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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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November 13, 2025
Top Post
Mastercard and Thunes Bring Stablecoin Payouts to the Mainstream
Mastercard
"Mastercard and Thunes have teamed up to accelerate global money movement for banks, payment service providers and end-users by expanding stablecoin wallet payout capabilities. Through this strategic collaboration, announced at the Singapore Fintech Festival , Mastercard Move will facilitate near real-time payouts to stablecoin wallets via Thunes’ Direct Global Network, harnessing the speed, liquidity, and 24/7 availability of regulated stablecoins."
On the web
PayPal Relaunches in the UK: Smarter Way to Pay Online and Now In-Stores With Game-Changing PayPal+ Loyalty Programme
PayPal Newsroom
"PayPal is relaunching as a unified payment experience for customers to shop online and now in-stores. PayPal customers across the UK can access the new PayPal+ loyalty programme, with PayPal Debit and Credit Cards also available. PayPal's first ever loyalty programme is available to British customers before anyone else in the world. Consumers can sign-up to PayPal+ for free in the PayPal app and start earning points on both online and in–store purchases."
Apple, Tencent Agree to 15% Fee on Wechat Mini Game Purchases: Bloomberg
Capital Brief
"Tencent Holdings has agreed to allow Apple to handle payments and take a 15% cut of purchases made in WeChat mini games and apps, according to sources cited by Bloomberg. The context: The deal has been negotiated by the two firms for over a year and opens a new source of revenue for the iPhone maker. Apple had been demanding that Tencent close loopholes used by app makers to push users to external payment systems – circumventing Apple’s usual 30% commission."
Uber Implements New Payment System
Retail Systems
"Ride sharing service Uber has overhauled its payment system in partnership with Checkout.com.Through the agreement, Checkout.com will provide acquiring and gateway services for Uber’s services on its platform across multiple markets worldwide. Uber said it implemented the technology to combine global coverage with local expertise and support its expansion in the digital economy."
Coinbase Abandons $2 Billion Acquisition of Stablecoin Firm BVNK
Yahoo FInance
"Coinbase has ended negotiations to acquire stablecoin startup BVNK, according to a Fortune report on Tuesday. Sources told the publication that the proposed deal was valued at approximately $2 billion. Both the American crypto exchange and Mastercard had been in advanced discussions to acquire BVNK, the UK-based fintech firm that builds stablecoin infrastructure. Coinbase and BVNK then entered exclusive negotiations."
November 12, 2025
Top Post
Ant International Launches World’s First Iris Authentication Feature in Smart-glasses Payment Solution
Business Wire
"In a global first, Ant International, a leading global digital payment, digitisation, and financial technology provider, has added iris authentication features to Alipay+ GlassPay, its AR glasses-embedded payment solution, through partnerships with leading smart glasses producers."
On the web
Amazon Business Unveils Next Generation AI Solutions to Help Organizations and Small Businesses Save Time and Money
US Press Center
"At Amazon Business’ Reshape conference, Amazon announced a number of new AI-powered solutions including the Amazon Business Assistant to help organizations discover savings, automate routine tasks, and make spending easier and more efficient. These innovations, all powered by Amazon Bedrock, AWS’s fully managed service for building and scaling generative artificial intelligence (AI) applications, represent the next step in Amazon Business’ smart business buying journey."
Visa Direct Stablecoin Payouts Pilot Speeds Up Access to Funds for Creators & Gig Workers
Visa
"At Web Summit, Visa Inc. announced a breakthrough pilot allowing businesses and platforms to send payouts directly to recipients’ stablecoin wallets. For businesses using Visa Direct, payouts can be funded in fiat currency, while recipients can choose to receive their funds in USD-backed stablecoins like USDC, transforming the speed and accessibility of global payouts."
Mastercard Champions Password-Free, Number-Free Checkout Across Asia Pacific by 2030
Mastercard
"At the Singapore FinTech Festival, Mastercard announced its ambition to make online shopping across Asia Pacific password-free and number-free by 2030. While more than a third of Mastercard transactions worldwide are already tokenized, achieving that vision in the world’s largest and fastest-growing e-commerce market — projected to exceed USD 7 trillion by 2030[1] — will require collective action. Mastercard is rallying banks, merchants, digital wallets, and technology partners to enable secure, tokenized payments powered by biometric authentication. This eliminates manual card entry and static passwords, making checkout faster and safer for consumers."
Visa Launches Scan to Pay for QR Payments Across APAC
Tech in Asia
"Visa has launched its Scan to Pay QR payment solution across Asia-Pacific, allowing millions of merchants to accept payments through widely used digital wallets and payment apps. The rollout is part of a broader Visa Pay initiative that connects participating digital wallets to Visa-accepting merchants worldwide."
