Gelato, a web3 developer cloud platform, has partnered with Morpho, a decentralized lending protocol, to launch Embedded Crypto-Backed Loans. This partnership allows Wallets, Brokers, and Fintech Apps to instantly borrow stablecoins like USDC using crypto assets as collateral. The borrowing flow is simple, Web2-like, non-custodial, and fully onchain. The platform uses Gelato’s Smart Wallet SDK and Morpho’s permissionless lending markets to provide a secure borrowing flow. Crypto-backed loans are fully non-custodial and onchain, governed by smart contracts. Gelato’s Smart Wallet SDK handles account abstraction, one-click onboarding, and gas sponsorship, enabling modern, web2-style user experiences. Gelato plans to introduce new security and recovery features later this year, including passkey authentication, multi-signer two-factor approvals, and onchain recovery modules tied to email or social logins. Embedded Crypto-Backed Loans are now available in beta on Polygon, Arbitrum, Optimism, and Scroll, with support for Katana coming soon.
Radcred’s platform simplifies access to payday loans by matching applicants with licensed lenders through a fully secure online process using soft credit checks and offering same-day funding
Radcred has launched a digital-first lending platform to meet the rising demand for online payday loans, offering same-day funding and soft credit checks for borrowers historically overlooked by traditional banks. The new system aims to simplify access to small-dollar financing by matching applicants with licensed lenders through a fully secure online process. Radcred’s lending platform connects borrowers directly to a network of licensed, state-compliant payday lenders. With soft inquiry checks and same-day loan processing, the platform is built for speed and accessibility. Unlike traditional banks, Radcred offers options for those with poor or limited credit histories. The platform supports applications from users across all 50 states, focusing on underserved groups such as part-time workers, gig economy professionals, and those recovering from financial setbacks. Through encrypted processing and smart-matching technology, Radcred ensures quick turnaround times often funding requests within hours. Borrowers can secure a $255 payday loan, a $500 loan no credit check loans or another small-dollar amount based on the offers provided by Payday lenders. The process involves no hard credit pull, helping protect the borrower’s FICO score. All offers are presented upfront, with clear repayment timelines and fee disclosures. The platform works seamlessly on both desktop and mobile devices, ensuring broad accessibility for users in need of instant loans.
Spinwheel provides banks and PFM platforms access to real-time, verified consumer credit data for processing payments as part of their clients’ existing workflow via APIs using credential less technology that requires only phone number and date of birth
Powering the future of the consumer credit ecosystem, Spinwheel is rewiring how consumer credit data is accessed, activated, and embedded into financial workflows. Today, the company announced the close of its $30 million Series A funding round, led by F-Prime with participation from QED Investors, Foundation Capital, and Fika Ventures. Spinwheel’s real-time consumer credit data and payments platform currently supports more than 15 million users and 165 million connected credit and liability accounts, facilitating over $1.5 trillion in consumer debt across its network. The new funding will accelerate development of its agentic AI platform, expand its data sets and product offerings, and scale its go-to-market team as it builds the foundational infrastructure to transform the consumer credit data and payments ecosystem. Today, the consumer credit ecosystem is buckling under the weight of legacy systems. U.S. consumer liabilities have reached $19.5 trillion—up from $13.3 trillion just a decade ago. Additionally, the average American holds between 10 to 14 credit accounts. Despite the scale, the infrastructure supporting credit data access and payments remains fragmented, slow, and riddled with friction for financial institutions, while consumers are left juggling multiple logins and outdated information. “Financial providers are faced with immense customer service friction, high operational and acquisition costs, missing or outdated data sets and a cumbersome, disjointed experience for consumers who, in turn, are struggling to view, understand and manage numerous liability and credit accounts. We are transforming this challenge by building the foundational infrastructure to power the future of the consumer credit ecosystem,” said Tomás Campos, co-founder and CEO, Spinwheel. “We believe this is an enormous opportunity that will outpace open banking. With a focus on first principles and innovation, we will elevate our financial clients’ ability to deliver better credit outcomes to consumers like never before.” Spinwheel was built to establish a unified infrastructure layer that simplifies how liabilities are accessed, activated, and resolved. Spinwheel partners with lenders, marketplaces, personal financial management platforms, and other financial companies to provide real-time, verified consumer credit data to process payments as part of their clients’ existing workflow and operations via APIs. The company’s proprietary, credentialless technology requires only two data fields—phone number and date of birth—streamlining and simplifying user actions and delivering a more complete consumer credit profile, empowering financial clients to provide better financial products and a seamless experience for the consumer. Spinwheel’s clients see significant improvements in conversion rates, increased revenue, lower operational and acquisition costs, as well as mitigated risk. “Spinwheel is tackling one of the most complex and consequential frontiers in financial data: real-time consumer liabilities. While open banking has largely focused on assets, there is a large opportunity in mapping the full liability picture across credit cards, mortgages, student loans, and more,” said David Jegen, Managing Partner at F-Prime. “We’re in the early innings of this category’s evolution. Spinwheel’s team has the right combination of deep technical skill and market insight required to lead in a market where challenges are large and the stakes are high.” This latest funding will accelerate its technology to further automate credit management and unlock more data through its agentic AI platform, expand into new access points and offerings for non-traditional data and sources, and build out its go-to-market team. Spinwheel’s infrastructure is built with bank-grade security standards, ensuring that while data is made more accessible.
