Amerian Express Ventures has joined an $18 million funding round in Sedric AI, a startup developing a dedicated compliance large language model (LLM) for financial services.

Blockchain bank account startup Bleap has joined with Mastercard to launch a non-custodial debit card, making it possible for people to connect stablecoin payments with traditional financial payment rails.

The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) and the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (Asic) have expressed grave concerns about the management of operational risk at the country’s leading stock exchange following a batch settlement failure in December last year.

Lead Bank has hit a $1.47 billion valuation after raising $70 million to serve fintech and crypto firms.

Worldcoin, the crypto biometric project fronted by OpenAI boss Sam Altman, has been temporarily banned in Portugal over data privacy concerns.

Barcelona-based wealth management platform Flanks has raised €14 million in an equity round led by Motive Ventures.

Green fintech Sugi has launched a feature enabling users to offset the carbon impact of their investments.

Metro Bank has settled a a legal claim with US software company Arkeyo over allegations that it leaked the company’s coin counting technology to a rival firm.

Ukraine’s central bank says that Revolut does not have a licence to operate in the country despite the London-based fintech’s announcement earlier this month that residents can now open accounts.

Clearstream is to offer clients a choice between digital and tokenized issuance of securities with the launch of a blockchain-based system operating over Google Cloud.

The European Central bank is to run its first thematic stress tests on cyber resilience to determine how well individual banks would respond to and recover from a cyber attack.

Mastercard Move is to enable near-instant payouts to stablecoin wallets via Thunes’ Direct Global Network.

The Advertising Standards Authority has upheld a claim against greenwashing by Lloyds Banking Group, banning an advert that burnished the bank’s environmental credentials but failed to mention its ongoing support for fossil fuel polluting industries.

Revolut is the most common recipient of Faster Payments made by crypto investment scam victims at Lloyds Banking Group, which is reporting a surge in get-rich-quick adverts on social media.

Kicking off the 18th edition of EBAday – this time in Madrid, Spain – Wolfgang Ehrmann, chairman, Euro Banking Association, opened the show by gracing the stage and welcoming nearly 1200 practitioners from all corners of the payments and transaction banking ecosystem to discuss the latest trends and share different perspectives.