Mesta, the Global fiat + Stablecoin Payment Network, today announced it has raised a $5.5 million seed round led by Village Global, with participation from Circle Ventures, Paxos, and WTI - Western Technology Investment. Existing backers including Garuda Ventures, Canonical Crypto, Everywhere Ventures, and Inventum Ventures also reaffirmed their support.

FreedomPay, a global leader in Next Level Commerce™, and Stripe, the programmable financial services company, today released the “Enterprise Payments Playbook,” a new report in partnership with Forbes Insights. The report, based on a survey of 250 global financial services enterprise leaders, finds that outdated payment technology is a direct cause of lost sales, reduced customer loyalty, and significant competitive disadvantage.

Nexi, the European PayTech, and the Reserve Bank of New Zealand (RBNZ) – Te Pūtea Matua, have successfully upgraded New Zealand’s Real Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) system, known as ESAS, ensuring alignment with the latest Swift regulatory and messaging protocols.

Instant payments are transforming the financial ecosystem, driving innovation, speed, and efficiency across global markets. Building on the success of our previous editions, we are proud to present the 11th Instant Payments Summit (IPS), taking place on March 16–17, 2026, in Atlanta, USA.

The financial services industry is evolving at unprecedented speed, driven by Applied AI and HyperAutomation. Following the success of our previous summits, we are pleased to announce the 6th US AppliedAI & HyperAutomation in Finance Summit, a two-day, high-impact forum bringing together senior leaders, innovators, and solution providers in banking, insurance, credit unions, and wealth/asset management.

PhotonPay, an AI-powered financial infrastructure platform, has entered a strategic partnership with 

CGI, one of the largest independent IT and business consulting services firms in the world, today announced its partnership with Barclays to integrate CGI Trade360, CGI’s global trade finance solution, with Konsole from Komgo, the largest multi-bank trade finance platform. The integrated solution will provide Barclays with more transparency, increased transaction speed, reduced manual entry and reduced operating risk.

Nuvei today announced the launch of its AI-powered Integration Agent, a new solution that enables merchants and partners to connect to its global payments infrastructure in hours instead of weeks. By dramatically simplifying technical integration, the launch advances Nuvei’s strategy to embed AI across the payments lifecycle, helping businesses go live faster, reduce costly errors, and access optimization tools that accelerate revenue growth.