An end-of-the-year mega-issue (TWIF 12/5)

Hello Fintech Friends,

Um – a lot of things happened this week.

Welcome to the 721 new readers who’ve joined us since last week. You’re joining 228,000+ other subscribers. Today's newsletter is brought to you by our friends at Persona.

First and foremost, we launched our Call For Speakers for Stablecon EMEA, taking place in Amsterdam next May 19-20. If you haven't registered yet, tickets are available at a steeeeeeep discount until the end of the year.

Speaking of – If you’re a stablecoin company, who are your top 3 wishlist customers? Let us know and we'll invite them to the conference.

We’re also looking for more great writers at TWIF! I'm excited to share that Vivi Giacaman is joining us as our new TWIF LatAm Editor, leading our coverage and content of all fintech in Latin America. If you've ever wanted to write about fintech for an audience of 225k+ subscribers, let us know.

And we're hiring a few Event Leads to join our US team. Demand for fintech events has exploded over the last year, and we're growing the team to keep up. If you're interested in making $1k to $4k per event to organize corporate events, drop me a line by replying to this email.

On the topic of LatAm fintech, I'm excited to share the conversation I had with Nubank co-founder Cristina Junqueira on her journey from an office in a rented apartment to a team of 9,000 (and 120 million users). Cristina recently moved to the US to launch Nubank's US strategy, and drops some great nuggets about what we can expect from them – check out the full conversation here.

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It's pretty crazy to see the CEO of the world's largest $10T+ asset manager, Larry Fink of Blackrock, talking about tokenization in The Economist and discussing how a world of tokenized investment options will create new opportunities for finance.

Stablecoins are the wedge product that will lead into tokenized funds.

Once dollars become tokenized, the barrier are lowered for equities, debt instruments, and more exotic instruments to move on-chain.

We'll also have some coverage on Sunday of the year's last (maybe?) fintech IPO! Investment and asset manager Wealthfront announced this week that it will go public, seeking out a $2 billion valuation.

The last piece of news from this week that I found interesting was that Coinbase is funding a test universal basic income program in New York, partnering with GiveDirectly on $12k cash transfers to recipients in-need. As a long-time believer that there is a strong intersection between tech and UBI programs, I'll be very curious to see the results.

Please enjoy another week of fintech and banking news below.

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

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Every fraud vector tells a different story, from account takeovers to synthetic identities and deepfakes. But they all share one thing in common: every fraud vector leaves a trail of data in its wake. Persona’s latest ebook, 17 top signals for fighting ATOs, synthetic IDs, and deepfakes, shows how leading fraud teams use these data breadcrumbs to detect and stop fraud attacks before they scale.

Inside this guide, you’ll find step-by-step workflows and the high-impact signals that matter most for each fraud type, plus best practices for calibrating thresholds, layering behavioral and device-based indicators, and refining your response using real-world data. 

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Qivalis — a new company backed by 10 major European banks announced a plan to issue a euro‑denominated stablecoin by the second half of 2026.

Asset and fund manager WisdomTree launched a new tokenized fund, bringing a professional put-write strategy onchain for retail investors.

Banks, brokers and money managers across Wall Street are eager to find a role in a newly-proposed administration program offering Americans investment accounts at birth. The US plans to seed each of the “Trump Accounts” with $1,000, costing $15 billion through 2034, to provide Americans with investment accounts they can draw down on later in life – an interesting experiment to effectively build a US sovereign wealth fund.

Visa pushed a wave of new digital‑wallet launches across Europe prepping an NFC‑wallet pilot for early 2026 and joined with AWS to bring its Intelligent Commerce payment platform to AWS Marketplace — enabling developers and businesses to deploy AI‑driven “agentic commerce” payment flows.

The FDIC claims it has prepared a set of draft rules under the GENIUS Act to regulate stablecoin issuers by month’s end.

HSBC adopted foundational AI models from Mistral AI — aiming to embed generative‑AI tools bank‑wide to improve internal productivity, document analysis, onboarding, and fraud/AML processes.

Mastercard added built‑in fraud‑protection tools (like “My Cyber Risk” and identity‑theft monitoring) to its SME credit cards in Latin America and the Caribbean — aiming to help small businesses better defend against cyber threats while they grow digitally and used data from its network and proprietary insights to launch the “Credit Intelligence” suite, helping lenders make smarter credit decisions by supplementing traditional credit‑bureau data.

