Industry News

WORLDLINE, the sixth largest merchant acquirer in Europe, has signed a framework agreement with Klarna, Europe’s top provider of BNPL services. The partners will offer Klarna flexible payment options to Worldline’s in-store and online merchants. Klarna will be integrated into Worldline’s technology stack. Rollout will begin later this year
in the travel and digital services sectors.

BOKU, operator of a global mobile payment network that lets users pay for digital goods and services from their mobile phone bill or deducted from a prepaid balance, has received a Payment Institution license from the Central Bank of Brazil. The license enables Boku to operate as a payment initiator and e-money issuer in Brazil’s Open Finance framework, including participation in Pix Automatico. Pix connects 76% of adults in Brazil to 15 million businesses.

STRIPE launched its Link consumer wallet and expedited checkout service in 2021. There are 250 million users worldwide. Stripe has enabled Link to initiate payments from AI agents on behalf of users. A one-time-use card is issued per task. Payment credentials are not exposed to an agent. Users approve all payments.

NUVEI payment processing technology will be embedded into Syspro’s ERP platform, which is purpose-built for manufacturers and distributors.  Syspro’s PayThem payment gateway will connect sales orders and accounts receivables to Nuvei’s payment infrastructure.

MICAMP SOLUTIONS connects more than 600 independent service organizations in the US that serve more than 60,000 merchants. The company has become an authorized ISO for the Vibe Retail POS system for small and midsized businesses. Vibe Retail, which was designed exclusively for independent retailers, handles inventory management and customer engagement as well as payment processing.

MASTERCARD has signed a memorandum of understanding with the government of Romania for development of a national identity wallet. The product will be interoperable across the European Union and compatible with the European Digital Identity Wallet framework. The Romanian state will maintain ownership of the wallet and handle its administration. Mastercard has previous similar experience with governments and governmental entities in France, Slovakia, Ukraine, Panama and other countries.

GOOGLE PAY in the US will offer Klarna’s BNPL and installment payment options in Universal Commerce Protocol powered checkout in Google Search, including AI Mode and the Gemini app. Consumers shopping in these will see a flexible payment option embedded directly into Google Pay at checkout.

VISA has rolled out its Agentic Ready program to customers in Asia-Pacific and Latin America. The program, which is already available in Europe, supports card issuers’ tests of agent-initiated payments in controlled, real-world environments using live cards and active merchants. Issuers can validate core payment flows, including enrollment, tokenization, authentication and transaction authorization. They can also identify operational and readiness gaps before agent-led transactions scale globally.

PPRO, a payment infrastructure provider, now offers merchants and PSPs access to NuPay, which is used by 115 million Brazilians who are customers of digital bank Nubank. NuPay is a single click or biometric scan payment method within the NuBank app that eliminates the need to share payment card details with merchants. It also supports subscription models without the friction caused by 3DS authentication or expired payment card details. Ppro customers include Stripe, PayPal and Citi.

CASHZONE, a global network of independently owned and operated ATMs connected and promoted by NCR Atleos, has expanded into Colombia. Bancoomeva is the sponsoring and settlement bank. Cashzone operates in 14 countries.

KLARNA offers an AI-powered shopping search app within OpenAI’s ChatGPT.  Users describe what they are looking for and instantly receive results with up-to-date prices, availability and offers from multiple merchants. The Klarna Shopping Search app takes users to the merchant’s site to complete the purchase. The app is powered by Klarna’s product search MCP server, which connects ChatGPT to Klarna’s live commerce data of more than 100 million products in 13 markets. Klarna is a digital bank and BNPL payment provider with over 119 million users worldwide.

TEXAS CAPITAL BANK’S commercial card ranking in Nilson Report issue #1307 should have been #56 (not #60), with total purchase volume of $899.6 million, up 39.8%. Its purchasing/fleet card ranking should have been #33 with purchase volume of $621.4 million, up 61.6%, and its corporate card volume should have been $278.2 million, up 7.5%. Texas Capital issues both Visa and Mastercard cards.

PAYONEER, which provides a financial platform that marketplaces, SMBs and entrepreneurs use to pay and get paid across national borders as well as to manage funds in multiple currencies, has renewed an agreement with Upwork, which supports freelance businesses in Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America and the Middle East. The new agreement includes Upwork’s participation in tests of stablecoin-based payouts in Latin America.