Raymond James to leverage FNZ’s end-to-end wealth management platform to deliver AI-powered capabilities, straight-through processing, and real-time capabilities with digital-first design to elevate advisor experience
Raymond James announced a strategic partnership with FNZ, a global wealth management platform provider, to deliver its next-generation wealth management platform. Under the agreement, Raymond James Ltd. will make a significant investment to accelerate the digital transformation of its wealth management infrastructure and elevate the advisor and client experience nationwide. The partnership will see Raymond James Ltd. leverage FNZ’s integrated, end-to-end wealth management platform—a deliberate and future-focused investment in modern infrastructure. Designed to deliver AI-powered capabilities, straight-through processing, and advanced digital capabilities, the FNZ platform will strengthen the Raymond James Ltd. unique value proposition. The new platform is built with a client-centric, digital-first design that improves efficiency, speed and personalization across the full wealth lifecycle. Advisors will gain a modern, intuitive operating environment, enabling more meaningful client engagements. Investors will benefit from improved digital experiences and real-time capabilities, all backed by the highest level of security and performance provided by the FNZ platform. FNZ’s market-leading technology and infrastructure will significantly enhance Raymond James Ltd.’s offering to advisors with greater flexibility to adapt quickly to changing markets, regulatory requirements, and investor expectations.
Investment platform Republic to offer retailer investors access to blockchain-based fractional shares of SpaceX, delivering more transparency, portability, and lower friction than traditional private equity deals
Investment platform Republic unveiled an industry first: blockchain-based fractional shares of Elon Musk’s private space company SpaceX. For the first time, retail investors—those without institutional backing or venture capital credentials—can gain exposure to one of the most sought-after private companies in the world. Investors won’t have a say in SpaceX’s strategic direction or Musk’s next launchpad move. What they do get is exposure to the company’s valuation growth—a potentially lucrative proposition, especially for those priced out of private equity until now. By putting these fractional shares on-chain, the platform delivers transparency, portability, and lower friction than traditional private equity deals. The move also bypasses many of the compliance headaches associated with traditional investment vehicles. It’s not equity in the classic sense—there are no shareholder meetings or board seats—but it’s a financial stake in the company’s future. That alone marks a major psychological and structural shift in how we define ownership in the digital age. It’s not a free-for-all—there are still guardrails and eligibility filters—but the aperture has widened significantly. More broadly, Republic’s move could set a precedent.
Mastercard sandbox to offer banks access to its ISO 20022-compliant fifth generation account-to-account (A2A) real-time payments infrastructure for testing payment use cases across retail, peer-to-peer (P2P), and B2B transactions
Mastercard has developed a sandbox where financial institutions can experiment with the latest instant payments technology. The sandbox gives banks access to Mastercard’s fifth generation account-to-account (A2A) real-time payments infrastructure. Within this environment, UK financial institutions can test payment use cases across retail, peer-to-peer (P2P), and B2B transactions. For example, the sandbox will enable institutions to implement a “5-leg credit transfer,” allowing a consumer to make a real-time payment at a merchant with the retailer receiving instant confirmation. According to Mastercard, the merchant and their financial institution would also receive richer data from these transactions, as the sandbox will adhere to the ISO 20022 format. While there are benefits to ISO 20022 adoption, many financial institutions—especially small- to mid-tier banks—have yet to achieve compliance. Beyond the costs associated with upgrading, a key reason for hesitation is concern around risk and fraud. This is where the sandbox model can provide value for highly regulated financial institutions looking to adopt emerging technologies. For example, artificial intelligence has become one of the most transformative technologies in recent years. Yet, many financial institutions worry it could make errors or jeopardize sensitive customer data. In response, Nvidia launched its own sandbox, allowing UK banks to experiment with AI and uncover use cases in a controlled setting. This approach helps financial institutions stay competitive while minimizing exposure to risk.
