Yapily and Wollette Want to Make Wallet Top-Ups Disappear
Hey FinTech Fanatic!
For years, Pay by Bank has promised lower costs, faster settlement, and less reliance on card networks.
But there has always been one practical problem.
People don't think about funding their wallets before they pay. If the balance isn't there, the experience breaks down, the payment fails, and most customers simply go back to using their card.
That's why the partnership between Wollette and Yapily caught my attention.
By combining open banking with Variable Recurring Payments, they're removing one of the biggest sources of friction in account-to-account payments. Instead of asking customers to top up manually, the wallet quietly replenishes itself whenever the balance drops below a chosen threshold.
It may sound like a small product update, but it's exactly these invisible improvements that often determine whether a new payment method becomes everyday behaviour or remains another interesting alternative.
There's plenty more below.
You'll also find new research showing why almost every finance leader is increasing AI investment, while surprisingly few organizations are actually ready to deploy AI across their finance operations.
See what else is shaping FinTech. 👇 See you on Monday!
Cheers,
Marcel
INSIGHTS
📰 Airwallex research finds AI ambitions outpacing finance teams’ readiness. A Forrester Consulting study commissioned by Airwallex found that 74% of finance leaders rank AI as a top priority, while 90% plan to increase AI investment over the next year. However, fragmented data, integration challenges, and limited AI expertise continue to slow broader adoption across finance workflows. Read the full report here
FINTECH NEWS
🇵🇭 Billease profit jumps as revenue tops $151M in 2025. According to its audited financial results, the company’s gross loan book increased 77% to $212.1 million, while total assets reached $233.5 million. Billease said it funded its expansion through operating profits instead of raising new external capital.
🇬🇧 Sokin is launching Sokin Checkout and Payment Links for UK businesses. The two products give businesses and finance teams a single place to collect customer payments by card and other methods, with funds settling directly into the company’s Sokin account with no separate integration to build or maintain.
🇬🇧 ClearScore profits double as user base surpasses 25 million. The profit jump in the year ended December 2025 was driven by a 37% increase in group revenue to £144.7m. The company cited improved operational efficiency, AI investments, and data innovations as core reasons for its strong financial performance.
🌍 SCRYPT expands stablecoin settlement network across four East African markets. By enabling direct settlement corridors for local African currencies into stablecoins, businesses can move from local currency to stablecoin settlement in a single licensed transaction, without first sourcing rationed bank dollars.
PAYMENTS NEWS
🌍 Wero is now available on Airwallex, enabling merchants worldwide to accept instant bank payments from European shoppers without requiring a European entity. The integration offers lower processing costs, same-day settlement, and support for features including one-click and recurring payments.
🇮🇱 Airwallex to grow Israel operations. The FinTech plans to use Israel as a strategic hub for product development and innovation while supporting its continued global growth and AI-driven financial platform strategy. Keep reading
🇳🇱 iDEAL-to-Wero migration reaches a major milestone in the Netherlands. The next phase will expand Wero's capabilities beyond online payments to include peer-to-peer, in-store, and cross-border payment services across participating European markets.
🇺🇸 Ramp launches AI Token Spend Controls. AI Token Spend Management gives companies one dashboard to see and control spending across AI providers, weekly briefings on usage trends and ways to be more efficient, and real-time controls and alerts to stop overruns.
🇪🇺 BitPay secures a MiCA license to expand cryptocurrency & stablecoin payments across the EU. Using a unified regulatory framework, merchants and partners can now tap into crypto payment acceptance, stablecoin-denominated payments, and cross-border payment use cases.
🌎 Visa has introduced the Visa Stablecoin Platform, enabling banks and FinTechs to mint, move, manage, and settle stablecoins through Visa's existing payment and treasury infrastructure. The platform is designed to simplify stablecoin adoption across Visa's network, bringing digital asset capabilities into traditional payment workflows.
#FINTECHREPORT
📊 Revolut 🆚 Klarna in 2025
Here's how the year played out👇
DIGITAL BANKING NEWS
🇵🇹 Trade Republic challenges banks with Portuguese IBAN and 3% interest. With this new structure, the German bank will now offer Portuguese customers a national IBAN, with the prefix PT50, something the institution claims is a direct response to requests from its own clients.
