This Week in Fintech

👋 Welcome to the new readers who’ve joined us since last week. You’re joining 176,000+ other subscribers who love fintech. Hello fintech friends, Driving the news today, Klarna’s ambitions look to be broadening beyond consumer lending, as it joins the industrial banking charter gold rush in the US. Please enjoy another week of fintech and banking news below. Have feedback for us? Let us know.

Hello TWIF UK & Europe friends, This week Palantir CEO Alex Karp was interviewed on CNBC - went after the Frontier Models in an eviscerating monologue where he claimed enterprises felt there “was a level of discomfort and loss of trust” in recent days and weeks following moves by the Anthropic and Open AI. Several months ago, Anthropic launched Claude Code, effectively hamstringing their partner Cursor.AI in one product update.

Hola amig@s fintech, This week, a few stories keep circling back to loyalty. A survey shows 9 in 10 SMEs across Mexico, Brazil, and Colombia would switch cross-border payment providers given the chance, putting $16 billion of a $23 billion market in play. But there are long-term commitments too, like Nubank betting $4.2 billion on staying for the long haul as a full bank in Mexico, or Equifax paying $750 million to hold Mexico's credit data conversation from now on.

Hello, Fintech Friends! Last week, Securitize went public on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker SECZ (congrats to the team, if you’re reading this!). It got there through a SPAC merger that valued the company at $1.25 billion. But what's more interesting is that it also issued its own stock directly onchain. About $295 million of SECZ now trades as tokens, which the company says makes it the largest tokenized stock in the world.

Hello Fraud Fighters! This week, Google did something it's never done before: it sued someone for abusing its own AI. A Chinese phishing ring allegedly used Gemini to write the code behind millions of scam texts, which tells you everything about where "AI safety" conversations are actually headed in 2026.

Hi fintech friends, I'm Osborne, investor in early stage startups. Please enjoy all the news and updates from the past week in today’s edition. If you feel TWIF brings you value, please share it with your friends (and maybe suggest they subscribe too). 📍 INDIA Digital lending startups showing promise: Fibe doubled profits; OnEMI (Kissht) grew AUM 61%; major banks posted 15-18% loan growth.

Bonjour Fintech Friends 👋, It’s July already, ready for Q3 one of the busiest quarters. First, if you are new here, welcome. If you were with us last week, do you remember the Monzo and Revolut play? Yeah, this time the narrative shifts from global fiat giants entering the continent to global payment networks rebuilding our internal rails from the ground up.

Hey fintech friends, Retail platforms are racing to launch prediction markets. Prediction markets want to become derivatives exchanges. Agentic payments infrastructure stack is splitting into two distinct stacks, and everything is going on-chain. Let’s break down where capital flowed in Q2, what launched, who exited, and what it all signals for players across the financial industry.

Hello Fintech Friends, Today’s newsletter is brought to you by our friends at Stablecon. Hope everyone had a great July 4! Here are the fintech stories that stood out this week. Plaid, which is also the parent company of TWIF, is considering a U.S. IPO, according to Bloomberg. Of course, public-market momentum is not just a U.S. story.

Hello Fintech Friends, Wishing you a festive July 4 weekend! Today’s newsletter is brought to you by our friends at Stablecon. In funding news this week, Mesh is raising a funding round that Binance is set to lead, valuing the crypto payments and settlement company at up to $2 billion, Axiosreports. AI-native risk and infrastructure led the rest of the deal sheet. Quantifind, Addi, and Venice pulled in nine-figure and high eight-figure checks across risk intelligence, BNPL and consumer credit.