Google has launched a joint effort with the Financial Services Information Sharing and Analysis Center, or FS-ISAC, that will combine the search giant’s threat detection capabilities with FS-ISAC’s network and intelligence sharing to prevent fraud within the financial sector. The program is dubbed the Financial Services branch of Google’s Priority Flagger Program. The collaboration with Google “accelerates the speed with which FS-ISAC members can identify and mitigate evolving fraud threats, increasing the security of institutions and the communities they serve,” said Teresa Walsh, FS-ISAC’s chief intelligence officer. While anyone can flag content on Google platforms flags from Priority Flaggers are prioritized for review by content moderators due to their high degree of trust and expertise. Google’s Priority Flagger program provides tools to eligible organizations like government agencies and non-governmental organizations, or NGOs, to quickly resolve with Google any violations of the platform’s policies, such as ads that attempt to defraud bank customers by imitating that customer’s bank and misusing its branding. Google considers priority flaggers to be particularly effective at reporting content that violates Google’s Community Guidelines or policies. The program gives participants dedicated channels to inform Google of potential violations that will be reviewed at a priority. Content reported by Priority Flaggers is not automatically removed. The same standards apply for all flags; the difference is the prioritization of the review process. The goal of the Financial Services Priority Flagger Program is to accelerate fraud prevention and detection specifically for the financial sector, according to Google and FS-ISAC. Google’s Priority Flagger Program generally streamlines the process of identifying, reporting and mitigating fraud threats related to Google platforms — specifically, Google Workspace and Google Ads. This collaboration builds on “years of collaboration” between the organizations, according to Amanda Storey, senior director of trust and safety at Google. It is “the kind of concrete cross-sector effort that meaningfully helps financial institutions protect their customers and employees,” she said. As part of this financial services-specific initiative, FS-ISAC will operate a dedicated channel for its members. Through this channel, members can report fraud and other malicious activity that leverages Google Workspace or Google Ads. The program initially launched with a pilot group of FS-ISAC member institutions. In the first 10 days of the pilot, FS-ISAC flagged 21 accounts, which allowed Google to identify and take action on 288 abusive accounts connected to the original ones, according to the press release. The program is now expanding to include all FS-ISAC member firms, providing access to reporting mechanisms, resources and direct support from experts. FS-ISAC’s new program is part of Google’s participation in the consortium’s Critical Providers Program. The Critical Providers Program is an official conduit for nonfinancial organizations that provide network infrastructure and services to share timely and industry-specific security information. Google Cloud was the first major cloud provider to join this program. Google’s new partnership with FS-ISAC reflects the significant and persistent challenge of fraudulent advertisements published through the Google Ads platform. The issue not only impacts consumers but also poses a substantial financial threat to legitimate businesses.
An offer of subscription management made 13% of trial users to upgrade to a leading bank’s fee-based premium account for continued access
The “subscription economy” has exploded, consumers are struggling to manage their costs, and standalone subscription management tools have boomed. Banks are uniquely positioned to assist their customers with subscription overload, but more institutions need to get in the game. Subscription management is now a critical budgeting tool with the potential to save customers as much or more than a free checking account or a loan refinance. Adding subscription management to your account services will help your customers budget smarter and align their expenses to their values and needs. Bank financial advisors are increasingly recommending that clients audit their subscriptions quarterly. Some are even suggesting setting a “subscription cap” as part of their financial wellness customer check-up processes. But this advice is no more than lip service, when much more sophisticated tools are available to comprehensively meet consumers’ needs. Solutions give control back to consumers by: Algorithmically identifying recurring charges; Exposing unused or forgotten subscriptions; Tracking & monitoring subscription payment deadlines and renewal dates; Alerting users to upcoming milestones; Simplifying cancellation processes; Negotiating more favorable terms for subscriptions they need. A real-world example: A financial institution wanted to grow their base of premium customers by offering a unique digital experience. This financial institution introduced a bill management system to a 200k test population as a freemium trial. More than 28% customers adopted the offering, taking advantage of its ability to auto-identify hidden subscriptions, monitor renewal and payment deadlines, and execute 1-click cancellations of any unwanted services. Fully 12.9% of trial users upgraded to the financial institution’s fee-based premium account for continued access. As even more services continue to shift to subscription models — think cars, clothing, even pet care — the need for robust subscription oversight will only grow. In this landscape, solutions that help consumers regain clarity and control over their financial commitments are more than useful — they’re essential. We predict within 12-18 months, embedded bill management will be table stakes for banks and credit unions of all types, from banks to digital wallets.
