Published:
May 16, 2026
Author:
Sarah Parsons Wolter
Share:
For two decades, banks have weathered fintech’s attack on their deposit base with the calm of a tenured department. Challengers have upended business models across the stack but none have fully loosened incumbent’s stranglehold over the deposit base. Stablecoins are a different proposition, and Washington has noticed. The Clarity Act passed a Senate Banking Committee vote this week and is now headed to the Senate. The journey has been marked by drama not between Republicans and Democrats but banks and a dollar-pegged token.
One central question: should crypto exchanges be allowed to pay yield on stablecoin balances? Coinbase pulled support for an earlier draft in January after banking groups tried to outlaw the practice. Banks worry customers would empty their deposit accounts and switch to stablecoins, a potential threat to the banking system. Coinbase’s move prompted legislators to cancel the vote and forced the White House to broker a compromise. The current language permits certain forms of yield while prohibiting others, wording the American Bankers Association argues lets exchanges “easily circumvent the prohibition.” Coinbase, by contrast, called the same language “a strong compromise.”
With $130m spent by crypto PACs in 2024 and midterms looming, the crypto industry's window for codifying a friendlier regime is narrow. With the full Senate vote setting the stage for a fierce lobbying fight, expect more drama ahead.
Portfolio News
Apex Fintech Solutions partners with Plaid to transform digital investing infrastructure - Plaid and Apex have partnered to streamline the account transfer process for investment platforms, combining Plaid's secure connectivity and data validation with Apex's ACATS infrastructure and risk engine. The integrated solution helps reduce transfer errors and delays while improving efficiency for brokerage firms and their customers. Read more
Yield Be Damned
US Senate committee advances crypto bill in milestone for digital assets - Among other things, the bill would define when crypto tokens are securities, commodities or otherwise, giving the industry what it says is much-needed legal clarity that should help boost digital asset adoption. Read more
Industry News
Traders will soon be able to bet on computer chip prices as AI drives costs skyward - Contracts on the new "compute futures market" from CME Group will be based on graphics processing units (GPU) price indexes from Silicon Data, the companies said in a statement released Tuesday announcing the joint venture, which still is pending regulatory review. Read more
BlackRock readies launch of two tokenized money-market funds - The funds include a digital class of shares tied to the BlackRock Select Treasury Based Liquidity Fund and the BlackRock Daily Reinvestment Stablecoin Reserve Vehicle, a newly created tokenized money-market fund. Their filings come as passage of the Genius Act accelerates demand for blockchain-native reserve assets. Read more
OpenAI launches the OpenAI Deployment Company (DeployCo) to help businesses build around intelligence - DeployCo, which launches with $4b of investment at a $10b pre-money valuation and OpenAI retaining majority control, is a committed partnership between OpenAI and 19 leading global investment firms, consultancies, and system integrators. The partnership is led by TPG, with Advent, Bain Capital, and Brookfield as co-lead founding partners. Read more
Big Tech groups launch global borrowing spree to fund AI expansion - These companies have increased their estimated AI spending to $725b this year, and are looking to raise debt in currencies including Swiss francs and euros, which offer attractive borrowing costs due to lower policy rates. Some borrowers were also looking into raising debt in Australian and Singaporean dollars. Read more
Fiserv forms strategic collaboration with OpenAI to bring AI to how Fiserv serves financial institutions - Fiserv is developing select first-party agents with OpenAI on the agentOS platform Fiserv launched this week, targeting the workflows that consume the most operational capacity at financial institutions. Read more
Private credit isn't the problem, concentration is - Assets don't fail in isolation. Portfolios do. Private credit is not a monolith. It includes senior and junior lending, sponsor-backed and direct corporate loans, asset-backed finance, special situations and secondaries. Risk varies widely depending on underwriting discipline, sector exposure, leverage, structure, geography and, most importantly, manager and investor behaviour. Read more
AI-hacking threat pushes $130b crypto sector to the brink - The number of DeFi exploits soared to a record in April, almost doubling from the previous month. Read more
Goldman president says bank is 'human assembly line' facing automation - Back-office roles are increasingly being handled by machines at Goldman Sachs and across Wall Street, where executives are pointing to additional areas where AI can find efficiency and drive growth. Read more
JPMorgan is finally rolling out its consumer bank in Europe - Almost five years after launching its digital bank Chase in the UK, CEO Jamie Dimon is preparing to take on Germany. JPMorgan's digital entry marks a departure from earlier attempts by international lenders, which struggled to gain scale through costly branch networks. Read more
Revolut prepares to launch private bank as it woos wealthy - Revolut is planning to launch a private bank in the UK and has been given a licence to provide complex financial instruments to clients, as the UK's most valuable fintech looks to expand its appeal among wealthy customers. The plans come as the UK's Financial Conduct Authority granted permission for Revolut's trading arm to expand into "leveraged products, private wealth services and managed portfolio solutions". Read more
Select Financings
Adfin - London based agentic cashflow management platform raised $18m in Series A funding led by Index Ventures. Read more
Anomaly Insights - New York based healthcare claims analytics platform raised $17m in Series A funding led by Sound Ventures. Read more
Boundary Labs - New York based developer of a protocol that makes stablecoins institution-ready through verifiable reserves raised $2m in pre-Seed funding led by Galaxy Ventures. Read more
Dolfin - Barcelona based sales incentive and commission platform raised €2.1m in Seed funding led by Swanlaab. Read more
Embat - Madrid based treasury management startup raised €30m in Series B funding led by Cathay Innovation. Read more
Equipifi - Arizona based provider of embedded BNPL solutions for banks and credit unions raised $34m in Series B funding led by Left Lane Capital. Read more
Exponent - New York based provider of financing and expense management software for franchise operators raised $10m in Series A funding led by Era. Read more
Fifth Dimension - London based real estate investment platform raised $26m in Series A funding led by HV Capital. Read more
Greenboard - New York based securities compliance startup raised $15.5m in Series A funding led by Base10 Partners. Read more
Onramp - Austin based multi-institution bitcoin custody and financial services platform raised $12.5m in new funding led by Early Riders. Read more
Outmarket - San Francisco based provider of AI workflow software for insurance brokers raised $17m in Series A funding led by Permanent Capital Ventures. Read more
Paymentology - London based payment processing infrastructure provider for fintechs and banks raised $175m in new funding led by Apis Partners and Asperity Partners. Read more
Sindhuja Microcredit - India based financial services startup for small businesses raised $5m in new funding led by Abler Nordic. Read more
Stitch - Riyadh based developer of enterprise banking software for customer onboarding, transaction monitoring, and financial product management raised $25m in Series A funding led by Andreessen Horowitz. Read more
Synthetic - San Francisco based automated accrual-basis bookkeeping platform raised $10m in Seed funding led by Khosla Ventures. Read more
FinTech Collective Newsletter
Curated News with Context
Delivered every Monday, the weekly newsletter, produced by our team, provides a tightly edited rundown of global fintech news, along with a bit of our original analysis.