UK Banks Move to Build Visa & Mastercard Alternative amid Trump Threat
Hey FinTech Fanatic!
What happens if the card networks go dark? 🤔
The news that reached me today speaks precisely to that.
UK bank bosses are meeting this week to explore building a national alternative to Visa and Mastercard.
Today, roughly 95% of UK card transactions run on those two US-owned networks. If they were ever switched off, whether due to geopolitics, sanctions, or operational risk, the shock to the economy would be immediate.
In an interview with The Guardian, Aurore Lalucq, president of the European Parliament's Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs, argued:
“Visa, Mastercard… the urgent issue is our payment system. Trump can cut everything.” According to Lalucq, “The rest is poetry. I urgently request that the Commission organize a European Airbus for payment systems: they can't say they weren't warned.”
What makes this even more interesting is that Visa and Mastercard are reportedly part of the working group. This isn’t a rebellion. It’s about resilience.
Across Europe, the tone is similar. Lawmakers are openly talking about payment sovereignty. The ECB pushes the digital euro. Now the UK is quietly building a fallback rail.
Scroll down and check out the stories that are shaking up the industry today👇 I’ll be back tomorrow with more signals.
Cheers,
FINTECH NEWS
🇸🇪 Do you live in Stockholm? Join our upcoming FRC run with Ihor Harkusha at Jack & Muttley Coffee Roasters. 🏃➡️ RSVP here to network casually!
🌍 Mintos pursues an ECB banking licence. The licence, subject to regulatory approval, will provide access to deposit-based funding and create a foundation for offering lending and other banking products directly to customers, significantly expanding the platform's long-term product offering.
🇬🇧 iForex says IPO process recommences, admission expected to occur in late Feb 2026. iForex confirmed that the IPO process has recommenced and is at an advanced stage. Read more
PAYMENTS NEWS
🇳🇿 Mastercard has demonstrated its Agent Pay technology in New Zealand, with country manager Megan Simons using an AI agent to purchase movie tickets and book accommodation through natural language commands. Issued via Westpac and secured with PassKey biometric authentication, the system removes the need to manually enter card details.
🇬🇧 ACI Worldwide has announced the first UK deployment of ACI Connetic, a cloud-native SaaS platform designed to unify SWIFT, CHAPS, and faster payments processing. The platform enables institutions to consolidate siloed systems, meet regulatory demands more efficiently, and accelerate innovation in real-time and cross-border payments.
🇬🇧 UK bank bosses plan to set up Visa and Mastercard alternative amid Trump fears. The meeting will take place this Thursday and bring together a group of City funders that will front the costs of a new payments company to keep the UK economy running if problems were to occur.
🇵🇱 Owners of Polish FinTech Blik discuss potential Warsaw IPO. It’s still unclear whether the listing would be intended to raise capital for Blik’s planned foreign expansion or also be an exit ramp for some of the company’s investors. Blik could fetch a valuation of about $2 billion.
🌎 Monnet Payments unifies LatAm payments with new virtual accounts. The solution enables regional and global companies to collect locally through a single technological integration. The service is designed to simplify cross-border operations and reduce payment friction for businesses expanding across the region.
🌎 Airbnb expands its Reserve Now, Pay Later globally. This allows users to cancel their bookings if their plans change without losing money upfront. With this option, users get charged closer to their check-in date rather than at the time of booking.
🌎 Peruvian FinTech Khipu expands to Colombia and Chile. The company aims to address a critical operational challenge for businesses across Latin America. This move signals Khipu's ambition to become a regional leader in the rapidly evolving financial technology sector.
🇳🇱 Quantoz partners with Visa to make stablecoins spendable. Through the partnership, Quantoz will support the issuance of virtual Visa cards that can be used wherever Visa is accepted, online, in-store, and via mobile wallets such as Apple Pay and Google Pay.
DIGITAL BANKING NEWS
🌍 UniCredit lands in Spain and Portugal with digital banking. UniCredit has secured Spanish regulatory approval to potentially launch its digital bank, UniCredit Nv, marking a step toward expanding into Iberian retail banking. While plans and branding are not final, operations could begin as early as Q2–Q3.
🇺🇸 John Delaney's Forbright confidentially files for a US IPO. The move follows a recovery in bank listings over the past year as the sector stabilises after the 2023 regional banking crisis and stronger stock prices reopen public market opportunities.
BLOCKCHAIN/CRYPTO NEWS
🇺🇸 Nexo returns to the U.S. The company’s official U.S. relaunch is being executed in partnership with regulated partners, providing a U.S.-compliant framework for the company’s investment and credit product offerings. As part of its U.S. offering, Nexo is introducing a comprehensive suite of digital asset services designed to support advanced portfolio management and liquidity needs.
