Industry News

MARQETA, provider of an end-to-end payment and financial services platform, will support the Klarna Card as it rolls out across 15 countries in Europe. The card, which utilizes Visa Flexible Credential technology (VFC), provides the option of a single debit purchase or buy now, pay later. Marqeta, which is certified to operate in 40+ countries, was the first issuer processor to be certified for VFC.

WILDFIRE SYSTEMS provides white-labeled shopping rewards and loyalty programs to financial services and technology brands. Its platform delivers cash back, coupons and other benefits to consumers, while driving sales at more than 50,000 merchants in over 50 countries. Bold.org, provider of a debit card to students, is a new customer of Wildfire. Bold.org ties rewards to purchases made at top AI platforms, including ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Claude. Pathward Bank issues the Bold.org Visa debit card.

Yapily provides connections to over 2,000 banks in 19 countries in Europe.  Google will use Yapily to provide bank account verification  to businesses as an optional value-added service. Adyen is also a Yapily customer in Europe.

BARCLAYS and VISA have agreed to extend a multi-decade partnership. The agreement, which covers card issuing and merchant acquiring in the UK and card issuing in the US, also includes account-to-account payments, agentic commerce and value-added services.

TRUIST, which ranks eighth largest among Visa and Mastercard small business credit card issuers in the US, is the first superregional bank to launch a Visa Business Premium Infinite product. The Truist Business Premium Visa Infinite card is aimed at small businesses with above-average annual spending. It delivers 2% cash back with an additional 10% loyalty cash bonus. Lines of credit range to $100,000.

DLOCAL and ALCHEMY PAY have formed a partnership to facilitate crypto payments in Latin America, beginning in Argentina. Alchemy Pay is a payment gateway that connects crypto with fiat currencies. It supports fiat payments in 173 countries. DLocal connects companies to local fiat payment methods in emerging markets through one API, one platform and one contract. It will provide Alchemy Pay with access to instant bank transfers in Argentina.

Alacriti, which provides payment and money movement technologies to banks and credit unions in North America, has integrated Visa Direct into its Orbipay Payments Hub for card-based real-time payments. Orbipay already supports RTP Network, FedNow Service and Zelle.

WORLDPAY, the second largest merchant acquirer worldwide based on transactions processed, has integrated with the Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP) of OpenAI. Users of OpenAI’s ChatGPT chatbot will be able to shop directly from participating Worldpay merchants using Instant Checkout.

U.S. BANK, the fifth largest US issuer of Visa and Mastercard credit cards, has expanded a co-brand deposit account and credit card partnership with Edward Jones to include clients of the company’s 20,000 financial advisors. Clients will be able to manage their everyday spending and investments in one platform. The partners promote three Mastercard branded credit card products with different value propositions.

VENMO will expand the use cases for its payment service to include rent payments, mortgage repayments and neighborhood commerce via a partnership with rent and rewards company Bilt, which connects over 5 million members to a network of 45,000 merchants. Beginning in 2026, Bilt members will be able to make payments directly from within the Bilt app or from within Venmo using their Venmo balance or linked payment methods. Venmo is a unit of PayPal.

SPLITWISE, a UK-based provider of an app for sharing expenses and bills among friends and family, signed a deal with Visa-owned Tink in April 2025 to enable users to share bank account access with a few clicks within the app. Before the partnership, users had to leave the app and manually enter payment details through their online banking platforms. In October 2025, the companies expanded into Austria, France and Germany.

CPI CARD has made a minority equity investment in Australia-based Karta, a prepaid program manager and payment technology company. Karta’s SafeToBuy technology eliminates printed numbers and details from prepaid card packaging. Data and security features are embedded in an EMV chip. CPI will produce and personalize contactless prepaid cards embedded with the SafeToBuy applet.

