Europe

BNPL

Klarna has secured an Electronic Money Institution licence from the UK Financial Conduct Authority, paving the way for Klarna to offer UK customers bank-like accounts and debit cards. The firm says this authorisation marks a major step beyond pay-later services into everyday financial management, positioning Klarna to compete with digital banks as it prepares for a potential IPO.

CORPORATE ACTIVITY

Worldline has entered exclusive talks to sell its Mobility & e-Transactional Services business line (and select financial services assets) to France’s Magellan Partners for an enterprise value of up to €410 million. The divestment, expected to close by mid-2026, is a strategic move to refocus Worldline on its core payments activities.

North America

ACCEPTANCE & PROCESSING

Mastercard is modernising B2B payments with new solutions that streamline how businesses get paid. It launched global availability of Mastercard Receivables Manager, an automated virtual card acceptance tool, and introduced Commercial Direct Payments for straight-through processing of B2B card transactions. Together, these offerings let suppliers reconcile payments faster and automate virtual card flows, helping companies digitise their commercial payments and improve efficiency.

BNPL

Splitit has announced a strategic partnership with Antom to integrate its card-linked installment payments technology into Antom’s merchant platform. Through the tie-up, Splitit’s solution will be embedded in the checkout process for Antom’s clients, allowing shoppers to split purchases into monthly payments on their existing credit cards – with no separate application, credit check or extra fees.

ISSUING

JPMorgan Chase is poised to take over Apple’s credit card programme from Goldman Sachs. According to sources, the Wall Street bank is in advanced talks with Apple to become the new issuer of the Apple Card, as Goldman seeks to exit the consumer partnership. If a deal is finalised, it would further entrench JPMorgan’s presence in cards – adding the popular no-fee, cashback Apple Card to its portfolio – and mark another win for CEO Jamie Dimon, who has been expanding Chase’s dominance in retail banking.

LITIGATION

Visa disclosed another hefty legal charge in its fiscal Q3 results, underscoring the ongoing cost of its long-running merchant fee litigation. The company took a $615 million provision last quarter related to the interchange fee class-action case – on top of a $992 million charge in Q2 – bringing its legal reserves for the case to over $1.6 billion this year. The decade-old lawsuit alleges anti-competitive practices around card swipe fees, and the recurring multi-million dollar provisions are raising investor concerns that the MDL (multidistrict litigation) could become a sustained drag on Visa’s earnings.

REGULATION

The U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) will rewrite its contested “open banking” rules to fend off an industry legal challenge. A federal judge paused a lawsuit by bank trade groups that aimed to strike down the Biden-era data-sharing regulations, after the CFPB requested time to replace them with a new version. The agency now plans an “accelerated” rulemaking to substantially revise the open banking framework – which was originally meant to give consumers more control over their financial data – and to better justify the pro-innovation, pro-competition measures in the face of bank opposition.

LATAM

CORPORATE ACTIVITY

Brazil’s investment bank BTG Pactual has agreed to acquire HSBC’s operations in Uruguay for $175 million, pending regulatory approval. The deal – expected to close within 6–12 months – extends BTG’s Latin American footprint into Uruguay, where HSBC’s local franchise serves ~50,000 clients and manages $1.8 billion in assets. For HSBC, the sale continues a strategy of divesting non-core units globally (after exits in markets like Argentina and Bahrain), while BTG gains a new banking platform to deepen its presence across the Southern Cone region.

FRAUD & CYBERSECURITY

AstroPay has unveiled a new developer platform that lets other companies embed AstroPay’s digital payments and banking capabilities into their own products. The fintech’s backend-as-a-service offers a full suite of features – from multi-currency wallets and FX to virtual card issuing, compliance and fraud tools – accessible via a single API integration. Connected to numerous local and international payment rails, the platform enables businesses to quickly launch cross-border financial services (for example, issuing Visa/Mastercard cards or opening local accounts in Brazil and Argentina) without the usual years of licensing and infrastructure build-out.

APAC

ACCEPTANCE & PROCESSING

South Korea’s Naver Pay has rolled out “pay-by-face” checkout, launching facial recognition payments on university campuses and planning its own payment terminals by year-end. Local card issuer Lotte Card also secured regulatory clearance to pilot facial-payment at airports, as biometric payment systems gain traction in the country despite interoperability and privacy challenges.

Middle East and Africa

ACCEPTANCE & PROCESSING

Bahrain’s EazyPay has become the first acquirer in the country to adopt Mastercard’s new Receivables Manager platform. The solution automates business-to-business virtual card payments for merchants by eliminating manual processing and delivering straight-through settlement of card receivables, improving suppliers’ cash flow and operational efficiency.

CASH(less)

A new Visa study on Egyptian SMEs reveals that 53% of small merchants have implemented digital payment acceptance in the past two years. An additional 55% of cash-only businesses are now looking to go cashless, as over 80% of merchants already accepting cards or mobile payments report being satisfied with digital payments and seeing higher revenues and customer footfall as a result.

MOBILE MONEY/WALLETS

Kenya’s Safaricom (operator of M-PESA) and PayPal have partnered to link mobile money with the global payments network. The collaboration allows over 35 million M-PESA users and 2 million businesses to seamlessly transfer funds between M-PESA wallets and PayPal accounts, expanding cross-border payment options and financial connectivity for merchants and individuals in Kenya.

OPEN BANKING

MENA-based fintech Lean Technologies has received In-Principle Approval from the Central Bank of the UAE under the country’s new open finance framework. As one of the first firms authorised in the UAE’s open banking regime, Lean can now offer regulated open API services – enabling features like instant account-to-account payments and other data-driven financial tools – in support of the UAE’s digital economy ambitions.