Stabelcoin infrastructure platform BVNK received an investment from Visa. The new capital comes on the heels of a $50 million Series B funding round in December. “We’re proud to support BVNK as they help accelerate global adoption of stablecoin payments,” Rubail Birwadker, head of growth products and partnerships at Visa, said. “Stablecoins are fast becoming a part of global payment flows, and Visa invests in new technologies and builders like BVNK, staying at the forefront of what’s next in commerce to better serve our clients and partners.” There was $27 trillion in total stablecoin transaction volume globally across 1.25 billion transactions in 2024, per Visa Onchain Analytics. BVNK processes more than $12 billion annually for companies like Ferrari and Rapyd. “We’re experiencing a once-in-a-generation shift to a new foundational payment technology, powered by stablecoins,” BVNK co-founder and CEO Jesse Hemson Struthers said. “At BVNK, we’re building the infrastructure to make these new rails accessible to businesses, empowering them to operate at the speed of today’s economy.”
Indiana’s HEA 1125 recognizes that On-Demand Pay is a unique financial product, and mandates appropriate consumer protections
Indiana has passed earned wage access (EWA) legislation into law. “Indiana’s HEA 1125 codifies the industry’s best practices into law, including recognizing that On-Demand Pay is a unique financial product, and mandating appropriate consumer protections,” EWA provider DailyPay said. The company added that Indiana joins other states, including California, Nevada, Utah, Arkansas, Missouri, Kansas and South Carolina. Indiana’s HEA 1125 codifies the industry’s best practices into law, including recognizing that On-Demand Pay is a unique financial product, and mandating appropriate consumer protections. Indiana now joins multiple states across the country, including California, Nevada, Utah, Arkansas, Missouri, Kansas, and South Carolina, which have also taken affirmative steps to ensure appropriate regulation is in place for the product. “We applaud Indiana legislators for responding to the realities facing working people in the state and ensuring continued access to a crucial financial option with common-sense guardrails that allow consumers and businesses to benefit,” DailyPay Vice President of Public Policy Ryan Naples. The company will make its On-Demand Pay platform available to new and existing clients with operations in Canada, DailyPay said. “Expanding into Canada is a major step in our mission to better serve our multinational clients and partners and to provide On-Demand Pay to everyone, everywhere,” DailyPay Vice President of International Josh Durodola said.
Balance’s new RTP-powered Instant Bank Connection allows buyers to link their accounts using only routing and account numbers
Balance, the financial infrastructure platform for B2B commerce, launched Instant Bank Connection, a new capability powered by Real-Time Payment (RTP) rails that simplifies ACH setup for buyers and speeds up payments to merchants—improving cash flow and reducing processing costs. Balance’s new RTP-powered Instant Bank Connection capability allows buyers to link their accounts using only routing and account numbers. This real-time verification streamlines the buyer experience while giving merchants immediate payment confirmation, faster payouts, improved cash flow, and the ability to release goods sooner with confidence—accelerating fulfillment and strengthening customer relationships. Balance’s RTP-powered bank connection is more than just a faster onboarding method—it’s a strategic lever for B2B merchants looking to scale with efficiency. By making ACH payments as seamless as cards, merchants can unlock significantly lower processing costs. By combining RTP-powered bank verification with AI-powered credit management, billing, collections, and cash application, Balance empowers merchants to reduce overhead, improve cash flow, and scale with confidence. Bar Geron, CEO and Co-founder of Balance said “With RTP-enabled ACH payments, they can reduce costs and accelerate access to funds—all while giving buyers a smooth, payment experience.”
Startup Rove’s loyalty program allows users to earn airline miles without credit cards by shopping using the Google Chrome extension through affiliate marketing with over 7,000 merchants
Startup Rove claims to be the first universal mile loyalty program. Rove’s loyalty program allows airlines to expand the lucrative business of miles to millions more consumers, Co founder Max Morganroth said. But instead of allowing airlines to share fees with credit cards, Rove gives them a way to make money through affiliate marketing with over 7,000 merchants through the Rove shopping extension for Google Chrome. That’s a business model that’s similar to Honey and Rakuten. Morganroth explained that the points earned from shopping can be converted into airline miles, which hold more value than their equivalent in cash. In addition to the affiliate marketing scheme, Rove also offers its users miles for hotel bookings. Users can combine Rove miles earned on hotel bookings with miles from the shopping extension and even credit card miles if they have a card that earns airline points. The startup’s elaborate scheme may seem complicated, but Morganroth says that earning miles through Rove is straightforward, as long as users book hotels on its platform or shop using the Rove shopping extension. When users are ready to book flights with their miles, Rove’s travel portal helps them find the best award flight deals. The startup’s users can book award travel on about 140 carriers because it is often possible to transfer miles of one airline company to its affiliates in another region. “Gen Z wants to travel more than any other demographic, yet they have the least access to the tools like this that actually make it cheaper,” he said. “They no longer have to wait until they’re 28, have five years of credit history, and $700 fee to get one of these cards; they can just download a Chrome extension, book any of their existing travel through us, and they’ll immediately be in the game.”