PARTNERSHIPS
🇮🇳 Cashfree, Mastercard, and Swiggy bring in-chat payments to AI apps in India, enabling businesses to accept UPI and card payments directly within AI applications. The solution allows users to complete transactions inside conversational interfaces without being redirected to external payment pages.
🇺🇸 Cloudflare and Mastercard partner to extend comprehensive cyber defense across critical infrastructure and small businesses. The partnership intends to develop tools to help small businesses, critical infrastructure, and governments protect themselves from today’s most pressing cyber threats without putting the brakes on innovation.
🇺🇸 Payoneer to launch stablecoin capabilities, powered by Bridge, bringing secure, always-on digital money to global businesses. These new capabilities will enable businesses to securely receive, hold, and send stablecoins as part of their day-to-day global financial operations.
🇺🇸 Plaid and Backbase tackle banks' multi-day customer onboarding problem. The collaboration allows banks to onboard customers faster, aggregate account data seamlessly, and deliver personalized financial journeys without wrestling with outdated integrations.
🇲🇹 Paytently partnered with SEON to deploy advanced fraud prevention and anti-money laundering controls across its payment orchestration platform. SEON’s command centre for fraud prevention and AML compliance provides real-time fraud detection, risk scoring, sanctions and PEP screening, device intelligence, velocity checks, and centralised case management.
🇺🇸 OLB Group announced a global partner agreement with PayPal. The integration is designed to simplify merchant onboarding, consolidate settlement and reporting, and expand access to buyers in more than 200 markets. Keep reading
🇺🇸 Payabli and Huntington Bank join forces to bring seamless payments to the digital banking experience. This integration empowers businesses to accept, issue, and manage transactions entirely within Huntington's digital ecosystem. This will deliver a unified, end-to-end financial experience powered by Payabli's infrastructure.
🇮🇳 Razorpay partners with Replit. By integrating Replit’s AI software creation platform with Razorpay’s payments infrastructure, the partnership allows AI-built products to accept UPI from day one. So what gets built can be adopted, paid for, and scaled instantly across India.
🌍 Medius partners with Adyen to launch corporate expense cards and cashback rewards across Europe. By offering rebates and seamless integration with Expensya, the partnership aims to differentiate in competitive markets and support CFOs in driving compliance and cost efficiency.
DONEDEAL FUNDING NEWS
💰 Over the last week, there were twelve FinTech deals in Europe, raising a total of €141.1 million, including four transactions in the UK, three in Switzerland, two in Ireland, one in France, one in Germany, and one in Sweden.
🇰🇪 Mogo secures KSh 800 million from I&M Bank and Ecobank to boost SME lending. The proceeds will be deployed to deepen Mogo’s lending portfolio, particularly for business growth loans, vehicle financing, and working capital support for micro-enterprises.
🇲🇽 Solvento and BBVA Spark close $25 million financing. The new funding will allow Solvento to significantly increase its capacity to create financial products for transportation providers, strengthening the operational continuity of fleets, routes, and services essential to the Mexican economy.
🇺🇸 Sphinx raises $7.1m to build every financial institution's last compliance hire. The funding will be used to scale Sphinx’s agentic compliance workforce as banks and FinTechs increasingly rely on it for core AML, KYC, and KYB operations. Continue reading
🇮🇳 Pred raises $2.5m to build the fastest trading experience in sports prediction. The capital will support team expansion, liquidity development, and global user onboarding as Pred builds exchange-grade infrastructure for sports prediction markets.
MOVERS AND SHAKERS
🇬🇧 Former Nutmeg CEO Matt Gatrell leaves after JPMorgan rebrand. His directorship ended on 30 January 2026, with reports citing personal reasons. The Nutmeg brand in late 2025 as part of its broader UK wealth and Chase expansion strategy.
🇬🇧 Former Adyen CTO Alexander Matthey joins PPRO as Bernie Miles departs. In a statement, PPRO says its new CTO will work to enhance platform scalability, resilience, and developer experience, while accelerating the strategic adoption of AI across the stack.
🇹🇭 Visa appoints experienced regional leader, Anthony Watson, as Country Manager for Thailand. Anthony brings more than 15 years of experience with Visa, having first joined the company in Melbourne in 2009. Over the course of his career, he has held senior leadership roles across Client Services, Product & Solutions, Sales, and Strategy, supporting multiple markets across Asia Pacific.
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