SABRE DIRECT PAY has introduced a service designed to help travel companies more efficiently address dispute resolution across issuing and acquiring channels. Developed in partnership with Chargebacks911, users can initiate and represent disputes without navigating issuer or acquirer systems. It also removes the need for separate logins, manual data entry and technical integrations.

SOCURE and MARKAAZ have partnered to unify business and identity verification when onboarding small and midsized businesses. Markaaz’s firmographic, compliance and business health intelligence is combined with Socure’s RiskOS orchestration platform to enable customers to handle KYB (know your business) and UBO (ultimate business owner) in a single workflow. RiskOS delivers top business identity providers, phone verification, fraud fighting and more via a single API.

MASTERCARD AGENT PAY for agentic commerce will be integrated with the PayPal wallet as part of a trial program for the Mastercard Agent Pay Acceptance Framework. The parties will test compatibility among multiple merchants and agents. Mastercard cardholders will access their credentials through PayPal’s checkout system during agentic chat interactions or on agent-enabled platforms.

JUSPAY, an India-based payment service provider, has integrated Mastercard’s Click to Pay, one-click online checkout service for use by its merchant customers in Brazil. There are 129 million Mastercard cardholders in Brazil, where shopping cart abandonment rates top 80%. Click to Pay is supported by biometrics and issuer-verified credentials.

HSBC has selected ValidFi’s advanced account validation and risk detection technology to review bank accounts used to pay credit card balances. ValidFi’s Omni Platform can validate account ownership, detect fraudulent payment attempts and identify suspicious behavioral patterns across all bank accounts. HSBC will also use ValidFi for real-time validation of newly opened accounts and for ongoing monitoring to detect emerging fraud signals.  John Gordon is CEO at ValidFi, john.gordon@validifi.com, www.validifi.com. John Phelan is US head of Retail Product and Lending at HSBC. john.d.phelan@us.hsbc.com, www.us.hsbc.com

Checkout.com, the UK-based payment services provider focused on multinational enterprises, will provide acquiring and gateway services in multiple markets to ride share and on-demand delivery company Uber.

PAYABL., a Cyprus-based financial technology provider, is expanding its payabl.one platform to hospitality, services and retail sector merchants in the UK. The platform supports contactless, chip & PIN and mobile wallet payments. In-store and online payments, business accounts and virtual business cards can be connected at a single dashboard.

THREDD, a provider of card issuing processing and related support services to over 100 fintechs in 47 countries, has integrated with LoanPro, provider of a platform used by more than 600 lenders to enhance loan originations, servicing, payments and collections. Financial organization customers of Thredd will be able to design, launch and scale credit products.

Klarna, a provider of flexible payment options to 111 million active users worldwide and owner of a digital bank, supports Google’s Agent Payment Protocol, an open standard designed to secure agentic commerce.

Zilch, the UK-based consumer payment platform, has integrated with open banking provider Plaid to offer consumers a Pay by Bank option for one-off payments. The company is also leveraging Plaid’s Virtual Account capabilities, which support improved settlement tracking and built-in refund functionality. Plaid maintains connections to over 12,000 financial institutions globally, including in 18 countries in Europe.

Sabre Direct Pay has introduced a service designed to help travel companies to more efficiently address dispute resolution across issuing and acquiring channels. Developed in partnership with Chargebacks911, users caninitiate and represent disputes without navigating issuer or acquirer systems It also removes the need for separate logins, manual data entry or technical integrations.

NCR Voyix and Wex have signed a partnership for fleet card acceptance beginning in 2026.  Voyix Connect, NCR’s payment gateway, will integrate with Wex to facilitate fleet card transactions at NCR Voyix POS systems at 18,000 fuel stations in the US.

Moneygram and Plaid has expanded their pay by bank partnership to Europe. Money transfer customers of Moneygram can connect and authenticate their bank accounts through Plaid’s open banking technology. Worldwide, Moneygram links with 500,000 retail locations and over five billion digital sender and receiver touchpoints. The partners began working together in the US earlier this year.