Algebrik AI announced a partnership with TruStage™, to integrate the education of a broad suite of lending protection offerings from TruStage—including GAP coverage, debt protection, credit insurance, and mechanical repair coverage—directly into Algebrik’s end-to-end digital lending workflows. With this integration, Algebrik enables credit unions and community lenders to present TruStage protection products directly within the digital loan application flow—empowering borrowers to choose coverage that fits their needs without disrupting the journey. Whether for auto loans, personal loans, or other credit products, protection options are embedded natively into Algebrik’s borrower experience and remain easily configurable by loan officers. Key Benefits of the Integration: Comprehensive Coverage Options – Offer GAP coverage, credit insurance, debt protection, and mechanical repair coverage products—all surfaced directly within Algebrik’s LOS. Embedded at the Point of Decision – Borrowers encounter relevant protection choices within the same digital flow, with no need to redirect or re-engage later. Configurable by Loan Type & Member Segment – Institutions can tailor which TruStage products are presented based on loan type, member profile, or risk category. Simplified Operations, Centralized Reporting – Built-in tracking, configuration, and compliance support helps lenders manage enrollment, documentation, and servicing with minimal manual effort.
Spinwheel provides real-time, verified consumer credit data for processing payments via APIs using credentialless technology that requires only phone number and date of birth
Spinwheel is rewiring how consumer credit data is accessed, activated, and embedded into financial workflows, with the closure of its $30 million Series A funding round. Spinwheel’s real-time consumer credit data and payments platform currently supports more than 15 million users and 165 million connected credit and liability accounts, facilitating over $1.5 trillion in consumer debt across its network. The new funding will accelerate development of its agentic AI platform, expand its data sets and product offerings, and scale its go-to-market team as it builds the foundational infrastructure to transform the consumer credit data and payments ecosystem. Spinwheel partners with lenders, marketplaces, personal financial management platforms, and other financial companies to provide real-time, verified consumer credit data to process payments as part of their clients’ existing workflow and operations via APIs. The company’s proprietary, credentialless technology requires only two data fields – phone number and date of birth – streamlining and simplifying user actions and delivering a more complete consumer credit profile, empowering financial clients to provide better financial products and a seamless experience for the consumer. Spinwheel’s clients see significant improvements in conversion rates, increased revenue, lower operational and acquisition costs, as well as mitigated risk.
Federal housing regulator to consider the inclusion of crypto assets in the income checks by mortgage lenders as against the current legislation that limits their use only for closing and reserves
Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Putle said his department will review how crypto assets might be included in the income checks by entities such as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Pulte owns up to $1 million in cryptocurrency and holds stakes in crypto firm MARA Holdings and Elon Musk’s X. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac require that virtual currency only be used for “closing and reserves if it has been exchanged into U.S. dollars and is held in a U.S.- or state-regulated financial institution. There must be sufficient documentation to verify that the funds originated from the borrower’s cryptocurrency account.” Meanwhile, there is a “rise of bitcoin as a form of collateral in loans issued by big banks — used as inputs to determine applicants’ net worth and liquidity, and by extension, loan terms.”
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are ordered by FHFA to consider crypto as asset for mortgages
U.S. Federal Housing FHFA Director William J. Pulte has ordered Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to consider cryptocurrency as an asset for single-family mortgage loan risk assessments. Pulte said he ordered the change because cryptocurrency may offer an opportunity to build wealth outside of the stock and bond markets, cryptocurrency has not typically been considered in the mortgage risk assessment process, and the consideration of additional borrower assets in that process “may enable the Enterprises to assess the full spectrum of asset information available for reserves and to facilitate sustainable homeownership to creditworthy borrowers.” The order directs Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to each prepare a proposal for making this change to their single-family mortgage loan risk assessments, consider only cryptocurrency assets that are stored on a U.S.-regulated centralized exchange, and consider additional risk mitigators. “Prior to implementing any changes, each Enterprise must submit and receive approval from its Board of Directors prior to submitting to U.S. Federal Housing FHFA for review,” the order said. Pulte said that his department would review whether crypto holdings should affect Americans’ mortgage applications.
