Credit cards are booming and nobody cares about the rate cap (TWIF 2/6)

Hello Fintech Friends,

Welcome to the 322 new readers who’ve joined us since last week. You’re joining 233,000+ other subscribers. Today's newsletter is brought to you by AiPrise.

We announced our first wave of speakers for the SXSW London Fintech Track this week!

For a limited time, you can get a discount on tickets here using the code SXSWLTWIF26.

This week I also had a chance to re-read Jas Shah's Agentic Commerce Is Here. Agentic Finance Is Next. It's one of the better agentic commerce breakdowns I've read, and I would recommend it. (Agentic payments have been a big topic in our TWIF WhatsApp groups lately.)

Also, does this strategy ever work?

Kalshi withdrew allegations of extortion against a rival in the prediction market industry after replying to a bank analyst report showing that Kalshi users lose money even faster than sports gamblers. Kalshi first tried to pressure the data provider to change their data and then accused them and the analyst of conspiring to extort them.

Please enjoy another week of fintech and banking news below.

Have feedback for us? Let us know. Find me at @nikmilanovic, @twifintech, and @ndm

Still waiting 24 hours for a KYB check?

AiPrise uses AI agents and global data to pull website signals, company records, documents, and risk lists into one decision queue, helping teams cut review time by up to 80% and reduce false positives by up to 85%. Instead of analysts chasing paperwork and RFIs, they focus on the edge cases while AiPrise handles the rest.

See how we helped Conduit make KYB 80% faster →

Visa partnered with UnionPay to streamline cross-border money transfers into China, utilizing the Visa Direct network to provide faster remittances for global consumers and businesses.

Chase UK expanded its digital banking offering by launching a mobile-app insurance marketplace, allowing customers to browse and purchase tailored coverage directly within the platform.

Equifax faces scrutiny from U.S. senators who are questioning the company's role and data accuracy in assisting states with Medicaid eligibility checks, following reports of low-income individuals being improperly dropped from the program.

BBVA joined Qivalis, a bank-backed joint venture to develop a regulated euro stablecoin, aiming to enhance the efficiency of programmable payments and digital asset settlements across Europe.

Wall Street is reckoning with AI as it begins to challenge banks’ long-standing dominance over the highly lucrative market for specialized financial and legal data.

Santander announced plans to close an additional 44 branches across the UK, citing a continued shift toward digital banking and a decline in-person transaction volumes.

JPMorgan Chase and Capital One maintain strong profit margins as legislative efforts to cap credit card interest rates stalled in Congress, allowing major lenders to avoid significant impacts on their interest income.

Fingerprint introduced a new ecosystem designed to differentiate between malicious bots and authorized "agentic AI," helping businesses safely interact with autonomous AI agents while preventing fraud.

Apex Fintech Solutions unveiled a turnkey integration for prediction markets, enabling broker-dealers and advisors to offer clients the ability to trade on real-world event outcomes through their existing infrastructure.

Aegis launched a US dollar-pegged stablecoin sanctioned by the UAE Central Bank, aimed at providing a regulated digital asset solution for cross-border settlements and institutional finance.

Revolut debuted its full-suite merchant acquiring product in Australia, empowering local businesses to accept payments online and in-person while managing their finances within a single ecosystem.

Adeptia released a new accelerator pack for retirement benefits enrollment, automating the process of converting fragmented data into validated, record-ready inputs for financial providers.

Robinhood rolled out Stocks and Shares ISAs for its UK customers, providing a tax-efficient way for users to invest in global markets through its commission-free trading platform.

Still waiting 24 hours for a KYB check?

AiPrise uses AI agents and global data to pull website signals, company records, documents, and risk lists into one decision queue, helping teams cut review time by up to 80% and reduce false positives by up to 85%. Instead of analysts chasing paperwork and RFIs, they focus on the edge cases while AiPrise handles the rest.

See how we helped Conduit make KYB 80% faster →

Stablecoin API infrastructure developer Checker is hiring across the board for key roles:

Y Combinator announced it will allow startup founders to receive investment funds in stablecoins, sparking a debate on Hacker News about whether that provides financial flexibility or introduces unnecessary risk.

Bitget Wallet released its official API to the public to allow developers to integrate wallet functionalities directly into their own applications.

Public jumped on the Claude bandwagon with an OpenClaw partnership to let users trade stocks, options, and crypto via OpenClaw.

Kontigo facilitated a way for the Venezuelan regime to bypass U.S. sanctions by using stablecoins to process oil revenue, while simultaneously pitching itself to Silicon Valley investors as a humanitarian "neobank" for Latinos facing hyperinflation.

Kalder CEO and Forbes 30 Under 30 nominee Gökçe Güven, a 26-year-old citizen of Turkey, has been charged with securities, wire and visa fraud and aggravated identity theft. 

PayPal stock plummeted 19% in value after reporting fourth-quarter revenue and earnings that missed analyst expectations, alongside the announcement of a new CEO, HP’s Enrique Lores, to lead the company's turnaround. The board warned the ‘pace of change’ is not fast enough in the company’s turnaround.