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Today's headline pertains to the story that broke this week that Circle is considering recovery mechanisms including reversible transactions to compensate victims of fraud and hacks. There are proposals like Shopify and Coinbase's shopping and escrow protocols to facilitate temporary and reversible transactions at the L2 level, but it would be a pretty big departure from the payments decentralization ethos to let an L1 adjudicate individual transactions (like a bank).

What do you think?

📰 Speaking of breaking news... we were happy to welcome legendary fintech reporter Mary Ann Azevedo to the team this week. She'll be working with us on breaking hot fintech news stories, starting with a deep-dive into Navan's S-1:

A look at Navan’s S-1

Expense management platform Navan has filed its S-1 with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission related to a proposed initial public offering. Navan plans to list its Class A common stock on the Nasdaq Global Select Market under the symbol “NAVN.” Interestingly, Navan (formerly known as TripActions) once focused

This Week in FintechMary Ann Azevedo

🇲🇽 We also took the wraps off a big project at Finnosummit 2025: Mexico Fintech Week.

From February 23–27, 2026, Mexico City will become the global capital of fintech, hosting 50+ decentralized events across 8 thematic tracks, in partnership with Klar, Stripe, Revolut, Utila, Minteo, Oscilar, Velafi, Puntored, Fintoc, DCG, Due, and more.

Mexico is the natural entry point to LATAM fintech: world-class talent, a dynamic market, and an ecosystem ready to lead.

This is a movement built by the community, for the community.

We're excited to build this alongside our partners at Finnosummit and with the incredible support of fintech leaders across the region.

Próximamente | Feb 23 - 27, 2026 | Join the Fintech Innovation

Discover the latest in fintech at Mexico Fintech Week, happening Feb 23-27, 2026. Stay informed on financial technology developments in Mexico.

Próximamente | Feb 23 - 27, 2026

Want to organize an event for Mexico Fintech Week?

Let us know! Reach out to ramon@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

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Financial Services & Banking

Product Launches

HSBC rolled out its Tokenised Deposit Service internationally, extending its blockchain-based offering beyond Hong Kong to markets like Singapore, the UAE, and the U.K. to support institutional clients.

Other News

Morgan Stanley tapped crypto infrastructure firm Zero Hash to provide E*Trade clients with access to Bitcoin and Ethereum, marking the bank’s first major retail crypto initiative.

Stablecoins are continuing to grow in relevance, but traditional asset managers still prefer centralized stablecoins, citing stronger regulatory oversight and operational stability compared to decentralised alternatives.

Quote of the Week

"I am out of banking so I can say things: mainframes are real, COBOL is real, on-prem is real, batch processes are real. And there is not much you can do about it because switching to a new system requires data migration, which is 100x harder than building or buying new tech." - Jevgenijs Kazanins

Fintech

Product Launches

Chime launched a cash-back secured credit card offering 1.5% rewards on purchases in categories like groceries, restaurants, and gas, aiming to expand its credit-building services.

Plasma activated its Layer 1 blockchain mainnet with over $2 billion in stablecoin liquidity and introduced its native XPL token, facilitating DeFi integrations.

Cloudflare introduced NET Dollar, a U.S. dollar-backed stablecoin designed to enable instant, secure transactions for the AI-driven internet, supporting a new business model that rewards originality and sustains creativity.

FICO unveiled its Focused Foundation Model for Financial Services, providing superior accuracy in decisioning and trust when deploying GenAI, through patent-pending Trust Scores that offer a risk-based approach to managing GenAI hallucinations.

AVAX One launched with a $550 million fundraising plan, aiming to acquire AVAX tokens and tokenize traditional assets on the Avalanche blockchain.

Coinbase added the Singapore dollar-backed stablecoin XSGD to its platform, facilitating local and cross-border payments for users in Singapore and also introduced USDC on-chain lending, offering yields up to 10.8% through partnerships with Morpho and Steakhouse.

Branch launched Branch Embedded, a suite of pre-built components enabling businesses to integrate fast, flexible payments into their platforms.

World Liberty Financial announced plans to launch a debit card, while the White House targets year-end passage of a crypto market structure bill.

WhatsApp added QR code-based payments to its Business App, allowing small businesses to share QR codes with customers for direct payments using their preferred method.

Kaia and Line Next launched a stablecoin superapp, Project Unify, designed to facilitate cross-border payments and integrate with Line Messenger's platform, aiming to offer yield services and token-to-fiat conversions.

SPONSORED

Fin is the best-performing AI Agent for Financial Services support, resolving the most complex, regulated queries like card issues and transaction disputes with unmatched accuracy, security, and compliance. Fin is also the only fully configurable AI Agent System, which means that your team is empowered to continuously improve performance and ensure policy compliance through no-code controls.

Learn more

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

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Job of the Week

Senior Security Engineer

Senior Security Engineer

Other News

Circle is exploring the implementation of reversible transactions for its USDC stablecoin to address fraud and hacks, aiming to enhance recovery mechanisms while maintaining settlement finality. This approach, which contrasts with the traditional crypto principle of irreversible transactions, could make stablecoins more compatible with legacy financial systems. While some view reversibility as a means to protect users and build trust, others argue it may compromise decentralization.

Nubank is planning to integrate dollar-pegged stablecoins into credit card payments, potentially allowing users to transact via tokenized currency instead of fiat.

Partnership Corner

Google and PayPal agreed to a multi-year collaboration to embed PayPal’s payment services across Google’s ecosystem and accelerate AI-driven commerce.

DBS, Franklin Templeton, and Ripple are merging tokenized collateral with stablecoin frameworks to offer trading, lending, and collateralization via tokenized money market funds on the XRP Ledger.

Ripple transformed its RLUSD stablecoin into an off-ramp liquidity option for BlackRock’s tokenized fund by integrating the stablecoin into Securitize’s tokenization infrastructure.

The Bad News 

Guavapay suspended its UK services under an agreement with the FCA after confronting significant levels of fraudulent activity and regulatory thresholds being exceeded.