Payments

Stripe has expanded its Shared Payment Tokens, a foundational building block to protect agentic commerce, to work with Visa and Mastercard's tokens. It's also added Affirm and Klarna.

Federal Reserve Vice Chair for Supervision Michelle Bowman played down the significance of Kraken Financial receiving a master account, saying the central bank is treating it as a pilot program.

Panelists at a JPMorganChase webinar said oil shipping security is shaky, creating risk of a new wave of inflation that would impact energy finance. Other analysts said the war will create pressure for some parts of the payments industry.

Noelle Acheson points out that a wander through stablecoin history highlights an overlooked use case likely to be of interest to financial services providers.

By acquiring the ATM firm, Brink's hopes to expand in retail commerce. Plus, Revolut issues a card to compete with Amex; Standard Chartered has a new payments chief; and more in American Banker's global payments and fintech roundup.

The blockchain technology firm has added new processing tools for digital assets and traditional money, pitching itself as a destination for crypto-curious banks.

Fifty years of sanctions has forced the Middle Eastern country to develop its own isolated financial system. But money has still found a way to move in and out of the country.

In separate arrangements, Mastercard is working with SoFi and Visa is working with Bridge to build scale in anticipation of greater demand for the digital asset.

With the likes of Amex and JPMorganChase upgrading card perks, BofA is expanding no-fee access to more customers and products and adding incentives.

Block last week cut 40% of its staff and attributed the layoffs to artificial intelligence, leaving many to wonder whether Jack Dorsey's payments company was a bellwether for widespread AI-driven layoffs, or a one-off.

The payments company will fire about 40% of its employees, with CEO Jack Dorsey attributing the move to the impact of artificial intelligence. While investors cheered the move, analysts also raised questions about the company's functionality, and Dorsey said other companies will make similar moves.

Recent reports from JD Power suggest that more customers choose payment alternatives to avoid surcharge fees.

Noelle Acheson argues that stablecoins can help community banks deepen relationships with their customers, help them explore new forms of capital formation and strengthen their own exposure to risk.

In this week's American Banker global payments and fintech roundup, Revolut, Tether and Circle made announcements designed to improve their standing in the stablecoin market. That comes amid new research from McKinsey that says the digital asset is growing quickly, but has not made even a small dent in payments.

There's speculation about a potential deal, which could boost Stripe's merchant appeal and accelerate its agentic commerce strategy. But payment experts also say Stripe could face a bidding war that includes AI companies.

Andrew Torre, the card network's president of Value-Added Services, said demand for security, agentic commerce and better processing are creating demand for technology and consulting.