Franklin Templeton, a global investment leader and Binance, the world’s leading cryptocurrency exchange by trading volume and users, today announced a new institutional off-exchange collateral program, making digital markets more secure and capital-efficient. Now live, eligible clients can use tokenized money market fund shares issued through Franklin Templeton’s Benji Technology Platform as off-exchange collateral when trading on Binance.

Nuveen, a global asset manager with $1.4 trillion in assets under management, and Schroders, a leading provider of active asset management, advisory and wealth management services with $1.1 trillion in assets under management have agreed to the terms of a board recommended cash acquisition ("the Transaction") by Nuveen for the entire issued and to-be-issued share capital of Schroders for approximately £9.9 billion.

Nu Mexico, a digital financial services platform, is strengthening its solid, long-term commitment to the country by detailing its strategic investment plan of US$4.2 billion through 2030. This substantial contribution drives robust and continuous growth, with the company adding approximately one million new customers per quarter and approaching 14 million customers.

The 26th Edition of the Connected Banking Summit – Innovation & Excellence Awards 2026 (East Africa Edition), hosted by the International Center for Strategic Alliances (ICSA), will convene senior banking, fintech, regulatory, and technology leaders on 11 March 2026 in Nairobi, Kenya.

The International Center for Strategic Alliances (ICSA) proudly announces the 26th Edition of the Connected Banking Summit – Innovation & Excellence Awards 2026 (East Africa Edition), scheduled to take place on 11 March 2026 in Nairobi, Kenya.

In his recent address in Cyprus, the ECB’s Piero Cipollone didn’t mince his words. He issued a clear warning: Europe must “accelerate” the digital Euro or risk dependence on non-European tech giants. With a pilot targeted for 2027 and potential issuance by 2029, the conversation has moved from theory to implementation.

Wrisk has acquired Atto, a real-time financial intelligence platform focused on open banking-driven credit scoring, income verification, affordability assessment and behavioural insight.

Atto supports enterprise partners by enabling context-aware credit and risk decisions within live customer journeys. The platform is already used by large enterprise clients across both automotive and non-automotive sectors, delivering credit insight grounded in transactional behaviour over and above the static bureau data.

Uptiq, the AI platform purpose-built for financial services, today announced it has raised $25 million in Series B funding from a group of leading strategic and financial investors across banking, fintech, and enterprise software. The round was led by Curql, with participation from Silverton Partners, 645 Ventures, Broadridge, Green Visor Capital, Live Oak Ventures, First Capital, Epic Ventures, Tau Ventures, and Evolution VC.

Alipay announced that its AI Pay, a payment solution that enables secure and seamless payment through AI agents, exceeded 120 million transactions in the past week, as agentic commerce accelerates in China, making it the world’s first AI agentic payment service to reach this milestone.

Launched in 2025, Alipay AI Pay has expanded into various use cases, including AI agents in apps and mini programs for brick-and-mortar retailers like Luckin Coffee, as well as AI smart glasses like Rokid and the Qwen app.

Visa, the Official Payment Technology Partner of the Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games, today releases new data revealing consumer spending patterns in the Winter Games host locations1 during the opening weekend of the Olympic Winter Games Milano Cortina 2026.

VisaNet data analysed by Visa Consulting & Analytics (VCA) shows the positive impact that Milano Cortina 2026 is having on commerce: