Payments

Last week's payments coverage was dominated by developments involving Stripe and agentic commerce. Linas's Newsletter reported that PayPal rejected a Stripe offer at $60.50 and that Stripe's stock now trades at $53. The same newsletter covered Grok Bot's role in making SpaceXAI an agentic payments player, describing Stripe Link as a winner in that development, and discussed Anthropic's launch of Claude Commerce Agents, framing it as a merchant-side bet on agentic commerce intended to keep retailers off ChatGPT and Gemini. Linas's Newsletter also covered a stablecoin built by 21 banks aimed at keeping $6T in deposits, X Money losing its 6% APY in New York, and Revolut AIR launching across Europe, noting that one EU neobank has better AI numbers. Fintech Futures also touched on Stripe, reporting that the company acquired Clerky to build out an incorporation offering for start-ups. Fintech Radar's issue #173 referenced Stripe walking away from PayPal, alongside separate items on Vanguard buying Altruist and Google entering capital markets.

Connecting the Dots in FinTech covered a comparison of Stripe and Adyen's H1 2026 growth, noting Stripe's faster growth while questioning whether it is winning outright. The newsletter also reported that Mollie and GoCardless are joining forces to build a European financial home, and that Circle placed USDC on Chelsea's shirt in what was described as a Premier League first.

Stablecoins were a recurring theme across newsletters. American Banker Fintech reported that international banks are planning a stablecoin and that OpenPayd is entering the US market. Fintech Snark Tank covered the subject of banks favoring certain stablecoins over others, without elaborating further on specifics.

Fintech Futures rounded out coverage with acquisition and product news: Eftsure acquired the AI-powered data validation fintech Relish, and Maxim debuted UK credit cards for the African diaspora in partnership with Paymentology.