Banking

American Banker Fintech covered several banking M&A and executive stories, reporting that Long Island's Dime plans to buy a Staten Island bank, that First Citizens is open to buying more branches following its BMO deal, and that BMO's top US executive will depart in a leadership shuffle. The newsletter also reported that Flagstar, blaming rates, says its turnaround will take more time, that Bank OZK is making progress diversifying away from its heavy CRE loan exposure, and that Bessent has put a GSE exit on the 2027-2028 agenda, which boosted shares.

Fintech Futures focused on core banking technology deployments and corporate moves, noting that Kingdom Bank overhauled its core banking and payments tech with Temenos, BRAC Bank revamped trade finance operations with Finastra and Conpend, and NMB Bank went live with the Oracle Flexcube core banking system. It also reported that Central 1 named Mike Henry as its new CEO and president, that NAB plans to cut 2,500 jobs in FY27, and that Ramp applied for a US national trust bank charter — a story also covered by Banking Dive Newsletter, which separately reported that Cross River plans to acquire customer-loyalty specialist Accrue.

Payments-focused newsletters addressed crypto and tokenized deposits: Payments Wrap Up covered SoFi targeting idle crypto cash with an interest-bearing tokenized deposit product and JPMorgan bringing its JPM Coin deposit token to Ethereum for institutional clients. Fintech Radar's issue #180 covered JPMorgan shutting out AI agents, Visa getting approval in China, and Mastercard putting BVNK to work, without further detail provided in the title.

Linas's Newsletter covered Ramp's move to hold company money rather than just track it, alongside AI-related items including Claude Duet's late arrival to the AI agent race and OpenAI's position, Bank of America putting a figure on the cost of defending against AI, the cost of OpenAI's London staff, and Citi joining JPMorgan in blocking AI agents. Make Banking Better covered the subject of AI's effect on bank jobs relative to executive decisions, without elaborating further in the title.