AI Is Moving Deeper Into Payments

Hey Payments Fanatic!

Anchorbase has raised $2 million in pre-seed funding.

The Canadian startup is building AI tools for payment collection, reconciliation, reporting, and other finance operations that businesses deal with every day.

It's a small funding round, but it highlights a much bigger trend.

More FinTech companies are starting to apply AI beyond the customer experience and into the operational side of payments, where many processes remain manual, fragmented, and time-consuming.

And that's just one of today's stories.

Further down, you'll find PayPal's latest results, a fascinating Q&A on the hidden AI revolution happening inside payments, and a look at how Maple Finance is bringing greater transparency to institutional DeFi.

See what else is shaping Payments. 👇 See you tomorrow!

Cheers,

Marcel

INSIGHTS

📰 The hidden AI revolution happening inside payments. Irene Skrynova, CEO of Global Payments at Unlimit, explains that AI’s biggest impact in payments is happening behind the scenes through approval optimization, smart routing, fraud detection, and real-time transaction decisioning. Read the full article here

NEWS

🇪🇸 Mastercard and Wealnest join forces to boost wealth management with Open Finance. Thanks to this integration, Open Finance technology will allow Wealnest clients to group and synchronize their balances and financial information from different entities in a single digital environment.

🌍 Airwallex has appointed Pranav Sood as Chief Financial Officer, marking a new phase of global expansion. Sood will help guide Airwallex’s financial strategy as it scales internationally following its recent $8 billion valuation and major investment plans across Europe.

➡️ Maple Finance has launched a new Transparency Dashboard, giving users a real-time view of key protocol metrics, including AUM, treasury performance, yields, and capital flows across its lending products. Explore it here

🇨🇦 Anchorbase raises $2 million. The new funding will support continued product development, deeper integrations with systems of record, expanded customer support, and go-to-market growth across North America. Read more

🇫🇷 Worldline brings Click to Pay to recurring payments. This new capability enables digital-first businesses to scale subscription payments seamlessly across markets, while increasing conversion, reducing involuntary churn, and protecting recurring revenue.

🇬🇧 Worldpay outage leaves pubs and shops scrambling for cash during England match. The outage disrupted contactless payments across parts of the UK before services were restored, highlighting the growing dependence of consumers and businesses on digital payment infrastructure.

🇺🇸 Green Dot and CommerceOne Shareholders approve pending acquisition of Green Dot. The deal will combine Green Dot Bank with CommerceOne to form a new public banking group, while Smith Ventures will acquire and privatize Green Dot’s FinTech operations, creating separate banking and FinTech businesses focused on long-term growth.

🇮🇹 MyPOS partners with Bancomat to expand payment acceptance for SMEs in Italy. Under the agreement, all merchants using myPOS payment devices will be able to accept payments through the Bancomat network, while Bancomat Pay acceptance for online stores is expected to be introduced in the near future.

🇮🇸 Iceland joins TIPS for instant payments. This will allow payments in Icelandic króna to be settled instantly in central bank money as of 2028. The Icelandic króna will be the fifth currency available for settling retail payments instantly using the Eurosystem’s TARGET Services.

📊 PayPal beat its Q1 2026 estimates with $8.4 billion in revenue and $464 billion in payment volume, driven by strong growth at Venmo. 

Let's dive in👇

🇸🇬 Wise launches Young Explorer debit card in Singapore. The card is available to personal account holders, regardless of citizenship, and can be ordered for up to five children through a parent's Wise account. Each card carries the child's name and links to a dedicated balance managed within the parent's account.

🇺🇸 Mosta launches MainUSD, a stablecoin for instant cross-border settlement. Customers can convert incoming funds or supported crypto assets into MainUSD, hold balances in a stable settlement asset, and move funds globally through fiat or stablecoin rails.

🇧🇷 Nord Security has partnered with EBANX to offer Pix Automático in Brazil. Just six months after launch, the recurring payment method accounts for 28% of Nord Security’s payment volume in the country, while delivering approval rates that outperform credit cards and expanding access to consumers who prefer Pix over traditional payment methods.

🇨🇭 Yellow Card has secured AML affiliation in Switzerland as a supervised financial intermediary, giving institutional and corporate clients a regulated gateway to access its stablecoin payment infrastructure. The move strengthens Yellow Card’s global regulatory footprint and supports cross-border capital flows.

