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October 2, 2026
On the web
Visa Data Shows Stablecoins Gaining Traction in Business Payments
Visa
"Visa shared new data showing the growing adoption of stablecoins across business payments and commercial card programs. The findings come as businesses, financial institutions and payment providers increasingly explore stablecoins for settlement, treasury management, payouts and cross-border commerce. New Visa data shows: Approximately 17% of stablecoin-linked card volume in FY26 year-to-date occurred across business and commercial card programs."
Stripe Agrees to Acquire Parafin to Expand Revenue Opportunities for Platforms and Help Small Businesses Grow
Stripe
"Stripe announced that it has agreed to acquire Parafin, a leading embedded financial products platform. Parafin supports some of the largest and most complex platforms in the world, including DoorDash, Gusto, Jobber, and Mindbody, by providing credit offerings for their small business customers. With Parafin, Stripe will strengthen its support for ambitious platforms while bringing more credit to the small businesses driving economic growth."
Polygon Passes $3 Trillion in Stablecoin Transfer Volume
Polygon Labs
"Polygon Chain has now carried more than $3 trillion in stablecoin transfers. Revolut, Paxos, Polymarket, Cash App, Deel and Tazapay are among the companies that have used the network to move payments. This year, the list of ways people can use money on Polygon has grown alongside the volume. The $3 trillion total counts stablecoin value transferred since September 2020."
Finastra Launches Supply Chain Finance to Help Banks Accelerate Working Capital Growth
Finastra
"Finastra announced Finastra Supply Chain Finance (SCF), a solution designed to help banks scale working capital programs faster and unlock growth. Integrated with Finastra’s Trade Innovation and Loan IQ platforms through the Nexus API suite, SCF enables banks to deliver connected trade, lending and supply chain finance services while accelerating time to market."
ECB’s Digital Euro Development Targets Visa and Mastercard’s 47% Market Share
The Cryptonomist
"Visa and Mastercard already process nearly half of every euro spent on cards across the eurozone, a dominance that has pushed European officials to build an alternative: a new European Central Bank digital currency known as the digital euro. A 12-month pilot of the digital euro is set to start in the second half of 2027, with 36 finance firms including Deutsche Bank, Revolut, Adyen and UniCredit taking part. Businesses across the euro area will be required to accept the digital euro, both in-store and online, by 2029."
October 1, 2026
Top Post
Fiserv Digital Asset Platform Goes Live with Financial Institution Clients, Advancing Stablecoin-Powered Banking and Payments
Fiserv
"Fiserv, Inc. announced that its digital asset platform is live marking a significant milestone in the commercialization of stablecoin-enabled banking and payments. The platform’s first live use case is Roughrider Coin, Bank of North Dakota’s dollar-backed stablecoin designed to enable more efficient money movement across the state’s interbank network. VersaBank serves as issuer for Roughrider Coin, Fireblocks is providing secure digital asset infrastructure and tokenization services, with transactions processed on the Solana blockchain."
On the web
PayNearMe Launches AI Servicing and Collections Agent to Help Support Teams Scale While Lowering the Cost to Serve
PayNearMe
"PayNearMe, launched its AI Servicing and Collections Agent, a new agent built directly into the PayXM™ platform to expand inbound self-service and outbound engagement. The Agent calls and texts customers, answers inbound calls, and helps customers make or schedule payments, resolve payment issues, and address other account needs, connecting them to support staff only when needed. It combines agentic AI with PayXM’s data, rules and workflows to interpret customer intent, determine the appropriate next step and take action."
Nacha’s Payments Innovation Alliance Unveils New and Updated Resources for Cybersecurity Awareness Month
Nacha
"Nacha’s Payments Innovation Alliance is taking an active role in 2026’s Cybersecurity Awareness Month this October, unveiling new and updated resources from its Cybersecurity & Payments AI Project Team. The new resource is a “Hacker Hunt ” game designed to familiarize employees with common scam communications and generate discussion about the best practices for distinguishing scam from safe communications."
DoorDash Launches AI Agent for Text-Based Food Ordering and Agentic Commerce
Konsulteer
"DoorDash is expanding its use of artificial intelligence from an in-app assistant into a transactional agent that can handle food orders through messaging. The company announced that customers in the U.S. can join a waitlist for a new text-based ordering experience. Instead of opening the DoorDash application and navigating menus, users can send a message describing what they want. The system can interpret requests, search DoorDash's marketplace, build a cart and complete checkout within the messaging experience."
Binance Pay Lets Overseas Visitors Spend Crypto at PayPay Merchants in Japan
Blockonomi
"Binance Pay users visiting Japan can now spend more than 100 cryptocurrencies at most PayPay-supported merchants. The payments run through HIVEX, a framework that links overseas QR payment apps to PayPay merchants. Tether’s USDt stablecoin acts as the backend settlement layer, and merchants receive Japanese yen. Binance says it is the first crypto payment service to reach PayPay merchants through HIVEX."
