Neobanks have proven the fintech thesis with explosive growth and billion-dollar profits, but their once-disruptive UX playbook is now a commodity, leaving them struggling to differentiate beyond branding. Revolut and Nubank are prime examples both combining consistent growth with solid financials. And it’s clear that they have already outgrown their “app” phase and now operate as full-scale financial institutions. The real battleground has shifted to infrastructure — compliance, ledgering, and risk engines — where plug-and-play models are showing cracks and control of the stack is becoming the new definition of strength. Build for vertical SaaS, creator tools and marketplaces — where finance runs in the background, silently. Shopify embeds financial tools directly into the merchant dashboard. Uber built a wallet into the driver experience. Klarna evolved from a standalone BNPL app into an invisible checkout layer. In healthcare, some players are doing something similar — embedding financing, payments and risk management tools directly into provider platforms. It’s fintech without the fintech branding, which makes it all the more scalable. So, infrastructure is turning into a multiplier. Even without consumer-facing brands, the most powerful fintech companies of the next decade will be those quietly owning the rails behind high-volume, cross-vertical financial flows. Major neobanks are already acquiring smaller players to control infrastructure end to end — positioning themselves not just as banks, but as super apps spanning crypto, margin trading, insurance and more. For founders and investors, the message is clear: long-term leverage comes from owning the stack early, even if it means trading off short-term speed. Smart money of the future will be backing the building blocks: unified compliance, simplified payments, modular credit and ledgers that scale. Importantly, this infrastructure is already becoming basic across SaaS, marketplaces and industries well beyond financial services. At this stage, strategic control matters much more than speed. The winners will be the ones who build beyond transactions, as they will power entire ecosystems. Think operating systems for finance, abstracted from banks themselves, embedded wherever economic value moves. That’s the next competitive edge: infrastructure that disappears into everything.
Starbucks pilots ‘coffee house of the future,’ to phase out mobile pickup-only store as it is “overly transactional and lacking warmth and human connection”
Starbucks Corp. is investing in improving its brick-and-mortar experience as part of its turnaround strategy under CEO Brian Niccol. The coffee giant plans to sunset its mobile order and pickup only concept in fiscal 2026. “We found this format to be overly transactional and lacking the warmth and human connection that defines our brand,” Niccol said. “We have a strong digital offering and believe we can deliver the same level of convenience through our community coffee houses with a superior mobile order and pay experience. “ Starbucks has been working on the “coffee house of the future,” Niccol told analysts, and has a new standalone prototype that will open next year. It boasts 32 seats, a drive thru and costs roughly 30% less to build. A small format version of the prototype with approximately 10 seats will open in New York City in the next few months. “We believe this new prototype will deliver an exceptional customer experience, improve unit economics and unlock growth opportunities in more markets,” Niccol said. Starbucks slowed new builds and major renovations to prioritize a new coffee house “uplift” program, with a target investment of approximately $150,000 per store and minimal to no downtime. The uplifts are intended to quickly replace thousands of seats the chain removed and introduce greater texture, warmth and layered design, Niccol said. The program, accelerating now in New York City, will be expanded to Southern California later in the fourth quarter. By the end of calendar year 2026, Starbucks will have completed at least 1,000 uplifts across North America, according to Niccol.
Perplexity is accused of willingly crawling and scraping content from websites that have explicitly blocked its bots, by obscuring its identity
AI startup Perplexity is crawling and scraping content from websites that have explicitly indicated they don’t want to be scraped, according to internet infrastructure provider Cloudflare. Cloudflare published research saying it observed the AI startup ignore blocks and hide its crawling and scraping activities. The network infrastructure giant accused Perplexity of obscuring its identity when trying to scrape web pages “in an attempt to circumvent the website’s preferences,” Cloudflare’s researchers wrote. Perplexity appears to be willingly circumventing these blocks by changing its bots’ “user agent,” meaning a signal that identifies a website visitor by their device and version type, as well as changing their autonomous system networks, or ASN, essentially a number that identifies large networks on the internet, according to Cloudflare. “This activity was observed across tens of thousands of domains and millions of requests per day. We were able to fingerprint this crawler using a combination of machine learning and network signals,” read Cloudflare’s post. Cloudflare said it first noticed the behavior after its customers complained that Perplexity was crawling and scraping their sites, even after they added rules on their Robots file and for specifically blocking Perplexity’s known bots. Cloudflare said it then performed tests to check and confirmed that Perplexity was circumventing these blocks. “We observed that Perplexity uses not only their declared user-agent, but also a generic browser intended to impersonate Google Chrome on macOS when their declared crawler was blocked,” according to Cloudflare. The company also said that it has de-listed Perplexity’s bots from its verified list and added new techniques to block them.
