• Airwallex has partnered with Affirm to enable merchants in 35 countries to offer BNPL options to eligible US customers at checkout.
• Airwallex merchants can add Affirm without an additional integration, giving shoppers access to interest-free and longer-term installment payment options.
• The partnership expands Affirm’s distribution while helping Airwallex merchants offer more competitive checkout experiences and potentially boost conversion and transaction sizes.

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Global payments platform Airwallex has teamed up with flexible payments company Affirm to allow merchants in 35 countries to provide flexible payment options at checkout to their eligible US customers.

Without additional integration, merchants can bring Affirm’s buy now, pay later (BNPL) capabilities, allowing shoppers to choose a payment schedule that works best for their cashflow at the point of sale. Among Affirm’s flexible financing options are four interest-free installments or monthly installments of up to 24 months. Affirm will not charge late fees and shows shoppers what they will pay upfront.

In addition to bringing flexibility to end customers, Affirm’s tools also bring benefits to merchants. The relaxed payment terms often support higher conversion and larger transactions. Merchants on Airwallex can offer Affirm payments seamlessly. Airwallex now supports more than 160 payment methods across the world.

“Merchants choose Airwallex to maximize local payment options for shoppers around the world, otherwise, they’re leaving conversion on the table,” said Airwallex VP of Financial and Strategic Partnerships Jason Gottlieb. “We’re thrilled to partner with Affirm and provide its familiar and transparent payment options to help our international merchants drive more US sales.”

Adding Affirm helps merchants compete with other point-of-sale checkout experiences by bringing more payment options into the checkout flow. And because accessing Affirm through Airwallex doesn’t require an additional integration, it reduces the complexity for merchants looking to modernize their payments experience.

For Affirm, the partnership offers another avenue for distribution. Partnerships with platforms like Airwallex allow the BNPL provider to reach large groups of merchants through technology they already use, rather than establishing a standalone relationship with each merchant. Affirm has pursued a similar strategy through partnerships with payment providers including Worldpay and Fiserv, expanding the number of places consumers can encounter its financing options.

Founded in 2015, Airwallex holds 85+ regulatory licenses and permits across 50 markets that enable customers to operate in 200+ countries and regions and support multi-currency checkout at scale. The Singapore-based company helps more than 676,000 businesses worldwide manage their financial operations and build and monetize their own financial products.

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Photo by Kindel Media

• InvestiFi raised $20 million in a strategic funding round led largely by credit unions and fintech investors to expand its embedded investing platform for community financial institutions.
• Community banks and credit unions are increasingly competing with fintechs like Robinhood, Wealthfront, Betterment, and Coinbase for the primary customer relationship, making embedded investing a key retention strategy.
• The investor lineup signals strong industry confidence that integrated wealth management tools will be critical for smaller financial institutions to remain competitive with digital-first providers.

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Credit Union Service Organization (CUSO) InvestiFi has landed $20 million in a funding round led by Vibe Credit Union, with participation from BankTech Ventures, ICCU (Idaho Central Credit Union), Navari (formerly CUSG), United Financial Credit Union, Coastal Credit Union, Mid Minnesota Credit Union, Truity Credit Union, and Southpoint Credit Union.

“What makes this raise especially meaningful is that so much of it comes directly from the consumer-focused financial institutions and strategic partners who use our platform every day,” said InvestiFi CEO and Founder Kian Sarreshteh. “They aren’t just customers — they’re believers in our mission to democratize investing and to make sure community financial institutions can compete and win in this space.”

InvestiFi plans to use today’s funds to scale its platform and increase adoption among credit union members and community bank customers. Specifically, the organization’s goal is to help these smaller financial institutions retain and gain back deposits from the 43% of Millennial and Gen Z users who have transitioned to third-party investment platforms because they felt that their credit union or community bank didn’t offer adequate investing options.

While community banks and credit unions used to compete against each other and larger banks, this is no longer the case. Fintechs like Robinhood, Wealthfront, Betterment, and Coinbase have become commonplace among users. And because these fintech options are increasingly offering savings tools, checking accounts, and even credit cards, there is also increased competition for the primary customer relationship. InvestiFi’s tools that allow community banks and credit unions to embed investing tools directly within their website or app will help retain primacy.

The makeup of the investor base is perhaps as noteworthy as its size. With many of InvestiFi’s own credit union customers participating, the raise shows how community financial institutions are increasingly investing in fintech infrastructure they view as essential to remaining competitive with larger banks and digital-first financial providers.