Brazil Central Bank Bars Crypto Settlement in Cross-Border Payments
Tokenpost
"Brazil’s central bank will ban stablecoins and other cryptocurrencies from settling cross-border payments starting Oct. 1, cutting off a crypto-based back end used by electronic foreign-exchange providers and payment companies. The restriction applies to fintech companies and payment firms that process overseas remittances through electronic foreign-exchange services."
Paying by Card? Online or In-Person, Here’s What’s Happening with Card Surcharges from October 1 [Australia]
Commonwealth Bank of Australia
"RBA changes mean that card surcharges on eftpos, Mastercard, and Visa end from 1 October. American Express, UnionPay and PayPal have also decided to remove surcharging from 1 October, although these firms are not currently subject to formal regulation by the RBA. Other charges, including weekend surcharges and some taxi payment fees, may still apply. Lower interchange caps will also apply to Australian-issued cards, which could also affect how credit card rewards are funded."
Shopify's Merchant Solutions Growth Accelerates: More Upside Ahead?
Yahoo Finance
"The competitive intensity in the payments domain remains high for Shopify, with Block and PayPal standing out as key challengers. PayPal is challenging Shopify's merchant-solutions business by expanding beyond branded checkout into a broader payment-processing and value-added-services platform. Through Braintree, PayPal is targeting marketplaces, platforms and large e-commerce enterprises with payment processing, payouts, Risk as a Service, payment optimization and embedded-finance solutions."
On the wires
Sardine Launches Dedicated AI Research Lab and $375,000 in Research Fellowships to Advance Fraud and Financial Crime Prevention
Business Wire
"Sardine launched Sardine AI Labs, an applied research group advancing frontier intelligence to fight financial crime. The team will study how AI can learn the language of financial behavior, anticipate new attacks and help risk teams make better decisions. Alongside the launch, Sardine is opening applications for up to 5 research fellowships, awarded to independent researchers working to advance the lab's early results."
September 30, 2026
On the web
Sibos Wrap-up Day 2: How Agentic AI Is Reshaping Custody [Video]
Global Custodian
"Global Custodian is joined by representatives from Chainlink, JP Morgan and GLEIF to discuss how agentic AI is already transforming custody and asset servicing, from automating queries and document processing to resolving exceptions and enabling AI agents to interact with financial assets."
Open USD Stablecoin Goes Live as Stripe, Visa and Mastercard Open It to Businesses
Unchained
"Open USD (OUSD), the dollar stablecoin backed by Coinbase, Mastercard, Shopify, Stripe and Visa, went live on Wednesday. Businesses can start building with OUSD through Mastercard, Stripe and the Visa Stablecoin Platform now, with Coinbase access beginning Oct. 1. The token runs natively on Ethereum, Solana, Base and Tempo, and will first be available to trade on Coinbase, Kraken and Uniswap. OUSD is issued by Bridge, the stablecoin infrastructure firm Stripe owns."
Mastercard Advances Agentic Commerce With New Trust and Intelligence Services
Yahoo Finance
"Mastercard announced an expansion of Agent Pay, its agentic payments program, with new trust and intelligence services that provide greater context for AI-initiated transactions. By bringing together identity, intent, behavioral and fraud insights, the services give financial institutions and merchants a clearer, shared understanding of AI-driven activity – enabling smarter authorization decisions, less friction and more seamless experiences for consumers. These services form the intelligence layer of Mastercard's Agent Pay Trust Framework."
Apple Pay Launches in India With Axis Bank, but RuPay Cards Remain Excluded
Techeconomy
"Apple has launched Apple Pay in India through a partnership with Axis Bank, giving iPhone and Apple device users access to the company’s contactless payment service for the first time in the country. The service initially supports Axis Bank-issued Visa and Mastercard credit cards. Cards on India’s homegrown RuPay network are not eligible at launch."
OpenAI Debuts Dots AI Agents in Challenge to Meta’s Popular Muse Agent [Video]
Yahoo Finance
"OpenAI CEO Sam Altman launched the company's newest product: Dots. A high-powered AI agent, Dots is designed to perform tasks for you over long periods via connections to 4,000 apps via ChatGPT. In another example, OpenAI says an early tester's Dot saw that they didn't submit an invoice for a publication. The Dot then set up the invoice and submitted it after getting the tester's approval. Unlike Meta, which is marketing Muse toward the consumer market, OpenAI is angling for the enterprise space."
