Fintech Weekly: Stablecoins Move Into the Mainstream, AI Moves Into the Core

30 August 2026

The past week marked a clear shift from fintech experimentation toward institutional-scale deployment. Stablecoins are increasingly being connected to mainstream payment infrastructure, banks are rebuilding core systems around cloud-native platforms, and AI is moving deeper into fraud, audit, forecasting and customer-facing financial services.

1. Top Headlines

Visa and Nium pilot stablecoin settlement under MAS BLOOM initiative — FinTech Futures Visa and Nium are testing stablecoin settlement under Singapore’s Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) BLOOM initiative, targeting payments that can operate seven days a week, including weekends and public holidays. The pilot is significant because it moves stablecoins from a crypto-native use case toward regulated cross-border payment infrastructure. Read the original article
Swift accepts request to extend structured address migration for ISO 20022 messages — Finextra Swift is extending the deadline for banks moving from unstructured to structured postal addresses in ISO 20022 payment messages after financial institutions requested additional implementation time. The development highlights the operational complexity behind global payments modernisation: standards adoption is not simply a technology problem but also a data-quality and change-management challenge. Read the original Finextra coverage
US state bankers associations to build industry-owned blockchain network — Finextra Banking associations representing 39 US states and more than 3,200 banks are creating the BankChain Alliance, targeting a 2027 launch for shared blockchain infrastructure supporting tokenised deposits, stablecoins and smart payments. The initiative suggests smaller banks increasingly see shared infrastructure as a way to compete with large banks and fintechs without individually bearing the cost of blockchain development. Read the original article
Deutsche Bank’s Private Bank selects Thought Machine for radical core banking shakeup — Finextra Deutsche Bank’s Private Bank has selected Thought Machine’s Vault Core as part of a programme to reduce 15 core-banking implementations to just two modern cloud-based platforms. The move demonstrates that core modernisation is becoming a strategic prerequisite for faster product development, operational simplification and scalable digital banking. Read the original article
Revolut debuts AI research unit to power in-house banking models — FinTech Futures Revolut has launched Revolut Research to develop proprietary AI infrastructure and models using data generated across its large customer base. Rather than treating AI as a collection of third-party applications, Revolut is positioning AI as an internal platform for fraud detection, risk assessment and personalised financial services. Read the original article
Lunar founders launch new AI audit company Repodo — FinTech Futures Former Lunar executives have launched Repodo with $8.2 million in pre-seed funding to build an agentic AI operating system for financial auditing. The platform automates data collection, reconciliation, documentation and transaction analysis while retaining human judgement for final sign-off—a model that could become increasingly relevant to regulated financial institutions. Read the original article
Stablecoin-focused neobank Fasset raises $68m Series C led by SBI — FinTech Futures Fasset has raised $68 million in a Series C led by Japan’s SBI, taking its valuation to $1 billion. The company plans to invest in its Own Network, designed to connect banks, telcos, payment providers and liquidity providers for international settlement, illustrating growing institutional interest in stablecoin-enabled financial networks. Read the original article
India’s Federal Bank implements M2P Fintech loan origination system — FinTech Futures Federal Bank is deploying a custom loan-origination platform from M2P Fintech to automate applications, onboarding and back-office processing across its fintech partner ecosystem. The project illustrates how banks are increasingly exposing lending capabilities through APIs and specialised fintech infrastructure rather than relying solely on monolithic internal systems. Read the original article
Pay.com.au launches US arm PayRewards with $28m Series E — FinTech Futures Australian B2B payments platform Pay.com.au has raised $28 million to launch PayRewards in the US, allowing small businesses to earn rewards from payments such as rent, utilities and taxes. The expansion shows fintechs increasingly using payments data and rewards mechanics to build higher-value financial products around business cash flows. Read the original article
UK Government tells Bank of England to support innovation in payment systems — Finextra The UK government plans to give the Bank of England a secondary objective focused on innovation in payments and digital money, including stablecoins. The policy shift is notable because it explicitly places payment innovation alongside financial stability within the central bank’s broader mandate. Read the original article

2. In-Depth Highlight: Stablecoins Move From Experiment to Payment Infrastructure

The week’s most strategically important development is the expansion of Singapore’s BLOOM initiative, with Visa and Nium testing stablecoin settlement for payments outside traditional banking hours. BLOOM is designed to explore cross-border settlement using stablecoins and tokenisation, building on Singapore’s earlier digital-money experimentation. Read the FinTech Futures report

The importance is less about cryptocurrency speculation and more about settlement infrastructure. Traditional cross-border payments depend on correspondent banking networks, operating windows and multiple intermediaries; stablecoin-based settlement could potentially provide continuous settlement while reducing some of these frictions.