🇸🇪 Swedish challenger Nordiska partners with Finastra to bolster payments and settlement processes. Through this partnership, Nordiska will gain direct access to the global Swift network and Sweden's central payment systems, including Riksbank's real-time settlement system - RIX RTGS - with RIX INST for instant payments to follow.

🇬🇧 PayPoint completes acquisition of AperiData, strengthening its Open Banking capabilities. The full integration of AperiData into the PayPoint Group will enhance PayPoint’s multichannel payments offering by embedding Open Banking capabilities into its existing services.

🇳🇬 Daya raises 2.4$ millon pre-seed to power stablecoin payment for African cross-border trade. Daya plans to use the funding for product development, corridor expansion, licensing, compliance infrastructure, and partnerships with local and global financial institutions.

🇳🇱 Van Lanschot Kempen becomes Principal Member of EPI. Through this partnership, the wealth manager will introduce Wero, a European digital payment solution, to its clients via the Van Lanschot Kempen digital banking environment, with rollout planned for late 2026.

🇧🇷 Blockchain.com announces expansion into Brazil, launching seamless institutional payments infrastructure. The new infrastructure enables Brazilian businesses to move and settle funds internationally with fewer constraints than traditional banking systems.

🇬🇧 Coins.ph selects Clear Junction to support European payment corridors. Through its partnership with Clear Junction, Coins.ph is enhancing its ability to support collections, disbursements, treasury operations, and local payment access for corporate and financial institution clients operating across Europe.

🇺🇸 CPI expands Proprietary Technology platform with acquisition of TRISM Business. The acquisition expands CPI’s market-leading position with financial institutions in the high-growth Software-as-a-Service-based instant issuance market and creates a new opportunity for expansion into larger financial institutions that require an on-premise solution.

GOLDEN NUGGET

𝐌𝐄𝐍𝐀 𝐢𝐬𝐧'𝐭 𝐜𝐚𝐭𝐜𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐮𝐩 𝐭𝐨 𝐝𝐢𝐠𝐢𝐭𝐚𝐥 𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐦𝐞𝐫𝐜𝐞. It's leading the next era of it👇Created by Arthur Bedel 💳 ♻️

Checkout.com just dropped its 2026 MENA Digital Commerce report. The numbers don't read like an emerging market. They read like the front line.

Total processing volume in the region grew 62% year on year. Remittance volumes grew another 169%. Buy now pay later grew 450%.

This is not adoption. This is acceleration.

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐬𝐡𝐢𝐟𝐭

→ 45% of MENA consumers now shop online weekly or more

→ 63% expect to spend online more often over the next year

→ 71% of employed consumers use digital wallets monthly

→ 56% compare prices on their phone while shopping in store

Digital wallets are no longer just a payment method. They are how people budget, invest, transfer, and now shop.

𝐀𝐠𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐜 𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐦𝐞𝐫𝐜𝐞 𝐢𝐬 𝐚𝐥𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐲 𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞

65% of MENA consumers are familiar with agentic AI. Half are comfortable with an AI agent shopping on their behalf. That number jumps to 56% in Qatar and Saudi Arabia, 54% in the UAE.

What would they delegate?

→ Finding the best price (50%)

→ Comparing products and reviews (41%)

→ Creating shopping lists (30%)

→ Buying groceries (27%)

→ Booking travel (25%)

These are not edge cases. They are everyday tasks moving to autonomous AI before most of the western world is ready to have the conversation.

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐭𝐫𝐮𝐬𝐭 𝐞𝐪𝐮𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧

Safety still beats speed. 62% of consumers say a safe and secure payment process is important. Only 35% rank speed in their top three. And 97% say payments should feel invisible.

The MENA consumer wants frictionless and secure. Not one or the other.

𝐖𝐡𝐲 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐦𝐚𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐬

One false decline sends 62% of customers away. 35% switch directly to a competitor after a single payment failure. The cost of getting checkout wrong has never been higher.

Merchants building for MENA today need three things in lockstep. Localized payment methods. Tokenized security. And an architecture ready for AI agents.

The region is showing the rest of the world what comes next.

Where do you think agentic commerce will hit mainstream adoption first, MENA or the US?

Source: Checkout.com · MENA Digital Commerce 2026

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