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Hello fintech friends,
Driving the news this week, publicly-listed neobank Chime is exploring stablecoins to improve its consumer financial products in the US.
This comes on the back of killer Q2 earnings: Active members jumped 20% this year to 10.4 million. ARPU grew 6% to $250, with customers earning $75k+ became its fastest-growing user segment. Revenue rose 27% to $670 million, beating estimates.
Late this spring, as reported by Bloomberg, Chime issued requests for proposals to blockchain technology companies to provide "end-to-end" stablecoin wallet services built into its app.
Embedded stablecoin wallets could allow Chime users to more easily hold, send, and receive US dollar-pegged stablecoins inside the app, without having to settle to bank accounts or round-trip through crypto exchanges and off-ramps. This could more easily enable new forms of credit as well. ‘Earn’ is a big area of feature investment from stablecoin startups in the US right now: both the ablity to earn yield (Fed rate interest) on ‘deposits’ and the ability to lend and borrow stablecoins for a higher rate of return (with higher risk and the earn protocol taking a cut).
But: Do Americans really care about stablecoins?
There are a few inherent advantages over conventional payments and deposits: easily pay friends across borders more quickly, collect paychecks and move money outside of bank hours (nights and weekends), maybe some lower fees?
Given Chime’s historical focus on more asset-light, unbanked, younger consumers, it’s not clear to me what killer value proposition will jump out from a stablecoin integration.
But if there’s one thing you can count on from Chime, it’s consumer innovation.
(PS: Today is the last day to buy a discounted ticket to the #1 show for stablecoin innovation, Stablecon USA, in Washington DC next month.)
- Nik
The Rundown
🏦 Financial Services & Banking
American Express expanded its virtual card access for commercial customers. The issuer will let Corporate Card users create and manage virtual cards in its @ Work platform and through a new partnership with Conferma.
Bank of America signed a joint venture agreement with Jio Financial to acquire up to 49.9% of Jio Credit, an India-based non-bank lender, in a deal worth roughly $1.9 billion.
🚀 Product Launches
UK buy-now-pay-later provider Zilch rolled out two paid membership tiers, Zilch Plus and Zilch Extra, alongside installment payments over 3, 6, or 12 months and Zilch Advance (early access to up to a portion of a paycheck).
Google opened up Google Wallet so for kids. Parents can now set up a secure balance for children under 18, with spending limits, transaction alerts, and device-lock controls.
Xero debuted Xero Payroll, powered by Gusto, folding payroll into its U.S. platform alongside accounting and Melio-powered payments.
Belvo rolled out three Model Context Protocol servers so AI agents can plug directly into its open finance infrastructure (financial account-linking) across Latin America.
Mercury introduced Mercury Spend, a spend management suite with programmatic budgets, self-enforcing policies, and a new category of cards built for AI agents to transact.
MoonPay launched Enterprise, a stablecoin infrastructure platform built on its Iron acquisition. Enterprise will give banks, fintechs, and merchants an API for fiat on-ramps, stablecoin conversion, cross-border payouts, and white-label issuance.
Astraeus launched an AI-native infrastructure platform for wealth management firms.
Bir introduced Ey-ay, Azerbaijan's first AI-powered chatbot for e-wallets.
💸 Other News
Revolut secured a full French banking license from the ACPR and European Central Bank, with Paris set to become its Western Europe headquarters.
Clair hit a $100 million revenue run rate, up 10x in a year, by offering earned-wage access embedded through payroll platforms like Gusto, QuickBooks, and TriNet. (Watch this space for an upcoming podcast with Clair CEO Nico Simko.)
Brazil's central bank moved to expand its Pix instant payments system internationally after signing info-sharing agreements with 65 central banks.
🤝 Partnership Corner
Lithic partnered with Monavate to give fintech and crypto companies a single path to launch card programs across both fiat and on-chain rails.
Adyen expanded its partnership with Toast into the U.S.
MoneyGram went live with MoneyGram Ramps on Solana, letting wallets and developers on the network tap its cash-to-crypto and crypto-to-cash infrastructure,.
😞 The Bad News
Bitwise Asset Management cut 14% of its workforce as its flagship crypto index fund's net assets fell 31% over the first seven months of 2026.
Bilt mistakenly sent roughly 1,850 cardholders collections notices for balances they didn't owe, a reporting error tied to a beta card Bilt discontinued in 2022. Some customers saw their credit scores drop 50+ points before Bilt moved to correct the reports.
Bunq was rejected by the OCC for a U.S. national bank charter, with regulators citing inadequate capitalization, inexperienced proposed management, and an "unrealistic" path to profitability. This was the Dutch fintech's second failed attempt at a U.S. banking license.
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“Today, agentic commerce doesn’t exist in any meaningful way. However, I have more conviction than ever that 24 months from now agents will become economic actors that drive billions of dollars of spend across the world.” — Cuy Sheffield
Come back next week for more Azerbaijani chatbots, on-chain cards, US-India partnerships, and early wage access! - Nik