Circle announced go-live of stablecoin-powered cross-border payments network that enables exchange of payment instructions securely and reliably, while settling transactions on open, public blockchains with near-instant finality
The Circle Payments Network (CPN) announced in April is now live. CPN is purpose-built to unlock the full potential of stablecoins for mainstream cross-border payments—a $190 trillion market that still depends heavily on fragmented, slow, opaque, and manual infrastructure designed in the pre-internet era. CPN delivers a significant software upgrade for global payments—creating value for financial institutions and their business and retail customers, while enabling innovation to flourish. At its core, CPN is a sophisticated compliance-first payments coordination protocol. It enables financial institutions to exchange payment instructions securely and reliably, while settling transactions on open, public blockchains with near-instant finality. CPN was designed to make it easier for financial institutions to move money globally and supports a wide range of payment use cases, including: B2B supplier payments; Cross-border remittances; Treasury and global cash consolidations; Recurring enterprise payments, including subscriptions; Payroll and mass disbursements. Early adopters of CPN include Alfred Pay, which is using the network to enable stablecoin-to-fiat offramps via PIX and SPEI; Tazapay, which is using it to support compliant fiat disbursements into Hong Kong; RedotPay, which is using the network to initiate USDC-based payments into Brazil; and Conduit, which is using it to onramp fiat into USDC in the U.S. and Europe to support B2B flows into Mexico.
Roblox’s Commerce APIs enable brands and creators to bundle physical purchases with digital items while allowing users to discover, create, and shop without leaving Roblox
Roblox, an online gaming platform, has enhanced its commerce capabilities by partnering with Shopify as its first integrated partner. This partnership allows creators or brands to sell physical goods within their experiences, accessible to all suitable experiences, including those aimed at all ages. The service is initially available to US users aged 13 and above. Plans are in place to broaden the scope of partners and extend the availability of these services to additional markets. The platform offers a unique shopping experience, allowing users to visit virtual stores, try on clothing, and engage with others, fostering interest and intent to purchase. Fenty Beauty, a pioneering brand, has launched a shoppable game on Roblox featuring an exclusive new shade of its Gloss Bomb Universal Lip Luminizer. Roblox is also launching an approved merchandiser programme (AMP) that links physical shopping with virtual goods and benefits on the gaming platform. This allows purchasing products at retail locations to unlock corresponding digital items on Roblox, enhancing consumer appeal and increasing the value of intellectual property.
Catena Labs aims to be the first fully regulated AI-native financial institution enabling AI agents to transact with regulated stablecoins and offering near-instant settlement, minimal transaction costs, and easy integration with AI workflows
Catena Labs announced its plan to establish the first fully regulated AI-native financial institution (FI) designed to serve the unique needs of the emerging AI economy. The company released a new open-source project defining protocols and patterns for agentic commerce. The company also confirmed an $18 million financing round led by a16z crypto, with participation from Breyer Capital, Circle Ventures, Coinbase Ventures and others. The company aims to address the shortcomings in legacy financial systems that make them poorly suited to the needs of AI agents and agentic commerce. “AI agents will soon conduct most economic transactions, but today’s financial systems are unprepared and resistant to interactions with automated intelligence,” said Sean Neville, CEO and co-founder of Catena Labs. “That’s why we’re building an AI-native financial institution that will give AI agents, and the businesses and consumers they serve, the ability to transact safely and efficiently.” The company is building upon protocols, patterns, emerging standards, and open source components to address new requirements AI agents create for identity and payments. Today, the company released the open source Agent Commerce Kit (ACK), which defines several of these open source building blocks. The company is building on ACK and other emerging standards to offer a broad suite of licensed financial services addressing new risk, security, and compliance challenges that arise from AI systems working as independent economic actors.
