Hello Fintech Friends,

Welcome to the 720 new readers who’ve joined us since last week. You’re joining 203,000+ other subscribers. Today's newsletter is brought to you by our friends at AWS, hosting Built on Bedrock in Fintech on September 2nd.

News broke this week that both Stripe and Circle plan to launch their own L1 blockchains – do we need more purpose-built chains? Distribution is everything, but it remains to be seen whether Tempo and Arc, respectively, offer meaningful functionality improvements over L1s like Solana, Stellar, Ripple, and Ethereum. Even so, merchants may vote en-masse for a blockchain integrated seamlessly into the payment provider that they already use.

In other news, Nubank crushed earnings, Circle also grew revenues, Plaid is getting into fighting AI fraud, and Google partnered with Wise.

All that and more below.

We're also planning to mix up the formatting of This Week in Fintech. It's time for a general brand refresh.

What kind of content do you think we should add? What should we subtract or change? Do we include many stories? Too many graphics? Send to many emails? Rachel, our Director of Content, would love to hear from you. You can reach her at rachel@thisweekinfintech.com.

Please enjoy another week of fintech and banking news below.

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

Discover what’s next in fintech. On September 2, AWS hosts Built on Bedrock in Fintech in NYC — a live demo night where 11 cutting-edge startups and AWS partners showcase how they’re using Generative AI with Amazon Bedrock to fight fraud, elevate customer experiences, and power capital markets intelligence. Featuring Arize, CAIS, Daloopa, Hebbia, Koho, Netomi, Stuut, TextQL, ValidMind, goML, and phData. Join us in person or via live stream. Register now.

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Financial Services & Banking

A North Dakota court overturned the Federal Reserve’s 2011 debit card swipe-fee cap, striking down Regulation II and potentially reshaping the economics of U.S. debit interchange fees.

Standard Chartered and Anchorpoint formed a joint venture to apply for Hong Kong’s first stablecoin issuer license under the new regulatory framework that took effect on August 1, 2025.

Citigroup wants to get in on the stablecoin mania with a crypto custody offering.

Santander partnered with OpenAI, deploying ChatGPT Enterprise to nearly 15,000 employees as part of its ambition to transform into an “AI-native” bank.

Fintech and crypto CEOs urged President Trump to block U.S. banks from charging fees for access to consumer financial data, arguing such charges would stifle innovation. And the President signed an executive order directing regulators to review and potentially relax fiduciary guidance to allow inclusion of cryptocurrencies and other private-market assets in 401(k) plans.

NATO-supporting financial institutions launched plans for the Defence, Security and Resilience Bank (DSRB), a new multilateral bank backed by global banks like ING and J.P. Morgan to finance defense, security, and supply chain resilience for NATO countries.

Visa launched a new Cybersecurity Advisory Practice, appointing Jeremiah Dewey as its global head to provide strategy, threat intelligence, and vulnerability services via Visa Consulting & Analytics.

Quote of the Week

Fintech

Product Launches

Circle launched Arc, a new USDC-powered Layer-1 blockchain designed to support stablecoin-based financial infrastructure with sub-second settlements and privacy controls. Stripe also deployed its own blockchain, dubbed “Tempo,” to assess whether openness can endure when built atop branded rails, with Paradigm’s Matt Huang appointed as its first CEO.

TrueBiz* announced the launch of TrueBiz Investigation Agent (a.k.a. ChatTRB), an instant web-based investigative AI tool.

Brightwave introduced Research Agents, the first analyst-grade AI chat platform that builds, thinks, and works across every dataroom from a unified interface.

Blockchain.com unveiled June, a privacy-first AI assistant featuring “Privacy+ Mode” that prevents both local and server storage of chat history to maximize user privacy.

Google Finance underwent an AI-powered overhaul that lets users toggle between the classic and revamped version, asking complex financial questions and receiving comprehensive responses via smarter research tools.

Discover what’s next in fintech. On September 2, AWS hosts Built on Bedrock in Fintech in NYC — a live demo night where 11 cutting-edge startups and AWS partners showcase how they’re using Generative AI with Amazon Bedrock to fight fraud, elevate customer experiences, and power capital markets intelligence. Featuring Arize, CAIS, Daloopa, Hebbia, Koho, Netomi, Stuut, TextQL, ValidMind, goML, and phData. Join us in person or via live stream. Register now.

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Upcoming Events

Our next Stablecon Salon lands in San Francisco next week, in partnership with Stable Sea and Kindred Ventures. | This Week in Fintech

Our next Stablecon Salon lands in San Francisco next week, in partnership with Stable Sea and Kindred Ventures. Join us at the Kindred Ventures offices for an evening of insightful conversation, fresh connections, and community-building with the people shaping the future of payments and stablecoin-enabled finance. 📍 San Fran 📅 August 21 ⚡ RSVP here: https://lnkd.in/gY_QVAZE

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Other News

Plaid is moving into combatting AI-driven fraud.

Nubank shares jumped 8% after beating consensus earnings estimates for Q2.

Circle reported a $482 million net loss for Q2 2025, its first earnings report after going public, driven by one-time IPO-related charges despite strong 53 % revenue growth to $658 million.

Paxos is pursuing a national trust bank charter from the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency to transition from state to federal oversight and boost its stablecoin infrastructure credibility.

Nuvei is leveraging stablecoin rails to power faster, lower-cost cross-border payouts—especially for treasury, payroll, and remittances in underserved emerging markets.

Partnership Corner

Korean banks and digital finance firms are forming partnerships to prepare for issuing stablecoins and exploring joint ventures ahead of potential legislation.

Wise teamed up with Google to enable users in the U.S. to access Wise’s remittance services through Google Wallet and Google Search as part of a remittance test.

Credit Sesame enlisted Green Dot’s embedded-finance platform, Arc, to enhance its Sesame Cash digital accounts by offering FDIC-insured demand deposit accounts.

The Bad News

Paxos agreed to pay a $48.5 million settlement to New York regulators over anti-money-laundering failures tied to its partnership with Binance, including a $26.5 million penalty and $22 million in compliance investments.

N26 faced pressure from major investors to replace its founders Valentin Stalf and Maximilian Tayenthal from day-to-day management amid renewed BaFin scrutiny and concerns over performance.

Zelle was sued by New York's Attorney General, who alleged that the platform’s failure to implement essential security measures enabled fraudsters to steal over $1 billion from consumers.