SEC staff clarified that liquid-staking receipt tokens tied to non-security crypto assets like ETH generally are not securities when they simply represent ownership of the underlying staked asset and do not add separate rights, returns, or managerial promises. The guidance builds on the SEC's earlier position on liquid staking, but remains staff guidance rather than binding law, meaning its treatment could change through future rulemaking, legislation, or a different administration.
Ramp is staging Bill Pay The Musical for one night on Broadway on September 25, starring Billy Porter, Billy Zane, and Jessica Vosk as an elaborate promotion for its accounts payable product.
Product work creates both output and learning, and AI risks accelerating the first without compounding the second.
The old BNPL model made borrowing feel like a payment choice rather than a credit decision.
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This guide [5] is for payments leaders, engineering teams, and finance professionals at enterprise and scaling businesses where they are evaluating whether a multiprocessor setup is right for their business. It covers how to identify specific gaps in reliability or global coverage that justify adding a second processor, what the resource investment looks like, and how an orchestration layer can help you manage multiple providers.
It also breaks down how Stripe Orchestration works: onboard with as little as a single line of code, manage routing logic from a single dashboard, and compare processor performance.
Ramp AR expands Ramp's financial operations platform from money going out into money coming in. The product extracts contract and purchase order terms into invoice drafts, prepares collections follow-ups using customer context, automatically matches incoming payments to open invoices, recognizes revenue, and keeps accounting records synced with the ERP, pushing Ramp toward a more complete end-to-end finance platform.
Meta's new personal AI agent Muse will be able to browse Shopify merchants and make purchases for users through Shop Pay, giving it access to Shopify's product catalog, payments, and commerce infrastructure. The partnership is an early example of how AI agents could become a new shopping interface while Shopify provides the rails underneath, contrasting with Amazon's decision to block Muse from buying on its site.
Coinbase is adding IPO allocations for eligible US retail customers, starting with Oura, allowing users to request shares at the offering price directly through the Coinbase app before public trading begins. The service is offered through FINRA-registered Coinbase Capital Markets and Apex Clearing, and forms part of Coinbase's broader “Everything Exchange” strategy to expand beyond crypto into stocks and primary-market investing.
Congress' effort to establish a federal framework for digital assets has stalled after the Senate fell short of the 60 votes needed to advance the legislation, with disagreements over ethics provisions emerging as the key sticking point. With the midterms approaching, the SEC and CFTC are likely to shape crypto rules through exemptions, guidance, and rulemaking instead, while questions such as stablecoin yield remain unresolved.
WislaCod's CEO argues that core banking programmes don't go over budget because of the ledger. The cost comes from the "seams" around it: platform decisions, migration timing, integration, testing, and unmanaged vendor chains. RTGS came in £56M over budget, and TSB's failed migration came down to a login misconfiguration and poor visibility into 85 subcontractors, not the data migration itself.
India's UPI looked like a textbook Christensen disruptor (cheap, basic, and aimed at the low end), yet India's credit card business has tripled in five years. His five reasons: both can grow together in a fast-growing, under-digitized economy; UPI made digital payments visible to everyone, which drove demand for cards; UPI scams pushed some users back to cards for fraud protection; and banks earn nothing on UPI but 2 to 3% on cards, so they pushed cards hard. The fifth is that UPI was never designed to compete: it offers no rewards, no deferred payment, and no fraud protection, and the government treats it as a public good. That may start to shift on October 15, when merchant UPI payments above INR 2,000 begin carrying a 0.4% fee.
Rogo CEO Gabe Stengel lays out a vision for AI doing much of the research, diligence, and execution work inside investment banks and investment firms, eventually becoming the venue where deals themselves happen. The discussion focuses on why domain-specific harnesses may matter more than frontier models alone, what investing skills humans will retain, and Rogo's ambition to become an AI-native Bloomberg for finance.
Numeric launched its Financial Data Platform, positioning it as an ERP replacement that stores full business-event context instead of reducing transactions to traditional general-ledger entries. The system is designed to automate accounting, enable richer reporting, and support finance agents, while allowing companies to migrate module by module from systems like NetSuite rather than undertaking a full rip-and-replace implementation.
Stripe is integrating its Link wallet with AI agents from Meta, xAI, Instinct, and others so bots can complete purchases without seeing a user's underlying card details. With 300 million users and roughly 1 million merchant integrations, Link gives Stripe a consumer-facing layer alongside its merchant network, positioning it to compete with PayPal, Apple, and Google as AI agents increasingly become the interface for shopping and payments.
SoFi has moved its entire $25 billion card program onto SoFiUSD for settlement across Mastercard's global payments network, making it the first nationally chartered US bank to use stablecoins this way at scale. For consumers and merchants, little changes: payments still run through standard Mastercard cards, while settlement happens behind the scenes on blockchain rails, with merchants able to receive funds instantly without holding crypto or changing their infrastructure. SoFi is now in discussions with large US merchants about expanding the system beyond its own card business, which could turn stablecoins from a crypto product into largely invisible payment infrastructure.
