Fintech Rundown: A Rapid Review of Weekly News

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Equifax, Fintech Rundown, Jack Henry

It's the last full week of September, which means that the calendar is ready to flip to the final quarter of 2026. Check out what fintechs are up to in this week's look at the top fintech news. We'll continue to update this post with news throughout the week.

DeFi

Aracore and Teiza to work on institutional stablecoin settlement model between South Korea and Malaysia.

Prediction markets

Yahoo Finance and Polymarket end prediction market partnership.

Digital banking

Centreville Bank turns to Jack Henry for its core upgrade.

Avant files application with OCC to establish Avant Bank.

Aegis Trace and InterSystems partner to strengthen AI decision traceability for regulated organizations.

Mortgages

Sprive raises $10 million for mortgage prepayment tool.

Credit and analytics

Nationwide Building Society partners with Equifax UK to give customers free access to their credit score.

Agentic commerce

GoCardless announces that it has processed the UK's first agentic account-to-account…

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Plaid Taps ID.me to Help Government Agencies Verify Financial Beneficiaries and their Accounts

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, ID.me, Plaid

Plaid and ID.me are teaming up to help US government agencies verify both benefit recipients’ identities and ownership of the financial accounts receiving payments.

The partnership combines identity and account verification into a single flow, helping agencies reduce manual processes, duplicate payments, and the risk of funds being diverted.

Connecting identity with payment destination could help modernize government benefits, enabling legitimate recipients to receive funds faster while strengthening fraud prevention and auditability.

Plaid has selected digital identity network ID.me to enable US government agencies to verify both the person requesting a benefit and the associated financial account receiving it.

Plaid is leveraging ID.me's digital identity wallet to solve the identity piece and is using its own financial account verification tools to help state and federal agencies verify that the account receiving a benefit payment belongs to the recipient before funds move.

"Identity verification tells an agency who is asking to be paid,…

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Coinbase Partners with Stablecore to Help Banks Offer Digital Asset Services

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Coinbase, Daily news

Coinbase and Stablecore are teaming up to help community and regional banks and credit unions offer digital asset services, including trading, custody, and stablecoin payments.

The partnership reflects the broader rebundling of financial services, bringing capabilities that once required separate crypto platforms back inside customers’ existing banking relationships.

Coinbase is positioning itself to benefit either way; it can either own the customer relationship, or it can provide the infrastructure that allows banks to retain it.

Crypto exchange platform Coinbase is teaming up with crypto and DeFi banking infrastructure company Stablecore to help banks and credit unions offer digital asset services through their existing banking platforms.

Under the agreement, Coinbase will tap Stablecore's expertise to bring digital asset services such as trading, custody, and stablecoin payments to Stablecore's 3,000+ bank and credit union partners. The goal of the solution is to help traditional financial institutions offer regulated digital asset products without…

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Earnix Launches Agent Hub for Insurance-Specific Agents

By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Earnix

AI-powered insurance decisioning firm Earnix launched its Agent Hub this week.

Integrated within the company's AI Orchestration System, Earnix AIOS, the Agent Hub enables insurance-specific agents to directly access Earnix pricing, underwriting, and customer decision solutions to automate workflows and enhance business performance.

Headquartered in Boston, Earnix made its Finovate debut at FinovateSpring 2016.

Insurance decisioning firm Earnix unveiled its Agent Hub this week. Located within Earnix AIOS—the company's AI Orchestration System powering pricing, rating, underwriting, and customer engagement—Agent Hub will enable more intelligent workflows by bringing together more than 25 insurance-specific agents and apps.

Agent Hub builds on Earnix's multi-modal AI strategy, enabling agents to work across an insurer's existing technology environment rather than as standalone assistants. Agents can draw on context from policy administration systems, data platforms, underwriting workbenches, and customer portals, while maintaining defined permissions, traceability, and human oversight. These specialized agents can then be used…

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FinovateFall and AI’s Coming of Age Moment

By David Penn Posted on
Categories: FinovateFall 2026, Thought Leadership

Did FinovateFall 2026 reflect a "coming of age" moment for AI?

It is probably too much and too soon to say that the current discourse around AI represents a milestone in--or, much less, a reckoning with--all the challenges and opportunities that AI technology presents. But the split-screen of last week's conference was difficult to ignore: four days (including our Leaders+ pre-conference event) of sober, sophisticated discussion on what needs to be done to take our use of AI to the next level at the conference, while outside in the broader media landscape, the conversation is essentially a bet on how quickly AI will kill us all.

I don't want to dismiss the concerns of those who are calling for a "slowdown" in AI development. And I certainly don't want to suggest that those who are (and have been) working in AI for years have everything figured out. That said, we…

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Baselayer Partners with Nevermined to Bring Identity Verification to Agentic Payments

By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Baselayer

Business identity and risk intelligence firm Baselayer has partnered with agentic payments infrastructure company Nevermined.

The partnership will bring identity verification to agentic payments, enabling agents to obtain the authority they need to make transactions on behalf of users.

Baselayer was founded in 2023 and made its Finovate debut at FinovateSpring 2026 in San Diego.

A new partnership between Baselayer and Nevermined is helping give AI agents the authority they need to act on behalf of human users.

In order for AI agents to transition from conducting research and making recommendations to taking action, they need three things: access to data, permission to access the solutions and services required to complete the task, and the ability to prove to the businesses they interact with that they are legitimate actors.

