Marcel van Oost

Hey Payments Fanatic! Mastercard is moving fast to define how agentic commerce should actually work. The company just joined Google’s Universal Commerce Protocol and is pushing to bring Agent Pay into Microsoft Copilot Checkout. Same message everywhere: speed without trust doesn’t scale. This is about rules: clear intent,

Hey Payments Fanatic! Pomelo just raised $55M in a Series C to scale across Latin America and beyond. Kaszek and Insight Partners co-led the round. A strong signal of long-term belief in the region. Mexico and Brazil are the priority. Scale matters there. Regulation too. Pomelo is also moving past

Hey Payments Fanatic! Cardtonic just closed a $2.1M seed round to build Pil, a new business spending and expense management platform. Cardtonic is moving from consumer products into enterprise financial infrastructure, targeting how African businesses manage spend, controls, and day-to-day operations. From virtual dollar cards to bill payments, the

Hey Payments Fanatic! Toss Payments is officially severing its ties with Chinese capital. Its parent company, Viva Republica, will acquire all Toss Payments shares held by Ant Group, taking Ant’s stake from 38% down to zero. Ant Group will end up with less than 1% of Viva Republica itself,

Hey Payments Fanatic! PhotonPay just expanded its UK capabilities through a new collaboration with ClearBank. This gives PhotonPay’s business customers access to named virtual accounts, GBP collections and payouts, plus Confirmation of Payee. All are plugged directly into Faster Payments, BACS, and CHAPS. The result is faster settlement, tighter

Hey Payments Fanatic! BVNK just landed a big one. The company will power stablecoin payments for Visa Direct, Visa’s $1.7T money movement network. BVNK processes more than $30B in stablecoin volume annually. Now that infrastructure plugs directly into Visa Direct’s rails. For businesses, this means faster payouts.