AI

Agentic commerce and payments infrastructure emerged as a dominant theme across several newsletters. Fintech Wrap Up published a deep dive on the Personal Agent Protocol and agentic commerce, and separately covered how Lloyds Banking Group's CMO Suresh Balaji is approaching the AI race. Sifted Fintech Newsletter reported that Revolut will roll out agentic shopping as AI commerce takes off. Linas's Newsletter covered the Personal Agent Protocol as well, framing it as a fight over who controls agentic payments, and also noted Elon Musk putting Claude inside Grok Bot as the AI race shifts from models to agents. The same newsletter reported that OpenAI is building a Wallet so its AI agents can pay without asking, alongside news that Nubank walked away from a £10 billion Monzo deal after a 10% share drop. The Fintech Blueprint covered Cloudflare's move into machine payments, describing it as a $200B shot at the space priced at $0.30 at a time.

Banking institutions' AI adoption and its workforce impact was another recurring subject. American Banker Fintech covered a Pennsylvania credit union set to offer a Google Gemini-based bot to members, and separately covered how AI will impact payments. Fintech Futures reported that HSBC is reportedly planning widespread UK wealth job cuts as part of a major AI push, and that Norway's DNB will cut 400 jobs in an AI-driven restructuring. Connecting the Dots in FinTech covered the shift from digital banking to what it termed AI-native banking, describing the rise of machine-speed finance, and also covered Incognia bringing AI agent detection to financial institutions.

Crypto-adjacent AI coverage appeared in Bankless, which reported that Vitalik flagged AI risk to crypto and warned against rushed wallet moves, and separately covered Bitwise pitching NEAR to Wall Street as an AI bet. The Generalist's Fintech Issues covered Jaan Tallinn's views on AI survival. Linas's Newsletter also covered whether AmEx and Perplexity launched an AI CFO for small businesses, and reported that Stripe bought its way into lending on payments it doesn't process.

Additional AI-related coverage included Linas's Newsletter's piece on how to make Claude "limitless," and Athena in the machine's coverage of near-zero gross margin as part of the AI adoption story.