Amazon is testing short-form audio product summaries on product detail pages, featuring AI-powered experts discussing key features
Amazon is testing short-form audio product summaries on product detail pages, featuring AI-powered experts discussing key features. The feature makes product research fun and convenient, making shopping easier for customers. Customers can listen to the summaries by tapping the “Hear the highlights” button in the Amazon Shopping app. The feature is currently available to select U.S. customers and will roll out to more customers in the coming months. The feature uses large language models (LLMs) to generate scripts, pulling from Amazon’s product catalog, customer reviews, and information from across the web, and then translating the content into short-form audio clips. AI-powered short-form audio content builds on Amazon’s work to make shopping faster, easier, and more fun. Some of our other AI-powered shopping features that help customers save time and make more informed decisions include:
Rufus, Amazon’s generative AI-powered shopping assistant that can answer questions on a variety of shopping needs and products—it’s like having a shopping assistant with you any time you’re in our store.
Shopping Guides, Amazon’s simplified product research tool that leverages generative AI to bring together dynamic shopping guidance and product recommendations on over 100 product types.
Interests, an AI-powered feature that works on your behalf to continuously monitor new products in Amazon’s store that match your interests and passions.
Review highlights, an AI-powered summary of common themes across reviews that can help you understand product sentiment at a glance.
Buy for Me, a new experiment in beta that allows you to complete purchases from other brand retailer websites if Amazon doesn’t sell the item directly, using agentic AI that doesn’t require human intervention.
NIST releases new AI attack taxonomy with expanded GenAI section and recognizing the extensive use of third-party foundation models in the AI supply chain, and the potential harm of malicious and backdoored models
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) published a new 2025 version of its adversarial AI taxonomy, first published in January 2024. The latest version of “Adversarial Machine Learning: A Taxonomy and Terminology of Attacks and Mitigations,” released March 2025, supplies significant updates, including expanded sections on generative AI (GenAI) and key challenges, and a standardized index for more efficient navigation and referencing. “Overall, we updated the content to reflect the progress over the year since the previous version, including terminology, glossary, and bibliography,” Apostol Vassilev, report co-author and research team supervisor at NIST’s Information Technology Laboratory, Computer Security Division, told. The report is designed to be used in conjunction with NIST’s AI Risk Management Framework to help organizations understand how AI models can be misused by attackers and how these attacks can be combatted, Vassilev said. The taxonomy report is divided into separate sections for predictive AI (PredAI) and GenAI, with the GenAI section seeing the most substantial change in the 2025 update. “We renamed the Abuse class of attacks to the Misuse class […] in order to handle a wider range of exploits and align our standard with other NIST and external standards,” Vassilev explained. This change adds model jailbreaks, data poisoning and fine-tuning circumvention under the umbrella of misuse, where an attacker seeks to bypass restrictions and produce potentially harmful AI outputs. The section on supply chain attacks saw significant changes, with distinct subsections on data poisoning and model poisoning attacks. This change recognizes the extensive use of third-party foundation models in the AI supply chain, and the potential harm of malicious and backdoored models.A new section on the security of AI agents noted that these autonomous AI systems can be vulnerable to many of the same exploits as traditional large language models (LLMs), with added risks due to their expanded capabilities. The 2025 report also includes a more detailed description of the GenAI stages of learning to help readers better understand attacks targeting specific learning stages. This information is further incorporated into the guidance on mitigations for direct prompt injection attacks, with interventions divided into pre-training, post-training, evaluation and deployment stages. A longer, updated list of indirect prompt injection techniques was added in the 2025 report; for example, the section highlights self-propagating injections, where a model reads an email that instructs it to send malicious emails to everyone in the user’s contact list. The GenAI section concluded with a new subsection on adversarial machine leaning (AML) benchmarks, referencing nearly a dozen different benchmarking tools and frameworks to help assess models’ susceptibility to varied attacks. The concluding section on key challenges and discussion underwent an overhaul in the latest report, including updated information on supply chain challenges, new subsections on risk management and mitigation evaluations, and a lengthier discussion on tradeoffs between the attributes of trustworthy AI. The new section on evaluation noted a lack of reliable benchmarks to assess the effectiveness of proposed AML mitigations and calls for more research to develop reliable, standardized methods.