Bank of America to Invest $4bn in Digital Transformation
Banking Exchange
"Bank of America has pledged to accelerate its investment in AI, automation, and digital banking as part of its strategy to fuel growth across all business lines. At Bank of America's first ‘Investor Day’ in 15 years, the bank outlined its commitment to “next-generation technologies”, revealing that it will spend $4 billion in technology code initiatives as part of its $13 billion total annual expenditure."
On the wires
Ant International’s Antom Launches AI‑Powered MSME App for Finance and Business Operations
Business Wire
"Antom, a leading provider of merchant payment and digitisation services under Ant International, today announced EPOS360, an app that brings point-of-sale (POS) system, payments, banking, lending, and growth support together to help micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) move from setup to scale efficiently."
November 11, 2025
Top Post
Visa Unveils 2025 Creator Report; Introduces Creator Agent Pilot with Karat
Visa
"Visa is using the scale of its network to help creators easily and securely pay and get paid, access capital and grow their enterprises with the same tools and resources available to small businesses worldwide. Visa’s new creator-research, Monetized: Visa 2025 Creator Report is a comprehensive study of the creator economy spanning five regions. In tandem with the report, Visa introduced plans to explore a potential agentic pilot program with Karat Financial. Karat is a fintech leader in the creator space, providing credit cards and business banking tailored to creators."
On the web
How Visa is Preparing for the Agentic Commerce Era
Retail TouchPoints
"In this episode of Retail Remix, host Nicole Silberstein sits down with Rob Cameron, Global Head of Acceptance Solutions at Visa, to explore how the rise of agentic AI, is shaping the future of commerce, and with it payments. Rob shares how Visa is preparing for this shift with its Trusted Agent Protocol. This conversation dives deep into the payment infrastructure that will be required to enable this next era of ecommerce."
Anchorage Digital Selects Modern Treasury to Power Money Movement Infrastructure
Business Wire
Modern Treasury announced that Anchorage Digital — a leading global crypto platform for innovators and investors — will use Modern Treasury’s infrastructure to power its money movement and ledgering. Anchorage Digital provides institutional-grade trading, staking, governance, custody, stablecoin issuance, and settlement for digital assets. With Modern Treasury, Anchorage Digital can automate money movement via multiple financial providers through a single platform and automate payment flows across wires, ACH, and real-time rails.
Extend and PNC Bank Collaborate to Modernize Commercial Card Payments for Businesses
Business Wire
"Extend, a leading artificial intelligence-powered spend and expense management platform, and PNC Bank announced new modern payment capabilities for PNC’s commercial clients. By enrolling their existing PNC Bank commercial cards, businesses can access Extend’s mobile and web platform—unlocking a full suite of digital tools to control, manage, and optimize business spend within minutes."
Venmo Introduces 'Venmo Stash' to Reinvent Rewards
PayPal Newsroom
"Venmo announced the launch of Venmo Stash1, a rewards program designed to give customers more value that grows with every interaction. Venmo Stash is always on and flexible, evolving alongside customers as they engage across Venmo's expanding suite of products and services. Venmo Stash builds on the app's evolution from a peer-to-peer payment app into an everyday commerce platform, designed to drive greater engagement with Venmo products."
Jack Dorsey's Block Enables Bitcoin Payments for Millions of Square Sellers
Decrypt
"Block, the payments infrastructure firm led by Jack Dorsey, has enabled Bitcoin payments for 4 million merchants globally using the Square Bitcoin feature of its point-of-sale platform. The integration allows merchants to accept Bitcoin at checkout with instant settlement via Bitcoin’s Lightning Network, with no fees until 2027. Sellers can automatically convert a portion of their daily card sales into Bitcoin as well."
November 10, 2025
On the wires
Visa and Mastercard Near Settlement With Merchants, Would Lower Fees, WSJ Reports
Reuters-WSJ
"U.S. payment firms Visa and Mastercard nearing a settlement with merchants by lowering fees stores pay and giving them more power to reject certain credit cards, the Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday, citing people familiar with matter. Visa and Mastercard would trim interchange fees, typically 2% to 2.5% per transaction, by an average of about a tenth of a percentage point over several years, the Journal reported citing sources. The companies would also ease rules that currently require merchants accepting one network credit card type to accept all of them."
November 7, 2025
Top Post
The Supply Side: Walmart’s Launch of Agentic Commerce Comes With Risks
Talk Business & Politics
"Walmart recently announced a partnership with OpenAI to allow ChatGPT users to directly shop and buy products using the chatbot app with no human interaction. This is known as agentic commerce. While agentic commerce is a leap ahead in retail, it is not without risks. The customer must add their payment form to the ChatGPT app instant checkout format. From there, a unique token that is specific to the customer’s AI agent will be created for that specific customer. The AI agent will then be able to make purchases on the customer’s behalf without being prompted. While there are safeguards in place with Visa and Mastercard models, there are still concerns about who might be responsible for an unwanted order the chatbot makes for the customer."