Vanguard opened its platform to crypto‑focused ETFs and mutual funds, letting its brokerage clients trade digital‑asset funds after years of excluding them.

Deutsche Börse formed a wide‑ranging digital‑asset partnership with Kraken, aiming to combine traditional financial‑market infrastructure with crypto trading, custody, settlement, and tokenized‑asset services.

The Financial Conduct Authority started live testing of AI applications in banking — opening a program that lets firms trial AI‑based tools for customer service, complaints handling, and financial advising under regulated conditions.

Seven U.S. state attorneys general have launched an inquiry into the “buy now, pay later” sector to investigate whether providers are exposing consumers to hidden fees, unclear terms, or debt traps.

CME Group suffered a multi‑hour trading outage after a data‑center cooling failure disrupted its systems — halting futures and options trading across markets including equities, commodities, FX and Treasuries.

Klarna expanded its U.S. membership program and launched new Premium and Max tiers — giving Americans access to lounge-access, travel insurance, lifestyle perks and cashback without needing a credit card or spending minimum.

Sony Bank plans to issue a U.S.-dollar-pegged stablecoin as soon as fiscal 2026, aiming to let customers pay for games, anime, and other digital content via stablecoin instead of credit cards.

QuickBooks — via its payments arm — added invoice-payment functionality so that businesses can embed a “Pay Now” button in invoices and get paid faster, reducing manual reconciliation and easing cash-flow issues.

Zepz partnered with infrastructure provider Bridge to launch stablecoin-linked Visa cards for Sendwave Wallet users — allowing customers to spend stablecoins while merchants receive local-currency settlements.

Binance unveiled a new product — Binance Junior — that opens parent-controlled crypto savings accounts for children and teens (ages 6–17), enabling parents to supervise deposits, limit transfers, and help kids earn via interest-bearing crypto savings.

Worldpay launched its public “Model Context Protocol (MCP)” to provide AI‑driven, agent‑enabled payments — making it easier for developers and merchants to integrate AI agents directly into checkout flows without extra licensing.

InFlow launched a payments system to power monetization for AI agents, enabling agents to onboard and pay autonomously inside their workflows.

Kurv launced an instant payments app for merchants.

CredoLab introduced a new Income Prediction Model that enabled lenders to estimate applicants’ income from privacy‑consented smartphone metadata — helping assess creditworthiness where traditional income data is unavailable.

Kraken began rolling out its “Krak Card” debit card across the UK and EU to extend multi‑asset payment capabilities — allowing users to spend fiat or crypto assets at everyday merchants with 1% cash‑back rewards.

SPONSORED

Every fraud vector tells a different story, from account takeovers to synthetic identities and deepfakes. But they all share one thing in common: every fraud vector leaves a trail of data in its wake. Persona’s latest ebook, 17 top signals for fighting ATOs, synthetic IDs, and deepfakes, shows how leading fraud teams use these data breadcrumbs to detect and stop fraud attacks before they scale.

Inside this guide, you’ll find step-by-step workflows and the high-impact signals that matter most for each fraud type, plus best practices for calibrating thresholds, layering behavioral and device-based indicators, and refining your response using real-world data. 

Learn more

Want to sponsor a newsletter? See our sponsorship information here.

Propel Holdings received regulatory approval to launch Propel Bank in Puerto Rico, allowing it to expand into banking services.

WISE secured conditional approval from the South African Reserve Bank to operate and entered the African market, its first regulated presence on the continent.

Block unveiled a three-year financial outlook, driving its stock up 9% on the back of expectations for annual gross profit growth through 2028 to be in the mid-teens, with adjusted operating income climbing about 30% annually.

Navro* integrated with BVNK to activate international stablecoin payment rails — giving its customers the option to send cross-border payments using stablecoins alongside traditional fiat methods.

Highnote expanded its partnership with Ferry and launched Instant Payments — making Ferry the first to deploy real-time payouts for tips and wages in restaurants.

Lithic powered Coinstar’s new “CINQ by Coinstar” GPR debit-card, which transformed physical cash inserted at kiosks into digital funds that users could access via virtual or physical cards.

Trulioo joined Google’s Agent Payments Protocol (AP2), which enabled it to provide identity verification and establish trust infrastructure for agent-led digital payments.

Nothing this week!