Halo Invest’s platform for advisers offers a light-touch, client-administrated option to efficiently service customers with more modest assets allowing them to easily check progress for clients and corporate actions
Halo Invest Adviser Gateway is now live, offering advisers a light-touch, client-administrated option to efficiently service customers with more modest assets. The platform, led by CEO Douglas Boyce, has secured its first advice firm client and a strong pipeline of new business for the immediate future. The platform is built to make investing “simpler, fairer and better” through innovative functionality, including a transfer dashboard for advisers to easily check progress for clients and corporate actions that the adviser doesn’t need to respond to individually. It also uses Go Cardless for efficient client money addition. The platform features include onboarding, trading, custody, and reporting, as well as a comprehensive range of investments and wrappers. The senior management team at Halo Invest has close to 200 years of combined experience within financial services, including former Tatton CEO Helen O’Neill, Head of Risk and Compliance Wendy Crawford, and Head of Customer Lynn Johnston. Halo Invest Adviser Gateway represents an evolution rather than a revolution, helping advisers achieve profitability from parts of their client book where it was previously difficult or impossible.
Jack Henry launches “MyFinancialHealth” on its digital banking platform designed using a configurable free-to-premium model, allowing financial institutions to offer key features at no cost to users, with optional paid upgrades
Jack Henry has launched MyFinancialHealth, allowing over 1,000 banks and credit unions to embed a suite of financial health tools powered by Array. The platform offers a broader suite of embeddable tools, including credit monitoring, identity protection, online subscription management, and federal student loans. The platform is designed using a configurable free-to-premium model, allowing financial institutions to offer key features at no cost to users, with optional paid upgrades for enhanced control and protection. The platform is easily activated through a single configuration, eliminating APIs, onboarding burden, and custom development. The launch aligns with Jack Henry’s mission to deepen the connection between accountholders and their primary financial institutions, reducing financial fragmentation and improving digital engagement. Array reports that users visit its components an average of 2.2 times a month, with many opting for premium services.
Ninth Wave’s next-gen portal offers FIs deep insights into data usage, access management, and fintech activity, empowering secure, compliant monetization of permissioned open finance data
Ninth Wave, a leading provider of open finance connectivity solutions, has launched its next-generation Ninth Wave Portal. The Portal closely monitors and measures all aspects of open finance data, giving financial institutions (FIs) full control over data sharing and providing deeper insights into security and usage patterns. It will enable FIs to monetize data sharing if they choose, creating new revenue streams from open finance. The platform enables banks to securely manage and monetize permissioned data through value-added services, unlocking new revenue streams. The Ninth Wave Portal serves as the financial institution’s window into their open finance ecosystem, removing guesswork and increasing transparency. It ensures data interactions are securely integrated, permissioned, and compliant with privacy requirements. The Ninth Wave Portal’s Analytics and Intelligence feature detects all data requests originating from external applications made on behalf of financial institutions’ customers, and identifies the following: Which applications are accessing data from the FI; Which fintech applications are accessing data through aggregator partnerships; What is the volume of requests per application; How many customers are taking advantage of the connectivity and who are they; What are the performance and uptime statistics for the open finance APIs.
CodeSightAI launches an AI code review platform that integrates with GitHub to cut review time by 60%, detect 90% of security issues, and automate smart fixes
CodeSightAI launched its AI-powered code review platform designed to help development teams deliver high-quality software faster. The platform seamlessly integrates with GitHub to provide intelligent code analysis, real-time collaboration, and comprehensive security scanning. The new platform addresses critical inefficiencies in traditional code review processes that cost the global software industry billions annually. By leveraging advanced AI algorithms, CodeSightAI enables development teams to reduce review time by up to 60% while catching 90% of security issues before deployment. CodeSightAI’s comprehensive feature set includes AI-powered code analysis that detects bugs, security vulnerabilities, and performance issues in real-time. The platform provides smart fix recommendations with automated application capabilities and supports multiple programming languages with pattern-based security scanning. The AI-powered code review platform offers seamless GitHub integration through one-click OAuth authentication, automated pull request analysis, and real-time synchronization with repository changes. Development teams benefit from live collaboration features including real-time cursors, code comments, and team performance analytics. Key capabilities of the platform include: – Advanced AI algorithms for bug and vulnerability detection; Real-time code quality assessment with detailed suggestions; Comprehensive security scanning with Row-Level Security; Team collaboration hub with activity feeds and performance metrics; Smart analytics dashboard tracking pull request metrics and quality improvements; Flexible billing and subscription management through Stripe integration.
