Joey Pizzolato

New York State Gov. Kathy Hochul has codified how buy now/pay later lending will operate in the state, taking a heavier hand as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau loosens its grip under President Trump.

The fintech's first-quarter earnings results beat analysts' expectations on nearly every metric. Now, the second-look lender is looking to partner with regional banks as it builds out its pre-screen and lead generation platforms.

The fintech's CEO told analysts during Thursday's earnings call that generative AI was taking search by storm and that investors "should absolutely expect us to have an answer for that."

The payment company joins other firms that are expanding apps in Europe, where Apple has agreed to ease access to supporting technology. Plus, the U.K. plans a new crypto crackdown.

AI agents have the power to automate a number of once-manual tasks: They can conduct background research, generate content, write code and analyze data. In their latest evolution, driven by Visa, Mastercard and other fintechs, payments are now on the menu of services.

The bureau's Tuesday afternoon announcement follows an earlier statement that it would walk back a rule that places buy now/pay later loans under the Truth in Lending Act's Regulation Z, a move that will ease compliance for fintechs that offer installment loans.

A service outage on Friday at Fiserv affected multiple banks and crippled at least 60 applications for some Fiserv customers, including Early Warning's peer-to-peer money transfer app Zelle. The issue, while resolved, reiterates the importance of bank redundancies.

Unexpected changes in spending patterns on the P2P app caused the company to miss internal and analyst targets, resulting in a more cautious shift in its annual guidance and a plummeting stock in afterhours trading.

As the banking-as-a-service model has evolved over the last decade amid widespread consent orders and BaaS partnership failures, the number of sponsor banks has dwindled, leaving fintechs to compete for the business of those that remain.

The card processor came up short on expected profits but hit analysts' estimates on revenue in the second quarter of its fiscal 2025. CEO Ryan McInerney said growth in payments volume, cross-border volume and processed transactions were strong even in the face of shaky economic conditions.