Financial services infrastructure provider OpenPayd launched a partnership with blockchain company Ripple. The collaboration will see OpenPayd’s global fiat infrastructure, including real-time payment rails, multicurrency accounts and virtual IBANs, support Ripple Payments into euros and British pounds. “By combining Ripple Payments with OpenPayd’s rail-agnostic and fully interoperable fiat infrastructure, we are delivering a unified platform that bridges traditional finance and blockchain,” OpenPayd CEO Iana Dimitrova said. “This partnership enables businesses to move and manage money globally, access stablecoin liquidity at scale, and simplify cross-border payments, treasury flows and dollar-based operations.” Ripple Payments is Ripple’s cross-border payment solution, employing blockchain, digital assets and a network of payout partners to deliver cross-border payments and on/off ramps for banks, FinTechs and cryptocurrency firms. The partnership is part of OpenPayd’s efforts to expand its newly launched stablecoin infrastructure, with the company providing direct minting and burning capabilities for Ripple USD (RLUSD). Businesses will be able to convert between fiat and RLUSD, accessing OpenPayd’s suite of services usinag a single API.
Visa and Mastercard are casting themselves as the connective tissue and playing to their strengths of global scale, trusted rails, built-in fraud protection, and tokenization tech to gain from the shift in card swipe fees to stablecoin payments
A major turf war is heating up in the payments worldand Visa and Mastercard suddenly find themselves on defense. Stablecoins like USDC are gaining traction, with companies like Shopify, Coinbase, and Stripe quietly rerouting payments around traditional card networks. For merchants, the pitch is irresistible: faster settlement, fewer fees, and no middlemen. With U.S. businesses spending roughly $187 billion a year on card swipe fees, even a small shift could redraw the map. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has hinted the stablecoin marketnow at $253 billioncould reach $2 trillion in the next few years. That’s not a side bet. That’s a direct hit. Visa and Mastercard aren’t sitting still. They’re flipping the narrativecasting themselves as the connective tissue for all things digital, stablecoins included. Visa is letting banks issue digital tokens and pilot stablecoin settlement directly on its network. Mastercard, meanwhile, just teamed up with Paxos to mint and redeem USDG, its fiat-backed stablecoin. The two networks are leaning into their edge: global scale, trusted rails, built-in fraud protection, and tokenization tech that masks sensitive data at checkout. That’s not just defense. It’s a strategic pivot.
Precisely’s code-light conversational interface uses MCP to connect APIs with LLMs through natural language prompts and enables instant access to location intelligence tools and rich datasets without requiring any code
Precisely has developed a lightweight setup using the Model Context Protocol (MCP) to connect APIs with large language model (LLM) interfaces like Claude Desktop. This approach eliminates the need for writing boilerplate code and allows for intuitive exploration of services through conversational interfaces. MCP offers a standardized method for AI applications to connect with APIs, data, and tools, enabling LLMs to dynamically decide which functions to invoke in response to user prompts. This aligns with Precisely’s goal of making it easier to integrate high-integrity data with applications and workflows. An MCP server was built to wrap all available endpoints from Precisely APIs, resulting in a code-light environment where Claude Desktop can execute API calls automatically based on a user’s request. The MCP server supports natural language prompts and enables instant access to location intelligence tools and rich datasets without requiring any code. It also helps scale the impact of data programs across the organization without adding to developer workload.
Ramp’s corporate cards for expense management integrate with leading accounting platforms, feature advanced fraud detection tools and enable setting customizable spending controls by employee or department and instant issuance of virtual and physical cards
Ramp has announced the official launch of its upgraded corporate cards for expense management. This new solution is designed to transform how businesses manage expenses, offering real-time visibility, tighter financial controls, and simplified reconciliation processes. With the launch of its corporate cards for expense management, Ramp is addressing the growing need for businesses to eliminate outdated manual expense workflows. The enhanced offering integrates with leading accounting platforms and equips finance teams with tools to reduce fraud risk, enforce spending policies, and enable accurate financial forecasting. Key features of the new corporate cards for expense management include customizable spending controls by employee or department, instant issuance of virtual and physical cards, and advanced fraud detection tools. Businesses can assign dedicated virtual cards for vendor subscriptions, improving vendor management and reducing the risk of unauthorized charges. As global teams and remote workforces expand, Ramp’s expense management solution ensures seamless financial oversight across geographies and departments. Audit trails are automatically maintained, providing businesses with ready access to clean, transparent transaction histories for compliance.