Embedded lending experiences become seamless with a best-of-breed orchestration stack that unifies KYC, AML, open banking, and audit trails for real-time risk decisions
The global market for embedded lending is expected to reach $7.2 trillion by 2030, but traditional compliance systems are facing challenges due to false positives in AML alerts. This can lead to delays, frustrated customers, and extra operational strain. Research shows that 32% of lenders see manual income verification as their biggest bottleneck in risk decisioning, while a quarter say document validation is their single highest cost. A robust orchestration layer with a best-of-breed approach can help reduce false positives and connect all risk and compliance checks to improve the borrower experience. This results in faster decisions, fewer customer drop-offs, and an uninterrupted lending experience. False positives in the KYC process can cause delays while compliance teams review the loan application manually. A pause in this process or within the process of transaction monitoring is more likely to cause a customer to abandon their purchase, leading to missed interest, revenue, and potential new-to-bank customers. Quick KYC and AML decisioning is a key part of the embedded lending compliance process, and regulators are tightening their grip on this issue. An integrated orchestration layer can build smarter, faster compliance directly into the customer experience. Effective AML hinges on piecing together up-to-date data from a web of internal and external sources. Modern orchestration layers typically include money laundering risk scoring modules, API connectivity to multiple vendors, and complete audit trails for compliance. The flexibility of the orchestration layer comes down to the lender’s risk appetite, allowing them to balance effective fraud detection with minimising false positives. An effective orchestration layer not only streamlines AML checks but also stitches together all the critical services required to deliver a seamless, compliant lending and customer onboarding experience.
Figure Technology embeds AI and Provenance blockchain into consumer lending to cut HELOC approval to 10 days, enabling on‑chain origination, AI underwriting and smart‑contract loan trading.
Figure Technology’s recent filing to go public spotlights the growth of AI and blockchain into loan origination, underwriting and secondary market trading. The company’s platform is built on the Provenance blockchain, which it describes as a “record of truth” for assets. Every loan originated through its system is recorded on the blockchain, providing an immutable record of ownership and performance. Figure combines that with automated valuation models, AI-powered underwriting, and smart contracts that govern loan sales and transfers. This approach has allowed the company to shorten approval times for home equity lines of credit (HELOCs) to a median of 10 days from an industry average of 42 days. Loan applications can be completed in five minutes, with funding available in as little as five days. Figure estimates its addressable market across lending and capital markets at approximately $185 billion in annual revenue potential, based on consumer credit originations and marketplace trading. In addition to lending, management is targeting tokenization and stablecoins as growth opportunities. The filing contends that the company has achieved profitability and scaled it in a capital-efficient way. Revenue models are built on fees from originations, servicing, gain on loan sales, and technology usage. Partner-branded lending, where banks and mortgage originators use Figure’s platform under their own brand, accounts for 77% of total originations. Figure had 168 active partners as of mid-2025. The company has also built regulatory infrastructure to support its ambitions. It holds more than 180 lending and servicing licenses, 48 money transmitter licenses, and SEC registration as a broker-dealer with authority to operate an alternative trading system. Internationally, it has crypto licenses in the Cayman Islands and Ireland. Management argues that this licensing framework differentiates it from competitors and will support scaling of new products.
Visa launches global framework unifying fraud and disputes for both acquirers and merchants; merchants above 2.2% disputes pay $8 each, threshold drops to 1.5% in April 2026.
Visa has launched its updated Visa Acquirer Monitoring Program (VAMP), introducing a unified global framework for fraud and dispute monitoring designed to strengthen compliance and safeguard the payments ecosystem. By consolidating fraud and dispute oversight for both acquirers and merchants, VAMP has been positioned as a pivotal development in the fight against payment fraud. Under the new framework, merchants whose disputed transactions have exceeded 2.2% – whether fraudulent or not have been subjected to penalties of $8 per dispute, with the threshold set to be reduced to 1.5% from April 2026. In parallel, merchants whose transactions have included more than 20% enumeration attacks – fraudulent test purchases made with stolen card details – have been brought under the scope of enforcement, regardless of transaction value. The introduction of VAMP has signalled a fundamental shift for merchants, who have been faced with increased compliance obligations, heightened cost pressures, and the potential risk of being restricted from accepting Visa payments. “With VAMP, Visa compels merchants to get on the front foot with fraud. If they don’t, they may find themselves hit with additional fees or even blocked from accepting Visa payments altogether. No merchant wants to find themselves unable to accept Visa payments, which make up almost 40% of global card transactions. Maintaining low fraud rates is not just a cost-control or compliance issue; it’s a business-critical priority. Merchants can’t afford to sit back. VAMP is here, and the impact will be felt across customer experience, operations and revenue,” said Martin Sweeney, CEO of Ravelin.