To thrive in a real-time payment’s world, banks must embed AI and cyber resilience into dispute workflows, fraud controls and compliance operations. To unlock the full potential of real-time payments (RTP), financial institutions worldwide are adopting intelligent, AI-led solutions to manage fraud, reduce errors, and enhance operational efficiency. In the US, AI is streamlining dispute resolution, improving accuracy and reducing turnaround times. The UK’s Faster Payments Service (FPS) is setting global standards for secure, real-time operations with integrated compliance controls. Meanwhile, banks in India, Brazil, and across the EU are exploring AI for real-time risk monitoring and dispute handling. The emergence of Agentic AI adds a predictive, self-learning layer that can autonomously detect, decide, and act transforming RTP ecosystems globally. Agentic AI brings autonomous decision-making, enabling systems to detect, act, and learn driving smarter fraud prevention and faster, context-aware dispute resolutions. To unlock RTP’s full potential, banks must center their dispute strategy around AI backed by regulatory alignment, robust assurance mechanisms, and proactive consumer education to ensure secure, compliant, and future-ready operations dispute management in the real-time era.
Mastercard debuts AI-powered design studio for card issuers- empowers creative teams by providing compelling design tools, and multisensory branding
Mastercard launched the Mastercard AI Card Design Studio, an innovative platform that transforms how issuers create and deploy card designs. By combining speed, affordability and advanced customization, it gives card issuers a powerful, intuitive solution to bring their unique brand to life. The AI Card Design Studio draws on Mastercard’s brand and card production expertise to bring high-end design capabilities directly to its partners. Users can upload logos and product details, use AI-assisted design features, customize as needed and instantly download brand-compliant designs. What once took weeks can now be completed in minutes—accelerating go-to-market timelines while enabling more creative flexibility and emotional impact. With the AI Card Design Studio, Mastercard is applying that same approach to the creative process, giving partners more control and clarity from the start. The platform empowers creative teams by providing compelling design tools, while freeing up time to focus on higher-level creative strategy. From pioneering multisensory branding and launching the inclusively designed Touch Card, to introducing our sustainable card program aimed at removing first-use PVC plastics from our network by 2028, Mastercard has consistently pushed the boundaries of what design can do. This new tool is a natural extension of that legacy, allowing issuers to quickly produce stand-out designs.
Trovata bolsters legacy treasury management offerings with debt and investment instruments, intercompany transactions, in-house bank support, credit facilities, FX hedging, bank fee analysis and bank account management
Trovata announced its acquisition of ATOM, the enterprise Treasury Management System (TMS) developed by Financial Sciences Corporation. This move marks a bold step forward in Trovata’s mission to modernize and democratize treasury technology, unlocking the full capabilities required to serve large global enterprises. With ATOM’s deep treasury feature set—including support for debt and investment instruments, intercompany transactions, in-house bank support, credit facilities, FX hedging, full domestic and international payment workflow, bank fee analysis and bank account management—fully integrated into Trovata’s cloud-native platform, Trovata becomes the first modern, viable TMS alternative to the legacy incumbents. The combined offering delivers unprecedented scale, flexibility, and performance for corporate finance and treasury teams seeking to modernize. Brett Turner, Founder and CEO of Trovata said, “With ATOM, we have the firepower to compete directly with the legacy incumbents—and replace them. This isn’t just expansion. It’s a generational shift in treasury tech.”