OpenAI enables retailers to build AI shopping agents that can search for products, add items to a cart, and generate checkout links without requiring authentication by connecting the store’s URL directly to the OpenAI Responses API
OpenAI unveiled a way for retailers to create artificial intelligence (AI) shopping assistants in Shopify. With a few clicks, developers can now connect the Storefront Managed Compute Platform (MCP) server directly to the OpenAI Responses API to build agents that can search for products, add items to a cart, and generate checkout links — all without requiring authentication. Go to the OpenAI Playground, under Tools, add MCP Server. Click on Shopify and add your store’s URL to create the AI shopping assistant. Now when users type, “I am looking for a lightweight men’s button up shirt for a vacation,” for example, the assistant will search for options from your inventory to show the shopper. If the shopper picks one of the options, the assistant can automatically move it to checkout. The move reflects OpenAI’s broader strategy to move deeper into offering shopping capabilities. Rival Perplexity already offers a shopping assistant within its AI chatbot. Shopify is one of the merchants whose products can be found through Perplexity. Google introduced Gemini Robotics On-Device, an AI model that runs directly on robots without the need for an internet connection. Amazon unveiled DeepFleet, an AI model that acts as a traffic controller for warehouse robots, improving travel efficiency by 10%.
Tailor’s platform enables enterprises to build their own ERP stack using its composable, headless architecture that decouples the data and logic layer from the UI, allowing for highly customizable workflows and easy integration with best-of-breed SaaS tools
Tailor, a headless ERP platform for modern retail businesses, announced an additional close of its Series A round, bringing the total raised to $22 million. The new investors include JIC Venture Growth Investments (JIC VGI), a Japanese government-backed investment fund, and New Enterprise Associates (NEA). Y Combinator, which participated in Tailor’s seed round, also increased its investment. This second close reflects growing global demand for flexible, API-first business systems that help enterprises move beyond the limitations of monolithic ERPs. “Tailor’s platform serves an increasingly complex supply chain landscape and we believe Tailor has the potential to rethink the ERP systems that power global commerce and operational agility,” said Andrew Schoen, Partner Technology Investing Team, at NEA. Tailor enables mid-market and enterprise companies to build and evolve their own ERP stack with speed and flexibility. Its composable, headless architecture decouples the data and logic layer from the user interface, allowing for highly customizable workflows and easy integration with best-of-breed SaaS tools. With Tailor, companies can: Orchestrate cross-system workflows with customizable modules for inventory, purchasing, fulfillment, finance, and more; Replace or integrate with legacy systems without re-architecting core infrastructure; Give developers and AI agents programmatic access to business logic and operational data; Deliver internal tools or customer-facing experiences with custom UIs
Fund managers like Vanguard and State Street looking to tap into higher-cost private markets to boost revenue by selling funds that charge higher fees, to offset the years-long trend of near-zero
Vanguard Group grew into a $10 trillion financial colossus by pioneering simple, ultralow-cost investing. Its wildly popular index funds proved that people don’t need expensive portfolio managers to pick their investments. These days, the company’s most exciting new product is a striking departure from that playbook—a foray into the world of private markets, where investors pay steep fees for access to complex deals that promise high returns. Wall Street is feverishly embracing private markets and Vanguard, like other giant money managers, wants a foothold in this booming business. A new fund it is developing with Blackstone and Wellington Management will offer a mix of public and private assets. State Street, another big fund manager, joined with Blackstone rival Apollo Global Management to create a 401(k) target-date fund with approximately 10% exposure to private markets. BlackRock is aiming to launch something similar next year. The companies say they want to democratize investing, letting people place bets in areas like private equity and private credit that have long been restricted to pensions, endowments and plugged-in elites. With fewer publicly traded companies to invest in, people need to put money in private markets, they say. The investment firms have something to gain for themselves in this shift. After years of driving down fees, retail fund managers are nearing a wall as what they charge approaches zero . The chance to sell more funds that can charge higher fees would boost revenues for the likes of Vanguard and State Street, which pioneered exchange traded funds. “They have been preaching low fees and competition, and now they’ve come around to the value of alternative investments in client portfolios,” said Morgan Stanley analyst Michael Cyprys . The companies that create and manage the private funds—Blackstone, Apollo, KKR and others—are hitting their own wall as their privateequity funds , which own unlisted companies, stall. They have focused on private credit , which involves issuing loans to those same sorts of companies, to generate growth. The trillions in savings held by retail fund managers looks like enticing fuel for their businesses. “Everyone’s looking at Vanguard and saying ‘wow, they have a tremendous pile of gold, I wonder if they’d let us have a small slice’,” said Bob Brinker , publisher of a mutual-fund newsletter.