“For generations, credit unions have earned trust by helping members save, borrow, and achieve their financial goals,” said Vibe Credit Union Chief Operations and Strategy Officer Jeff Pascoe. “The next chapter is helping them build wealth through that same trusted partnership. As a credit union, we believe we have a responsibility to invest in innovations that strengthen not only our own members’ experience, but the future of the credit union movement itself. InvestiFi helps make that future possible.”

InvestiFi, which enables credit unions and community banks to offer digital investing directly within online banking, was founded in 2020. The organization helps its 60 financial institution clients offer tools like fractional investing, guided investing, IRAs, cryptocurrency trading, and stablecoins.

Interested in hearing more about specialized tools for community banks or credit unions? Register for FinovateFall and enroll in the Credit Union Spotlight or the Community Bank Spotlight to get a dedicated networking space where you can share best practices, talk through common challenges, and discover innovative solutions designed for you.

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Photo by RDNE Stock project

• MoonPay launched PayBox, enabling ChatGPT and Claude users to authorize AI agents to make purchases, trade tokens, interact with DeFi, and move assets using natural language.
• The platform combines Visa’s agentic commerce protocol, x402, and cryptographic security to let AI transact while keeping users’ card details and wallet keys protected.
• PayBox reflects the growing shift toward agentic commerce, as companies build the payment infrastructure that will enable AI agents to transact safely on users’ behalf.

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Stablecoin infrastructure provider MoonPay launched PayBox this week. The new payment vault allows users’ AI agents to trade tokens, bridge assets, interact with DeFi, and transact online without leaving the conversation.

The new capability enables Claude and ChatGPT users with a PayBox connector to offer their AI the ability to transact by describing what they want in natural language. In addition to requesting their AI to make purchases like booking a flight, customers can also ask things like, “Maximize yield using Aave” or “Onramp $100 into PYUSD.” 

After the user installs PayBox on Claude or ChatGPT, the AI prepares the transaction, then the user approves the transaction with a passkey and PayBox moves the money without having to involve a developer tool or third party. MoonPay is using x402, an open protocol that enables AI agents and web services to initiate and settle payments programmatically across the internet, to allow AI to pay any service on the consumer’s behalf.

PayBox works with two payment methods, cards and wallets, both of which are kept secure. MoonPay leverages Visa’s agentic commerce protocol to avoid seeing or storing full payment details, while wallet keys are protected by threshold cryptography and secure enclaves. These protections never offer MoonPay or the agent access the full private key or allow the agent to sign transactions without user approval.

Users can choose between an approval mode, in which every transaction requires passkey confirmation, or an autonomous mode that lets AI agents complete transactions within user-defined spending limits and policies. Even in autonomous mode, the agent never gains access to users’ card credentials or wallet private keys.

“The card hid the cash. The phone hid the card. This is the era where money disappears into conversation,” said MoonPay CEO and Founder Ivan Soto-Wright. “Billions of AI agents are coming online, and every one of them will need to hold, move, and spend money safely. Someone had to build the trust layer for that world. We just did. PayBox is the product that MoonPay was built to make.”

Agentic commerce is moving beyond experimentation as AI assistants are starting to complete transactions on users’ behalf. To capture this opportunity, companies are racing to provide the payment layer for AI agents, especially as stablecoin infrastructure, payment networks such as Visa, and emerging standards like x402 continue to converge.

PayBox is launching with support for Solana, Ethereum, Hyperliquid, Tempo, Base, Robinhood Chain, Arbitrum, and Polygon, with plans to add more chains. The first PayBox integrations are already live, and MoonPay expects to introduce additional use cases every week. Additionally, MoonPay noted that support for AI platforms beyond Claude and ChatGPT is coming soon.

• Increase has launched Increase Bank, combining an FDIC-member institution with its API-first banking core and direct connections to the Federal Reserve, The Clearing House, and Visa.
• The company entered banking through its 2025 acquisition of Washington-based Twin City Bank, which continues serving existing community customers under the Twin City Bank name.
• By operating its own bank while continuing to work with partner banks, Increase is integrating more of the embedded-finance stack and gaining greater control over product development, compliance, payments, and economics.

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API-first banking fintech Increase is launching Increase Bank to bring its modern bank core to help businesses build and launch financial products.

With today’s launch, Increase now includes Increase Bank, an FDIC-member institution, plus its built-from-scratch banking core with direct connections to the Federal Reserve, The Clearing House, and Visa.

“This is a bank built by a team of product-obsessed operators for ambitious companies that are just as obsessed with building the best possible products for their customers,” said Increase Founder Darragh Buckley. “It is programmable at scale and designed for reliability, speed, and flexibility.”

