Payments

Facial recognition emerged as a recurring theme in payments coverage. Payments Wrap Up reported that Revolut is trialing "Pay with Smile" for facial-recognition payments, while Sifted Fintech Newsletter similarly covered Revolut's unveiling of facial recognition payments in the UK. Payments Wrap Up also covered a partnership between Mastercard and SoFi on stablecoin settlement to cards.

Several newsletters focused on infrastructure and partnership news. Fintech Futures covered Modulr's US expansion through a partnership with Cogent Bank. Banking Dive Newsletter reported on Moov adding P2P competition and covered the cross-border payments market heating up. Connecting the Dots in FinTech covered Adyen turning authentication into a conversion tool, as well as a partnership between Mastercard and Alchemy making AI agents payment-ready.

Stablecoins and crypto also featured prominently. Bankless reported that Binance committed $100M in a stake in Circle as part of a new USDC pact. Linas's Newsletter covered Affirm's new AI underwriting model working best on borrowers with no FICO score, and separately covered Apple and Google hiring for stablecoins from opposite ends of the payments stack, under the framing "no iCoin, no Google USD." Linas's Newsletter additionally covered Amazon blocking Meta's Muse AI Agent to protect $76 billion in ad revenue, and covered X's Everything App positioning itself where retail investors make up their minds.

Broader industry analysis appeared as well. Fintech Weekly covered the ECB addressing a question related to tokenisation regarding what one pays with. Fintech Wrap Up covered reports on how Europeans bank, pay, and invest in 2026, a strategic roadmap for agentic AI adoption in banking, and crypto exchanges building financial super apps for the next billion users.