PARTNERSHIPS
🇬🇧 Wollette and Yapily partner to power automated wallet funding through open banking. The integration enables customers to automatically fund their wallets from their bank accounts, supporting seamless account-to-account payments for online and in-store purchases while reducing payment friction for merchants.
🇰🇪 BoC partners Scale to launch virtual prepaid Mastercard for Africa’s creators. Powered by Scale, the programme provides the card layer within the BoC platform, making funds easier to access, manage and spend. The programme is issued on the Mastercard network, with UBA Kenya acting as regulated sponsor bank.
🇦🇪 Spreedly launches a standalone payment vault to securely store and manage payment credentials independently of a payment service provider. The solution supports credential portability across more than 100 payment providers, helping businesses reduce vendor lock-in while improving flexibility, tokenization, and payment optimization.
🇩🇪 Green Banana launches BNPLx orchestration on Shopify, enabling merchants to access multiple buy now, pay later providers through a single integration. The orchestration platform supports both B2C and B2B commerce across more than 25 European markets, simplifying BNPL deployment and expansion.
🇨🇭 AMINA becomes the first regulated bank to integrate Mesh. The integration embeds Mesh’s verified deposit technology directly into AMINA’s online banking platform. This allows clients to verify wallet ownership and deposit stablecoins and digital assets in a single, streamlined flow across more than 300 wallet providers.
DONEDEAL FUNDING NEWS
💰Over the last week, there were eleven FinTech deals in Europe, totaling €50.3m in disclosed funding, including five transactions in France, three in Germany, and three in the UK.
🇺🇸 ORANGE JUICE secures $40M to launch a bitcoin-backed permanent capital company. The capital injection will be used to scale operational infrastructure and initiate the firm’s first wave of strategic investments. Read more
🇺🇸 Alpaca raises $135 million. The company will use the new financing to accelerate its agent-first brokerage and API-first prime brokerage infrastructure, enabling financial companies and institutional clients to build and scale investing products across traditional and onchain markets.
M&A
🌍 Fourthline and Veridas join forces to fight identity fraud with a global identity platform. The combined company will operate across 50+ countries, supporting banks, FinTechs, and other regulated businesses while targeting the growing threat of AI-driven identity fraud.
🇺🇸 MoonPay acquires Glide in an all-equity deal to expand crypto deposits infrastructure. Glide’s specialty is crypto deposits infrastructure, the plumbing that helps users and businesses move fiat currency into crypto wallets. By folding Glide into its stack, MoonPay gains deeper capabilities in bank and fiat integrations.
🇺🇸 FalconX acquires bloXroute to accelerate the future of onchain capital markets. By combining bloXroute's blockchain networking infrastructure with FalconX's institutional trading platform, the company will enhance the speed and efficiency of onchain execution while accelerating the development of new trading, financing, and prime brokerage capabilities.
🇺🇸 Polygon Labs completes the acquisition of Coinme in the final stage. The integration includes workforce reductions while strengthening the company's focus on stablecoin payments and on-chain financial infrastructure. Continue reading
🇺🇸 AngelList acquires Ark, combining fund administration software, banking, and AI in one platform. AngelList’s acquisition of Ark will expand the AngelList financial system to all fund administrators in private markets, combining Ark’s purpose-built fund administration software with AngelList’s banking and payments infrastructure, investor services capabilities and AI-enabled product development.
MOVERS AND SHAKERS
🇦🇺 iGoDirect appoints Greg Duncan as Chief Executive Officer of Cards & Payments. As CEO, he will lead the continued expansion of iGoDirect’s Cards & Payments division, focusing on strengthening issuer and partner relationships, driving innovation and enhancing customer outcomes across the payments ecosystem.
🇸🇬 Adyen appoints Gary Yang as Asia-Pacific President to lead the next phase of regional growth. Based in Singapore, Gary will oversee the region’s commercial growth and operations, succeeding Warren Hayashi, who will retire at the end of 2026.
🇬🇧 Pay.UK bolsters Board. Pay.UK has appointed Alison Berryman, Chief Operating Officer at Monzo, Matthijs Boon, Chief Financial Officer at Equals Group, and Pranay Ahluwalia, Chief Financial Officer at Bank of Ireland UK, as Industry Non-Executive Directors. The appointments strengthen the board with expertise in digital banking, payments, finance, and technology as Pay.UK continues to modernize its payment infrastructure.
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