Margarita Finance launches agentic stablecoin technology with 20% APY yield-bearing token, allowing users to access institutional DeFi investment strategies through a single token purchase
Margarita Finance launched its agentic stablecoin technology to an invite-only user base this week, introducing a DeFAI protocol that automates AI-based institutional investment management through yield-bearing stablecoins. The company’s new protocol autonomously builds and issues institutional investment products, wraps them into proprietary vaults with automated monitoring, and makes them investable through yield-bearing stablecoins. The first curated offering, SOL20, provides a 20% expected return (APY) to users powered by AI-based options trading. This way, DeFi users get access to institutional trading strategies usually reserved to Wall-Street hedge funds. The DeFAI protocol operates by creating custom investment strategies, packaging them into monitored vaults, and wrapping them into easily accessible stablecoins that are backed by the underlying yield-generating assets. This approach allows users to access institutional DeFi investment strategies through a single token purchase. Margarita Finance’s end-to-end value capture model now encompasses both consulted custom investment products and curated yield-bearing stablecoins, providing users with multiple entry points into AI-managed DeFi strategies.
Google’s ad network has begun showing advertising within the flow of conversations with chatbots operated by AI startups
Google’s ad network has begun showing advertising within the flow of conversations with chatbots — part of Alphabet Inc.’s efforts to keep its edge in digital advertising as generative artificial intelligence takes off. Earlier this year, Google’s AdSense for Search network, which traditionally shows ads within the search results of other websites, expanded to include conversations with chatbots operated by AI startups. Google made the move after conducting tests last year and earlier this year with a handful of startups, including AI search apps iAsk and Liner, according to people familiar with the matter who asked not to be identified discussing private information. Showing ads alongside its own search results is the heart of Google’s business, bolstered by a business that serves up advertising across much of the web. That empire has come under threat as new entrants like OpenAI and Perplexity AI seek to siphon off the search giant’s audience with products aiming to help users find what they are looking for more quickly. Generative AI startups are increasingly exploring advertising-based business models to offset the high costs of answering users’ questions with artificial intelligence. For example, before inviting users to ask follow-up questions, iAsk shows ads below its AI-generated responses. In addition to Google, startups such as Koah Labs have begun allowing brands to serve ads to the chatbot audience. AI search startup Perplexity, one of the most prominent players using AI to reshape internet services, establishes relationships directly with brands that want to buy ads on the site, according to a person familiar with the matter. Perplexity allows brands to sponsor follow-up questions to users’ queries.
Modern Treasury’s AI agent for enterprise payment operations only takes action when it’s approved to do so, doesn’t let third-party model providers train on company data, is auditable by design and delivers verifiable results
Modern Treasury, the payment operations platform for businesses, introduced Modern Treasury AI to deliver the first AI Platform purpose-built for the unique demands of enterprise payments. Built on the company’s Payment Ops infrastructure, Modern Treasury AI blends a context-aware agent with a powerful, real-time workspace. Together, they set a new standard in how businesses manage payment operations, transitioning from manual, reactive processes to proactive, intelligent workflows. The AI Agent is the first enterprise-grade Agent that understands payments, is auditable by design and delivers verifiable, rapid results built on existing connectivity and a deep understanding of how enterprise payment systems and workflows work. When combined with the Workspace, a canvas for payment teams and the AI Agent to operate in, they create a new model for how companies manage payment workflows, streamlining operations from insight to execution to issue resolution. Key features include: AI That Respects Rules and Roles: The AI Agent only takes action when it’s approved to do so and will never let third-party model providers train on your data. Purpose-Built Intelligence; and Seamless Execution.