Truist Financial Corp. has launched a new integrated merchant-services platform called Merchant Engage, aimed at meeting the banking and payment needs of businesses ranging from small enterprises to large merchants. The free service allows Truist clients with both banking and merchant accounts to view all transaction data in one centralized platform. Developed in partnership with London-based fintech Pollinate International Ltd.—marking its U.S. debut—Merchant Engage offers a comprehensive digital experience covering dispute management, new-location onboarding, and transaction processing. According to Chris Noe, Truist’s head of wholesale payments, the bank covers Pollinate’s service fees, making the offering cost-free for users. Pollinate provides customizable modules across the merchant lifecycle, delivering a seamless experience without requiring users to manage processor tie-ins or aggregate data themselves. “The client is able to get a rich, intuitive user experience that shows all of the processing, all of the settlements, all the dispute management, and anything that they would possibly need,” Noe explained. For instance, onboarding a new merchant location can now be done entirely within Merchant Engage, avoiding the need to navigate multiple platforms. While Truist may be first with this level of integration, other banks like U.S. Bank are also expanding their merchant services, such as with April’s launch of U.S. Bank Essentials.
While MCP offers agent identification, absence of guardrails for communication, lack of audit trail and inability to do KYC on agents to authenticate them present adoption challenges for regulated companies
Model Context Protocol (MCP) has begun amassing a large number of users, all but guaranteeing the mass adoption needed to make it an industry standard. While many regulated companies, such as banks, financial institutions, and hospitals, have begun experimenting with AI agents, these are typically internal agents. Regulated companies do have APIs. Still, so much of the integration these companies undertake has taken years of vetting to ensure compliance and safety. However, it doesn’t mean financial services companies want to jump into the MCP and Agent2Agent (A2A) bandwagon immediately. Since MCP is open source and new, it is still undergoing constant updates. Sean Neville, cofounder of Catena Labs said that while MCP offers agent identification, which is key for many companies, there are still some missing features, such as guardrails for communication and, most importantly, an audit trail. These issues could either be solved through MCP, A2A or even an entirely different standard like LOKA. He said one of the biggest problems with the current MCP revolves around authentication. When agents become part of the financial system, even MCP or A2A, there’s no real way to do “know-your-customer” on agents. Neville said financial institutions need to know that their agents are dealing with licensed entities, so the agent must be able to point to that verifiably. John Waldron, senior vice president at Elavon, doesn’t discount the possibility that financial institutions may work towards supporting MCP or A2A in the future. “Looking at it from a business perspective and demand, I think MCP is a very critical part of where I think the business logic is going,” he said.
Eudia’s acquisition of Johnson Hana to enable it to build a network of AI-augmented human workforce by embedding the deep industry and institutional knowledge of 300+ elite legal professionals into its AI platform
Eudia, the Augmented Intelligence platform for Fortune 500 legal teams, announced its acquisition of Johnson Hana, bringing 300+ elite legal professionals into the world’s first AI-augmented human workforce. The move creates an entirely new type of company—one that fuses human expertise and artificial intelligence to fundamentally reinvent how legal work is performed. While many believe AI is simply software, Eudia has proven that AI’s true potential lies in human partnerships. Human + AI teams consistently outperform humans or AI working alone—a principle Eudia calls “Augmented Intelligence.” This acquisition brings to life a new type of workforce that accelerates outcomes and drives unprecedented business value across Eudia’s customer base. Johnson Hana represents a fundamental departure from traditional alternative legal service providers (ALSPs). This acquisition enables Eudia to build the world’s first team of AI-augmented humans—legal professionals who accelerate both outcomes and transformations within their Fortune 500 clients. The Johnson Hana acquisition accelerates Eudia’s vision of building a comprehensive network of augmented legal professionals. These experts bring deep industry knowledge that is directly embedded into Eudia’s AI systems, creating compounding intelligence that benefits all clients. These operators are trained in Eudia’s proprietary process of capturing institutional knowledge and context, enabling their clients to compound the effectiveness of AI for both internal and external teams.
The memecoin market is moving away from creating hype to building trust backed by open AMAs, clear roadmaps, and community engagement, evolving into a broader ecosystem and pivoting to super app models
The memecoin market, once the playground of viral trends and overnight riches, is entering a new phase. Thousands of tokens now flood platforms like Ethereum and Solana, fragmenting liquidity and thinning investor focus. Coins often hold only 20–40% of their market cap in liquidity. That leaves little margin for volatile assets. The crowded market has sharpened investor expectations. No longer will a meme and a mascot suffice. The winning tokens now build trust—through transparency, accountability, and community engagement. CAPTAINBNB is one such example. Its 100% circulating supply and renounced contracts signalled integrity, helping it build a loyal base. This kind of trust—backed by open AMAs, clear roadmaps, and genuine developer commitment—often sustains projects through downturns. In contrast, countless memecoins launched with fanfare in 2023–24 are now abandoned, unable to survive a single market dip. Key Opinion Leaders (KOLs) once ruled the memecoin narrative. But by 2025, skepticism has caught up. In short, the influencer model is no longer a guarantee. In many cases, it’s a liability. Where hype is fading, utility and grassroots support are taking its place. Shiba Inu’s transformation offers a blueprint—evolving into a broader ecosystem with ShibaSwap and Shibarium, giving holders reasons to stay beyond the meme. Some projects are pivoting to super app models that empower user decisions and foster participation. This bottom-up governance reflects a maturing memecoin scene, where communities are not just holders but stakeholders.