The new Affirm payment options will be available to customers when shopping for millions of products. Customers can simply select Affirm as their payment method at checkout and apply to get an instant eligibility decision from Affirm. If approved, customers will be able to pay for their orders using flexible financing options: “0% Pay-in-3” splits the cost of the purchase into three interest-free monthly payments, while a longer-term interest-bearing (22% Representative APR fixed) plan is available for up to 48 months. Both options are available on baskets of at least £50 and come with no late or hidden fees.
NewView Capital and Carta announced a partnership to streamline company-sponsored tender offers, combining NewView's secondary investing expertise with Carta's cap table and liquidity infrastructure. The collaboration reflects the growing normalization of private-company liquidity programs as startups stay private longer, with Carta administering more than 70 tender offers representing $3 billion of transaction volume in the first half of 2026 alone.
Atum, an open payments network founded by former Visa crypto product team lead Pete Cooling, has emerged from stealth with $13.5 million in funding.
Blockchain.com users could eventually trade tokenized US equities and ETFs around the clock through the NYSE's upcoming digital trading platform, pending regulatory approval.
Chicago-based Go.AI raised $85 million led by Updata Partners to expand its on-premises AI infrastructure, bringing its total funding to $90 million.
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Rapid growth comes with its costs: extensive manual setup when employees join, change roles, and leave. Misaligned info across finance, HR, and senior leadership. Opaque context for spending decisions.
So when Aven grew 3x, it started by tackling the potential headaches [5]. This Wednesday, September 23rd, hear from Aven, Ramp, and Gusto to learn how a new integration clears the path for rapid growth.
P.S. - Want to better understand your people/HR teams? Join Gong's Director of GTM Strategic Finance, the FP&A Guy, and the Founder of
The SEC issued five-year conditional exemptions allowing certain blockchain-based venues and automated liquidity providers to trade tokenized US stocks, bringing crypto-style market infrastructure into traditional equities. The tokenized shares would carry the same dividends and voting rights as the underlying stock, while issuers would have the right to opt out, giving the SEC a live framework to test on-chain trading before deciding on permanent rules.
Revolut is considering a dual listing on Nasdaq and the London Stock Exchange, though CEO Nik Storonsky said the US remains the preferred market because of its deeper investor base. The fintech was valued at $75 billion in a secondary sale last year and has 80 million customers globally. It reportedly discussed targeting a valuation of up to $200 billion in an eventual IPO, which is still likely at least a year away.
A House China Committee letter raised concerns that Airwallex's China-based workforce and exposure to Chinese law could create risks around access to sensitive US financial data, prompting Joe Lonsdale to warn companies that may use Airwallex infrastructure. Airwallex CEO Jack Zhang rejected the allegations, arguing that the relevant issue is data architecture and access controls rather than employee location, saying the company's safeguards have been independently assessed and that the concerns did not stem from a breach or regulatory finding. Rippling CEO Parker Conrad also clarified that zero Rippling payments run through Airwallex.
Stripe says new SaaS platform creation is accelerating despite fears that AI would commoditize software, with new platform businesses up more than 180% year over year and more integrations reaching meaningful payment volume faster than prior cohorts. Its argument is that durable SaaS will increasingly be built around core workflows, proprietary business context, and embedded money movement, with AI making those platforms more capable rather than eliminating the application layer.
This article revisits a 2018 framework for how banks, fintechs, and big tech would converge, and argues that the emerging winner is a new model we call the Hyperbank: a technology company that owns the financial stack down to the regulatory or sovereign root. Column illustrates the model with just $1.77B in assets but roughly $200MM in revenue, a potential $6B valuation, and customers including Ramp, Brex, Bilt, Mercury, and Wise, while vertically integrating stablecoins, card issuing, global banking, multicurrency accounts, and core infrastructure. Hyperbanks are different from Deep Fintechs, which build difficult-to-copy technologies such as blockchains, zero-knowledge proofs, AI underwriting, and advanced trading infrastructure. Neobranches own digital distribution while renting the underlying financial factory.
Mastercard, Trip.com, and Network International are piloting an agentic travel-booking experience that lets Trip.com's TripGenie AI agent help users discover, book, and pay for travel services end to end. The initiative uses Mastercard's Agent Suite for Merchants and payments infrastructure to keep merchants in control of the customer experience while enabling consumer-authorized AI purchases, with a phased commercial rollout expected in early 2027.
The San Francisco startup connects to existing bank accounts, moves idle balances into US Treasuries, and returns funds before scheduled bills come due. Users can earn a yield without switching banks or manually moving money, with real-time cash flow monitoring determining when to invest and when to pull funds back.
Lightspeed argues that the real breakthrough in next-generation ERP is not a better interface, but using AI to eliminate migration risk, historically the biggest reason CFOs stayed with legacy systems like NetSuite. Its portfolio company DualEntry uses AI to migrate and reconcile company data in as little as 24 hours, pursuing a “reverse wedge” strategy that replaces the ERP first and then expands into adjacent finance workflows.
Warren Buffett is stepping down as Berkshire Hathaway chairman at age 96, becoming chairman emeritus while remaining on the board. His son Howard Buffett will become chairman, with Greg Abel continuing as CEO. The move completes Berkshire's long-planned succession and puts more responsibility on Abel to deploy the company's $365.5 billion cash hoard, as Buffett closes a six-decade tenure in which Berkshire compounded shareholder returns at 19.7% annually, nearly double the S&P 500.
