This Black Friday, fraudsters once again made concerted efforts to target bargain hunters hoping to cash in on the shopping frenzy, but this year far fewer succeeded. 

Visa blocked 280% more suspected fraud in the UK on Black Friday 2025 compared to Black Friday 2024, and 63% more compared to the previous Friday. Across Europe, Visa blocked 140% more suspected fraud on this year’s Black Friday, compared to last year’s, and 40% more compared to the previous Friday. 

FinTech Wales, the independent membership association for the fintech and financial services industry in Wales, has today published its Fintech in Wales Annual Report 2024/25 - the organisation’s fifth and most comprehensive report to-date.

Cumbuca, a Y Combinator start-up backed by investors including Lightspeed, has launched to deliver fast-track direct access to the Brazilian financial services market. The company acts as a proxy for Brazil’s regulated payments ecosystem, giving international firms a faster route to market than securing their own license, which can take several years.

LSEG today announced an MCP (Model Context Protocol) connector for ChatGPT users and enterprise customers of OpenAI, and initial plans to make ChatGPT Enterprise available for employees.

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10x powers the core with a tier-1-grade, cloud-native core banking engine built for scalability, resilience, and flexibility. The 10x Banking Platform supports millions of accounts, unlocks real-time data, and delivers full compatibility across programming languages with seamless API integrations – empowering rapid innovation and customization.

The latest credit card data analysis from global analytics software leader FICO, for September 2025, underlines the financial balancing act households have faced this year.

Smartstream, the trusted data solutions provider for leading global financial institutions and enterprises, today announces the preview of Smart Agents for Investigations, a breakthrough in financial operations that brings augmented and autonomous exception handling to reconciliations and back-office processes.

YouLend, the global leader in embedded finance infrastructure, has entered into a strategic partnership with Qonto, Europe’s leading digital financial management solution for SMEs and freelancers. The collaboration expands Qonto’s Financing Hub in the German market, addressing the growing demand for fast, integrated financing options among small businesses.

ClearBank, the enabler of real-time clearing and embedded banking, today announces a partnership with Plaid, a data network that serves as the analytics layer for financial services. This collaboration will deliver faster, more secure, and frictionless Pay by Bank experiences for businesses and consumers across the UK.

Flywire Corporation , a global payments enablement and software company, today announced that it has partnered with TenPay Global, Tencent's cross-border payment platform, to extend Weixin Pay (also known as WeChat Pay) as a payment option for Chinese students and families making education payments to universities in South Korea and Malaysia.