Hello Fintech Friends,

Welcome to the 2,101 new readers who’ve joined us since last week. You’re joining 212,000+ other subscribers. Today's newsletter is brought to you by our friends at Plaid.

I think this is the biggest week for fintech product launches... ever?

If you wanted to see a word cloud of the products launch this week, you could probably guess the composition:

• ✅ Stablecoins
• ✅ AI
• ✅ Stripe

Mary Ann did a great job earlier this week summarizing all the new launches from Stripe:

Inside Stripe’s Effort to ‘Build the Economic Infrastructure for AI’

On September 30, payments giant Stripe announced it is helping OpenAI launch a new commerce experience called Instant Checkout in ChatGPT. The new “experience” will allow ChatGPT users in the United States to buy from Etsy merchants (and, soon, from Shopify merchants) in the chat using checkout powered by Stripe.

This Week in FintechMary Ann Azevedo

But also! Visa launched a stablecoin prefunding pilot and GenAI tool. Fiserv released an AI-driven content platform. Brex, SWIFT and OKX all announced their own stablecoin products. European banks are coming together to compete with dollar stablecoins. The UK plans to launch a digital pound. Public is opening up direct indexing to retail, JP Morgan is opening up private credit to individual investors... It's a fintech product gold rush.

But I think one of the most important conversations this week won't even make it to the news – I got to hop on with Mike Cagney, who recently took his company Figure public on the Nasdaq. Mike believes blockchain will open up the opportunity to completely reinvent capital markets, and after you watch this conversation, I think you will too.

This is the most important conversation on finance and capital markets you'll see in the next decade. And I'm not kidding. Mike Cagney has now brought two companies public - SoFi and Figure. He… | Nik Milanović

This is the most important conversation on finance and capital markets you’ll see in the next decade. And I’m not kidding. Mike Cagney has now brought two companies public - SoFi and Figure. He has a deep knowledge of credit and equities markets from his time as a hedge fund manager. And he understands how inefficient they are. Companies like Figure that use blockchain to originate credit assets will change the game for everyone. New players will enter the market. Traditional brokers will have to fight to justify their fees. Underwriting data won’t be held by gatekeepers. Figure’s HELOC product is early innings. There is a sea-change coming to credit and equities. This is exactly what we mean at Stablecon when we talk about the tokenization of all assets. Check out the full interview at This Week in Fintech:

LinkedInView Profile

Figure started by focusing on HELOCs, but plans to use on-chain asset formation to broaden the number of players who are able to access capital markets both as lenders and borrowers. And this doesn't stop with credit markets: tokenized equities could remove the need for a DTCC, for brokerages like Robinhood, and even for exchanges like the NYSE and Nasdaq.

Give the interview a listen and let me know what you think.

Please enjoy another week of fintech and banking news below.

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

SPONSORED

Fraudsters aren’t operating alone. They’re using AI, automation, and stolen credentials. Yet many fraud teams are still relying on siloed systems and rule-based tools that only catch a fraction of what’s happening. Download the report now and learn how top teams are driving smarter, more proactive fraud prevention—without sacrificing user experience.

Learn more

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

Financial Services & Banking

Product Launches

Visa launched a stablecoin prefunding pilot through Visa Direct, enabling businesses to use stablecoins for cross-border payments. The company also launched the Visa Commercial Solutions Hub, integrating GenAI to provide automation and AI-powered payables for commercial payments.

Bank of America introduced AskGPS, an AI assistant built in-house to assist staff in handling complex queries from institutional clients.

SWIFT announced plans to develop a blockchain-based ledger for 24/7 cross-border payments, collaborating with major banks and blockchain company ConsenSys to modernize international transactions.

Fiserv released an AI-driven content platform aimed at helping financial institutions enhance customer experiences and streamline operations.

European Banks collaborated to launch a euro-denominated stablecoin, aiming to provide a European alternative to dollar-pegged stablecoins and enhance the region's financial sovereignty.

ABN AMRO launched Buut, a digital neobank developed in partnership with Mambu, offering online banking services to meet the needs of customers.