Rather than pursuing a new bank charter from scratch, Increase acquired Washington-based Twin City Bank in 2025, giving it a regulated banking institution to complement its API-first infrastructure platform. The single-branch bank now operates as Increase Bank while continuing to serve Twin City Bank’s existing community banking customers under the Twin City name.

While the bank expands Increase’s role in the financial stack, the technology remains central to its strategy. Instead of serving exclusively as middleware between fintechs and sponsor banks, the company is integrating more of the stack by operating its own bank while continuing to partner with others. The move gives Increase greater control over product development, compliance, and payment operations, while positioning it to capture a larger share of the economics behind embedded finance.

“A fintech company’s ability to scale often comes down to whether they have a banking partner that can move at their pace, build solutions to the edge cases they are solving, and give them direct access to payment rails,” said Stripe Head of International Diede van Lamoen. “Increase was built by people who have first-hand experience with these challenges and a drive to support users from the first payment to their billionth.”

Founded in 2020, Increase provides the banking infrastructure behind companies including Gusto, Ramp, and Stripe. Its API-first platform enables developers to build products for money movement, deposit accounts, and card issuing using programmable banking components.

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Photo from Mike Hindle on Unsplash

• Ramp has officially launched in Canada, marking the spend management platform’s first expansion outside the US and bringing its corporate cards, expense management, bill pay, and accounting tools to Canadian businesses.
• The Canadian platform includes localized features such as CAD and USD spending without FX markup, automatic GST/HST/PST/QST tax coding, Canadian-dollar accounting integrations, and cards issued through Peoples Trust.
• Ramp’s expansion comes as competition in business banking intensifies, following Expensify’s UK and EU corporate card launch and Intuit’s introduction of a QuickBooks-connected corporate credit card.

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Corporate card and expense management platform Ramp is moving across international borders this week. The New York-based company is now available to businesses in Canada.

Today’s launch comes after Ramp piloted its Canadian operations with a select few Canada-based small businesses. With the broad launch, businesses headquartered in Canada can now use Ramp’s capabilities for managing spend, paying bills, and closing their books. Notably, Ramp is still not available to businesses based in Quebec or Saskatchewan.

Ramp’s new Canadian operation is built for Canadian businesses, allowing businesses to spend in CAD and USD without additional FX markup. Additionally, the platform is designed to accommodate Canada’s tax system by automatically coding transactions with the appropriate GST, HST, PST, or QST, helping finance teams streamline expense management and tax compliance.

The Canadian offering brings the same capabilities as the US platform, including corporate cards, expense management, reimbursements, bill pay, and accounting sync. However, Canadian businesses make payments in CAD and cards are issued through Peoples Trust. Card transactions sync natively with QuickBooks Online, Xero, Microsoft Business Central, NetSuite, and Sage Intacct in Canadian dollars.

To support its Canadian expansion, Ramp will open its first office in Toronto, where it will build a local team to provide sales, implementation, and customer support for Canadian businesses. The local presence underscores Ramp’s longer-term investment in the Canadian market as it expands beyond the US.

Ramp, which is used by over 70,000 businesses, was founded in 2019 and has experienced notable growth, most recently fueled by a $300 million financing round that valued it at $32 billion. The company powers over $100 billion in purchases annually. Interestingly, Ramp’s launch into Canada comes before the company’s expansion into the UK and EU, which Ramp announced would happen “this summer” after its March acquisition of Billhop, a Stockholm- and London-based payments platform.

Today’s announcement comes at a time when competition in business banking is heating up. Just last week, Expensify launched its corporate card across the UK and EU, while five days ago, Intuit launched its own corporate credit card that will be connected to QuickBooks. Together, the moves underscore how providers are racing to expand both geographically and across the business finance stack, giving small and midsize businesses more integrated options for managing spending, payments, and accounting.

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Photo by Cedric Fauntleroy

• Cross River Bank will provide the regulated banking infrastructure behind X Money, X’s new embedded financial services offering.
• X Money will bring FDIC-insured, interest-bearing accounts, a Visa debit card, and peer-to-peer payment capabilities directly into the social media platform.
• The launch advances Elon Musk’s “everything app” vision and will test whether US consumers are willing to use a social platform as a primary financial interface.

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Cross River Bank, a bank and banking-as-a-service (BaaS) provider, announced today that it will power X Money, the financial services capability in X (formerly Twitter).

Through the partnership, X will embed FDIC-insured, interest-bearing accounts, a Visa debit card, and broader payment capabilities directly into its social media platform. Cross River will power the financial capabilities through its regulated infrastructure and access to payment rails.

