Paying employees in cryptocurrency is becoming more popular, with companies offering portions of employee salaries in crypto. And it’s easy to see why — payments in fiat can often be rigid, slow and expensive, particularly for a globally distributed workforce. However, payments made on the blockchain are fully transparent, revealing how much and how often each employee is paid, potentially creating dissatisfaction among coworkers.

Spinwheel, the agentic AI-powered credit data and payments platform, today announced a strategic investment from Citi Ventures. The funding will support Spinwheel’s continued go-to-market growth, expand its agentic AI platform, and build out its data sets and product offerings. In addition, Citi Ventures will advise Spinwheel on product use cases that matter most to the largest financial institutions.

AEON, the next generation crypto payment framework, has officially introduced its new Scan-to-Pay feature in Brazil via its Web3 mobile payment solution AEON Pay. Brazilian users can now simply scan merchants' PIX QR codes and complete purchases with their crypto assets, and AEON automatically settles the payment to merchants in Brazilian Real (BRL) via PIX, the nation's instant payment network.

Lead Bank, the industry-leading bank serving the world’s top fintechs and digital asset companies, today announced the close of its $70 million Series B fundraising round. The round included new investors, ICONIQ and Greycroft, as well as existing investors Ribbit Capital, Coatue, Khosla Ventures, Andreesen Horowitz, and Zeev Ventures. Lead’s post-money valuation is now $1.47 billion.

Gemini has unveiled a suite of new products for over 400 million European Union (EU) and European Economic Area (EEA) investors, including Gemini Staking for Ethereum (ETH) and Solana (SOL), as well as Gemini Perpetuals, our regulated derivatives product. This continues our European expansion as we become the go-to crypto trading destination for European investors after receiving .

Elysian, the AI-native third-party administrator (TPA) for commercial insurance, today announced the closing of a $6 million seed round led by Portage, with participation from American Family Ventures and TenOneTen Ventures. The funding will accelerate Elysian’s go-to-market efforts, support customer onboarding, and scale the company’s delivery operations and technology platform.

Nova Credit, a leading credit infrastructure and analytics company, today announced that PayPal, one of the world’s largest digital payment platforms, has selected Nova Credit’s Cash Atlas® to incorporate cash flow underwriting capabilities across its growing portfolio of consumer credit products.

Antom, a leading merchant payment and digitisation services provider under Ant International, today announced the launch of an agentic payment solution, featuring a first-of-its-kind secure APM checkout solution. Antom is also among the first partners of Mastercard and Visa to pilot card-based transaction capabilities for AI agents.