Open-standard RISC-V instruction set architecture’s ability to tailor the architecture to the application driving its adoption across a diverse range of compute platforms from datacenter service processors, AI accelerators, chip makers and custom embedded cores
The open-standard RISC-V instruction set architecture has evolved from an academic project into a legitimate disruptor, increasingly embedded across a diverse range of compute platforms. Amid a wave of industry consolidation, geopolitical shifts, and an AI-driven workload explosion, RISC-V is accelerating toward mainstream relevance with some of the largest chip players backing it. A strong ISA needs a strong ecosystem, and RISC-V is seeing meaningful support across all levels of the stack. Android is being ported to RISC-V, with full RVA23 compliance under development. Ubuntu and Red Hat Enterprise Linux are already available on SiFive hardware, giving software developers familiar toolchains. Tenstorrent, a new AI chip start-up co-founded by legendary chip architect Jim Keller, and also a SiFive customer, is designing RISC-V-based CPUs targeting AI and high-performance edge workloads. Meanwhile, Ahead Computing, another RISC-V start-up with ties to Intel talent, is quietly making strides in server-class designs. Finally, all of the “Magnificent Seven” tech giants reportedly use RISC-V in some capacity, with five of them working directly with SiFive (and likely others). These include datacenter service processors, AI accelerators, and custom embedded cores—proof that RISC-V’s flexibility fits many application use cases. What makes RISC-V different isn’t just the open license, it’s the ability to tailor the architecture to the application. Unlike x86 or Arm, which impose fixed instruction sets and licensing constraints, RISC-V lets chipmakers design exactly what they need, nothing more, nothing less. That’s a major win in the AI era, where model diversity and workload complexity demand hardware tuned for domain specific workloads and energy efficiency. In the US, DoD-aligned programs are increasingly turning to open ISAs to avoid reliance on foreign-controlled IP. Even GlobalFoundries’ acquisition of MIPS plays into the RISC-V narrative, expanding IP offerings while avoiding competitive overlap.
Adopting “life-led” approach by providing community facilities, setting up branches with social draw and redefined purpose can help neobanks forge emotional connection with millennials and address their life-stage challenges
Once the darlings of the industry, the neobank pioneers of digital banking are now struggling to extend those early wins into long-term growth. It’s because their users, Millennials in particular, are reaching stages in life that bring challenges requiring complex financial solutions like mortgages, pensions, and investments, and, like their parents and grandparents before them, they want to sit down and talk to a friendly, knowledgeable person about it. They don’t want to discuss their future with a bot. Whether its new style activated branches that have a redefined purpose and social draw, or a neobank hosting a summer residence by the sea, or something else, there are many ways neobanks can forge that emotional connection with their customers. The opportunity is to get beyond the screen of the shallow, day-to-day money basics, to the deeper potential life-value of what might be below the surface. Banks could also invest, be present in, and even provide community facilities much needed by local residents, from sport facilities to wellness centers and community hubs. They could do this with interesting relevant partner organizations. This life-led™ approach would not only transform banking; it would also bring support to communities that need it. The key lies in coming out of the other side of the digital transition, and rediscovering the power of people in places.
Neobanks are going beyond the UX playbook and building infrastructure stack for compliance, payments, credit and ledgers; positioning themselves as super apps to address the embedded finance requirements of vertical SaaS, creator tools and marketplaces
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.
ThetaRay’s compliance solution allows users to build, modify, and simulate AML rules independently through no-code interface with customization and aggregation and safely test the impact of rules without affecting live systems
ThetaRay has introduced the Rule Builder Simulator, an AI-powered tool that enables banks and other financial institutions to build, test, and implement anti-money laundering rules faster. The tool offers a no-code interface for defining complex rule logic, reducing operational friction and approval bottlenecks. The Self-Service Rule Builder allows teams to test and analyze the impact of new rules in a secure environment before deployment without affecting live systems. This is part of ThetaRay’s mission to equip financial institutions with AI-enhanced tools that strengthen compliance, support growth, and innovation. Key Compliance Benefits: Autonomy and Speed: Users can build, modify, simulate, and deploy AML rules independently, reducing the rule lifecycle times from weeks to hours. Tailored Risk Coverage: Complex rule logic using no-code customization and aggregation, addressing institution-specific compliance needs with precision. Safe Testing Environment: Validate new rules in a secure simulation environment before going live, ensuring confidence in compliance decisions. Optimized Detection: Simulations help teams evaluate rule and AI combinations for optimal results in detecting financial crime. Seamless Production Deployment: Approved simulations can be applied to production with built-in governance and oversight workflows
