U.K.

Metro Bank, the lender founded by U.S. entrepreneur Vernon Hill, plunged to a record low after it disclosed that British regulators are probing how it misclassified assets, an incident that prompted a share sale.

The U.K.’s major banks are urging regulators to allow for greater flexibility in processing high-risk transactions, in a bid to tackle ever-rising levels of financial crime.

Metro Bank, the U.K. challenger bank seeking to fix a shortfall on its balance sheet, said it expects to raise about £350 ($464 million) through selling shares.

Business management software provider Sage will partner with U.K. fintech Modulr to deliver real-time salary and supplier payments to small and medium-size businesses in the country.

Lloyds is paying small merchants to offer cash back, but consumer groups are already casting the move as inadequate to address the decline of branches and ATMs in the U.K.

Immigration restrictions are a threat to London’s status as a fintech hub, enough for Revolut CEO Nikolay Storonsky to demand the U.K.’s government take special steps to prevent the technology talent from going elsewhere.

The all-in-one card market has been a dead end for many years, with products like Coin, Swyp, Stratos and Plastc doomed to be mere footnotes in the history of fintech. Curve is determined to avoid the same fate, and it says PSD2 is its ticket to success.

The venture capital arms of Alphabet Inc.’s Google and Salesforce.com Inc. are investing in U.K. payments startup GoCardless, which has has raised an additional $75 million to fund expansion.

While payments firms must navigate political and regulatory waters, consumers and merchants are best served by a competitive free market free of politics, with minimalist regulators playing the role of the night watchman, writes Eric Grover, a principal at Intrepid Ventures.

Ant Financial, the Chinese payments company that operates Alipay, has a scale that’s almost unimaginable to a U.S. audience. But the giant's ability to build a true empire has already run into regulatory trouble in the U.S.—and it’s affecting Ant's strategy worldwide.