Snoop launches Variable Recurring Payments to supercharge automated saving- allowing users to set flexible, automated deposits from their current account into their Snoop savings account on a weekly or monthly basis
Snoop has launched Variable Recurring Payments (VRPs), letting users automate savings with ease and stay on track with financial goals – all powered by Open Banking. Snoop’s new VRP functionality allows users to set flexible, automated deposits from their current account into their Snoop savings account on a weekly or monthly basis – on the day that suits them. This new capability builds on the app’s existing savings features, which already include smart insights and nudges that help customers shift spare cash into high-interest savings. John Natalizia, chief executive officer and co-founder of Snoop said “With VRPs, we’re unlocking a new level of control and ease. This is about building better habits with less effort – and helping people grow their money without needing to think about it every day.” Since launch, the Snoop savings account has gained strong traction. Over 90% of customers fund their accounts using Open Banking, preferring seamless, secure transfers over manual top-ups. The Snoop savings account offers: 4.25% AER / 4.16% gross (variable) interest; Daily interest payments; Easy access: same working day if requested before 11am; Open from just £1, save up to £85,000; FSCS protection up to £85,000 (held with Vanquis Bank Limited). Over 80% of users have set savings goals, most aiming to build an emergency fund. Snoop recommends monthly contributions and nudges users when spare cash is available. This will expand to include advanced sweep rules, roundups, and payday savings, offering even more intelligent automation. Natalizia added “Unlike traditional accounts, Snoop actively helps customers optimise their savings.
BlackRock’s Aladdin integrates Passthrough’s digital onboarding—featuring standardized investor questionnaires, automated data collection, and embedded compliance checks—to streamline private market workflows and enhance investor experience on eFront
Passthrough and Aladdin, BlackRock’s technology business, announced a partnership that integrates Passthrough’s digital subscription technology within the eFront platform to offer a unified investor experience. The collaboration enables common clients – from general partners to asset servicers – to digitize their investor onboarding process and deliver scalable investor relations solutions for their clients. Now live, the integration enables eFront users to streamline and automate onboarding and fund closings for their investors. Using Passthrough’s technology, it’s now easier to distribute and execute subscription documents electronically, accelerating subscription workflow and reporting. Over time, the two companies will collaborate further to embed Passthrough’s full onboarding flow – including subscription agreements, tax forms, and AML requests – within eFront’s investor experience. Through this partnership, BlackRock will also leverage Passthrough’s technology to streamline onboarding for clients in its private markets business. Passthrough automates investor onboarding and compliance workflows for private funds. From subscription documents and tax forms to AML and KYC processes, Passthrough eliminates friction for both investors and fund managers. The platform connects directly to CRMs, investor portals, and fund admin systems to provide a seamless, API-first experience across the investor lifecycle.
Pagaya the provider of AI-driven underwriting technology brings $1 billion in additional POS BNPL funding capacity through securitization
Pagaya Technologies has launched POSH (Pagaya Point of Sale Holdings Trust), a new asset-backed revolving securitization program focused on point-of-sale financing (“POS”), which will enable Pagaya to be a growth catalyst for point-of-sale providers in the U.S. By combining increased funding capacity through POSH with Pagaya’s embedded AI-driven underwriting technology, lenders can approve more customers at the point of sale. This boosts merchant satisfaction, broader adoption and activation. The inaugural transaction, POSH 2025-1, is a $300 million AAA-rated deal, with an 18-month revolving period, and is expected to close next week. The revolving nature of the deal structure allows Pagaya to reinvest capital as loans are repaid, significantly expanding overall lending capacity, while also increasing capital efficiency. The POS product is optimized for loans with shorter durations – typically six months – and credit profiles in the 600+ range, empowering lenders to approve more customers without additional credit risk. As demand continues to surge across the POS ecosystem, Pagaya is delivering new capital solutions to drive the next phase of lending partner growth. Sanjiv Das, Co-Founder and President of Pagaya said “It enables Pagaya to support our existing POS lending partners at scale by powering more customer approvals, which in turn drives greater merchant satisfaction and activation. These results are delivered seamlessly through our API integration into our partners’ origination systems, making it easy to unlock value for both lenders and merchants.