Western Union Is Betting on Israeli Payment Technology

Hey Payments Fanatic!

Western Union just made an interesting move in the cross-border payments space.

The company is acquiring Israeli FinTech GMT for approximately NIS 200 million, bringing a long-established local payments player into its global network.

What stood out to me wasn't the acquisition itself. It was the fact that Western Union plans to deploy GMT's technology across its global operations.

GMT has spent years building payment and money transfer solutions for consumers, businesses, and migrant workers in Israel. Now that technology could end up supporting payment flows for millions of customers worldwide.

The deal also highlights something we're seeing more often across payments: large global players are increasingly looking for specialized technology rather than building everything in-house.

And since we're talking about cross-border payments, keep scrolling for my latest Q&A with Dor Golan, CEO and Co-Founder of Grain. We discuss one of the most overlooked challenges in global payments: hidden FX leakage and how businesses can prevent it before it starts eating into revenue.

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

Cheers,

Marcel

Q&A

➡️ The Hidden FX Leaks in Cross-Border Revenue and How to Prevent Them. In this Q&A with Dor Golan, the CEO of Grain argues that FX remains one of the most overlooked sources of revenue leakage in cross-border commerce. He highlights how poor currency management can hurt conversion, pricing, and margins, and explains how embedded FX infrastructure can help businesses reduce friction, improve checkout experiences, and optimise global payments.

INSIGHTS

🇦🇿 Mastercard SME Confidence Index: Azerbaijani SMEs embrace digital transformation while seeking greater access to finance. A new Mastercard study found that 84% of Azerbaijani SMEs see digital payments as a key growth driver, while 53% believe better access to financial services and credit offers the biggest opportunity for expansion.

NEWS

🇺🇸 Airwallex and Taxbit have partnered to help marketplaces combine global payments and tax compliance in a single workflow. The integration enables seller onboarding, automated W-8/W-9 collection, multi-currency wallets, global payouts to more than 200 countries, and automated tax reporting powered by real-time payment data.

🇮🇱 GMT is acquired by Western Union for NIS 200 million. The acquisition strengthens Western Union’s presence in Israel and adds GMT’s money transfer, payment services, and nationwide distribution network to its global cross-border payments business.

🇺🇸 PayPal is reportedly winding down PayPal Ventures as part of a broader strategic review. The company is also exploring the sale of some venture portfolio holdings, despite the fund having invested more than $850 million across over 80 startups, including companies such as Plaid and Anchorage Digital.

🇬🇧 Thredd expands its partnership with ID DISTRIBUTION to power the next phase of employee benefits and expense innovation. The extended agreement runs through 2030 and includes support for a planned launch in Spain, a new corporate expense card solution, and enhanced fraud monitoring and 3D Secure capabilities.

🇺🇸 Thredd and Sutton Bank partner to power U.S. card program expansion for global brands. Together, Thredd and Sutton Bank will support companies looking to bring modern prepaid and debit card programs to market across the U.S. Continue reading

🌏 Visa and Mintoak join forces to bring merchant SaaS capabilities to acquirers across Asia Pacific. The partnership enables banks and financial institutions to move beyond transaction-led acquiring towards platform-led models, allowing acquirers to deliver a digital-first merchant experience that integrates omnichannel payment acceptance. 

🇵🇭 GCash parent Mynt moves closer to a Philippine IPO with board approval. The company said that the board of directors and shareholders authorised the filing of a registration statement with the Philippines’ Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and a listing application with the Philippine Stock Exchange (PSE) in connection with a potential IPO.

🇦🇺 OSL Group secures an Australian Financial Services Licence. The licence enables OSL to provide payment and custody services and facilitate OTC transactions to wholesale clients under ASIC oversight, as Banxa COO Sean Moynihan joins Visa, Coinbase and EY at the Australian Digital Economy Conference to discuss agentic commerce and the future of stablecoin payments.

🇦🇪 Alaan launches UAE's first AI-native business bank account, powered by ruya. The account gives UAE businesses access to seamless, Shariah-compliant digital banking capabilities embedded directly into Alaan’s spend management platform.