Enterprises in regulated industries are embracing sovereign cloud with baked-in compliance, governance, and operational control across regions for scaling AI driven by pressure to support composable architectures, low-latency performance, and policy-based data residency
Sovereign cloud is rising in prominence: It ensures compliance, governance and operational control across geopolitical regions while still enabling innovation at scale, according to Kevin Cochrane, chief marketing officer of Vultr, a registered trademark of The Constant Company LLC. The two-fold nature of sovereignty lies in national infrastructure and enterprise-level governance, according to Cochrane. “The agents that they’re deploying are only going to be able to communicate in many cases within that geographic boundary. There’s all sorts of controls. The issue of sovereignty actually also matters for the enterprise.” This need for localized governance is especially urgent in healthcare, financial services and other heavily regulated industries. Vultr’s approach includes prebuilt infrastructure templates tailored for compliance — allowing developers to deploy AI-native applications with speed and confidence. By productizing infrastructure-as-code stacks, Vultr helps organizations reduce the time from proof of concept to production, Cochrane explained. Vultr’s sovereign cloud capabilities are not an add-on; they’re embedded into the architecture. The company’s on-demand infrastructure model and open ecosystem approach allow enterprises to customize deployments while maintaining strict control over data, networking and compute layers. With compliance baked in, organizations avoid the trap of retrofitting governance after the fact — a risk that can delay or even derail AI projects, according to Cochrane.
Bank of America transformed Erica into productivity tool for employees to complete password resets, device activation, health benefits review, locate payroll and tax forms, achieving 50% IT service desk automation
Bank of America transformed its customer chatbot Erica into an employee productivity powerhouse, achieving 50% IT service desk automation by strategically targeting common pain points and building adoption incrementally over five years. And the firm continues to invest in Erica in two critical ways: First, the bank is identifying and integrating technologies that can improve the Erica experience for consumers like Gen AI. Secondly, as the digital assistant evolves, Bank of America is also opening up the Erica tech for internal use cases. Hari Gopalkrishnan, CIO, Head of Consumer, Business Banking and Wealth Management Technology says Erica, has evolved over the years and is ripe for integrating Gen AI to build enhanced capabilities. “As we look at the emergence of Generative AI, we actually see that classification can actually get a lot better. You can actually talk even more naturally in a natural language. So that is just a natural sort of expansion of where we go with Erica. We have about 25 different proof of concepts right now, many of them are actually about to get into production, which use a Large Language Model in some way, to continue to enhance the work that we’ve been doing,” he said. Erica’s success with consumers fueled the firm’s efforts to open up the digital assistant for employees. When it launched in 2020, the virtual assistant allowed employees to complete basic tasks like password resets, and device activation. In 2023, Erica for Employees saw another boost in capability with employees being able to review health benefits, locate payroll and tax forms, through the digital assistant.
Intuit’s custom generative AI operating system abstract away technical complexity, so developers don’t need to reinvent risk safeguards or security layers every time they build an agent
At Intuit, agents aren’t just about answering questions—they’re about executing tasks. In TurboTax, for instance, agents help customers complete their taxes 12% faster, with nearly half finishing in under an hour. These intelligent systems draw data from multiple streams—including real-time and batch data—via Intuit’s internal bus and persistent services. Once processed, the agent analyzes the information to make a decision and take action. These capabilities are made possible by GenOS, Intuit’s custom generative AI operating system. At its heart is GenRuntime, which Srivastava likens to a CPU: it receives the data, reasons over it, and determines an action that’s then executed for the end user. The OS was designed to abstract away technical complexity, so developers don’t need to reinvent risk safeguards or security layers every time they build an agent. Across Intuit’s brands—from TurboTax and QuickBooks to Mailchimp and Credit Karma—GenOS helps create consistent, trusted experiences and ensure robustness, scalability and extensibility across use casesAt Intuit, the creation of GenOS empowers hundreds of developers to build safely and consistently. The platform ensures each team can access shared infrastructure, common safeguards, and model flexibility without duplicating work. For Amex, its enablement layer is designed around a unified control plane, the layer lets teams rapidly develop AI-driven agents while enforcing centralized policies and guardrails. It ensures consistent implementation of risk and governance frameworks while encouraging speed. Developers can deploy experiments quickly, then evaluate and scale based on feedback and performance, all without compromising brand trust.