“With Cross River providing the banking backbone and X connecting users across the United States, the collaboration represents a new standard for money movement, combining compliance, speed, and scale in a way that meets the needs of today’s digital-first consumers,” the company said in a statement. “By enabling seamless, in-app finance, this will unlock a future where financial services live within the platforms that consumers already use every day.”

Founded in 2008, Cross River offers scalable, embedded payments, cards, lending, and crypto solutions to businesses and consumers. The bank is known for its API-driven banking core and regulatory expertise. Because it owns its infrastructure, Cross River eliminates the risk and compliance gaps that come with bringing on third-party systems.

X selected Cross River because of its ability to handle payments quickly and at scale, enabling it to support new financial products and features.

This follows years of promises from X owner Elon Musk to turn X into “the everything app.” Adding embedded accounts, debit cards, and peer-to-peer payments moves that ambition beyond social media content and into financial services. It also gives X a way to deepen engagement by allowing users to store, spend, and transfer money without leaving the platform.

The launch of X Money will be a good test of whether US consumers are ready to treat a social media app as a primary financial interface. If it is successful and its users willingly adopt it as a payments platform, X will have access to valuable transaction data and can create new opportunities around commerce, creator payouts, subscriptions, and other financial products such as lending. It would also put the platform in more direct competition with digital wallets and challenger banks. Cross River’s role is critical because it gives X the regulated banking and payments infrastructure needed to pursue that vision without becoming a bank itself.

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Photo by SHVETS production

• The OCC conditionally approved Upstart to establish a branchless, full-service national bank just four months after the company applied.
• The charter would let Upstart originate loans nationwide, accept FDIC-insured deposits, and reduce its reliance on third-party banking partners while preserving its existing loan-purchaser network.
• The approval reflects growing fintech interest in bank charters, but the OCC’s rejection of Wise’s application shows that regulatory approval is still far from guaranteed.

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Lending marketplace Upstart has been granted conditional approval from the US Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) to establish Upstart Bank. The news comes four months after Upstart submitted its initial application.

Upstart is pursuing a de novo bank charter—a license to establish a newly formed, full-service national bank—and will accept the accompanying bank holding company oversight. The charter will allow Upstart to reduce operational complexity as well as reliance on third party partners.

“Conditional approval from the OCC is an important milestone for Upstart Bank and we will continue to work with the OCC, the FDIC, and the Federal Reserve on the remaining steps,” said Upstart Co-Founder and CEO Paul Gu. “Upstart Bank will allow us to lower the cost of lending and bring our full product offering to all 50 states, advancing our mission to radically reduce the cost and complexity of credit for all Americans.”

While the newly formed bank will be headquartered in Delaware, it will not have any physical branches. The new charter will allow it to originate loans to all US consumers and accept FDIC insured deposits. Upstart emphasized that the new bank is intended to complement its existing funding model instead of replace it. Banks, credit unions, and institutional investors are expected to continue purchasing the vast majority of loans originated on the Upstart platform.

California-based Upstart was founded in 2012 and leverages AI to price credit and automate the borrowing process. The company closed its IPO in 2020 and is currently traded on the NASDAQ under the ticker UPST with a market capitalization of $2.67 billion.

Upstart’s conditional approval comes as bank charter activity is accelerating under a more fintech-friendly regulatory environment. At the same time, regulators are demonstrating that approvals are far from automatic. Just one day after Upstart’s announcement, the OCC rejected Wise’s application for a national trust bank charter, underscoring that applicants must still satisfy supervisory and compliance expectations.

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Photo by Erik Mclean

• Chime has launched Chime Invest, allowing users to trade stocks and ETFs commission-free or choose an Atomic Invest-managed portfolio.
• The new feature aims to lower investing barriers with no account minimums and management fees ranging from 0% to 0.25%, depending on membership tier.
• Chime Invest strengthens Chime’s push to become a broader financial platform and reflects fintech’s wider shift toward rebundling banking, investing, lending, and other services in one app.

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Digital bank Chime is giving its users one more reason to spend more time in its app with the launch of Chime Invest, a new investment capability. With the new investing tool, users can buy stocks and ETFs commission-free or use an expert-managed portfolio option.

The managed accounts are managed by Atomic Invest, an SEC-registered investment adviser that offers users a diversified portfolio personalized to their goals and risk profile with up to $500,000 of protection by SIPC. For Chime Prime members, the managed accounts do not require balance minimums or charge management fees. Chime Plus members face a 0.10% annual management fee, while all other Chime members are charged 0.25% for the managed portfolio option.

