ClearBank and Pay.com Are Building a More Connected Payments Stack
Hey Payments Fanatic!
What if merchants didn’t need to piece together payments, banking and payouts from different providers?
That’s what Pay.com is trying to build with ClearBank Europe.
Through ClearBank’s Agency Banking infrastructure, Pay.com can offer merchants named multi-currency accounts, virtual IBANs and real-time SEPA Instant pay-ins and pay-outs - all within the same platform.
The interesting part is what happens behind the scenes. By connecting acquiring, orchestration, treasury and banking infrastructure, Pay.com gets a single view of where money moves, making reconciliation and operations much simpler as its merchant base grows.
And that matters as merchants become increasingly global and expect payments to work 24/7, not around banking batch windows.
The same challenge shows up in gaming. dLocal’s latest report, How Gamers Pay and Play in Emerging Markets, looks at how local payment methods, from Pix and mobile money to wallets and vouchers, can determine whether growing demand actually turns into revenue.
Here’s what else is happening in payments today👇
See you tomorrow!
Cheers,
INSIGHTS
💡 dLocal: How Gamers Pay and Play in Emerging Markets. The latest dLocal whitepaper looks at how localized payments are becoming critical to gaming expansion across Africa, Asia, and Latin America. As mobile gaming, internet access, and digital adoption accelerate, gamers increasingly need payment methods that match how they already pay locally, from mobile money and digital wallets to local banks and vouchers. Brazil stands out with 155M people and 16M companies connected to Pix, while 89% of Brazilian adults had used Pix for payments by May 2024. Across emerging markets, the message is clear: access to gaming is growing, but payment localization can determine whether that demand actually converts into revenue. Read the full article here
NEWS
🇦🇲 Viva, Amio Bank and Mastercard launch a digital card offer that can cover customers’ mobile tariff payments through everyday spending. Subscribers using the Amio-Viva Mastercard Digital card can have their tariff covered if they make more than AMD 50,000 in cashless transactions over the previous 30 days.
🇦🇪 Noah Co-Founder & CEO Shah Ramezani joined Johny Fernandez on FINTECH. TV to discuss how the Gulf built its stablecoin infrastructure differently from the US, with the UAE developing its framework around payments. He highlighted clear regulatory ownership, AE Coin’s use for government fees and projections of ~$500B in GCC assets moving on-chain by 2030.
🇳🇱 Bunq becomes the first bank to complete Wero rollout across four European markets. The Dutch neobank has fully deployed the instant payment solution, positioning itself ahead of larger banks in the Wero ecosystem.
🇪🇺 ClearBank Europe partners with Pay.com, providing embedded banking infrastructure for the payments platform. The integration lets Pay.com merchants hold funds, make SEPA transfers, and pay out at speed without leaving the platform.
🇧🇪 Monizze and IDEMIA Secure Transactions launch Monizze Pay, Belgium's first mobile payment solution for employee benefit vouchers. The NFC wallet feature lets users pay in-store via smartphone for meal, eco, and gift vouchers on iOS and Android.
🇨🇴 Visa migrates 6 million Nequi cards to Pismo, marking a major cloud-native processing milestone in Colombia. Over 5 million users can now access virtual card technology, with roughly 900,000 physical cards also running on Pismo's cloud infrastructure. Visa said the migration supports its broader push to serve SMEs through neobank partners.
🌍 Visa and Reap expand stablecoin credit cards to over 100 markets worldwide. The partnership uses Reap's existing Visa card issuance infrastructure to bring stablecoin-linked spending into EMEA and Africa. Reap has already processed $20 billion in stablecoin settlement across 175 million merchant locations.
🇦🇪 Al-Futtaim partners with Juspay to unify payments across 50 brands and 12 markets. Juspay will deploy payment orchestration with fraud management, network tokenisation and consolidated analytics starting September 2026. The rollout includes Juspay's Breeze commerce stack for digital-first checkout.
🌍 Thredd partners with Velocity to expand its global payments platform with stablecoin-powered money movement. The collaboration adds stablecoin settlement capabilities to Thredd's card issuance and processing infrastructure. Read more
🇨🇦 Shopify partners with Meta to bring Shop Pay to Muse, allowing the AI agent to discover products from Shopify merchants and complete purchases on users’ behalf. The integration brings Shop Pay’s checkout infrastructure directly into Muse, turning AI-assisted shopping into an actual checkout experience.
🇺🇸 Finzly earns certification for Request for Payment on the RTP Network, enabling financial institutions to send and receive RfP messages. The certification positions Finzly's clients to offer real-time bill payment and collections through the RTP network.
🇬🇧 Airtel Money targets an $8 billion to $9 billion London IPO, according to a Financial Times report. The African mobile money unit is exploring a listing that would rank among the largest London flotations in recent years. Keep reading
🇬🇧 Form3 launches AI agentic payments infrastructure, designed to let autonomous agents initiate and manage payment flows. The platform targets financial institutions looking to embed agentic capabilities into real-time payment processing. Keep reading
🇮🇳 BHIM launches myUPI, an AI assistant for transaction tracking, complaints and fraud support. The tool aims to simplify UPI issue resolution for users across India.
🇦🇪 Foloosi secures UAE Central Bank approval for a payments licence, clearing a key regulatory hurdle. The approval allows Foloosi to operate as a licensed payment service provider in the UAE.
🌏 AI-powered stablecoin platform Infini raises $6M in seed funding and launches its mobile app. The round will support expansion of Infini's stablecoin payment and savings products.
🌎 Open payments network Atum raises $13.5M in seed funding from Variant, PayPal Ventures and other investors as it emerges from stealth. The startup is building a coordination layer that connects payment companies, developers and enterprises across stablecoins, blockchains and traditional payment rails.
🇺🇸 James Wester joins ModoPayments as Chief Payments Officer, bringing payments industry expertise to the Dallas-based platform. Wester steps into the newly created CPO role to help shape ModoPayments' strategic direction.
GOLDEN NUGGET
🚨 Your gateway never sees the card number when someone pays with Apple Pay.
Here’s what it actually receives, and how it unlocks it:
When a customer confirms a payment with Face ID, Apple Pay doesn’t simply send the card’s PAN.
Instead, the Secure Element releases a PKPaymentToken.
Think of it as an encrypted envelope that only the payment processor with the right certificate can open.
Inside that token:
→ An ephemeral public key
→ An encrypted payload
→ Apple’s signature
Then the process begins:
→ First, Apple’s signature is verified.
→ The merchant’s private key and the device’s ephemeral key are used to create a shared secret.
→ That secret is turned into an AES-256-GCM encryption key.
→ The payment token is decrypted.
And out comes:
The DPAN.
The expiry.
The ECI.
And a one-time cryptogram (TAVV) created for that payment.
The DPAN + cryptogram then travel through the card network.
Behind the scenes, the token vault knows which real card that DPAN represents.
And the issuer can approve or decline the transaction.
The clever part?
Even if someone managed to steal the payment token, the DPAN is tokenized and the cryptogram is single-use.
So what looks like a simple Face ID + tap is actually an encrypted payment flow happening almost invisibly in the background.
Fantastic explainer from Muhammad Kashif’s Payments · Under the Hood series here
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