Business identity and risk intelligence innovator Baselayer has teamed up with agentic payments infrastructure company Nevermined, combining agentic payments and identity…

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Torus Teams Up with SRM to Help Acquirers Recover Profits

By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, SRM Technologies, Torus

Payments profitability intelligence platform Torus and international advisory company SRM have partnered to help acquirers recover billions of dollars by improving fee transparency.

The partnership comes as a white paper from Torus highlights the challenges faced by acquirers due to growing fee scheme complexity and increased regulatory scrutiny.

Torus most recently demoed its technology at FinovateEurope 2025 in London. SRM made its Finovate debut at FinovateFall 2023 in New York.

Payments profitability intelligence platform Torus and international advisory company SRM have teamed up to help acquirers recover billions of dollars through greater fee transparency. The companies' new joint offering, the SRM/Torus Acquirer Profitability Solution, gives acquirers transaction-level scheme fee assurance, automated reconciliation, and merchant profitability analytics. The solution will help acquirers address growing pressures from rising operating costs, complex and ever-changing card scheme fee structures, margin compression, and greater regulatory scrutiny.

"By combining SRM's deep advisory expertise with the…

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American Express Now Offers High-Yield Business Savings Account

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, American Express, Daily news

American Express launched a 2.95% APY Business Savings account with no minimum balance or monthly maintenance fee.

Amex is deepening its business banking offering with card-rewards deposits and a forthcoming Gusto-powered payroll solution with AI-driven insights.

Amex is positioning itself to compete with fintechs like Mercury, Brex, and Bluevine as a more complete financial operating system for businesses.

American Express is bolstering its offerings today with the launch of the high-yield American Express Business Savings account.

The high-yield savings account comes with an APY of 2.95% and does not require a minimum balance or charge a monthly maintenance fee. Users will be able to make and receive transfers online or through the Amex app and can make instant transfers to and from an American Express Business Checking account with no transfer fee.

Additionally, later this year, Amex's Graphite Business Cash Unlimited card members, who earn 2% rewards on each transaction, will be…

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PayNearMe Acquires Marr Labs, Envestnet Acquires Vestmark

By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni profile, Envestnet, Mergers & Acquisitions, PayNearMe

With PayNearMe's acquisition of Marr Labs and Envestnet's acquisition of Vestmark, we continue to see evidence that fintechs are conducting M&A at a faster pace than banks in 2026.

Payment experience management company PayNearMe has acquired Marr Labs' technology and hired its 'key employees.' Founded in 2023 and headquartered in San Francisco, Marr Labs builds AI agents that provide compliant voice automation, document intelligence, intelligent workflow orchestration, and real-time compliance enforcement. The acquisition will enhance PayNearMe's ability to deliver agentic AI automation to its clients, leveraging Marr Labs' expertise in building and operating sophisticated AI systems at scale.

"PayNearMe has always focused on understanding and continuously improving the entire payment journey," PayNearMe CEO and Founder Danny Shader said. "AI provides powerful opportunities to further improve the experience delivered by our PayXM platform. The Marr Labs team has proven its ability to build and deploy sophisticated AI systems at massive scale.…

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What to Build vs Buy: Lessons from AI Agents in Production at a Major Insurer

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Sponsored

This is a sponsored blog post by AI software company ElevenLabs.

The first generation of automation in financial services was a cost decision, and customers could tell.

Decision tree chatbots and IVR menus reduced volume by deflecting it, and the experience taught a generation of policyholders and account holders to say "agent" and wait for the queue.

Institutions are adopting AI agents for a different reason:a better category of customer experience: every contact resolved on the spot, at any hour, in any channel, or handed to a person who already knows the customer and the situation - with the savings reinvested in the human service that matters most.

Admiral, one of Europe's largest insurance groups, frames its own ambition as building the most trusted customer experience in insurance, and is explicit that this is a customer experience transformation.

That framing matters for the question every institution asks - build…

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Arva AI Unveils Research Lab to Help Banks Automate High-Risk Decision-Making

By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Arva AI

Agentic AI company Arva AI has launched its Research Lab, a new division dedicated to building models and infrastructure to enable financial institutions to automate high-risk decisions.

The Lab has produced proprietary models for data enrichment, transaction analysis, and evidence-based reasoning, and infrastructure—AgentCore—that turns analyst insights into backtested, versioned system improvements.

Founded in 2024, Arva AI made its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope 2026 in London.

Arva AI, a fintech startup that leverages agentic AI to enhance business verification, announced the launch of its Research Lab. The lab is a new research division within the firm dedicated to building the models and infrastructure that enable banks to automate high-risk decisions. After more than 5,000 hours of research, training, and evaluation, the Lab has produced proprietary models for data enrichment, transaction analysis, and evidence-based reasoning. The Lab has also built infrastructure—AgentCore—that transforms analyst corrections, insights, and case outcomes into…

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Fintech Rundown: A Rapid Review of Weekly News

By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Bluefin, Coinbase, Finastra, Fintech Rundown, Worldline

FinovateFall 2026 is in the books! A huge thanks to all who attended our annual autumn conference. If you missed it, check out the companies that won Best of Show, and stay tuned for our wrap-ups and top takeaways in the weeks to come.

For now, we're catching up on the latest in fintech news and announcements, including a major fundraising in the Buy Now, Pay Later space and continued innovation in agentic commerce. Be sure to check back with the Fintech Rundown all week long for updates!

Payments

Bluefin announces expanded Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) support across its payment security infrastructure.

Payments and banking hub xpate launches new API-based capability xpate Pro to enhance money management for digital businesses.

Wealth management

AI-powered portfolio management platform for financial advisors Pave Finance raises $15 million in Series A funding.

Trade finance

Finastra teams up with digital trade finance platform provider…

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