Apple opens up NFC as it pulls in $24B in Q2 payments revenue (TWIF 8/16)

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TWIF is coming to San Francisco next month with a Fintech Coffee on September 5th with Silicon Valley Bank and a networking happy hour with our friends at Rutter on September 18th.

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Please enjoy another week of fintech and banking news below. (👍👎 Have feedback for us? Let us know!)

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Amazon and Barclays teamed up to launch a new UK credit card with 2% cashback and a £20 Amazon gift card...

...and is partnering with Santander to launch a similar card in Germany.

 Illinois is leading the charge to bar interchange fee collection from cards on taxes and tips.

Mastercard is using open banking to make lending easier, while Standard Chartered is rolling out a corporate cash account with lower rates and fees for hitting ESG goals.

Solana ETFs are now approved in Brazil. German development bank KfW selected Boerse Stuttgart as the infrastructure partner for its new blockchain digital bond.

The CFPB and American Fintech Counsel both weighed in on the use of AI in financial services, while banks are asking the CFPB to include fintechs under the umbrella of its open banking rules.

Australia is rolling out a new service to confirm payment recipients to lower payments fraud.

Russia's central bank revoked the banking license of American Express' domestic subsidiary.

Klarna continues to expand into full-suite consumer financial services, with the launch of consumer digital bank accounts with interest and cash-back rewards.

Merchant digital payments platform Flexa launched mobile-first experiences to streamline direct wallet payments with digital assets.

UK small business lender Hello Alice, with 1.5 million customers, partnered with the Global Entrepreneurship Network and Wells Fargo to launch a 'capital access boot camp.'

Business payments and cross-border currency platform Airwallex passed $100 billion (!) in annual processing volume, up 73% year-on-year.

Apple is generating serious revenue from its payment services like BNPL and tap-to-pay – the company received $24 billion in Q2 payments revenue, up 14% year over year. The tech giant also announced that it will open up NFC payments on iPhones to third-party developers, which could enable everything from stablecoin tap-to-pay to better merchant rewards to account-to-account tap payments.

Meanwhile, investment app Robinhood saw $682 million of earnings in Q2, Italian neobank illimity posted a €23 million net profit, and US neobank Varo cut losses to $13.5 million.

Google integrated the kid-focused Greenlight debit card into its smart watch.

Twitter (X) is getting closer to adding payments to its social platform.

Money transfer provider Wise received a license to provide money movement services in India, British neobank ClearBank was cleared to bank in the EU, and payments app Ziina* became the first startup to be granted a stored value facility license in the UAE.

Binance recovered $73 million in stolen user funds from external parties.

Jack Dorsey's Block is planning a major reorg.

Investment advisor Path tapped Gemini as the custodian for its new automated crypto portfolio app.

Small business-focused fintech Lili partnered with data provider Dun & Bradstreet to improve business credit scores.

Payments orchestration provider Yuno partnered with Colombia's Nequi to expand the payment methods available to the latter's 20 million users.

Uruguayan payments app dLocal partnered with Microsoft to better leverage AI.

The CFTC ordered FTX to pay customers $12.7 billion in remunerations. (I suppose this is also good news?) Australia's Securities and Investment Commission is suing the country's ASX exchange over misleading statements about the progress of its abandoned blockchain system.

The SEC sent several letters to venture capital funds such as A16z and USV ot understand their involvement in decentralized exchange Uniswap.

Nerdwallet will cut its workforce by 15%.

Thousands of Monzo customers were unable to make payments due to an app outage.

Donald Jr. and Eric Trump "have truly fallen in love with crypto/DeFi" and are launching a new crypto project.

Credit card debt management company Tally, last valued at $855 million, is shutting down.