Ant International’s Antom Supports Google Gemini in Expanding Access to AI Service in Asia
Business Wire
"Google Gemini and Antom, a leading merchant payment and digitisation services provider under Ant International, announced a strategic partnership to make AI tools for learning, creativity and productivity more accessible to users in Asia. The collaboration will leverage A+Rewards, Antom’s digital marketing solution powered by privacy-preserving computing and AI technologies, and its extensive partner network of digital payment apps, e-commerce platforms and lifestyle service providers, to help expand access to Google AI Plus."
SWIFT Links Bizum, PayID and Pix Aliases for Cross-Border Transactions
Crowdfund Insider
"Swift and a coalition of banks, payment schemes, and technology firms have begun work on linking popular domestic instant-payment systems so that consumers can send money abroad using the same simple identifiers they already use at home. The initiative, announced on 28 September 2026, focuses on three widely adopted national platforms: Spain’s Bizum, Australia’s PayID (operated by Australian Payments Plus), and Brazil’s Pix."
FedNow To Test International Real-Time Payments
Digital Transactions
"FedNow, the instant-payment service operated by the Federal Reserve, prepares to test cross-border transactions. The test will involve a group of organizations that were not named. They will test “FedNow enhanced message formats that facilitates sending and receiving the U.S. domestic leg of cross-border payments,” a Fed statement says. Possible use cases could be international payroll, corporate payments, and disbursements for property transfers, insurance claims, and global treasury management."
September 29, 2026
Top Post
Bank of America, Bradesco Test Instant Cross-Border Payments
Bank of America
"Bank of America announced that Bradesco, one of Brazil’s largest private-sector banks, has completed the first pilot transaction using the bank’s Cross-Border Real-Time Payments solution. The payment was initiated through Bradesco’s existing Swift connectivity and delivered in Hong Kong dollars to a local beneficiary through Hong Kong’s Faster Payment System (FPS)."
On the web
Introducing Toast Fuel, Powering Convenience Stores From the Counter to the Pump
Business WIre
"Toast announced Toast Fuel, a new set of capabilities for fuel operators and convenience stores. With Toast Fuel, operators can run fuel payments, both in-store and at the pump, alongside retail and foodservice on a single, connected platform. Many convenience store operators run their in-store retail and fuel businesses on two disconnected systems, and have had little access to the cloud-based tools that have helped reshape restaurants and retailers over the past decade."
Bank of India Launches Programmable Digital Rupee with Auto-Payment Feature
BusinessLine
"Bank of India has gone live with user-level programmable digital rupee functionality and auto-issuance capability on its Central Bank Digital Currency platform, developed by Montran India, the companies announced today. The new feature allows account holders to schedule automatic transfers of digital rupees (e₹) to a beneficiary’s CBDC wallet at a fixed amount and frequency, while restricting how the recipient can spend the funds."
BofA Clients Accelerate RTP® Use, Led by Liquidity Management
Bank of America
"Bank of America’s corporate clients are proving that higher-value real-time payments are in demand by increasingly using the RTP® network to move money, support liquidity needs and execute business payments with greater speed, transparency and control. The strongest growth is occurring at the higher end of the transaction range, where clients are using RTP to manage liquidity and move funds precisely when and where they are needed."
Swift Tests Pay-by-Alias Cross-Border Payments with Global Banks
TNGlobal
"Swift and a group of banks, payment schemes and technology providers are working on a pay-by-alias model intended to make international transfers feel more like domestic instant payments. The initiative would let consumers send money abroad using identifiers such as a mobile phone number, email address or virtual payment address instead of entering a recipient’s bank-account details."
Volante Technologies and Circle Advance Stablecoin Payment and Settlement Capabilities for Financial Institutions
Business Wire
"Volante Technologies announced a strategic collaboration with Circle Internet Group, Inc., the issuer of USDC, to help financial institutions integrate stablecoin payment and settlement capabilities into their existing payment operations. Volante is bringing USDC workflows into its AI-powered Payments Platform, enabling financial institutions to evaluate how stablecoin activity can operate alongside existing payment rails, operational controls, and on- and off-ramp requirements."
Nvidia Launches New Platform for Reining in Rogue AI Agents
TechCrunch
"Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang introduced a toolkit of software and hardware products that add independent security layers around AI agents to ensure they stay within their test environments even if they attempt to break out. The release follows a string of hacking incidents involving AI models from Anthropic, Google, OpenAI, and Meta that bypassed security controls to escape their testing environments and access real-world systems."
Oracle Integration with Swift’s Ledger Helps Banks Connect Tokenized Deposit Infrastructures Across Institutions
Oracle
"Oracle is integrating with Swift’s blockchain ledger to help financial institutions participate in payment flows orchestrated through it and help financial institutions use their own tokenized deposit infrastructures across institutions. Through the integration, financial institutions can extend existing payment services with interoperable tokenized deposits and manage traditional and digital asset payment flows through a unified operating model, helping deliver more seamless, always-on payment experiences to clients."
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