🇬🇧 Access PaySuite acquires Ordo's Open Banking infrastructure, turning payments into a driver of real outcomes. The acquisition gives Access PaySuite full ownership of its core payment infrastructure and, with it, the ability to combine payment initiation with real-time account data in ways that go beyond transaction processing.

🌎 Trace Finance raises a $32M Series A led by CoinFund to scale regulated banking and stablecoin infrastructure across Brazil, the U.S., and emerging markets. The funding will support Trace's expansion as it scales transaction capacity and extends its regulated infrastructure across additional high-growth corridors globally.

🇺🇸 Precoro launches Precoro Payments, a new capability that allows finance teams to pay invoices directly inside the procurement workflow. With Precoro Payments, users can initiate ACH, same-day ACH, wire, and international invoice payments directly from approved invoices, with all payment data automatically synced to ERP systems.

🇬🇧 Plasma has launched Plasma One, a stablecoin banking product that enables users to spend, send, and earn with stablecoins through a single account. The platform aims to simplify stablecoin banking by combining payments, liquidity, and blockchain rails into one integrated experience.

🇬🇧 Volt partners with SysPay to bring Pay by Bank to its hospitality, travel, and e-commerce merchants. The partnership makes Volt’s Pay by Bank solution available to SysPay’s merchant base, giving hotels, vacation rental operators, and e-commerce platforms access to open banking-powered real-time payments.

🇺🇸 Veem expands its virtual card program with stablecoin support. Businesses can now receive funds, convert and store value, fund card balances through supported stablecoins or Veem’s global fiat network, and spend worldwide using USD virtual cards accepted at Visa merchants.

GOLDEN NUGGET

𝐍𝐞𝐭𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐤 𝐭𝐨𝐤𝐞𝐧𝐢𝐳𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 — powering e-commerce today and tomorrow — 𝐛𝐲 Mastercard & Checkout.com 👇Created by Arthur Bedel 💳 ♻️

Most people think tokenization is a security feature.

It is much bigger than that.

Network tokenization replaces your 16-digit card number with a unique, merchant-bound token — protecting card data across the entire payment flow, from the consumer all the way to the issuer.

The numbers speak for themselves.

→ 50%+ of all Mastercard e-commerce transactions are now tokenized

→ 2x growth in tokenized volume in just 2 years

→ +3-6 ppt average improvement in approval rates

→ $443B in annual false declines that tokenization helps eliminate

And the proof is in the data.

In 2025, Checkout.com merchants saw:

→ +10.3 ppt higher approval rates on tokenized transactions

→ -49% reduction in fraud-related chargebacks

→ +7.2% increase in gross sales revenue

This is no longer a "nice to have." It is a direct revenue lever.

𝐖𝐡𝐲 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐦𝐚𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐬 𝐧𝐨𝐰:

Two reasons.

First, revenue recovery. Issuer-trusted credentials reduce false declines that cost merchants $443 billion every year. Network tokens carry richer data, cryptograms, and merchant-bound context — giving issuers what they need to approve more transactions on the first try.

Second, agentic commerce. AI agents cannot use raw card numbers safely. Tokenized credentials are the only way agent-driven payments stay secure, authenticated, and uninterrupted — even when cards expire or get reissued.

𝐀𝐝𝐨𝐩𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐢𝐬 𝐠𝐥𝐨𝐛𝐚𝐥, 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐢𝐭 𝐢𝐬 𝐚𝐜𝐜𝐞𝐥𝐞𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠

→ MENA: +344.9% YoY growth in tokenized transactions

→ Europe & UK: +77.5% — and 59% of all Checkout.com tokenized traffic

→ Asia Pacific: +77.1%

→ North America: +56%

The merchants that scale tokenization now unlock revenue today and future-proof their infrastructure for the agent-mediated commerce wave.

Mastercard and Checkout.com have set a clear target: a fully tokenized, fully authenticated e-commerce ecosystem by 2030.

For merchants still sitting on the sidelines — the math is no longer ambiguous.

Are you tokenized yet?

Source: Mastercard × Checkout.com

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