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A leading payments industry news source for more than 17 years. Glenbrook curates the news and keeps you abreast of the important daily headlines in payments.
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June 16, 2026
Top Post
Nuvei’s $2.75b Payoneer Bet: Can the Combined Giant Out-Muscle Stripe at $91.5b?
Tech Funding News
"The combined company enters a market where scale is becoming critical. Stripe recently reached a $91.5 billion valuation and continues expanding its global payments, treasury, and embedded finance capabilities. Dutch payments company Adyen processes transactions for global enterprises, including Uber, Spotify, and Microsoft, and continues to invest in unified commerce and cross-border infrastructure. What the Nuvei-Payoneer combination brings that rivals lack is a single platform for merchant acquiring, global payouts, multi-currency accounts, treasury services, and marketplace payments."
On the web
Capital One Software Introduces Databolt Connect for Secure Data Collaboration on Databricks Marketplace
Yahoo Finance
"Capital One Software, the enterprise B2B software business of Capital One, announced Databolt Connect, a purpose-built, lightweight application that facilitates secure, multi-party data collaboration in Databricks. Available in the Databricks Marketplace, an open marketplace for data, analytics, and AI, powered by OpenSharing, Databolt Connect provides privacy-preserving linking of sensitive datasets to enable groundbreaking research and analytics."
FedNow: These Use Cases and Industries Are Poised for Instant Payment Growth
Federal Reserve
"There are many industries that could benefit from instant payments and endless use case possibilities. Here’s a quick rundown of use cases gaining traction and the industries poised for instant payment growth: Auto loans; property & casualty insurance payouts; real estate transactions; emergency payments; payroll and earned wage access; and digital wallets."
Visa Expands Click to Pay with Revolut, Bringing Frictionless Online Checkout to Millions Across Europe
Intelligent CIO Europe
"Visa has launched Click to Pay for eligible Revolut Visa cardholders marking a significant scale moment for Visa Click to Pay in Europe. Click to Pay is a global standard and capability for online checkouts that removes the need to manually enter card numbers, passwords or one-time codes. Designed to work across devices, browsers and participating merchants, it allows Revolut customers to pay seamlessly at checkout with any merchants participating in Click to Pay – both domestically and when shopping online internationally."
Paze Launches Valuable Promotion: Spend $10, Get $10 Back — Available up to 10 Times
Upgraded Points
"Paze® has rolled out a promotion for online checkout. As of June 15, 2026, eligible consumers will earn a $10 statement credit when they spend $10 or more using Paze at eligible online merchants. The offer can be redeemed up to 10 times per eligible card, allowing eligible consumers to earn up to $100 in statement credits through September 10, 2026. Qualifying statement credits will appear on a future billing statement. You don’t need to activate this offer. Just make sure the total on the final screen is at least $10, then check out with Paze."
Akamai Unveils Agentic Security Framework to Power Trusted AI-Driven Interactions and Commerce
Akamai
"As AI agents increasingly act on behalf of users, every request raises critical questions of identity, intent, and trust. To address this, Akamai announced its unified agentic framework for its Bot & Agent Control solutions, which connects identity, observability, trust, and edge security into a single, real-time decisioning layer to power scalable AI-driven interactions at the edge. Enhanced visibility allows organizations to distinguish, manage, and monetize agentic traffic."
Adyen Announces Adyen Agentic As the Universal Translator for the Next Era of Commerce
Adyen
"Adyen announced Adyen Agentic, a suite of modular APIs that enables enterprises to sell through conversational AI platforms without rebuilding their commerce systems for each new channel. Adyen Agentic introduces three layers – Agentic Feed, Agentic Cart, and Agentic Payments. Adyen Agentic is designed to be that universal translator. Merchants integrate once. Adyen translates that single integration across every agent platform, protocol, and payment method."
American Express Announces Proposed Acquisition of TheFork, a Leading European Restaurant Booking Platform
American Express
"American Express announced a proposed acquisition of TheFork, a leading online restaurant reservation and management platform in Europe, from Tripadvisor, Inc., growing its dining offering in the region. The proposed acquisition builds on American Express’ broader dining strategy and its successful acquisitions of digital dining platforms Resy and Tock."
Validata: Introducing AI Payment Vault 4.0
Validata Software
"Validata launches AI Payment Vault 4.0, the Agentic AI Operating System for processing payment exceptions, investigations and reconciliations, faster, smarter and more efficiently. Agentic AI autonomously validates and creates incoming cases, detects duplicates, collects canonical data across structured and unstructured sources, orchestrates multi-step workflows, manages reminders and correspondence, and supports investigators throughout the case lifecycle, while keeping human experts fully in control. All actions and decisions are fully traceable, securely stored, and archived to support regulatory and audit requirements."
With Stripe, AWS Enables AI Agent Payments for Content Owners and Publishers
Stripe
"Stripe announced that it will be providing the financial infrastructure for a new AWS Web Application Firewall (WAF) capability that enables content owners to monetize AI agent traffic. When an AI bot or agent requests a protected resource like an article, a data feed, or a licensed archive, AWS WAF returns a machine-readable HTTP 402 Payment Required response. The response contains prices to access the content, accepted payment methods, and license terms. The agent pays to access the content. Coming soon, content owners will be able to receive funds directly in their bank accounts via Stripe."