Walmart is testing the use of dark stores (smaller warehouses that are closed to the public) to provide faster delivery amid improvement in batch density and increased penetration of paid expedited delivery orders
Walmart is reportedly testing the use of dark stores to provide faster delivery to customers. The company has opened a dark store in Dallas, plans to add one in Bentonville, Arkansas, and is considering adding more locations. Dark stores are smaller warehouses that are closed to the public and carry popular items in order to support a wider delivery radius and faster deliveries to customers. Walmart opened a few such stores in the mid-2010s but closed them after the pandemic. The company said in November that consumers were showing resilience while prioritizing delivery speed and convenience. Walmart Chief Financial Officer John David Rainey said that the company’s eCommerce margins were benefiting from its delivery densification, increased penetration of paid expedited delivery orders, and automation of the supply chain. “As we scale our store-fulfilled delivery business, we’ve seen significant improvement in batch density with orders per delivery up 20%,” Rainey said. “In addition, the popularity of expedited delivery has resulted in more than 30% of orders coming from customers and members that elected to pay a convenience fee to receive their delivery in less than one hour or less than three hours.”
Birdeye’s AI Publishing Agent auto-generates and auto-schedules brand-aligned and industry-specific content across all locations for weeks by drawing on insights from top-performing posts, competitors’ social activity, and upcoming local holidays and events
Birdeye unveiled its Social AI Publishing Agent, a first-of-its-kind innovation built for Hyperlocal brands ready to dominate on social media. Powered by BirdAI, including the newly launched Brand AI and Industry AI engines, this intelligent agent doesn’t just assist with content planning — it does the job. While traditional tools leave marketers staring at blank calendars and scrambling to create and schedule posts, Birdeye’s Social AI Agent auto-generates and auto-schedules brand-aligned content across all locations for weeks, before you even log in. specific content, your competitors’ social activity, and upcoming local holidays and events, the publishing agent auto-generates weeks worth of social content right on your social calendar. The publishing agent offers businesses multiple configuration options, including post frequency, theme, channel selection, and post time. Depending on the organization’s preference, the agent can share posts as drafts on the calendar, send for approval, or publish autonomously. Brand AI ensures every post reflects the brand’s unique voice, tone, compliance guardrails and visual identity. Industry AI tailors content to the specific nuances of each company’s vertical, local trends, and audience preferences. Together, these proprietary models enable Social AI to auto-generate and schedule content that’s not only on-brand, but also highly relevant and effective. With Birdeye’s AI Agent, marketing teams can finally: Eliminate hours of manual planning; Keep every location’s social feed fresh and consistent; Scale brand engagement without scaling headcount.
Web3 developer Gelato partners a DeFi protocol Morpho for embedded crypto-backed loans that allow borrowing stablecoins using crypto assets as collateral through a fully non-custodial and onchain flow
Gelato, a web3 developer cloud platform, has partnered with Morpho, a decentralized lending protocol, to launch Embedded Crypto-Backed Loans. This partnership allows Wallets, Brokers, and Fintech Apps to instantly borrow stablecoins like USDC using crypto assets as collateral. The borrowing flow is simple, Web2-like, non-custodial, and fully onchain. The platform uses Gelato’s Smart Wallet SDK and Morpho’s permissionless lending markets to provide a secure borrowing flow. Crypto-backed loans are fully non-custodial and onchain, governed by smart contracts. Gelato’s Smart Wallet SDK handles account abstraction, one-click onboarding, and gas sponsorship, enabling modern, web2-style user experiences. Gelato plans to introduce new security and recovery features later this year, including passkey authentication, multi-signer two-factor approvals, and onchain recovery modules tied to email or social logins. Embedded Crypto-Backed Loans are now available in beta on Polygon, Arbitrum, Optimism, and Scroll, with support for Katana coming soon.
Radcred’s platform simplifies access to payday loans by matching applicants with licensed lenders through a fully secure online process using soft credit checks and offering same-day funding
Radcred has launched a digital-first lending platform to meet the rising demand for online payday loans, offering same-day funding and soft credit checks for borrowers historically overlooked by traditional banks. The new system aims to simplify access to small-dollar financing by matching applicants with licensed lenders through a fully secure online process. Radcred’s lending platform connects borrowers directly to a network of licensed, state-compliant payday lenders. With soft inquiry checks and same-day loan processing, the platform is built for speed and accessibility. Unlike traditional banks, Radcred offers options for those with poor or limited credit histories. The platform supports applications from users across all 50 states, focusing on underserved groups such as part-time workers, gig economy professionals, and those recovering from financial setbacks. Through encrypted processing and smart-matching technology, Radcred ensures quick turnaround times often funding requests within hours. Borrowers can secure a $255 payday loan, a $500 loan no credit check loans or another small-dollar amount based on the offers provided by Payday lenders. The process involves no hard credit pull, helping protect the borrower’s FICO score. All offers are presented upfront, with clear repayment timelines and fee disclosures. The platform works seamlessly on both desktop and mobile devices, ensuring broad accessibility for users in need of instant loans.
