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. The crypto brand (and digital assets, more broadly) doesn't travel the same from one market to another. In markets with a functioning banking system, it exists almost like a solution looking for a problem and it found many, speculation being one of them, portfolio diversification being another. The list goes on.

For shareholders, the persistent discount between Block and its closest peers may be among the most frustrating aspects of the story, especially considering the perception that Block’s execution has improved and growth is moving to a sustainably higher level. Before I attempt to hypothesize why the discount exists, let’s take a closer look at the numbers first.

Mexico has become a proving ground for neobanks looking to scale. Nu now has 16 million customers, reaching 16.5% of the country’s adult population; Plata has more than 3 million customers; and Ualá is growing its active user base by 7% month over month since obtaining its banking license. Revolut, meanwhile, reached 500,000 account holders less than six months after launching operations. For the biggest players, scale increasingly means operating across borders.

The Premier League is back. Who do you think will win it this season? I believe this season's winner is going to be a team that didn't win it in a long time. Beyond the pitch, one of the things I can't wait to see is the new players waiting to debut for my favorite team. Outside the game, OPay is preparing for its own high stakes debut, stepping onto the public stock exchange.

Cashfree Payments reduced consolidated net loss to ₹118.5cr ($12.3M) in FY26, with revenue growing 51% YoY to ₹967cr ($101M). • India's outward Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) increased 17% YoY to $5.7bn in July 2026, per Reserve Bank of India (RBI). • Public sector banks re-offered ₹40K crore ($4.4bn) of bad loans in Q1 FY25, with 80% being repeat sale attempts. • Private credit deployments dropped 61% YoY to ₹34K cr ($3.5bn) in H1 2026 from ₹9bn in H1 2025.

Today’s newsletter is brought to you by our friends at Stripe made a major push into AI infrastructure this week. The payments giant agreed to acquire OpenRouter for more than $8 billion, putting it at the center of how developers access AI models. Ramp’s launch of its own model router now sets up a race to become developers’ preferred gateway. Munich Re’s $575 million acquisition of At-Bay, and HomeTrust Bank’s $448.1 million Blue Ridge Bank deal ranked among the other major transactions.

Today’s newsletter is brought to you by our friends at Increase. Fintech companies secured more than $700 million in financing this week across equity rounds, credit facilities and mixed equity-and-debt deals. Ingenico, a market leader in point-of-sale terminals, raised €150 million ($173.7 million) from a PIMCO-led investor group.

Driving the news this morning are reports which circulated this week that JPMorgan quietly terminated its relationship with prediction markets provider Polymarket last year over regulatory concerns. At the time, Polymarket was banned by the CFTC from serving US customers on its platform.

👋 Welcome to the new readers who’ve joined us since last week. You’re joining 176,000+ other subscribers who love fintech. This week’s fintech news saw big moves in cross-border payments, AI innovation, and market regulation across APAC and LatAm. UnionPay and ShopeePay expanded international QR access, while Alipay and Ant International debuted advanced AI tools for merchants and FX management.

Hello, Fintech Friends! I was listening to Toast's second-quarter earnings call last week. The results were great. Revenue grew 23% YoY to $1.9 billion, net income nearly doubled to $154 million, and the company added a record 9,500 net new locations. But something else about the call stuck with me. Just a year ago, lending looked like the biggest opportunity for payments companies.