Amex developed an “enablement layer” that allows for rapid development of agents without sacrificing oversight, and a modular “brains”—framework in which agents are required to consult with specific “brains” before taking action
As GenAI capabilities accelerate, Amex is reshaping its strategy to focus on how intelligent agents can drive internal workflows and power the next generation of customer experiences. To support fast experimentation, strong security, and policy enforcement, Amex developed an “enablement layer” that allows for rapid development without sacrificing oversight. Within this system is Amex’s concept of modular “brains”—a framework in which agents are required to consult with specific “brains” before taking action. These brains serve as modular governance layers—covering brand values, privacy, security, and legal compliance—that every agent must engage with during decision-making. Each brain represents a domain-specific set of policies, such as brand voice, privacy rules, or legal constraints and functions as a consultable authority. By routing decisions through this system of constraints, agents remain accountable, aligned with enterprise standards and worthy of user trust. Hillary Packer, EVP and CTO at American Express stressed the need to move quickly, but with intent. “Don’t wait for a bake-off,” Packer advised. “It’s better to pick a direction, get something into production, and iterate quickly, rather than delaying for the perfect solution that may be outdated by launch time.”
Banks can compete with Robinhood which has amassed $18 billion in deposits with integrated investing services that allow consumers to invest directly from their checking account and offer bundled financial wellness features like credit score monitoring and subscription management
The deposit displacement numbers are staggering—and deeply concerning for banks and credit unions. According to research from Cornerstone Advisors and Investifi, more than $3 trillion has slipped out of banks’ and credit unions’ coffers and into the hands of fintechs, neobanks, and digital investment platforms over the past few years. This isn’t just a passing trend—it’s a full-scale displacement of deposits that threatens the foundation of community financial institutions. And at the center of this disruption lies an unexpected culprit: consumer investing. At the center of the situation is the changing role of the checking account. At the center of the investing-led deposit displacement is Robinhood who has amassed more than $18 billion in deposits—despite the company’s fines and business model. The deposit displacement crisis isn’t irreversible. Cornerstone estimates that banks and credit unions can realistically reclaim about a third of the nearly $2 trillion in funds lost to fintech investing platforms. The key? Developing integrated investing services that:
- Allow consumers to invest directly from their checking account.
- Offer bundled financial wellness features like credit score monitoring and subscription management.
- Provide seamless, mobile-first investment experiences within existing digital banking platforms.
- Deliver targeted education to demystify investing, especially for young consumers who believe they don’t have enough money to get started.
- In fact, 70% of non-investing Gen Zers and Millennials report having more than $5,000 in savings—plenty to open an investment account. The problem isn’t capability—it’s awareness and access. Community banks and credit unions can’t simply “market harder” or “be cool like Robinhood” to win back lost deposits. They must:
- Reimagine their checking and savings products to integrate investing; Partner with fintechs or investtech providers to embed seamless investment options; Equip consumers with tools and education to overcome investing barriers; Expand digital capabilities to meet the expectations set by neobanks and crypto platforms. The $2 trillion deposit outflow isn’t just a threat—it’s a wake-up call. Banks and credit unions have a limited window to evolve their product offerings, digital experiences, and customer education strategies to stem the tide.
QR Codes make a splash in the real time payments pool – X9 payment QR code standard introduces a common language for encoding payment data, so single QR code can work across multiple networks, such as FedNow, ACH, and TCH RTP
QR code payments have taken a big step towards becoming not only a mainstream payment option but also one that can accelerate the adoption of real-time payments. Late last week, the technology was used to facilitate a transaction over the FedNow network using the X9 standard. The demonstration transferred funds in one second from a credit union to a Top 4 bank in the United States. During the test, a bill was presented to a payer with a merchant-generated QR code. Upon scanning the code, the payer authorized the transaction via the payer’s credit union’s mobile app. Assisting in the transaction was technology from Matera, a fintech specializing in instant payments and QR code technology. Also involved in the transaction were Tyfone Inc., a digital-banking and -payments platform provider, and real-time payments provider Payfinia Inc., a Tyfone company. Key to making the transaction possible was the X9 payment QR code standard. Developed by the Accredited Standards Committee X9, the X9 standard introduces a common language for encoding payment data in “a secure, structured, and extensible way,” according to Matera. As a result, a single QR code can work across multiple networks, such as FedNow as well as the automated clearing house and The Clearing House’s RTP network. It can also work with different banks. The standard also supports multiple use cases, such as consumer-to-business, business-to-business, and peer-to-peer payments. Matera chief executive and co-founder Carlos Netto said “It opens the door to a broad range of use cases, bill payments, in-store payments and ecommerce, all initiated by QR code and settled in real time. Ultimately, this payment QR Code can accelerate the adoption of instant payments.”