Visa and FIS target small FIs with value-added solutions such as a wallet link that pushes an issuer’s branded digital card to the customer’s digital wallet and stop payment services that enable cardholders to halt recurring payments to merchants
Visa and FIS expanded their partnership to offer new value-added payment capabilities to financial institutions of all sizes. The new offerings will include stop payment services that enable cardholders and call centers to halt recurring payments to merchants, a wallet link that pushes an issuer’s branded digital card to the customer’s digital wallet, and eCommerce fraud mitigation that gives issuers increased eCommerce transaction approval rates and helps eliminate the financial liability of chargebacks due to fraudulent purchases. Visa and FIS will also offer a digital campaign manager that facilitates the use of new marketing channels, such as augmented reality events and other digital experiences. The companies expect to make these new capabilities available to FIS client issuers by the end of the year. Chris Como, head of cards and money movement at FIS, said in the release that these offerings are meant to help small financial institutions compete with larger ones. “By integrating Visa’s advanced solutions into the FIS ecosystem, we are helping to level the technological playing field for those providers, illustrating our commitment to unlocking financial technology to the world,” Como said.
Walmart taps Scandit’s smart data capture tech to enhance store associate app with voice-activated personal assistant which enables associates to ask questions to quickly locate merchandise and get answers for customers, as well as look up business metrics
Walmart Inc. is renewing a partnership with AI-based mobile scanning solutions provider Scandit to enhance the functionality of its store associate apps. Since 2022, Walmart has been seamlessly integrating Scandit smart data capture software into several apps it provides store associates in an effort to optimize operational tasks such as order fulfillment, stock replenishment, out-of-stock detection, product information look-up and receipt checks for self-checkout customers. For example, Walmart designed the intuitive user interface of its “MyWalmart” associate app with input from Scandit to provide features including viewing their shifts up to two weeks in advance, checking on their upcoming paid time off, and requesting changes to their schedule. In addition, the app provides all associates access to the Ask Sam voice-activated personal assistant which enables them to ask questions to quickly locate merchandise and get answers for customers, as well as look up business metrics. And instead of scanning each box in the back room individually, associates can hold up their device and using augmented reality, highlight the boxes that are ready to go to the store floor. As part of the new expanded agreement, Scandit will provide Walmart with tools and technologies designed to boost the speed and accuracy of their existing associate and customer-facing applications.
PanTerra Networks platform delivers a single, secure interface to manage AI across contact center, cloud PBX, AI-enhanced video conferencing, team messaging, file sharing, and call handling and adapts to hybrid, remote, and distributed work environments
PanTerra Networks announced the launch of Streams.AI: its next-generation AI-powered platform built to bring customer engagement, automation, intelligence, and control to business communications, all within a unified, admin-friendly environment. Streams.AI empowers organizations to elevate productivity, responsiveness, and customer engagement by embedding AI directly into PanTerra’s flagship Streams platform, enabling both smarter collaboration and more effective customer engagement. The platform delivers a single, secure interface to manage AI across all communication channels—from call routing and IVRs to sentiment-driven escalations and human backup integration. Streams.AI unifies contact center, cloud PBX, AI-enhanced video conferencing, team messaging, file sharing, and call handling into one intelligent platform that adapts to hybrid, remote, and distributed work environments. Central to it all is Streams.AI’s Admin AI portal, a powerful yet intuitive hub that gives IT teams complete control over users, routing, AI behavior, security, and performance. Whether you’re managing 50 users or 5,000 across multiple locations, Streams.AI removes the clutter of disconnected systems and gives businesses a cohesive foundation that can truly scale. At the heart of Streams.AI is Luna AI, PanTerra’s proprietary conversational AI receptionist engine that powers: Context-aware call routing based on sentiment, caller history, or real-time presence; Custom AI personalities that reflect each brand’s tone of voice; Dynamic fallback to human operators with full conversation continuity; Speech-to-intent response matching for faster, more helpful resolutions. For advanced users, PanTerra’s AppDesigner allows full customization of AI-enabled workflows—whether it’s an IVR that taps into billing data or a scheduling assistant that syncs with HR systems.
Argyle’s income and employment verifications automation tech taps Mastercard Open Finance tech to launch asset verification at the POS- to confirm borrowers’ balances, cash-to-close, and cash-flow history
Argyle, a US service provider automating income and employment verifications, has launched asset verification powered by Mastercard’s Open Finance technology. This allows lenders to confirm borrowers’ balances, cash-to-close, and cash-flow history, along with income and employment. The integration of Mastercard’s Finicity with Argyle’s payroll connections streamlines verification processes. The new solution offers Argyle’s customers unique advantages: Frictionless delivery: Asset, income and employment verifications can be embedded directly in the loan application process at the point of sale (POS), helping lenders evaluate borrowers quickly and efficiently. Reports are generated in seconds and arrive in a GSE‑accepted format. Rent payment history: Service providers can access up to 24 months of transaction history, enabling the use of rent payment history and cash flow trends in underwriting or applicant decisions. This expanded view of consumer financial behavior supports credit access for first-time homebuyers and borrowers who may lack traditional credit histories. Centralized support: Argyle’s support team ensures service providers benefit from a streamlined service across all verification types, including payroll, banking and document-based workflows.