Sales of EssilorLuxottica and Meta’s Ray-Ban AI glasses rise more than 200% in the first half of the year; upcoming versions to include Ultra HD 3K recording, open-ear speakers incorporated into the frames and eight hours battery life
EssilorLuxottica, which partners with Meta on artificial intelligence (AI) glasses, reported that the sales of those Ray-Ban Meta glasses were up more than 200% in the first half of the year. The designer, manufacturer and distributor of vision care products, eyewear and MedTech solutions also highlighted new and upcoming smart glasses and MedTech products. The designer, manufacturer and distributor of vision care products, eyewear and MedTech solutions also highlighted new and upcoming smart glasses and MedTech products. EssilorLuxottica said that the Oakley Meta AI glasses announced in June will be available later this summer. The first product from this brand, Oakley Meta HSTN, will include Ultra HD 3K recording, open-ear speakers incorporated into the frames to deliver music and podcasts, and enough battery life to power up to eight hours of typical use and up to 19 hours on standby. The company also highlighted its rollout of Nuance Audio in the United States and Italy in February and its subsequent expansion to France, the United Kingdom, Germany and Spain. Nuance Audio is a MedTech solution that incorporates hearing aid software into smart glasses
AppBrilliance’s Real-Time Payments API allows homebuyers to authorize earnest-money or escrow deposits in seconds and offers instant settlement of good-funds via the RTP network eliminating wire instructions, checks and ACH delays
AppBrilliance confirmed that its the technology engine behind the new Request for Payment (RfP) experience announced by real-estate payments leader ZOCCAM in collaboration with U.S. Bank and Stewart Title. The rollout marks the title industry’s first production use of RfP to move good-funds deposits in real time. With RfP embedded in the ZOCCAM mobile app and website, homebuyers can authorize earnest-money or escrow deposits in seconds. Homebuyer funds settle instantly and irrevocably to Stewart Title’s escrow account via the RTP network, eliminating wire instructions, checks and ACH delays. Instant, secure and low cost. AppBrilliance abstracts the complexity of RTP/RfP and FedNow rails into a single developer interface for real-time payments and open banking. With as little as two clicks, users can now complete purchases – an overdue upgrade to the legacy payment systems, reducing costs and risk for consumers, payment service providers (PSPs) and banks. Key Benefits of the AppBrilliance Real-Time Payments API: Lower Cost – significantly reduces costs vs. cards, checks, wires and ACH; Safer – Eliminates risk of non-settlement, disputes, charge-backs and fraud; and Faster Payments – 24x7x365 availability with instant good-funds arriving in 15 seconds
NiCE acquires Cognigy- enabling enterprises to build custom AI agents for automating customer service tasks in a low-code interface that uses LLMs to speed up certain tasks
NiCE Ltd; announced plans to acquire rival Cognigy GmbH for $955 million. NiCE sells a platform called Mpower that helps enterprise run their contact centers more efficiently. It can measure the performance of customer support teams, answer common requests using artificial intelligence and perform related tasks. Cognigy competes in the same market. The company’s cloud platform, Cognigy.AI, enables enterprises to build custom AI agents for automating customer service tasks. Development is done in a low-code interface that uses large language models to speed up certain tasks. The acquiree says AI agents built using its platform can not only answer customers’ questions but also perform actions on their behalf. According to Cognigy, AI agents powered by its platform can ingest multimodal input. An online retailer could create a technical support agent that lets users upload a photo of a product with a manufacturing defect. The AI agent could analyze the photo, determine what’s wrong with the product and issue a refund. Under the hood, Cognigy uses LLMs from major AI providers such as OpenAI and Anthropic PBC. If the LLM that powers an agent encounters an issue while processing a customer service request, Cognigy can retry the query. If that doesn’t work, it can switch to a different model. NiCE plans to integrate the company’s technology with its CXone Mpower contact center automation tool. The latter offering lends itself to many of the same tasks as Cognigy.AI, including custom AI agent development. It also provides human help desk representatives with guidance on how to resolve tickets.