Ant International, a leading global digital payment, digitisation, and financial technology provider, has released its proprietary Falcon TST (Time-Series Transformer) AI model, the industry-first Mixture of Experts architecture-based big data model with multiple patch tokenizers, supported by up to 2.5 billion parameters. The model has also achieved state-of-the-art zero-shot results on well-acknowledged long-term forecasting benchmarks, such as absolute mean error rates.

Starling has teamed up with Small Business Britain, the UK’s leading champion of small businesses, to found a campaign to empower women across the UK to start and grow their businesses. 

PPRO, the leading local payments platform, today announced the launch of Buy Now Pay Local, a new solution that enables Payment Service Providers (PSPs) and merchants to access the local Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) options that consumers prefer, through a single, seamless integration.

Cashflows, the platform that makes it easy for businesses to accept payments, has partnered with Boodil, a UK-based e-commerce payments technology provider, to enhance the payment experience for Shopify merchants across the UK.

The strategic partnership combines Cashflows’ robust acquiring and gateway technology with Boodil’s innovative payment technology, arming Shopify merchants with a comprehensive payment suite that offers card payments and digital wallets.

FALKIN, a digital safety company that helps people stop scams before payments happen, has today announced it has secured $2 million in pre-seed funding. The round was led by TriplePoint Ventures, with participation from Notion Capital, BackFuture Ventures, Aviva/Founders Factory, Haatch, Found Capital, and Founders Capital. The round also included leading fintech and cyber investors such as Pierre Decote, Group Chief Risk Officer at Revolut and Ben Enckevort, CTO and Co-Founder of Metomic.

As part of its European growth strategy, UK-based payments company myPOS is introducing Tap to Pay on iPhone for businesses in Spain. The move comes after the fintech successfully launched the feature in nine other European markets, including the UK, France, Italy, and the Netherlands. Available within the myPOS Glass app, the feature allows merchants to accept all forms of contactless payments directly on their iPhone — including contactless credit and debit cards, Apple Pay, and other digital wallets — with no additional hardware required. 

Fraud prevention sits at the heart of customer trust in modern banking. Across the Asia-Pacific region, digital payments continue to surge, and with that growth comes a rising tide of scams and unauthorised transactions. In fact, Mastercard estimates that individual consumers in Asia collectively lost nearly $700 billion USD to digital scams in 2024.

Eltropy, the leading AI-powered conversations platform for community financial institutions (CFIs), today introduced its "Safe AI Strategy for Community Financial Institutions" eBook. This strategic guide offers credit unions and community banks practical guidance for navigating AI implementation through a framework built on trust, fairness, and security.

FinovateSpring 2026 is returning to San Diego, May 7-9 2026, to bring together the brightest minds in fintech, banking, and innovation. It offers unparalleled opportunities for networking, learning, and collaboration, making it a must-attend for anyone shaping the future of financial services.

FinovateEurope is returning 10-11 February, 2026 at the InterContinental O2 in London, bringing together 1,000+ decision-makers, including 600+ C-suite executives, directors and leaders from banks, investors, and financial institutions. At the heart of the event are 30+ live demos showcasing the latest cutting-edge fintech innovations, making FinovateEurope the ultimate destination for those shaping the future of financial technology.