THE NEW FINANCIAL ARCHITECTURE: BUILT FOR SPEED, GUIDED BY VALUES

As we close out 2025 and look toward 2026, the fintech landscape feels less like an industry in evolution and more like one in acceleration. The past year has been defined by speed. Speed of innovation, of adoption, and, in some ways, of societal expectation. We’re moving faster than ever, yet the questions hanging over the sector are becoming deeper, more nuanced, more human. It’s this tension, between velocity and reflection, that shapes our Winter Edition.

As we enter the critical holiday shopping season, businesses are facing new and emerging challenges with first-party fraud. Sift’s Q4 2025 Digital Trust Index shows that chargeback rates climbed steadily throughout 2025, reaching 0.26% in Q3, a 53% increase from Q1 2025. Retail e-commerce chargeback rates have exploded by 233% since Q1 2025, the highest increase of any merchant category.

Nutanix, a leader in hybrid multicloud computing, today announced new capabilities in its Nutanix Cloud Platform (NCP) solution designed to give organisations greater flexibility to deploy and govern their infrastructure across distributed environments running traditional, modern, and AI applications, including fully disconnected environments, with cloud  providers that offer sovereign services, or across a combination of both – without  sacrificing unified management or operational simplicity. 

Doha Bank has successfully listed its inaugural USD150 million Floating Rate Digitally Native Notes (DNN) on the London Stock Exchange’s International Securities Market (ISM), achieving T+0 instant settlement via Euroclear’s Digital Financial Market Infrastructure (D-FMI). Euroclear’s D-FMI facilitates the issuance, distribution and settlement of fully digital international securities using distributed ledger technology (DLT).

HSBC Holdings plc and The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation Limited  today announced the despatch of the scheme document regarding the proposal for the privatisation of Hang Seng Bank by way of a scheme of arrangement.

Starting today, ViaBill customers in Denmark can now choose to split up payments for their purchase using ViaBill’s Mastercard and Pay Later solutions on Apple Pay. Eligible customers can now choose to pay in monthly installments when checking out with Apple Pay online and in-app using iPhone or iPad, or in-store using iPhone. This innovative capability delivers even more convenience, control, and transparency to even more customers.

Coinbase, the leading publicly-listed firm for digital assets, and Chainlink, the industry-standard oracle platform, today announced the selection of Chainlink's Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol (CCIP) as the exclusive bridging solution for all Coi

EBANX, a global technology company specializing in payment services for emerging markets, has extended its operations with Network Tokens to five Latin American countries. The technology replaces the card’s sensitive Primary Account Number (PAN) with a secure, dynamic token (DPAN), thereby protecting cardholder data while ensuring a smoother payment experience.

BPI Direct BanKo, Inc., A Savings Bank (BanKo), the microfinance arm of the Bank of the Philippine Islands (BPI), announced that it has selected ACI Worldwide , an original innovator in global payments technology, to advance its payment infrastructure.