$750M Raised. Ramp Says AI Is Becoming a New Category of Business Spend

Hey Payments Fanatic!

Ramp just raised $750 million at a $44 billion valuation.

The funding round itself is impressive. But what caught my attention was the company's view of where business spending is heading next.

For decades, companies spent money on two things: people and vendors.

Ramp argues there's now a third category growing at extraordinary speed: AI.

Not software. Not cloud infrastructure. Intelligence itself is paid for in tokens.

That's why the company is building tools to help businesses track, control, and optimize AI-related spending, while also investing heavily in AI internally. According to Ramp, AI now helps generate more than two-thirds of its code, and 99.5% of employees actively use AI tools.

Whether you agree with the vision or not, the numbers are hard to ignore. Ramp has surpassed $1 billion in annualized revenue, serves more than 70,000 customers, and says payment volume grew 170% year-over-year.

I'll stay on the theme of how technology is reshaping finance further down the newsletter, where you'll also find an interesting discussion on CBDCs and the future of digital money.

Today's remaining Payments headlines are just below. 👇 See you on Monday!

Cheers,

Marcel

PODCAST RECOMMENDATION

🎤 CBDC: What you need you know? by DashDevs. In episode 155 of the FinTech Garden Podcast, hosts Igor Tomych and Dumitru Condrea explore the fundamentals of Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs), examining how digital euros could reshape payments, regulation, privacy, and financial infrastructure across Europe. Watch the full podcast here

INSIGHTS

📰 Smart money ushers in a new era of payments. In a new article, Juan Franco, Global CEO of Getnet, argues that payments are evolving from simple transaction processing into intelligent, data-driven infrastructure. He highlights how AI, automation, and real-time analytics are enabling payment systems to orchestrate risk, fraud prevention, authentication, and routing decisions. Read the full article here

NEWS

🇬🇧 Ecommpay's AI lifts merchant payment success rates 2.6% in Q1 2026, with some merchants seeing improvements of 5% to 15%. The system analyzes large-scale transaction data to identify and reduce declines related to authentication failures, fraud checks, and customer behavior, helping merchants improve approval rates and recover lost revenue.

🇬🇹 Banco Promerica has launched the Ysi Debit Mastercard, a digital-first debit card designed to offer Guatemalan consumers a simpler and more secure payment experience. The card supports contactless payments, digital wallets, real-time account management through the bank’s mobile app, and includes benefits such as cashback, discounts, and enhanced fraud protection features.

🇮🇳 Mastercard expands value-added services push amid UPI dominance. As UPI continues to dominate the payments landscape, Mastercard is pursuing a three-pronged strategy centered on consumer payments, commercial payments, and services to diversify its presence beyond its traditional card network business.

📰 Airwallex reveals that outdated payment systems cost global businesses $330 billion every year. Together with the Centre for Economics and Business Research, the study highlights how payment delays, FX spreads, correspondent banking fees, and settlement frictions create a “Global Growth Tariff,” with businesses across EMEA alone bearing an estimated $144 billion cost that impacts cash flow and growth.

🇺🇸 Ramp notches a $44 billion valuation in a new funding round. The company is expanding beyond spend management into AI-driven cost control, accounting automation, and autonomous payments, while accelerating its international growth. Continue reading

🇺🇸 Fiserv plans to launch its FIUSD stablecoin in July, according to CEO Mike Lyons. FIUSD aims to keep stablecoin-related deposits within financial institutions while providing an alternative to dominant stablecoins such as Tether’s USDT, Circle’s USDC, and PayPal’s PYUSD.

🇩🇪 ING has enabled online shopping payments with Wero for customers in Germany. Wero allows consumers to pay directly from their bank accounts and forms part of a broader effort to build a European-owned payments infrastructure across Belgium, Germany, and the Netherlands.

🇺🇸 Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski highlights the US as the fastest-growing market after the IPO, debuting with a market valuation of approximately $17 billion. Alongside its U.S. expansion, Klarna is advancing its digital asset strategy through KlarnaUSD on the Tempo blockchain and a wallet infrastructure partnership with Privy, extending its focus beyond BNPL into stablecoins and digital finance.

🇦🇺 Volt and Trade Nation launch real-time payments for Australian traders, opening a global partnership. Combined with automatic reconciliation across incoming PayID flows, the integration removes long-standing operational pain points for high-volume trading platforms, while delivering the speed and transparency clients expect.

🇦🇪 Bybit became the first major crypto exchange to integrate Western Union’s USDPT stablecoin, bridging two financial worlds through one stablecoin. Starting with the onboarding of USDPT, Bybit and Western Union will expand on digital asset utility and towards a more inclusive vision for the future of finance.

🇺🇸 Visa and Brale explore private stablecoin settlement for institutional payments. Through the collaboration with Brale, Visa plans to evaluate support for SBC as an additional stablecoin option for institutional settlement use cases.

🇷🇺 Russia's A7 transborder payments company plans global expansion. A7 has become a major player in Russia’s cross-border payments market, supporting fund transfers for businesses as the country continues to develop alternative payment channels outside traditional Western financial networks.

🇮🇪 Enfuce enters Ireland with a Payac partnership to future-proof card services for Irish credit unions. The migration to Enfuce will provide a more agile, scalable, and resilient processing environment capable of supporting the evolving needs of both credit unions and their communities.

🇬🇧 GoCardless launches Recurring Pay by Bank as part of a new UK payment scheme. The new scheme supports the UK’s National Payment Vision to foster greater competition, innovation and resilience by driving widespread adoption of account-to-account (A2A) payments.

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