DATACAP SYSTEMS, provider of POS hardware and processor-agnostic payment services, has launched Virtual Gift, a platform that enables merchants to create branded, consumer-facing digital prepaid product storefronts. The hosted purchase pages can be shared
via link, QR code or embedded directly into a merchant’s website. Partners can deploy a complete prepaid product selling experience without building or hosting a front-end interface. Storefronts support white-label branding, email, SMS and print delivery methods as
well as multiple payment options.

RYD, a Munich-based mobility technology company, has launched Ryd fleet, a digital-first payment operating system for fleets in collaboration with Mastercard. Drivers can pay for fleet-related expenses wherever Mastercard is accepted in Europe, including fuel, charging and washing directly through the app on their smartphone or natively via the vehicle’s infotainment system. Receipts, odometer readings and trip details can also be recorded directly within the app at the point of use.

ACI WORLDWIDE has integrated the Kinexys Liink Confirm application from Kinexys by J.P. Morgan into its enterprise fraud fighting platform for instant payments. The integration embeds account and payee verification directly into payment workflows to support faster payments at scale and across payment rails. Transactions sent over instant payment rails are irrevocable. Kinexys Liink Confirm verifies that an account exists, is open and matches the intended recipient before a transaction is initiated.

CHECKOUT.COM will provide payment processing and fraud fighting services to Australia-based payment and loyalty platform provider Hello Clever, which lets merchants offer immediate cash back and rewards in a buy-to-earn model for consumers. Hello Clever adds AI data analysis on top of payment flows. It settles transactions using New Payments Platform, PayID and PayTo, Australia’s open banking platforms.

ZILCH, best known as a provider of BNPL payment plans for consumers, has introduced the Visa Flexible Credential service on virtual Visa cards it issues in the UK. Visa Flexible Credential connects different payment options to a single card or digital credential. Thredd is the issuer processor for Zilch cards.

SPLITI-IT GO from card-linked BNPL provider Splitit, brings flexible payment options to face-to-face sales environments, including field services, in-store purchases and consultations. Splitit lets consumers use available credit on their existing credit cards. There is no new loan opened or credit check required. Merchants don’t need to make any changes to their payment technology stack.

STARLING BANK, an all-digital, fully licensed UK financial institution servicing more than 4.5 million accounts, will offer its small business customers card acceptance products and services from Adyen, including tap to pay and an in-app invoicing tool.

COMMONWEALTH BANK OF AUSTRALIA (CBA) processes more than 20 million payments a day. On an average day, the bank sends more than 40,000 proactive warning alerts to customers. CBA has deployed an agentic AI system to detect emerging scams and fraud patterns and to generate the rules needed to interdict those transactions. The AI agent system, which is built on Snowflake’s data cloud, monitors more than 80 million signals each day for cyber threats, financial crime, fraud and scams.

TYFONE has integrated Mitek Systems’ Check Fraud Defender into its nFinia digital banking platform used by community banks in the US. Customers get access to real-time check fraud detection. Mitek’s Check Fraud Defender incorporates a consortium model that encourages user institutions to proactively flag suspicious checks tied
to known fraud patterns.

MONEYGRAM, a financial technology company focused on peer-to-peer payments and other money transfers, will modernize its physical payment network in the US, European Union and the UK using POS technology from Stripe. New terminals will support tap to pay, Bluetooth-enabled devices and QR code-based payments. MoneyGram connects nearly 500,000 retail locations and serves 50 million customers worldwide.

FIS and ANTHROPIC are working on initiatives that will bring agentic AI to banking. Their first product is the Financial Crimes AI Agent, which can shorten the time needed for anti-money laundering investigations from hours to minutes. The agent automatically gathers and evaluates evidence from core banking systems and then
presents high-risk cases to investigators for review. Anthropic’s Applied AI team and forward-deployed engineers are embedded with FIS to co-design the Financial Crimes AI Agent and transfer knowledge so FIS can build and scale additional agents independently over time.

GR4VY, a cloud-native, no-code payment orchestration platform provider, has added support for Pix Automático in Brazil through an integration with dLocal. Pix is a real-time payment service used by 70 million consumers and businesses in Brazil. DLocal offers support for 700+ local payment methods via a single API.