Stablecoins, AI advisors, payments, and the technology rewriting finance.
58 articles
The payments company is handing outside lenders a view of real clearing flows, after an early tie-up backed billions in card volume with no defaults.
The Singapore to New York transfer is an early proof point for tokenized deposits, the incumbents' answer to stablecoins for instant, around-the-clock settlement.
Federal banking oversight is opening a door that fintechs have circled for years, a charter of their own with the capital requirements that come with it.
Kraken is listing a dollar stablecoin from SoFi's bank and letting institutional clients settle around the clock over the lender's network, one more step in erasing the line between deposits and digital assets.
The renamed TabaBank, N.A. would give the money movement company direct ownership of the banking charter behind its payments, a structure the firm says will let it clear transactions as its own regulated entity.
The stablecoin market is about to be contested by the institutions that hold the world's deposits, with 21 banks committing to a dollar token built for regulatory approval from day one. The project's timeline and its planned compliance with both US and EU rules signal how the financial establishment intends to compete with crypto-native issuers.
The financing splits into $87 million of equity and a $113 million credit line meant to fund a lending push, extending the startup's stablecoin-based model beyond cross-border payments toward savings and credit for customers in the US and Mexico.
Organizers expect to incorporate the venture in the second half of 2026 and reach customers the following year, and they are designing the token to satisfy both the US GENIUS Act and Europe's MiCA regime so it can clear payments across two continents.
India's feature-phone owners, a group of more than 200 million people, can now make UPI payments without a smartphone or data plan, after PhonePe switched on an SMS-based service. The launch targets the last big pool of users left outside the country's digital payments boom.
Dunamu, operator of South Korea's largest crypto exchange Upbit, signed a strategic partnership with Visa on August 28 to explore OUSD-based stablecoin payments, cross-border remittances, and agentic commerce, following a similar Shinhan Financial Group deal three days earlier.
More than a dozen major banks including Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and Santander are building a joint dollar stablecoin on public chains, the Wall Street Journal reported, a reversal after years of lobbying against the market.
Visa processed its first live international payment transaction in Syria on August 27 in collaboration with Fransabank Lebanon and Paymira, marking a milestone in Syria's phased reintegration into the global digital payment ecosystem.
Visa on August 25 joined Singapore's BLOOM initiative and selected Nium as its first partner to test weekend and holiday settlement with regulated US-dollar and euro stablecoins, addressing the gap when traditional banking rails are offline.
Stripe announced on August 19 that it is acquiring OpenRouter, the AI model marketplace that had raised at a $1.3 billion valuation in May, in a deal the New York Times pegged at $7.5 billion with $1.5 billion allocated to founders.
Bitcoin surged past $80,000 for the first time since November 2024 and Ethereum cleared $2,500 on August 23, 2026, lifting total crypto market cap above $3.4 trillion. The rally exposed a sharp divide: Strategy sold $2.01 billion in stock but held its BTC, while BitMine Immersion bought 32,447 ETH during the breakout.
Stripe confirmed on August 19 that it is acquiring OpenRouter, the AI model gateway that processes more than 10 trillion tokens per day for 10 million developers and companies. The reported $7.5 billion price — most of it in stock — is Stripe's largest acquisition ever and the clearest signal yet that AI payments will be a tollbooth business.
Stripe confirmed on August 19 that it has agreed to acquire OpenRouter, the AI model gateway that routes traffic across 400+ models from 80+ providers, for approximately $7.5 billion. The deal, the largest AI infrastructure M&A of 2026, closes the loop between payments and AI compute routing.
U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs drew $1.92 billion and Ethereum products $697.2 million in the week through August 21, a combined $2.6 billion inflow as BTC neared $80,000 and ETH topped $2,500. CryptoSlate called it the strongest weekly inflow of 2026; the ETF momentum drove a 25% weekly BTC advance.
World Liberty Financial on August 18 received conditional approval from the OCC to establish a national trust bank, according to coverage by Stablecoin News. The conditional approval lands the same week FASB proposed new accounting rules that would let companies classify compliant stablecoins like PYUSD as cash equivalents.
Visa is circulating a request-for-proposal to replace BVNK as its stablecoin settlement partner after Mastercard's earlier acquisition, according to documents seen by CoinDesk. The RFP targets a partner licensed in the U.S., Canada, the UK, and Singapore, with the capacity to swap and support multiple stablecoins including the new Open USD consortium token. Korea Payment Networks separately completed a USDC payment proof-of-concept on August 18.
The New York Times reports the deal values OpenRouter at $7.5B, with $1.5B allocated to founders — less than three months after OpenRouter raised $113M at $1.3B. CEO Patrick Collison says the goal is to help businesses 'route requests intelligently and spend tokens efficiently.'