ACCEPTANCE & PROCESSING

Barclays and Visa have expanded their six-decade partnership via a new multi-year agreement spanning card issuing and acquiring across Barclays’ retail, business, corporate and private bank segments. The deal will support “next-gen” payment experiences – from account-to-account transactions to AI-driven “agentic” commerce – enabling secure, seamless payments for millions of consumers and merchants (Visa Press Release).

Edenred and Visa have announced a strategic partnership to drive innovation in commercial and consumer payment solutions, with Visa certifying Edenred’s in-house issuing and processing platform to enable the rollout of new Visa-branded payment products across Europe.

BNPL

Klarna has introduced a four-tier membership programme (Core, Plus, Premium, Max) across the UK and EU, offering travel, cashback and lifestyle perks to users without tying benefits to credit or debt, as the BNPL provider expands toward a broader digital banking platform.

Affirm is expanding its reach in Europe through a new integration with Worldpay’s platform. Worldpay will offer Affirm’s BNPL option to over a thousand software platforms and their merchants, letting approved customers split purchases into instalments at checkout. The partnership promises to give more consumers flexible payment plans while helping Worldpay’s merchants boost conversion with transparent pay-later options.

DXC Technology has partnered with BNPL firm Splitit to enable 300+ million bank account holders globally to use instalment payments directly from their bank accounts. The collaboration allows banks to embed card-linked instalment plans into customers’ debit cards and apps – letting them compete with standalone BNPL providers – and lets shoppers pay in interest-free instalments with funds drawn from their existing accounts rather than new credit lines.

DIGITAL & eCOMMERCE

PayPal is partnering with OpenAI to broaden payments in ChatGPT, adopting the new Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP) to enable seamless transactions via AI. The integration will let ChatGPT users check out instantly with PayPal – including funding options like bank accounts, balances or cards – and will connect PayPal’s network of merchants so that small businesses can sell within ChatGPT’s conversational interface.

DIGITAL, RETAIL & ‘Neo’ BANKING

BBVA’s German arm has launched a new “Bargeld via App” cash deposit feature in partnership with Paysafe. The service lets BBVA customers deposit cash into their bank account at 12,000 retail locations (supermarkets, pharmacies, etc.) by generating a barcode in the BBVA app to be scanned at the checkout, crediting the amount to their account instantly. All deposits are free during an introductory period (20 Oct 2025–31 Jan 2026), after which a 1.4% fee will apply.

FRAUD & CYBERSECURITY

Starling Bank (UK) has launched “Scam Intelligence,” an AI-powered tool in its banking app that lets customers scan images and ads from online marketplaces to spot signs of purchase scams – the first feature of its kind offered by a UK bank.

Mastercard has introduced a Threat Intelligence solution (announced at Money20/20 USA) that combines Mastercard’s fraud insights with cyber threat data from Recorded Future, helping payment providers detect and prevent cyber-enabled fraud before transactions are compromised.

Europol coordinated an international operation to dismantle a crypto-phishing crime syndicate based in Latvia that created 49 million fake accounts for fraudulent purposes. The raids (conducted 10 October 2025 with support from Europol and Eurojust) led to seven arrests and the seizure of a “SIM farm” with 75,000 SIM cards used to bypass SMS two-factor authentication. Authorities say the group’s fake accounts and phishing schemes caused an estimated $5.7 million in losses, exploiting weaknesses in one-time SMS passcodes and highlighting the need for more secure authentication methods.

OPEN BANKING & PSD

The UK’s Financial Conduct Authority published a research note on open banking in October, confirming that open banking continues to grow steadily and provide a foundation for innovation and competition in finance. The FCA outlined plans to accelerate open finance – including tech sprints on SME finance and mortgages starting in November, exploring broader “smart data” use cases, and working with industry on a new long-term governance entity – with a goal of publishing an open banking/open finance roadmap by March 2026.

London-based fintech Zilch has partnered with Plaid to integrate open banking into its BNPL repayments process. The move allows Zilch’s customers to pay their instalments directly via bank account debits (using Plaid’s API connections) instead of cards, reducing reliance on card networks and enabling instant account-to-account payments for Buy Now Pay Later plans.

REALTIME/INSTANT PAYMENTS

New EU rules on instant payments took effect on 9 October 2025, requiring all euro-area payment service providers to offer 24/7 instant credit transfers in euros. Banks can no longer charge more for instant transfers than for standard SEPA payments, and they must provide free “confirmation of payee” name-checking to verify the beneficiary’s name against the IBAN – measures aimed at making instant euro payments ubiquitous and safer across Europe by reducing misdirected payments and fraud.

REGULATION (UK)

The Bank of England has published an exploratory “design note” on offline payments for a potential UK central bank digital currency (digital pound). It explains that the system would support deferred offline payments – transactions recorded once one party reconnects (similar to how contactless card payments can be done offline and processed later) – as the likely approach at launch, since fully peer-to-peer device offline payments (with no network contact) remain challenging to implement securely at scale. The BoE will continue research into true device-to-device offline functionality, but it may only be introduced later as the technology matures.

SCHEMES

The Netherlands’ popular online payment system iDEAL will begin a phased rebranding to “iDEAL | Wero” in 2026, as part of integrating with Europe’s new EPI digital wallet. The move – a collaboration between Dutch banks and the European Payments Initiative – will gradually migrate iDEAL’s 100% Dutch consumer reach (over 1.5 billion transactions annually) onto the pan-European Wero platform. The transition aims to preserve iDEAL’s trusted user experience while extending its reach across borders, ensuring Dutch consumers can make cross-border online payments as easily as local ones under the unified Wero wallet.

French online bank Fortuneo has added Wero to its services, allowing its customers to send and receive instant payments via the new European wallet as part of EPI’s ongoing rollout. Wero – intended to reduce Europe’s reliance on US-based networks – went live for Fortuneo users on 22 October 2025, following earlier launches at Hello Bank, Monabanq and Revolut. Fortuneo’s adoption underscores growing momentum behind Wero, which lets users transfer money using a phone number and is increasingly being embraced by European banks in pursuit of a unified, continent-wide instant payment scheme.