Customers can use qualifying government-issued digital IDs when opening accounts in person or online, provided the institution has systems to process them.
Grab, Southeast Asia's Uber, has agreed to acquire a 60% stake in Atome Financial for $1.49 billion in cash, adding AI-powered credit underwriting and a $1 billion loan portfolio.
Anthropic is reportedly pushing its planned IPO from October to November, giving the company more time to present third-quarter results and address investor concerns around AI safety, competitive pressure, and the pace of model development.
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Train, test, and deploy the only configurable AI agent system built to ensure policy compliance in financial services: Fin [5]. Fin subjects every answer to rigorous, multi-stage validation so it can resolve complex queries with precision.
As Lee Burkhill, PM at MonyGroup, says [6]:
_"I've never seen Fin hallucinate—not once. That's a huge deal. We constantly test it, throw new questions at it, analyze variations and it holds up. That level of accuracy in an AI Agent is rare."_
Learn more about Fin [7], the AI Agent making perfect customer experiences possible in 45+ languages.
Mercury Books is an AI-powered accounting product that automatically categorizes and reconciles card transactions, invoices, and bill payments, then lets users query their books in plain language through its Mercury Command agent. Customers can use their own accountant or bookkeeper or work with partners like Pilot, Fondo, and Ridgewood, as Mercury expands from banking deeper into accounting and finance operations.
Ramp has officially launched in the UK, bringing its finance automation platform to British businesses as it expands beyond the US. The move opens a major new market for Ramp's corporate cards, spend management, and finance operations products, extending its push to become a global financial operations platform.
Mastercard and Trip.com have joined forces to showcase AI-powered booking experiences for the travel sector. Powered by Mastercard's Agent Suite for Merchants and in partnership with Network International, the organizations are showcasing how consumers will be able to search, book, and complete purchases through Trip.com's AI agent TripGenie.
Primary Venture Partners argues that the strongest enterprise AI companies will win not by owning the best models, but by turning real-world workflow experience into compounding expertise. Their framework centers on “scorebooks” and continual learning loops that capture context, decision traces, expert feedback, and business outcomes, allowing domain-specific applications to improve across customers and build defensibility through workflow ownership, implementation depth, and accountability.
AI will erode many traditional software moats by making products cheaper to replicate, migrations easier, and integrations more automated, pushing the industry toward a barbell structure. A smaller number of dominant platforms will try to own entire buying centers through relentless product expansion and scale, while an explosion of tiny, niche software businesses emerges at the other end, leaving mid-sized point solutions increasingly squeezed out.
The venture arm of Nasdaq announced it is investing $100M into Payward, the parent company behind crypto exchange Kraken, at a $21B valuation. The deal strives to make Kraken a major distribution platform for Nasdaq's tokenized equities, which are set to go live in 2027. This comes as the asset class hit a record $6B in monthly on-chain trading volumes in August.
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Payment and banking infrastructure compliance mandates least-privileged access restricted to the minimum per job function. Siloed audit logs lack the identity context to provide an audit trail without manual work across systems. Teleport [15] offers a guide that explains how certificate-based authentication solves these challenges,
American Express is expanding beyond cards with a new high-yield Business Savings account, grouping it with Business Checking under a broader “Business Banking” offering. Amex also plans to add Gusto-powered payroll, AI-driven payroll insights, and direct redemption of card rewards into checking, pushing toward a more complete operating account for small businesses rather than just a payments relationship.
Radical Ventures launched its multi-billion-dollar Radical Breakouts Fund with a first close of more than $1 billion, backed by major Canadian pension funds and banks including CPP Investments, PSP Investments, HOOPP, TD, and BMO. The fund will target late-stage AI companies in Canada and globally, reflecting a push to give Canadian scaleups access to the kind of large private-growth capital that has historically been concentrated in the US.
Klarna is powering Apple's new US device leasing program, including financing for the $1,999 foldable iPhone Duo and $1,199 iPhone 18 Pro, with 12- or 24-month terms that let customers upgrade, buy out the device, or return it. The partnership gives Klarna a major distribution win after failing to land Apple more than a decade ago, while helping Apple push hardware toward a subscription-style model that could encourage more frequent upgrades.
Saudi Arabia-based Tabby raised $233 million in a Series F led by Blue Pool Capital, valuing the BNPL fintech at $6.5 billion, up from $4.5 billion last year. Tabby plans to use the capital to deepen its presence in Saudi Arabia and the UAE, where it is expanding beyond BNPL into larger consumer financing, working capital and cash-account products, while processing more than $18 billion in annualized transaction volume across 25 million registered users.
Robinhood plans to add one-for-one share redemptions and voting rights to its Stock Tokens, addressing criticism that the products currently provide only economic exposure without actual shareholder rights. The shift follows backlash from AMC CEO Adam Aron and comes as Coinbase and other tokenization platforms push toward structures that more closely replicate traditional equity ownership, including redemption, dividends, and voting.