According to a Gallup Economy and Personal Finance survey, around 40% of Americans report that they do not own any stock. Chime anticipates that its new investing feature will lower barriers to entry in investing by not requiring an account minimum and by offering a managed portfolio option for those who may be intimidated to make trades on their own.

“The hardest part of investing is often getting started and sticking with it,” said Chime CEO and Co-founder Chris Britt. “Millions of people already trust Chime with their money every day. By bringing investing into the app they already know and love, we’re making it easier to turn saving into investing and investing into long-term wealth.”

The average Chime member opens the app five times a day and makes approximately 50 transactions each month. Adding investing tools within its app will not only make it easy for users to begin investing, but it also gives existing investors another reason to keep their financial activity within the Chime ecosystem instead of turning to a third-party brokerage.

Chime was founded in 2012 and is well known in fintech for offering tools and services that cater to lower-to-middle income consumers. The challenger bank offers an earned wage access tool that allows users to receive their paycheck up to two days earlier when they set up direct deposit, a credit-building tool, and a feature that will spot users up to $200 to avoid account overdrafts. The fintech has three membership tiers with varying benefits based on the direct deposit amount.

The addition of Chime Invest is another example of how fintechs are rebundling multiple services into singular apps to become more comprehensive financial platforms. Instead of competing solely on checking accounts or payments, companies are increasingly layering on adjacent services such as investing, lending, insurance, financial planning, and even mobile telco plans to deepen customer relationships and increase lifetime value.

For traditional banks, the rebundling trend increases competition by demonstrating that consumers increasingly expect everyday banking and long-term wealth-building tools to coexist within a single digital experience. For fintechs, it underscores that customer engagement is becoming more valuable than customer acquisition as a competitive advantage.

Chime Invest will be generally available to members in the coming weeks.

• Walmart-backed OnePay has partnered with Upgrade to launch personal loans ranging from $1,000 to $50,000 directly within the OnePay app.
• OnePay will use existing customer data to streamline applications and underwriting, potentially extending same-day offers to eligible users.
• The partnership advances OnePay’s super app ambitions while giving Upgrade access to a larger customer base and highlighting fintech’s broader rebundling trend.

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Walmart-backed digital banking platform OnePay is getting an upgrade this week. The New York-based company has teamed up with alternative lender and fellow digital banking platform Upgrade to launch Personal Loans, bringing a new element into its banking app.

With the new Personal Loans product, OnePay will allow eligible borrowers to apply for a loan ranging from $1,000 to $50,000, receive and accept an offer with APRs ranging from 7.74% to 35.99%, and pay back their loan within the OnePay app. The company sees the new product as a significant step forward in its mission to make everyday financial services simpler, more accessible, and more useful.

“Getting access to credit in America today is harder than it should be,” said OnePay CEO Omer Ismail. “It’s never been more important to give consumers access to financing that’s simple, transparent, and meets them where they already are—and we’re excited to partner with Upgrade to introduce another financing option for our customers with OnePay Personal Loans.”

Because it can leverage information customers have already shared, OnePay can reduce repetitive entry during the application process, minimizing friction. Additionally, because OnePay is able to leverage customer information such as their average daily balance, overdraft occurrences, and spending habits for underwriting purposes, it is able to extend financing offers as soon as the same day to some of its active customers.

OnePay has tapped San Francisco-based Upgrade for the lending infrastructure and expertise, offering it the ability to offer larger-dollar lending directly within its app. Founded in 2017, Upgrade offers checking and savings accounts, personal loans, credit cards, and rewards programs that focus on low fees and responsible credit usage to help consumers improve their financial lives. With more than 7.5 million customers, Upgrade has facilitated over $42 billion in credit with tools such as its Upgrade Card, which encourages customers to pay off balances quickly and avoid revolving debt and build credit responsibly.

“Our personal loans offer consumers the breathing room they need to get on the best financial path,” said Upgrade CEO and Co-founder Renaud Laplanche. “We’re proud that this partnership makes that resource more accessible to millions of OnePay customers.”

The addition of a personal lending product is a major step for OnePay, which has been building out its banking super app since it was founded in 2021. By embedding unsecured lending directly into its app, OnePay is evolving beyond a digital wallet and deposit platform into a more comprehensive financial services hub. The partnership is another example of recent rebundling efforts in fintech. Rather than building every product in-house, digital banking providers are increasingly partnering with specialized fintechs to quickly expand their offerings.

For Upgrade, the deal opens the door to OnePay’s growing customer base, while OnePay gains proven lending infrastructure and underwriting expertise without taking on the complexity of developing it internally. As competition among digital banking platforms intensifies, strategic partnerships like this one are becoming an increasingly common way to deepen customer relationships and increase engagement.