LendingClub is buying AI-powered spending intelligence platform Cushion that ingests users’ bank transactions and purchase data to help them track their bills, make on-time payments, manage subscriptions, build credit, and monitor BNPL loans
LendingClub announced the acquisition of intellectual property and select talent behind Cushion, an AI-powered spending intelligence platform, providing a natural complement to LendingClub’s suite of mobile financial products and experiences. Cushion’s AI-powered technology ingests users’ bank transactions and purchase information to help them track their bills, make on-time payments, manage subscriptions, build credit, and monitor BNPL loans. Scott Sanborn, CEO of LendingClub said, “Cushion’s technology complements our DebtIQ experience to provide our members with the tools and information they need to take control of their debt and spending. With credit card balances and interest rates at historic highs and consumers seeking ways to keep more of what they earn, the need for our solution has never been greater.” Adopting Cushion’s technology will eventually allow LendingClub to provide much-needed visibility into a consumer’s financial obligations beyond traditional credit monitoring. It builds on LendingClub’s acquisition of Tally in Q4 2024, which will simplify credit card management, help users optimize payments, reduce interest, and improve credit health.
MIT researchers demonstrate the strongest nonlinear light-matter coupling in a quantum system that could help reach the fault-tolerant quantum computing stage with 10X faster operations and readout
MIT researchers have demonstrated what they believe is the strongest nonlinear light-matter coupling ever achieved in a quantum system. Their experiment is a step toward realizing quantum operations and readout that could be performed in a few nanoseconds. The researchers used a novel superconducting circuit architecture to show nonlinear light-matter coupling that is about an order of magnitude stronger than prior demonstrations, which could enable a quantum processor to run about 10 times faster. “This would really eliminate one of the bottlenecks in quantum computing. Usually, you have to measure the results of your computations in between rounds of error correction. This could accelerate how quickly we can reach the fault-tolerant quantum computing stage and be able to get real-world applications and value out of our quantum computers,” says Yufeng “Bright” Ye, lead author of a paper on this research. The new architecture, based on a superconducting “quarton” coupler, achieved coupling strengths roughly ten times higher than previous designs, potentially allowing quantum processors to run ten times faster. Faster readout and operations are critical to reducing errors in quantum computation, which depend on performing error correction within the limited lifespans of qubits. Researchers demonstrated extremely strong nonlinear light-matter coupling in a quantum circuit. Stronger coupling enables faster readout and operations using qubits, which are the fundamental units of information in quantum computing. (Christine Daniloff, MIT)
AI meeting summarization tool Jump AI frees up about 10 hours per week for each advisors
Artificial intelligence-powered offerings in wealth management regularly hammer home one benefit they provide in particular: saved time. “Advisors are saving 10-plus hours per week on average by leveraging AI to streamline their client meeting process,” said Startup Zeplyn CEO Era Jain. “That’s about 500-plus hours per year or 20 new clients they can service per year.” These time savings are primarily spent on business development and relationship building. Solo advisor Kelly Klingaman, founder of Kelly Klingaman Financial Planning, said she wanted to utilize an AI notetaker in her business so she could be more present during client meetings. Having tried out a few AI notetaking tools so far, Klingaman said Fathom is “affordable, easy to use and dynamic” — and it saves her between five and eight hours per week. For Gregory Furer, the founder and CEO of Beratung Advisors, one of the biggest game changers has been the integration of Holistiplan tax planning software. “With AI, we can now analyze a client’s tax return and generate insights in just three minutes — a process that used to take an hour and was prone to human error,” he said. From there, Furer said they create tax modeling for clients in 20 to 30 minutes, compared to the two to three hours it used to take. He said his firm is also leveraging AI within eMoney, its financial planning software, “to instantly calculate the amount of life insurance needed to maintain client-defined success rates and goals.” “This real-time decision support enhances the accuracy and speed of our recommendations,” he said. Like Klingaman, Furer has been utilizing AI for meeting notes; he uses Jump. “As the tool continues to learn our systems and language, it could eventually save five to 10 hours per week of high-value planner time, potentially becoming our most cost-effective AI tool.” Rob Schultz, senior partner and wealth manager at NWF Advisory said he also uses Jump for meeting summarization. “The quality of the notes was significantly better than I ever wrote down during a meeting and it allows me to focus solely on the client in front of me. It saves me time in the post-meeting review, probably 30 minutes per client interaction.” Samuel Flaten, co-founder of Narrow Road Financial Planning said he mainly uses ChatGPT, which he calls a “total game-changer.” In addition to the writing assistance, Flaten said he has also trained a custom GPT with “everything I know as a CFP” to workshop ideas, stress-test strategies and pull in creative alternatives he might not have considered. Across his average weekly schedule of 20 meetings, Schultz said his use of Jump AI frees up about 10 hours. Jain of Zeplyn recommends that firms optimize their scheduling by identifying advisors who successfully use AI to save time, establishing their best practices and training or coaching other advisors.
