Аsia
Zavo launches EMI Bet to reinvent India’s credit culture
IBS Intelligence, Posted August 20, 2025
Zavo, has launched EMI Bet, a competitive repayment league designed to transform the culture of credit repayment in India. By rewarding financial discipline with prizes worth up to $86,156, the platform aims to reimagine the borrower-lender relationship and establish a new benchmark in customer-centric innovation.
Positioned at the intersection of behavioural finance and digital engagement, EMI Bet converts the routine act of monthly loan repayment into a gamified, reward-driven experience. Participants can win prizes ranging from iPhone 16 Pro Max devices and gaming consoles to superbikes and electric cars simply by making timely repayments.
India Celebrates National Fintech Day 2025, Spotlighting Innovation, Inclusion, and Economic Transformation
Business Micro, Posted August 20, 2025
August 20th, India marks National Fintech Day, celebrating how financial technology has moved from a niche convenience to the backbone of everyday commerce and inclusion. In just a few years, the ecosystem has layered innovations on India’s Digital Public Infrastructure, like UPI, Aadhaar, and the Account Aggregator framework, bringing digital payments, credit, investments, and insurance to both metros and the smallest towns. Regulators and industry are working in tandem, powering growth and jobs, and also widening access and trust in India’s financial system.
FincFriends raises fresh funds to expand digital credit
IBS Intelligence, Posted August 19, 2025
FincFriends, has raised $4.8 million in Q1 FY 2025–26, through debt funding. This follows the company’s earlier debt raise of $11.5 million in Q4 FY 2025, underscoring the continued confidence of its investors in FincFriends’ growth strategy.
The funds will be directed towards strengthening RupeeRedee, the company’s flagship digital credit platform, with a focus on expanding its reach across Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities. By leveraging technology to streamline credit access, FincFriends aims to bridge financial gaps for underserved borrower segments, positioning itself at the forefront of India’s evolving digital lending landscape.
Europe
Monzo plans to launch UK mobile phone service
The Guardian, Posted August 16, 2025
Monzo is looking to launch its own mobile phone service in the UK, in a move that could heighten competition among big phone groups and secure further revenue for the growing digital bank.
The online-only lender, which was launched in 2015, is in the early stages of developing a digital sim card: a software version of the insertable chip used to connect a phone to cellular networks and the internet.
That could open the door to lucrative mobile phone contracts with new and existing customers, putting pressure on incumbents such as VodafoneThree and the BT-owned operator EE. Big phone providers are already facing competition from financial firms including Revolut and the buy-now-pay-later provide Klarna, which are also trying to take a slice of the mobile phone market.
Germany’s Oyak Anker Bank completes Mambu core migration
Fintech Futures, Posted August 19, 2025
Frankfurt-headquartered Oyak Anker Bank has upgraded its legacy core banking system to Mambu’s cloud-native platform, executing what the Dutch vendor describes as “one of Germany’s most ambitious digital transformation projects”.
The migration of the bank’s core banking infrastructure to Mambu, deployed on Microsoft Azure, was successfully carried out with the help of regional implementation partner Innovance.
Scale of bank fraud and money mules is ‘so vast’ it should be a national security threat, think tank warns
This is Money, Posted August 15, 2025
The scale of bank fraud and money mules across Britain is so vast it should be considered a national security threat, a leading think tank warns.
A report from the Royal United Services Institute (Rusi) has found sophisticated techniques and weak crime controls across the financial system has allowed droves of money mules to operate across the nation.
Criminals use money mules to launder profits of crimes and ‘rinse’ the money by passing it through a legitimate bank account.
Robinhood brings AI stock tool to UK
Private Banker International, Posted August 19, 2025
Robinhood has rolled out its AI-driven product, Digests by Robinhood Cortex, available to all UK users, providing plain-language explanations of what is causing stock price changes.
The tool is the first product powered by Robinhood Cortex, the company’s artificial intelligence investing assistant. Using generative AI, it monitors breaking news, analyst reports, technical indicators, and Robinhood’s unique data to produce clear, short descriptions of why a stock is moving.
USA
Candescent powers digital onboarding for banks and credit unions
IBS Intelligence, Posted August 19, 2025
Candescent has launched enhanced onboarding capabilities within its market-leading platform, Candescent Terafina. The new release gives banks and credit unions unprecedented flexibility to design, control and optimise the account opening journey, marking an industry first.
The latest upgrade introduces intelligent templates and adaptive post-open workflows that allow financial institutions to streamline the process, reduce friction and deliver a personalised customer experience from the very first interaction. By reimagining the sequence of account opening, institutions can now minimise initial data entry while seamlessly moving optional actions, such as debit card selection and online banking enrolment, to after the account has been activated. This modernised flow strengthens conversion rates, enhances customer satisfaction and preserves both compliance and back-office efficiency.
QNB first bank in GCC to launch Commercial Unified Digital Wallet Integration using Mastercard Gateway
QNB, Posted August 20, 2025
QNB has achieved another major milestone by becoming the first bank in the GCC to enable Digital Wallet acceptance through a single, unified integration on the Mastercard Gateway Hosted Checkout platform.
The solution leverages Mastercard Gateway’s latest Hosted Checkout capability, where Digital Wallets are enabled through a single integration flow for both web and mobile environments. This approach reduces technical complexity, improves time-to-market and enhances merchant satisfaction, particularly for small and mid-sized businesses that benefit most from ready-to-deploy payment technologies.
LatAm
dLocal and Tiendamia partner to drive cross-border eCommerce growth in Latin America
dLocal, Posted August 19, 2025
dLocal (NASDAQ: DLO), the leading cross-border payment platform connecting global merchants to emerging markets, has partnered with Tiendamia, a trusted cross-border marketplace platform bringing together global product catalogs and international shipping. This collaboration brings faster, more accessible checkout with local payment methods and transparent pricing for Latin American customers and sellers.
Can Latin America really deliver on cross-border payments?
IBS Intelligence, Posted August 21, 2025
Latin America’s payments landscape is at a crossroads. On one hand, the region is buzzing with innovation, with digital wallets, instant payments, and FinTech adoption reshaping how consumers and businesses transact. On the other hand, the dream of seamless cross-border payments across the continent remains more complicated than it looks on paper.
LatAm’s SaaS market set to double by 2027 as digital payments surge, study shows
IBS Intelligence, Posted August 20, 2025
Exclusive data revealed by EBANX, a global technology company specialising in payment services for emerging markets, shows that Latin America’s Software as a Service (SaaS) market is projected to reach $46 billion in 2027, more than doubling from $22 billion in 2023, according to Payments and Commerce Market Intelligence data sourced by EBANX.
“The rapid growth of the SaaS sector reflects a major shift in how Latin Americans work, learn, and live in the digital economy,” stated Marie-Elise Droga, CRO at EBANX. “Businesses of all sizes are adopting SaaS to stay competitive and scale efficiently, while consumers increasingly turn to digital services for productivity, entertainment, education, financial management, and more,” she added.