China Signs up 26 Financial Institutions for Digital-Yuan Cross-Border Payments
TNW | China
"The People’s Bank of China has spent the past year steadily widening the circle of lenders authorised to run e-CNY operations. The scale at home is already large. By the end of November 2025, e-CNY transactions had reached 3.48 billion in number and around 16.7 trillion yuan in value, roughly $2.37tn, according to PBOC figures. That is a substantial domestic footprint, though still a rounding error against the volumes that move through conventional cross-border rails every day."
Stripe Is Quietly Building the Infrastructure That Makes Stablecoins Unavoidable for Global Commerce
Startup Fortune
"Stripe is expanding stablecoin payments to over 160 countries, partnering with Shopify to bring USDC settlement to millions of merchants, and reportedly joining Visa and Mastercard in a joint stablecoin platform. With $9 trillion in stablecoin payment volume processed in the past year, the infrastructure race has moved well beyond pilots."
Wyoming Launches the First State-Backed Stablecoin
Value The Markets
"Wyoming has launched FRNT, the first state-backed stablecoin, introducing a regulated, fiat-backed alternative for investors. Understanding how Wyoming entered the stablecoin market is essential for investors looking at new opportunities. Wyoming has established a stablecoin known as the Frontier Stable Token, referred to as FRNT. This initiative marks a significant milestone as Wyoming becomes the first state government in the U.S. to launch a fully fiat-backed stablecoin."
Saviynt Expands Identity Security for AI Solution With Intent-Aware Runtime Authorization for AI Agents
Saviynt
"Saviynt, a provider of identity security, released enhancements to its Agent Access Gateway — a runtime authorization layer that controls what AI agents can do as they interact with applications, data, APIs, tools, infrastructure, and other agents. As enterprises move AI agents from experimentation into production, security teams face a new access problem. Agents can reason, adapt, and execute thousands of actions across business systems within seconds. Saviynt’s Agent Access Gateway addresses enforcing policy at runtime."
GoCardless Powers Open Banking Payments Within Intelligent Billing Platform
Open Banking Expo
"Bank payment company GoCardless has become the exclusive integrated payment provider for Intelligent Billing, a specialised billing and data processing platform designed for complex recurring revenue models. GoCardless will provide direct debit and Open Banking payment services directly within the Intelligent Billing platform, enabling telecoms operators and managed service providers (MSPs) to automatically initiate, manage and reconcile their payments."
June 15, 2026
Top Post
Nuvei to Acquire Payoneer for $2.75 Billion, Creating a Leading Global Platform for Local and Cross-Border Commerce
Nuvei
"Nuvei and Payoneer announced they have entered into an agreement under which Nuvei will acquire Payoneer. A key component of this infrastructure is Payoneer’s established regulatory footprint across major jurisdictions around the world. Payoneer holds multiple licenses and authorizations, including licensing for online payment services in mainland China and authorization in principle as a cross-border payment aggregator in India under the Reserve Bank of India’s regulatory framework."
On the web
ACI Worldwide and EPI to Power Instant Payments in Europe
ACI Worldwide
"ACI Worldwide has joined the European Payments Initiative (EPI) as a technical service provider and will integrate EPI’s Wero wallet solution onto ACI’s best-in-class Payments Orchestration Platform. Through this strategic collaboration, merchants and financial intermediaries across Europe will be able to offer Wero as a new payment method to consumers and businesses."
JPMorgan Chase Plans to Deploy More Powerful AI Agents This Year
CNBC
"JPMorgan Chase plans to deploy AI agents later this year that can operate autonomously for hours at a time, CNBC has learned exclusively. AI agents are evolving from tools that complete single tasks to digital workers that manage workflows across multiple steps and disparate software programs. JPMorgan says AI is already boosting business results, including a 20% increase in private banking gross sales, and could eventually allow bankers to expand client coverage by as much as 50%."
China Readies Commercial Launch of mBridge Digital-Currency Payments Network
Bloomingbit
"China is preparing a commercial launch of mBridge, a digital currency-based cross-border payments network. mBridge includes the central banks of Hong Kong, Thailand, the UAE and Saudi Arabia, and aims to cut fees to about half those of existing international payment systems. mBridge uses blockchain technology to enable direct transactions in central bank digital currencies, reducing the dollar’s intermediary role and strengthening use of the digital yuan."
Ant Group Overhauls Alipay With AI Agent Interface To Challenge WeChat’s Billion-User Dominance
Foreign Policy Journal
"Ant Group is testing a redesign of its Alipay super app that would introduce an AI agent interface at its core. The design allows users to ask the Alipay AI to book a car ride, order coffee, or arrange food delivery by typing or speaking requests. The AI assistant, pronounced “Ah Bao” in Chinese, will also be capable of performing money-management tasks. Tencent is also testing a prototype AI agent within WeChat, setting the stage for competition between two platforms that each serve more than a billion users."
