Hello Fintech Friends,
Don’t forget to attend our Fintech Breakfast in London!
This week we saw a lot of news in the Cryptosphere. Most notably the CLARITY Act which aims to define (and enshrine) how crypto assets are treated in law. The outcome appears to be reaching an (un)happy compromise on whether crypto is deemed a security or a commodity and as a result how it can be used/treated as a revenue mechanism. The bill would introduce registration and compliance routes for digital commodity exchanges, brokers, and dealers and also give a pathway for some assets to move away from securities treatment if the underlying network becomes sufficiently decentralised. Early commentary seems to view the supposed compromise as friendly to banks and less so to the DeFi world.
Whilst financial rewards are still permitted they seem to be being tied to kinetic rather than passive generation mechanics. In other words, you can get a kind of crypto ‘cashback’ for use but not interest. The assets need to be DOING something in the traditional sense, not sat around passively creating yield. This deepens the moat for entrenched credit institutions and makes it that much harder for non-banks in high interest rate environments.
But remember - its ain’t legal till its legal.
Please enjoy another week of fintech, funding and banking news below.
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Funding Announcements
Not-gambling-because-”Prediction-Markets”-are-more-legit-Unicorn Kalshi raised $1 billion in Series F at a $22 billion valuation, as institutional appetite for prediction markets continues to surge.
YC backed Business Insurance Corgi raised $160 million in Series B at a $1.3 billion valuation to rebuild insurance infrastructure with AI and automation.
Reserv raised $125 million in Series C led by KKR for its AI-native claims technology and third-party administration platform.
Fun seals $72 million in Series A to expand its global payments infrastructure platform.
Silverflow raised $40 million in Series B to scale its cloud-native payments platform.
Natech secured $33 million in Series B to expand its embedded finance offering.
Fazeshift raised $17 million in Series A, bringing total funding to $22 million, to automate accounts receivable with AI agents.
Squads raised $18 million to build business finance infrastructure on stablecoin rails.
Product Launches
ANNA Money launched a business savings account for UK SMEs in partnership with Griffin, alongside onboarding and tax-filing product updates.
Temenos launched embedded AI agents, copilots and conversational tools across core banking, digital banking and financial crime workflows.
CSI launched an AI-powered Customer Intelligence Suite for community financial institutions, with pilots planned for Q3 2026 and wider availability in Q4.
ClearBank and Fiat Republic went live with SEPA Indirect access, giving digital asset businesses faster euro payment capabilities.
Deel Local Payroll launched embedded payroll payments in the UK with Crezco, allowing businesses to run payroll and pay employees in one flow.
Bizum is expanding into contactless in-store payments in Spain via NFC through participating bank apps.
Currensea is expanding across Europe after receiving a Payments Institution Licence from the Dutch central bank.
Crypto Announcements
Crypto Titan Coinbase down for over 7 hours this week in platform-wide outage
Payward, Kraken’s parent company, agreed to acquire stablecoin-native payments infrastructure company Reap for up to $600 million.
AWS, Stripe and Coinbase launched AgentCore Payments in preview, enabling AI agents to make stablecoin-powered payments for APIs, web content and other digital services.
Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey "If we want stablecoins to be part of the architecture of payments globally ... they're only going to work if we have international standards. Frankly, that, I think, is going to be a coming wrestle with the (U.S.) administration," – Andrew Bailey
Regulatory News
The FCA launched an antitrust investigation into PayPal, Mastercard and Visa over alleged UK competition law breaches related to PayPal’s digital wallet arrangements.
The FCA launched an antitrust investigation into PayPal, Mastercard and Visa over alleged UK competition law breaches related to PayPal’s digital wallet arrangements.
The FCA’s new cryptoasset regime is expected to come into force on 25 October 2027.
US Senate reached a compromise on stablecoin legislation that would restrict stablecoin issuers from offering yield based solely on holding stablecoins.
Upcoming Events
Fintech Crossword
See if you can answer this weeks Fintech crossword. Answers in my next edition!
Thanks for reading!
