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/crypto

Matera and Circle bid to take stablecoin payments mainstream

Brazilian fintech Matera is joining forces with Circle to turn stablecoins into a payment method integrated into banks' core systems.

/people

NatWest appoints first chief AI research officer

NatWest has appointed Dr Maja Pantic as its first chief AI research officer.

/crypto

Stablecoin-as-a-Service platform OpenTrade raises $7 million

OpenTrade, a provider of yield-bearing stablecoin products for fintechs, has raised $7 million in funding led by Notion Capital and Mercury Fund, with participation from existing investors AlbionVC, a16z crypto, and CMCC Global.

/retail

NatWest announces further branch closures

NatWest has announced another 52 branches will shut this year, bringing the banking group's total planned closures to 105.

/payments

Klarna reported to Norway's Consumer Authority

Norway's Consumer Council has referred Klarna to the country's Consumer Authority over an alleged failure to provide clear details about interest paid on its buy now, pay later products.

/startups

Barclays opens London innovation hub with Microsoft and Nvidia onboard

Barclays has opened a new innovation hub in London, working with a range of partners from across the tech industry – including Microsoft and Nvidia.

/security

Industry associations highlight cybersecurity risks at US regulatory agencies

Four industry trade associations have called for significant reforms to how federal financial regulators handle sensitive data following a data breach at the Office of the Comproller of the Currency that exposed over 148,000 private correspondences containing sensitive supervisory information about US financial institutions.

/ai

Starling rolls out AI-based 'Spending Intelligence' tool

Starling Bank is putting Generative AI into the hands of its customers with the roll out of a new 'Spending Intelligence' Large Language Model that customers can interrogate to get insights into their spending habits.

/payments

Australian Payments Plus to bring least-cost routing to online Cick to Pay transactions

Australian Payments Plus (AP+) has selected Giesecke+Devrient (G+D) to develop eftpos Click to Pay with integrated least-cost routing (LCR), a project that is billed as a world first for online debit card payments.

/startups

Payroll data startup Teal raises £1.4 million

Payroll data platform Teal has raised £1.4 million in pre-Seed funding led by Passion Capital.

/regulation

Payments fintech Navro acquires first US licence

Navro, the London-headquartered fintech that simplifies international payments for businesses, has secured its first US money transmitter licence.

/ai

Barclays to roll out Microsoft Co-Pilot to 100,000 staff

Barclays Bank is to extend its delivery of Microsoft Co-Pilot AI agents to 100,000 staff worldwide.