Eppo, a feature flagging and experimentation platform offers “confidence intervals” to make it easier to understand and interpret the results of a randomized app experiments and different versions of apps and models
Datadog has acquired Eppo, a feature-flagging and experimentation platform. Despite the demand for tools that let developers experiment with different versions of apps, the infrastructure required for product analytics remains relatively complex to build. Beyond data pipelines and statistical methods, experimentation infrastructure relies on analytics workflows often sourced from difficult-to-configure cloud environments. Eppo will continue supporting existing customers and bringing on new ones under the brand “Eppo by Datadog.” Eppo offers “confidence intervals” to make it easier to understand and interpret the results of a randomized app experiment. The platform supports experimentation with AI and machine learning models, leveraging techniques to perform live experiments that show whether one model is outperforming another. Eppo co-founder and CEO Che Sharma said “With Datadog, we are uniting product analytics, feature management, AI, and experimentation capabilities for businesses to reduce risk, learn quickly, and ship high-quality products.” For Datadog, the Eppo buy could bolster the company’s current product analytics solutions. “The use of multiple AI models increases the complexity of deploying applications in production,” Michael Whetten, VP of Product at Datadog, said. “Experimentation solves this correlation and measurement problem, enabling teams to compare multiple models side-by-side, determine user engagement against cost tradeoffs, and ultimately build AI products that deliver measurable value.”
dLocal’s platform enables PayPal Enterprise Payments, previously known as Braintree, cto easily accept cards and process local and alternative payment methods across Latin America, EMEA, and APAC markets
dLocal, a cross-border payment platform for emerging markets, has expanded partnership with PayPal to offer businesses access to payment processing and local payment methods in more than 40 new untapped emerging markets. By leveraging dLocal’s platform, global customers of PayPal Enterprise Payments, previously known as Braintree, can now easily accept cards and process local and alternative payment methods across Latin America, EMEA, and APAC markets without needing to establish local entities. dLocal’s platform will handle both B2B and B2C payment flows, making it easy for businesses to connect with local customers and suppliers. As a result, merchants will gain access to a number of potential benefits including: Access to new, global customers: Integration will provide businesses with quick access to new global customers without having to establish a local entity or pay cross-border fees. Lessen tech debt and complexity: Businesses looking to process in these new markets can leverage their existing PayPal Braintree’s integration – and their stored cards – to process locally with minimal engineering and integration resources required. Increased authorization rates; and One source of truth: Businesses will have access to one single platform to manage local and international payments.
Marqeta’s processing volumes surge 27% on card issuance; that non-Block TPV grew at 2x faster than Block TPV
Marqeta’s first quarter results surged across several metrics as new and existing card issuance programs grew on a global stage across debit and credit channels, and the company’s platform gains a tailwind as it enables new BNPL and embedded finance offerings. Total processing volume (TPV) of $84 billion was up by 27%. Forward looking guidance looks for net revenue growth in the range of 13% to 15%. Mike Milotich, interim CEO and CFO, said that net revenue growth of 18% to $139 million. Beyond Block (the company’s largest customer at 45% of Marqeta revenues), Milotich said that non-Block TPV grew at 2x faster than Block TPV, “fueled by a wide range of customers across several use cases. Consistent with the last several quarters, financial services, lending including buy now, pay later, and expense management drove the bulk of our TPV growth.” Lending and expense management TPV continued to grow over 30% “and both accelerated a bit from last quarter,” given a boost by the combination of Klarna’s migration to the Marqeta platform in Europe, and “our BNPL customers benefiting from the increased adoption of Pay Anywhere card solution and distribution through wallets, both are supported in part by newly available flexible network credentials and strong user growth among SMB lending solutions.” He also said that despite a challenging macro environment, there has not been a spending shift across the platform, telling analysts, “Breaking down the spend by low, medium and high discretionary TPV based on merchant category reveals no meaningful shift in the mix of spending in Q1 versus the past several quarters.”