Citi launched a new Agentic AI platform to streamline workflows and enhance productivity in its client services.

Other News

UK Banks are prepping their own pilot project to deliver the UK's first live transactions of tokenized sterling deposits (GBTD), designed to enhance speed and fraud protection in banking.

Private credit gold rush! JPMorgan confirmed plans to allocate up to 15% of its actively managed JPMorgan Total Credit ETF's portfolio to private credit.

The SEC proposed allowing stocks to trade on blockchain platforms, potentially transforming equity trading by enabling 24/7 transactions and fractional ownership.

JPMorgan discontinued its Nutmeg digital wealth management brand in the UK, replacing it with JP Morgan Personal Investing to streamline its investment services.

Quote of the Week

Fintech

Product Launches

Worldpay deployed a unified embedded finance engine to enable partners to embed banking features more seamlessly.

Brex introduced a stablecoin payment platform, enabling clients to accept and send Circle's USDC stablecoin.

Crypto wallet provider Phantom launched CASH, a product for users to fund instantly, link your bank or card, and start using funds right away, buy and sell crypto fast without fees on stablecoins, tap to pay with Apple Pay and Google Pay, and pay friends.

Former PayPal CEO Bill Harris introduced Evergreen Wealth as a digital RIA blending fiduciary advisors and AI to deliver tax-optimized, hyper-personalized investment management.

SoFi launched Options Level 1, giving members access to strategies that balance risk via limited options positions.

Chargeflow released Prevent, a tool that monitors and blocks malicious payment activity to stop “digital shoplifters” before they attack merchants’ checkout flows.

Lunos AI launched its AI-driven accounts receivable platform to automate invoice collection and transform B2B cash flow.

Public launched Direct Indexing, lowering the investment minimum to $1,000. This move allows retail investors to build personalized portfolios with built-in tax advantages, previously accessible only to high-net-worth individuals.

BILL announced enhancements to its platform to let SMBs combine faster payments with higher yields on operating cash.

Fruitful unveiled Money Map, an automated money management system that turns personalized advice into financial actions with a single click.

Stripe introduced Open Issuance from Bridge, a platform enabling developers and firms to launch their own stablecoins on-chain. Open Issuance is meant to provider greater control over product experiences, eliminate unnecessary fees, and provide opportunities to earn rewards from reserves.

OKX rolled out a stablecoin-powered scan-to-pay service in Singapore, facilitating real-time payments via QR and digital wallet flows.

SPONSORED

Fraudsters aren’t operating alone. They’re using AI, automation, and stolen credentials. Yet many fraud teams are still relying on siloed systems and rule-based tools that only catch a fraction of what’s happening. Download the report now and learn how top teams are driving smarter, more proactive fraud prevention—without sacrificing user experience.

Learn more

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

Other News

Klarna celebrated surpassing one million U.S. debit card sign-ups in just eleven weeks, highlighting the strong adoption of its pay-now debit product as it continues expanding beyond its core buy-now-pay-later services.

Nubank applied for a U.S. national bank charter with the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, aiming to strengthen its regulatory position and build a foundation for deeper expansion into the U.S. market.

Stripe plans to seek a federal banking charter, a move tied to its ambitions to issue and manage stablecoins, which would give the company greater regulatory flexibility and credibility in financial services.

News emerged that Gusto paid $600 million to acquire Guideline, a retirement savings provider, and plans divest customers tied to rival payroll platforms, signaling its strategy to consolidate retirement services while maintaining focus on its own ecosystem.

Partnership Corner

Monark Markets and Apex Fintech Solutions joined forces to expand retail investor access to private markets, combining Monark’s private market platform with Apex’s custody and clearing infrastructure to lower barriers for individual investors.

OpenAI and Stripe teamed up to integrate payments into ChatGPT, enabling users to make purchases and process transactions within the conversational interface, part of Stripe’s broader push into AI-powered commerce.

The Bad News

Charlie Javice received a prison sentence of more than seven years after being found guilty of defrauding JPMorgan by fabricating data about her startup’s customer base during its $175 million acquisition.