The participation of Visa, Nium and major financial institutions in the wider BLOOM ecosystem also signals that the technology is being evaluated within regulated financial-market structures rather than in isolation. At the same time, Revolut’s launch of EURR and Fasset’s $1 billion valuation demonstrate that stablecoins are expanding simultaneously on the consumer, banking and institutional sides of the market. (Finextra Research)

The emerging competitive question is therefore changing: who will control the regulated rails connecting bank deposits, stablecoins, tokenised assets and payment networks? Banks, card networks, fintechs and infrastructure providers are all positioning themselves for that architecture.

3. Market & Industry Insight

Stablecoins are becoming financial infrastructure

This week’s developments show three parallel layers emerging. At the payment layer, Visa and Nium are testing settlement. At the banking layer, Revolut is issuing a euro-backed stablecoin while Fasset is building a regulated stablecoin-focused network. At the infrastructure layer, US banking associations are considering their own blockchain network and Swift is continuing to modernise cross-border payment messaging. (FinTech Futures)

For financial institutions, the strategic implication is that stablecoins should increasingly be assessed as part of payments architecture and treasury infrastructure, not simply as a crypto product.

AI is becoming an operating layer for finance

AI is also moving beyond chatbots. Revolut is building proprietary AI infrastructure for fraud and risk; Repodo is applying agentic AI to audit workflows; and Federal Bank is automating digital lending processes. The common theme is workflow transformation: AI is being embedded directly into processes where financial institutions currently spend significant amounts on manual review, reconciliation and decision support.

This creates a new governance challenge. As AI becomes embedded in regulated processes, banks will need strong controls around model risk, explainability, human oversight, data lineage, audit trails and operational resilience.

4. Company & Startup Spotlight

Revolut — Building the AI-native bank

Revolut is increasingly positioning itself as an AI-driven financial institution rather than simply a digital bank. Its new Revolut Research unit is intended to develop proprietary AI infrastructure for fraud detection, risk assessment and personalised banking. Read the FinTech Futures report

Why it matters: Revolut’s strategy illustrates a broader shift from buying individual AI applications toward building an enterprise AI platform integrated with proprietary financial data and workflows.

Fasset — Stablecoin banking at institutional scale

Fasset is building an Islamic digital bank and stablecoin-focused financial network. Its latest $68 million round, led by SBI, values the company at $1 billion and will support Own Network, which aims to connect financial institutions and payment/liquidity providers across international markets. Read the FinTech Futures report

Why it matters: Fasset is an example of fintech companies attempting to combine regulated banking, digital assets and cross-border settlement into one infrastructure proposition.

5. Regulatory & Policy Watch

UK: The government plans to give the Bank of England an explicit innovation objective covering payment systems and digital money such as stablecoins. Read the Finextra article
Singapore: MAS continues expanding BLOOM, with Visa and Nium testing stablecoin settlement as part of regulated cross-border payment experimentation. Read the FinTech Futures article
US: Banking associations representing 39 states are developing an industry-owned blockchain network, with the planned infrastructure intended to support tokenised deposits, stablecoins and automated settlement. Read the Finextra article

6. Quote of the Week

“We have launched Revolut Research to institutionalise our ‘build, don’t bolt on’ philosophy.”

— Pavel Nesterov, Head of AI, Revolut, discussing the company’s new AI research division. Read the original report

The quote captures an important enterprise-AI trend: financial institutions increasingly want AI to become part of their core technology architecture rather than another layer of third-party software.

7. What’s Next

3 September: Finextra’s Countdown to Sibos: Who controls value in an AI-driven economy? will examine AI, tokenisation and programmable finance. Event details
8 September: Finextra will host a session on ecosystem-wide fraud controls and the regulatory changes needed to combat financial crime. Event details
8–11 September: FinovateFall 2026 takes place in New York, bringing banks and fintechs together around emerging financial technology. FinovateFall 2026
15 September: Finextra will examine whether banks are ready for digital money, including stablecoins, tokenised deposits and CBDCs. Event details

Stablecoins Move Into the Mainstream, AI Moves Into the Core