The European Council and European Parliament have reached an agreement on amending the existing payment services directive (PSD2) that they say will step up the fight against fraud and increase transparency.

Sustainable Finance Live is back for another virtual event. Finextra and Responsible Risk have come together for a thought-provoking series of experiential events, welcoming banking and technology ecosystems to collaborate on enabling a wave of change.

Mastercard has connected its Multi-Token Network (MTN) to JPMorgan’s Kinexys Digital Payments rail for B2B cross-border payments settlement.

Bank of America is launching a fintech accelerator that aims to attract entrepreneurs from underrepresented communities.

Barclays has followed HSBC in withdrawing from the Net Zero Banking Alliance (NZBA), claiming that the departure of a host of other global lenders means the organisation “no longer has the membership to support our transition”.

Lloyds says the barcode cash paying-in app feature it launched in August has already been used to pay in over £3 million at PayPoint high street locations.

Bloom Money, a UK startup offering financial services to immigrants has raised £1 million in pre-seen funding. Separately, another UK startup, SuperFi, has secured $1 million in pre-seed funding for its debt prevention platform.

PayPal has for the first time used its proprietary PYUSD stablecoin to pay and invoice.

Singapore’s OCBC Bank has launched a robo investment service using technology from local startup WeInvest.

AI startup Bridgewise has been given the green light by Israeli regulators to launch a chatbot that gives advice on buying and selling stocks.

Abu Dhabi investment group MGX has invested $2 billion in stablecoin in crypto exchange Binance.

Morgan Stanley is the latest Wall Street titan to enter the robo-adviser arena, launching a digital platform it hopes will attract the high net worth clients of the future while they are still millennials.

Uzum, an Uzbekistan fintech and digital bank, has secured nearly $70 million in equity financing from Tencent and VR Capital, with participation from FinSight Ventures – a US fund focused on AI, fintech and super-app investments, and lead investor in Uzum’s first equity round completed in March 2024.

A new non-profit programme offering fintech startups free access to data feeds and APIs from providers such as Thomson Reuters and Xignite is gearing up for launch later this month.

The SME Finance Taskforce has released its coalition plan to boost the UK economy by speeding up lending and access to finance for 5.5 million SMEs.