PhonePe, GPay and Paytm Record Their Highest UPI Volumes in May
Entrackr
"Walmart-backed digital payments platform PhonePe retained its dominance in the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) ecosystem in May after it processed 10.73 billion transactions, according to data released by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI). UPI recorded 23.2 billion transactions during the month, up from 22.35 billion transactions in April."
Mastercard on Central Bank Rails: What the TIPS Pilot Means for the Payments Industry
LeapRate
"Two weeks ago, Mastercard quietly did something that would have been impossible eighteen months ago. Its Mastercard Move platform processed live payments settled atomically in central bank money — simultaneously completing both legs of a euro-to-Danish-krone exchange on the ECB’s TARGET Instant Payment Settlement platform. No correspondent bank in the middle. No overnight settlement risk. Final, simultaneous settlement in central bank money. It may not have generated the headlines it deserves."
On the wires
A Top-10 Hospital Now Runs 24% of All Patient Payments Through AI -- Two Months After Go-Live
PR Newswire
"Two months after deploying Grace, a top-10 U.S. healthcare facility now processes 24% of all patient payments through an AI agent — with no human collector involved — and patient satisfaction scores are outperforming live agents. Grace isn't a chatbot or an IVR. She negotiates payment plans, handles disputes, and closes discounted settlements — entirely on her own, at scale. She processes complex business rules at the company, line-of-business, or individual account level, working multiple accounts simultaneously without losing a detail."
June 12, 2026
On the web
Vendoora Opens Waiting List to Help Retailers and Service Businesses Prepare for Agentic Commerce [UK]
Business Insider
"Vendoora opened the waiting list for its agentic commerce platform, built to help businesses get found, understood, recommended, and sold through AI assistants and shopping agents. Vendoora helps close that gap by cleaning, enriching, and structuring product data so it can be understood by AI assistants, LLMs, answer engines, and shopping agents. Businesses only pay when a sale is made. The standard commission is 7.5% on net product sales up to $100,000 per month, reducing to 5% above that level. Stripe processing fees apply separately."
Square Financial Services Introduces 3.50% APY High Yield Savings for Square Sellers
Block
"Square Financial Services, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Block, Inc. announced the launch of Square High Yield Savings, a new deposit tier that pays 3.50% APY to Square sellers who maintain a daily balance of $10,000 or more in their Square Savings account. The rate is more than eight times the national average savings account rate."
Agentic Commerce and the ‘Legacy’ Payments Providers - The CEOs of Visa, Mastercard and Amex on Why There’s Life in the Old Dogs Yet
Diginomica
"With all things agentic top of the ‘to do’ list for both buyers and sellers, it comes as no surprise that agentic commerce is a top priority for traditional payments providers, such as the credit card companies. Recently three of the main players here - Visa, Mastercard, and American Express - outlined their thinking on this front to the Bernstein 42nd Annual Strategic Decisions conference."
Stripe Helps UK Businesses Sell Globally and Build for the AI Economy
Stripe
"Stripe shared new tools to help UK businesses sell globally from expanded multi-currency treasury capabilities to new fraud defences, and the ability for UK businesses to sell across multiple AI agents through a single integration. Stripe has expanded Stripe Treasury to let UK businesses hold, convert, and move money across GBP, EUR, and USD from a single account, and pay out to suppliers in over 100 countries with just an email address. Businesses on Stripe can now automatically localise pricing for international customers with Adaptive Pricing."
Europe’s Most Valuable Fintech Faces Banking-Supervision Reality
EU Today
"The issue is not whether Revolut is a successful fintech. It is one of Europe’s most prominent technology businesses. The London-based company has secured a full UK banking licence after a prolonged regulatory process, and has built a business that extends beyond foreign exchange and card payments into savings, investments, crypto, lending, subscriptions and other financial products. The question is whether the internal controls of a fast-moving digital bank can keep pace with the scale and complexity of the products it wants to sell."
Cash App Launches $40 Mobile Virtual Operator (MVNO) to Deepen Fintech Ecosystem
Tech Buzz
"Cash App, owned by Block, is jumping into the mobile carrier business with a $40-per-month unlimited 5G plan. The move mirrors Klarna's 2025 playbook almost perfectly. It's rolling out to select users now, with broader availability coming in the next few months as the fintech giant tries to become the everything app for its user base. Cash App just became the latest fintech company to bet that your phone bill belongs in your banking app."
Education: A 65-Year-Old Programming Language Called Cobol Still Quietly Processes over $3 Trillion in Banking Transactions Every Single Day
Make Tech Easier
"The next time you use an ATM, transfer money between accounts, or swipe a credit card at a checkout, there is a strong chance that somewhere behind the scenes — invisible, silent, and almost certainly running on a mainframe older than most of the building it sits in — a programming language called COBOL is doing the actual work. Roughly 220 billion lines of COBOL code remain in active use across financial institutions worldwide."