Articles
Tracking Fintech Insights and Trends That Shape Money & Markets
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Airwallex charges full speed ahead in EMEA
When AUSTRAC announced in January it would audit Airwallex for suspected breaches of anti-money laundering (AML) and counter-terrorism financing (CFL) laws, the plucky fintech unicorn remained cool as a cucumber. Like many well-funded fintech disruptors, the company has become supremely confident in its prospects. It’s going to take more than an audit (or two) to rattle the
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Sea’s fintech business booms, but stock still plummets
Sea Group has long been seen as one of the more resilient Asian platform companies, with a diversified portfolio including gaming, e-commerce, and digital financial services. Sea’s fintech business, Monee, accounts for less than 15% of its overall revenue but has been a consistent bright spot for the company, which faces intense pressure in the ultra-competitive
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Revolut has big plans for the U.S. market
Revolut applied for a U.S. banking charter on March 5, signifying its determination to become a licensed bank in the world’s largest economy. “The United States is a key pillar of our global growth strategy. Filing for a national bank charter is a major milestone toward our vision of building the world’s first truly global
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Will Stripe buy PayPal?
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A Bloomberg report about a possible Stripe acquisition of PayPal has spurred intense discussion in the fintech industry. After all, Stripe is the digital payment colossus of 2026, the most valuable private fintech firm in the world. PayPal once dominated the online payment processing market, but not anymore. Any conversation about the digital payments pioneer
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Klarna fights an uphill battle with investors
Swedish payments giant, sometimes bank and stablecoin issuer Klarna is learning that it’s a lot harder being a listed fintech firm than a unicorn whose eye-popping valuation is decided by private investors who cannot resist hitting the inflate button. The aura of invincibility enjoyed by erstwhile unicorns like Klarna dissipates pretty quickly after an IPO “pops” and
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Why Swift Is Still The Global Payments Hegemon
Many a well-funded fintech upstart has burst onto the scene with the intention of challenging the dominance of the Swift (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication) payments network. The Belgium-based interbank messaging network is and continues to be a convenient poster child for the woes of traditional correspondent banking. Yet disrupting the organization has proven,
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Why most Australian neobanks have failed or been bought
In many countries, neobanks are thriving. Australia is not one of them. In fact, we would say Oz is where neobanks go to die. If you think that’s an exaggeration, consider this: Just one major native digital Australian lender has survived for a decade. That would be Judo Bank. More on Judo in a moment.
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Why Google Fintech Is A Bigger Success Than Meta
Google and Meta are both Web 2.0 giants that are among the largest companies in the world by market capitalization. Google dominates search globally outside of China, while Meta – including Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram – has a huge share of social media platforms ex-China. One area in which the two tech juggernauts differ sharply
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Why the UAE is a better crypto hub than Hong Kong
We still remember clearly when Hong Kong abruptly decided it wanted to be a cryptocurrency hub. It was late 2022, and the city, reeling from Covid-19 restrictions, needed to get its mojo back as quickly as possible. The timing was almost comical, coinciding neatly with FTX’s dramatic implosion. Almost 3 ½ years later, Hong Kong’s
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Grab doubles down on fintech
Singaporean super app Grab reached its first full year of profitability in 2025, posting US$200 million in net income. For a company once best known for burning cash in a race to the bottom against Uber and later GoTo, this is an important milestone—even if investors remain skittish: Grab’s stock has fallen 22% over the
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The Return of Bank Balance Sheets in Fintech Strategy
For most of the last decade, fintech liked to pretend the balance sheet was optional. You could build beautiful software, acquire customers cheaply (until you couldn’t), and “partner” your way around the messy parts like funding, liquidity, capital, and regulatory accountability. Banks, for their part, were happy to play utility: hold the deposits, originate the
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TRM Labs hits $1 billion valuation
Crypto crime fighting has become a big business out of necessity. In 2025, over $3.4 billion in cryptocurrency was stolen. About $1.5 billion was attributed to the February 2025 hack of the Bybit exchange, while hacks targeting individuals also rose to over $700 million. North Korea is responsible for the majority of stolen crypto funds.
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Is Revolut’s rise unstoppable?
Since its inception, Revolut has had a sweeping global vision. Not always a realistic one—as seen by its negligible presence in China and regulatory struggles in India—but almost always more ambitious than its competitors. After all, what other fintech startup is valued at US$75 billion, has 70 million users, and purports to be building the world’s
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Why Banks Are Rejecting Too Many Small Business Loans
Small business loan rejection rates in the United States remain stubbornly high, which is a lose-lose scenario. Denial of credit prevents capital-starved firms from growing and deprives lenders of revenue: they literally leave money on the table. In 2024 (the most recent full year for which data are available), 41% of applicants received all the
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Payment giants have high hopes for agentic AI
Agentic AI represents a shift from “AI as a tool” to “AI as an active agent” or partner. Unlike passive generative AI, which relies on step-by-step instructions, agentic AI is given a goal and determines the necessary actions to achieve that goal with limited supervision. Agentic AI systems can learn from past tasks and adapt
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Why Wise is growing so fast
Wise (formerly TransferWise) is growing briskly thanks to its combination of a disruptive low-cost business model, proprietary technology, and rapid expansion into business and partner banking. The UK-based firm currently serves 10.9 million active customers. Its quarterly cross-border volume grew 25% annually to £47.4 billion in the third fiscal quarter of 2026, while underlying income
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Why Airwallex has a new compliance headache
Airwallex had been on a great run. The Australia-founded B2B payments startup reached a valuation of US$8 billion in December following a massive $330 million Series G funding round. This valuation represents a 30% increase from its previous $6.2 billion valuation in May 2025, driven by strong growth in annualized revenue and transaction volume. Then AUSTRAC, Australia’s
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Vietnam launches crypto exchange licensing
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In a region where cryptocurrency use is growing briskly in many countries, Vietnam still manages to stand out. Research firm Chainalysis notes that along with India and Pakistan, Vietnam is one of the fastest-growing decentralized virtual currency markets in both the Asia-Pacific region and the world. Vietnam’s overall index rating is 4 of 151. 21% of Vietnamese adults
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2 of Brazil’s biggest fintechs eye U.S. IPOs
Across the globe, momentum is building for fintech IPOs as equities markets continue to surge, shrugging off economic uncertainty and geopolitical tension. Two of Brazil’s largest fintechs, Agibank and PicPay, are both planning to list on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), which attracted seven of the 10 largest IPOs in 2025. Among them were
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Why the Taiwan Stock Exchange had an incredible year in 2025
Geopolitical tumult and economic uncertainty across the world failed in 2025 to shake investor confidence in equity markets, with Taiwan being one of the best examples of this phenomenon. The Taiwan Stock Exchange (TAIEX) set six records in 2025 and could soon overtake Canada’s stock market (TSX) to become the world’s No. 6 stock market