Spinwheel provides banks and PFM platforms access to real-time, verified consumer credit data for processing payments as part of their clients’ existing workflow via APIs using credential less technology that requires only phone number and date of birth
Powering the future of the consumer credit ecosystem, Spinwheel is rewiring how consumer credit data is accessed, activated, and embedded into financial workflows. Today, the company announced the close of its $30 million Series A funding round, led by F-Prime with participation from QED Investors, Foundation Capital, and Fika Ventures. Spinwheel’s real-time consumer credit data and payments platform currently supports more than 15 million users and 165 million connected credit and liability accounts, facilitating over $1.5 trillion in consumer debt across its network. The new funding will accelerate development of its agentic AI platform, expand its data sets and product offerings, and scale its go-to-market team as it builds the foundational infrastructure to transform the consumer credit data and payments ecosystem. Today, the consumer credit ecosystem is buckling under the weight of legacy systems. U.S. consumer liabilities have reached $19.5 trillion—up from $13.3 trillion just a decade ago. Additionally, the average American holds between 10 to 14 credit accounts. Despite the scale, the infrastructure supporting credit data access and payments remains fragmented, slow, and riddled with friction for financial institutions, while consumers are left juggling multiple logins and outdated information. “Financial providers are faced with immense customer service friction, high operational and acquisition costs, missing or outdated data sets and a cumbersome, disjointed experience for consumers who, in turn, are struggling to view, understand and manage numerous liability and credit accounts. We are transforming this challenge by building the foundational infrastructure to power the future of the consumer credit ecosystem,” said Tomás Campos, co-founder and CEO, Spinwheel. “We believe this is an enormous opportunity that will outpace open banking. With a focus on first principles and innovation, we will elevate our financial clients’ ability to deliver better credit outcomes to consumers like never before.” Spinwheel was built to establish a unified infrastructure layer that simplifies how liabilities are accessed, activated, and resolved. Spinwheel partners with lenders, marketplaces, personal financial management platforms, and other financial companies to provide real-time, verified consumer credit data to process payments as part of their clients’ existing workflow and operations via APIs. The company’s proprietary, credentialless technology requires only two data fields—phone number and date of birth—streamlining and simplifying user actions and delivering a more complete consumer credit profile, empowering financial clients to provide better financial products and a seamless experience for the consumer. Spinwheel’s clients see significant improvements in conversion rates, increased revenue, lower operational and acquisition costs, as well as mitigated risk. “Spinwheel is tackling one of the most complex and consequential frontiers in financial data: real-time consumer liabilities. While open banking has largely focused on assets, there is a large opportunity in mapping the full liability picture across credit cards, mortgages, student loans, and more,” said David Jegen, Managing Partner at F-Prime. “We’re in the early innings of this category’s evolution. Spinwheel’s team has the right combination of deep technical skill and market insight required to lead in a market where challenges are large and the stakes are high.” This latest funding will accelerate its technology to further automate credit management and unlock more data through its agentic AI platform, expand into new access points and offerings for non-traditional data and sources, and build out its go-to-market team. Spinwheel’s infrastructure is built with bank-grade security standards, ensuring that while data is made more accessible.
Walmart taps Scandit’s smart data capture tech to enhance store associate app with voice-activated personal assistant which enables associates to ask questions to quickly locate merchandise and get answers for customers, as well as look up business metrics
Walmart Inc. is renewing a partnership with AI-based mobile scanning solutions provider Scandit to enhance the functionality of its store associate apps. Since 2022, Walmart has been seamlessly integrating Scandit smart data capture software into several apps it provides store associates in an effort to optimize operational tasks such as order fulfillment, stock replenishment, out-of-stock detection, product information look-up and receipt checks for self-checkout customers. For example, Walmart designed the intuitive user interface of its “MyWalmart” associate app with input from Scandit to provide features including viewing their shifts up to two weeks in advance, checking on their upcoming paid time off, and requesting changes to their schedule. In addition, the app provides all associates access to the Ask Sam voice-activated personal assistant which enables them to ask questions to quickly locate merchandise and get answers for customers, as well as look up business metrics. And instead of scanning each box in the back room individually, associates can hold up their device and using augmented reality, highlight the boxes that are ready to go to the store floor. As part of the new expanded agreement, Scandit will provide Walmart with tools and technologies designed to boost the speed and accuracy of their existing associate and customer-facing applications.