🇺🇸 Hyperliquid Strategies applies to register as a US futures commission merchant. The HYPE treasury company's subsidiary filed the application to serve US customers trading perpetual futures on licensed markets. It held about 38.9 million HYPE as of 28 October.
🇺🇸 California demands $4.8M in restitution from crypto ATM operator CoinFlip. State regulators say the firm failed to detect and report suspicious activity at its roughly 500 kiosks in California, harming scam victims. CoinFlip did not respond to requests for comment.
STABLECOINS NEWS
🇪🇺 ECB to start digital euro pilot in the second half of 2027. The 12-month pilot will involve 36 service providers, with formal issuance targeted for 2029, subject to EU legislation being agreed this year, Executive Board member Piero Cipollone said.
PARTNERSHIPS
🇺🇸 Plaid powers account connections for Claude's new Personal Finance feature. US users can link financial accounts to get insights from Claude, with read-only access that cannot move money. Anthropic joins more than 800 AI companies building with Plaid.
🇺🇸 Klarna goes live with Guitar Center online. US shoppers can now pay in full, in four interest-free instalments or with financing at the retailer's online checkout. Guitar Center operates more than 300 stores.
🇵🇰 PVARA and Mastercard discuss tokenisation opportunities in Pakistan. PVARA chairman and Minister of State Bilal Bin Saqib met Mastercard's Mark Elliott, division president for East Asia, to explore opportunities. No agreement was announced. Pakistan receives over $40B in remittances a year.
🌐 Airwallex launches integration with Vercel. The Airwallex connector on Vercel lets developers building AI apps and agents accept payments, send payouts and track multi-currency cash positions. Credentials are requested only when an app needs them.
🇺🇸 Stripe powers stablecoin purchases in Samsung Wallet. Stripe's Crypto Onramp lets eligible users on 82 million Galaxy devices in the US buy USDC through the new Samsung Wallet Stablecoin Account, using Samsung Pay, cards or ACH.
🇦🇪 Visa Acceptance Platform now accepts Jaywan cards online in the UAE. Merchants can accept eligible Jaywan debit, credit and prepaid cards from Al Etihad Payments' domestic scheme, with card-on-file tokenisation through Visa's Token Management Service.
🇭🇰 OSL Group and Reap collaborate on stablecoin payments. The partners aim to expand everyday stablecoin use, combining OSL's USDGO, with over $1.2B in circulation, and Reap's stablecoin-linked card programmes. No launch timeline was given.
🌐 BitPay adds one-tap crypto buying powered by MoonPay. BitPay Wallet users in more than 100 countries can buy crypto with Apple Pay, Google Pay, cards or SEPA, with purchases going straight to their self-custody wallets.
🇦🇪 Ant International and HSBC complete tokenised deposit pilots in the Middle East. The pilots covered intra-UAE AED transfers and cross-border USD payments from the UAE using HSBC's Tokenised Deposit Service. Ant plans to set up a global treasury hub in the region.
🇺🇸 Bluefin and ZeroRisk partner on PCI compliance for merchants. Bluefin will use ZeroRisk's platform to manage merchant PCI compliance and gain visibility into merchant status. Bluefin serves more than 300 partners and 40,000 customers.
🇵🇭 Salmon Bank deploys Profinch to automate BSP regulatory reporting. The Philippine bank is rolling out Profinch's BSP Regulatory Reporting platform in its own cloud for FRP and COCREE 2.0 submissions, ahead of the FRP V16 deadline of 30 June 2027.
🇰🇷 Coocon and DSRV sign MoU on on-chain financial APIs and AI agent payments. The partners will explore stablecoin data APIs covering wallet balances, deposit detection and settlement data. Coocon will apply the x402 payment protocol to its MCP data APIs.
🇭🇰 UstarPay selects BitGo Bank as custodian for its digital assets. The OCC-regulated BitGo Bank & Trust will hold the digital asset holdings behind UstarPay's payment and card infrastructure. Financial terms were not disclosed.
DONEDEAL FUNDING NEWS
🇺🇸 Synctera raises $24.5M as banks return to BaaS. Multiplier Capital, Fin Capital, 1st & Main Growth Partners, Diagram and NAventures backed the round, taking total funding to $126.7M. Twenty clients have signed with Synctera this year.
🌐 Lombard Systems raises $4M to standardise financing for tokenised assets. Ethereal Ventures led the pre-seed and seed funding for its Delivery-versus-Lock standard, which lets institutions use tokenised assets as collateral. A first institutional deployment is planned by the end of 2026.
M&A
🇨🇦 National Bank of Canada agrees to buy RESP provider Embark for C$226M. Embark manages Registered Education Savings Plans for about 436,000 beneficiaries, with over C$6B in assets under management. The price may be adjusted for working capital.
AI DEVELOPMENTS
🇮🇳 Cashfree launches Checkout for Agents. Built on the WebMCP standard, the feature lets AI agents read order totals and pick a payment method on Cashfree's hosted checkout, while shoppers approve the final payment. It is enabled by default for merchants.
🇨🇦 Wealthsimple unveils AI assistant Penny among 12 new releases. Penny will not move money or place trades without client confirmation. Other launches include Wealthsimple Pay up to $100,000, perpetual futures in late November and a business credit card in early 2027.
🇧🇷 Nubank cuts AI agent update cycles to under five days using simulated customers. Testing on synthetic customers reduced the average update time from 21.2 days. In a live A/B test, the new card management agent raised self-service rates by 4.9 percentage points.
🇬🇧 Gen Z agentic money app Frank exits stealth. The London start-up, led by former Railsr executive Erica Katsambis, will open its beta to 1,000 founding members by year-end and is raising a £3M seed round ahead of a 2027 launch.
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