Revolut drops anchor in Mexico, JPMorganChase hires a payments chief

Revoluts Billionaire CEO Moves Residence From UK to Mideast
Photographer: Adrian Dennis
  • Key insights: Revolut has opened a licensed bank in Mexico as it pushes an international strategy. 
  • What's at stake: The London-based financial institution is competing with large payment tech firms and banks. 
  • Forward look: Revolut hopes to replicate its Mexico strategy in other markets. 

Revolut's international expansion took another step as the London financial institution opened a fintech in Mexico that it hopes will serve as a model for moves into other countries. Called Revolut Bank S.A Institución de Banca Múltiple, the unit has a banking license in Mexico and has capitalized its operations with more than $100 million USD. 

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Revolut's Mexican bank will offer yield-bearing savings, cross-border payments, digital bill pay, family accounts, payment cards and a points-based reward system. 

"Revolut's technology will empower millions across Mexico with better financial tools ... and we are confident in replicating this success on our journey to reach over 100 million daily active customers in 100 countries," Nik Storonsky, Revolut's co-founder and CEO, said in a release.

Revolut's Mexican bank follows earlier moves to diversify its products, including launching new investment products in the U.K. and expanded credit in the U.S. Revolut's strategy comes as PayPal and Block also rapidly add financial services to push a super app, or a single platform for multiple financial and nonfinancial products, making these technology-focused companies a rival to banks, particularly for younger consumers. —John Adams  

Trump Blasts Dimon, Threatens To Sue JP Morgan Over Debanking
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JPMorgan Payments taps new chief data and analytics officer

Zachary Anderson is joining the bank's payments division from Edinburgh-based NatWest Group, where he was group chief data and analytics officer and head of open banking, personalization and AI, according to his LinkedIn profile. 

"I am super excited to share that I've started a new chapter as Chief Data & Analytics Officer at J.P. Morgan Payments," Anderson wrote in a LinkedIn post

"The scale here is hard to wrap your head around: we are moving $12 trillion a day. That's roughly the world's GDP flowing through these pipes every few weeks," he said. "But what really draws me in isn't just the volume — it's the precision. Operating at 99.9999% reliability is the standard here. To me, that is the ultimate data challenge: how do we maintain that 'space flight' level of trust while pushing the edge of the possible with AI and analytics?"

Anderson joins JPMorgan at a time when its payments division has been posting consecutive quarters of record growth. In the fourth quarter of 2025, revenue increased 9% year over year to $5.1 billion, largely due to higher deposit balances and fee growth.

Payments revenue is a key contributor to the bank's commercial and investment banking business, and made up 26% of CIB revenue. —Joey Pizzolato

ebay-hq
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EBay bans third-party agents and bots

Online auction marketplace eBay is shutting its doors to third-party agents and bots, according to its terms of service. 

EBay updated its terms of service on Jan. 20 to include buy-for-me-agents and LLM-driven bots, "or any end-to-end flow that attempts to place orders without human review." Value-added Resource first reported the change to the company's terms of service. 

The move comes as retailers grapple with burgeoning use of chatbots in e-commerce and discovery. Merchants not only need a way to make their inventory discoverable by AI agents, but also need to protect against fraud and charge-back risk, while still maintaining control of the customer experience. —Joey Pizzolato

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Visa adds partner for rent incentives

Real estate fintech Amenify has partnered with Visa to launch a "resident commerce" portal that embeds a rewards program with access to local merchants.

Based in San Francisco and India, Amenify's clients include property managers and technology companies including RealPage, Entrata and Zego. These users access Amenify through an application programming interface as a white label user. 

Merchants also use Amenify to market products connected to rental properties. The new collaboration with Visa enables residents to earn "Amenify Cash" by using a linked Visa card for rent or purchases at local merchants that are part of Amenify and Visa's network. These "rewards" can be used for online purchases from local restaurants, groceries, housekeepers, maintenance workers, e-commerce, furniture and other products.

The service also includes agentic commerce tools that can automate tasks, find and manage service providers and other retailers.

Amenify helps Visa expand its services strategy, which aims to draw revenue from outside card payments; as well as its push into agentic commerce. —John Adams 

FCA
Bloomberg

UK banking regulator to examine 'advanced AI'

With new forms of artificial intelligence sweeping across financial services, the Financial Conduct Authority has launched a review of the impact on consumers, financial markets and regulators.

The regulator has hired Sheldon Mills, a former FCA officer, to lead the investigation, which will focus on agentic AI, generative AI and other emerging forms of AI that are designed to produce original content or take actions with limited or no human supervision. 

Its goal is to determine how AI is evolving, including the potential of more autonomous versions, and how this could affect competition and market structure. The FCA will also determine the impact on consumers, including how AI may influence consumers, and how regulators will need to evolve in response. 

"AI is already shaping financial services, but its longer-term effects may be more far-reaching. This review will consider how emerging uses of AI could influence consumers, markets and firms, looking towards 2030 and beyond," Mills said in a release. "By taking a forward-looking view, the review will help the FCA continue to support innovation while promoting the safe and trusted adoption of AI in retail financial services." —John Adams 

Commonwealth Bank of Australia and smartphone users
David Moir/Bloomberg

Westpac, CBA demo Mastercard's agentic commerce

As Mastercard expands its outreach to artificial intelligence developers, the card brand is also lining up issuers to push the technology in Australia.

Commonwealth Bank of Australia and Westpac this week executed transactions using agentic AI, or a form of AI that uses little or no human supervision. CBA used Mastercard's Agent Pay to make a debit card payment at Event Cinemas, with the issuer, acquirer and merchant all being aware that an AI agent was performing the payment. Westpac used a credit card to process a payment at Threadbo, a local resort. 

"Agentic commerce represents one of the most profound shifts in consumer behavior we've seen in decades," says Paul Monnington, division president of Australasia for Mastercard, in a release. —John Adams 

zelle online
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Zelle adds more community banks to its ranks

Zelle has been looking to penetrate the remaining banks and financial institutions that are not on its network, and put much of its focus last year on smaller community banks

The peer-to-peer payments network said 337 financial institutions went live or signed up for its services in 2025; and 97% of those were community banks or credit unions with less than $10 billion in assets. 

"Zelle already reaches 80% of U.S. bank and credit union accounts and last year was about widening access – deliberately and at scale," said Denise Leonhard, Zelle's general manager, in a statement. "Deployment looks very different at a rural community credit union than at a major metro bank, and not every institution starts with the same tech stack." 

Zelle's reseller network has been key in getting more community banks and credit unions to sign up for the service because the technology sellers help keep integration costs down. Last year, Zelle signed a distribution deal with Alacriti to make the P2P network available on Alacriti's Orbipay Payments Hub. —Joey Pizzolato

FCA sign and stairwell
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Guavapay forced to liquidate

Embattled payments fintech Guavapay has been forced to liquidate by the U.K.'s Financial Conduct Authority four months after it halted operations in the country. 

Guavapay was working to get back in the regulator's good graces after allegations that the company did little to prevent fraud on its platform forced it to halt operations in September of last year. 

The situation further unraveled for Guavapay earlier this year when Mastercard sued following a missed debt payment. Its founder, Orkhan Nasibov, has also left the company. —Joey Pizzolato

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