On the web
Alacriti Unifies Account Validation and Verification in a Single Platform To Cut Payment Risk
Alacriti
"Alacriti, announced the launch of its Orbipay Bank Account Validation & Verification Service (BVV), offering businesses and financial institutions a modern, unified approach to securing bank account-based payments. Clients who accept bank accounts for payments and payouts face mounting challenges, including ongoing Nacha compliance for Web Debits and fraud risk from compromised bank accounts. Traditional alternatives, such as manual processes, challenge deposits, and ACH Prenotes, are often slow, costly, and disrupt the customer experience. Orbipay BVV addresses these issues by offering two core, real-time options..."
The Next Chapter of Transaction Banking: Integrating Stablecoins & Tokenized Deposits
Fireblocks
"By the time of Sibos 2025, banks and policymakers seemed to agree: digital money will be part of the operating models of traditional finance. The question now is how to make it happen. The urgency comes from a structural shift already under way. For the first time in regulated finance, value can meaningfully cross borders without banks. Virtual asset service providers are already moving stablecoins from Singapore to São Paulo without correspondent banks."
MoneyGram Partners with Oscilar to Build the Future of AI-Powered Risk Intelligence for Global Payments
PR Newswire
"MoneyGram, a leading global payments network for consumers, businesses and communities, today announced a strategic partnership with Oscilar, the AI Risk Decisioning™ Platform, to power its next-generation risk infrastructure. The collaboration advances MoneyGram's AI-first strategy, delivering real-time risk intelligence across its global network to drive greater efficiency, agility and performance."
November 6, 2025
Top Post
Mastercard, Ripple and Gemini Test Card Payments on XRP Ledger
Yahoo Finance
"Mastercard has joined forces with Ripple and Gemini to test a new way to settle credit card transactions using the RLUSD stablecoin on the XRP Ledger. The plan would connect Gemini’s credit card, which is issued through WebBank, to a blockchain-based system where settlement happens using RLUSD instead of the usual behind-the-scenes bank transfers. The project is expected to roll out in the coming months, once it clears regulatory reviews and participating partners are officially onboarded."
On the web
Profile Discover’s Data Manager Helps Foil Credit Card Fraudsters
IEEE Spectrum
"Credit card companies use a variety of methods to detect fraud, which is the most common type of identity theft and is on the rise, according to Experian, one of the major consumer credit information services. To help prevent unauthorized transactions, IEEE Senior Member Pankaj Gupta is developing tools using data integration, artificial intelligence , machine learning, and real-time account monitoring. Gupta is a manager of data and analytics engineering for Discover. “The innovations my fraud department has developed have helped my organization respond to threats faster and adapt more easily to future needs,” he says."
American Express and Emburse Announce Expanded Partnership and New Ways to Automate Expense Management for Emburse Enterprise Customers
American Express
"American Express and Emburse are expanding their strategic partnership with the launch of two new features — American Express Virtual Card issuance and Real-Time Transaction Data — in Emburse Enterprise Expense, an AI-powered platform that helps large organizations simplify travel, expense, invoice, and payment workflows while improving visibility and control."
Worldline Partners With Fipto to Enable Next Generation of Payments Rails With Stablecoin
Worldline
"Worldline and Fipto, a European fintech providing stablecoin payment infrastructure, announced a strategic partnership to explore how stablecoins can enhance settlement and payment services across Europe. Through collaboration and innovation, Worldline and Fipto are helping build the payment infrastructure Europe needs for the digital economy ahead."
Nuvei Expands Payout Offering with Visa Direct for Account Integration
Nuvei
"Nuvei announced it has integrated Visa Direct for Account into its global payments platform, giving merchants the ability to send funds directly to consumers’ and workers’ bank accounts in eligible countries. Nuvei is among the first global acquirers to enable Visa Direct for Account alongside Visa Direct for Card, strengthening its position as a Visa partner in enabling faster global money movement."
On the wires
Adyen Expands In Person Payments Offering With Launch of Two New Terminals
PR Newswire
"Adyen announced the release of two new terminals; the S1E4 Pro and S1F4 Pro. Designed to thrive in challenging environments across various sectors including retail, food & beverage (F&B), hospitality and beauty & wellness, the introduction of these latest terminals marks the latest step forward for Adyen's in-person payments solutions."
New Coupa Card Transforms How Organizations Seamlessly Manage Supplier Payments and Employee Expenses
PR Newswire
"Coupa, the leading AI platform for total spend management, announced the launch of Coupa Card, a new virtual card solution embedded natively within Coupa Pay that helps organizations seamlessly manage both supplier payments and employee expenses through a singular source."
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