Revolut Secures French Banking Licence in Major European Expansion
Revolut has secured a French banking licence from France’s ACPR regulator and the European Central Bank, marking a major milestone in its transformation into a fully-fledged European bank. The licence will allow Revolut to offer more locally tailored products in France, including lending and regulated savings, rather than relying solely on its Lithuanian banking licence to serve EU customers. The fintech plans to make Paris its Western European headquarters and eventually migrate customers in Germany, Ireland, Italy, Portugal and Spain to the French entity. Revolut is also committing $1.1 billion to its French expansion and plans to hire more than 600 people across Western Europe, including 400 in France. The move comes after Revolut secured a UK banking licence earlier this year and could strengthen its eventual push for a U.S. banking licence. With more than 75 million customers and a reported $115 billion valuation, Revolut is increasingly challenging traditional banks on their own turf.
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Agentic Payments from the Ground Up
Two kinds of agentic commerce
One of the report’s early points is that the term “agentic commerce” actually covers two fairly different things. The first is what you might call macro commerce. Here the agent is acting for a person, doing things like booking a flight or managing a subscription, and the payments look a lot like ordinary e-commerce. They carry consumer-sized values and sit comfortably on the card rails we already have. The second is micro commerce: small, frequent payments that one piece of software makes to another, often for an API call or a slice of compute. These usually come in well under a dollar.
Both are growing, but the micro side is where things get interesting. Payments that small don’t behave like human purchases, and that’s exactly where the economics of traditional payments begin to break down.
🔹 What the live data shows
Two open protocols went live over the past year to handle machine-native payments, and the report studies both. The first, x402, was incubated by Coinbase and Cloudflare and is now stewarded by the Linux Foundation. Since launching in May 2025, it has processed roughly $15.0 million in adjusted volume across 109.6 million transactions.1 The second, the Machine Payments Protocol (MPP), was built by Stripe and Tempo with contributions from Visa. In its first few weeks after launching in mid-March 2026, it settled about $25,000 across roughly 115,000 transactions.
The two tell very different stories. x402 gives us a real look at sustained machine-native demand at scale, with most of its activity on Base, Solana, and Polygon.2 MPP is much newer, but its two-party design and plans to support more than one settlement rail make it worth watching. On both, the average payment is a fraction of a cent. A fixed card fee on a transaction that small would cost far more than the payment itself.
🔹 Why small payments need new rails
None of this is a new ambition. Back in 1997, the engineers building the web set aside HTTP status code 402, labeled “Payment Required,” for a day when paying for content online would be as routine as loading a page. That day never came. Card fees were fixed, which made sub-dollar payments uneconomic, so the web ended up running on advertising instead.
What’s different now really comes down to two things happening at the same time. Capable AI agents have created steady demand to pay for resources at machine speed. And a newer generation of blockchains has pushed settlement costs down to fractions of a cent. Together, that makes payments in the one-cent-to-one-dollar range practical for the first time. Account abstraction, passkeys, and sponsored transactions help too, letting these rails run quietly in the background where users never have to deal with them.
Curated News
💳 Payments
PaysafeWallet Launches in Poland
PaysafeWallet has officially launched in Poland, giving consumers another digital option for managing and moving money. The expansion strengthens Paysafe’s presence in Central and Eastern Europe’s digital payments market.
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ShopBack and Visa Expand In-Store Payments in Singapore
ShopBack and Visa have expanded their partnership to support in-store payments in Singapore. The collaboration brings ShopBack’s rewards ecosystem further into physical retail while leveraging Visa’s payment infrastructure.
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Adyen Expands Toast Partnership Across the U.S.
Adyen is expanding its global partnership with restaurant technology company Toast into the U.S. The move brings Adyen’s payments infrastructure to a larger network of American merchants.
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🏦 Banking
Nayax and Zaria Pursue U.S. Bank Charters
Payments company Nayax and fintech Zaria have filed applications for U.S. bank charters. Securing bank status would give both companies greater control over their financial products and regulated infrastructure.
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SIDBI Goes Live With Secure Financing Platform in India
India’s SIDBI has gone live with MonetaGo’s Secure Financing platform to strengthen financing processes and reduce fraud. The deployment aims to improve trust and efficiency in SME lending.
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Bunq’s U.S. Bank Charter Application Rejected
U.S. regulators have rejected Dutch fintech Bunq’s application for a national bank charter. The decision highlights the challenges European fintechs can face when attempting to establish regulated banking operations in the U.S.
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Palmer Luckey-Backed Start-Up Bank Targets $1.5B Raise
A start-up bank backed by Palmer Luckey is reportedly preparing to raise $1.5 billion. The planned fundraising could provide significant capital for building out its banking and financial services ambitions.
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BofA and USAA Cross-License AI and Banking Patents
Bank of America and USAA have agreed to cross-license patents covering AI and banking technology. The partnership shows how major banks are increasingly collaborating around intellectual property as AI becomes more central to financial services.
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India’s UPI Eyes Expansion Into Japan, Malaysia and Bahrain
India’s NPCI is exploring expansion of the UPI payments system into Japan, Malaysia and Bahrain. International expansion could further establish UPI as a major cross-border payments network.
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💼 Fintech
FCA Selects Five Fintechs for Its Scale-up Unit
The UK’s Financial Conduct Authority has selected five fintech companies to receive support through its Scale-up Unit. The initiative is designed to help promising firms navigate growth and regulatory challenges.
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Traydstream Secures Investment From Mashreq’s NeoVentures
Trade finance technology provider Traydstream has secured an investment from Mashreq’s NeoVentures after processing more than $350 billion in trade. The deal highlights continued investment in technology modernizing global trade finance.
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EDGE and Socure Target AI-Driven Lending Fraud
EDGE and Socure have partnered to help lenders detect AI-driven fraud earlier in the consumer lending process. The collaboration reflects the growing arms race between increasingly sophisticated fraud techniques and AI-powered defenses.
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MoneyLion Veterans Launch Wealth Platform Astraeus
Former MoneyLion executives have launched Astraeus, a new wealth management platform. The venture adds another technology-focused challenger to the increasingly competitive wealth management market.
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Mastercard Names New EEMEA Lead
Mastercard has appointed a new regional lead for Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa. The leadership change comes as the company continues expanding its payments and financial technology operations across emerging markets.
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Payouts.com and Replit Expand Financial Services Partnership
Payouts.com and Replit have expanded their partnership to deliver tailored financial experiences more quickly. The collaboration highlights the growing use of embedded financial infrastructure within technology platforms.
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🪙 Crypto
Robinhood Brings Crypto Trading to UK Investors
Robinhood has launched cryptocurrency trading for UK investors, expanding its digital asset offering into another major market. The move strengthens Robinhood’s international crypto ambitions.
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Bybit Sues North Korea Over Alleged $1.5B ETH Theft
Bybit is suing North Korea over the alleged theft of approximately $1.5 billion in Ethereum. The legal action follows one of the largest crypto thefts ever reported and underscores the escalating cybersecurity risks facing exchanges.
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Hong Kong’s OSL Launches AI Agent Payments Tool
OSL has launched an AI agent payments tool designed to enable autonomous digital transactions. The product brings together AI agents and crypto infrastructure, pointing toward new forms of machine-to-machine commerce.
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Polymarket Seeks Funding at More Than $20B Valuation
Prediction market platform Polymarket is reportedly seeking funding at a valuation exceeding $20 billion. The potential deal would further cement prediction markets as an emerging category at the intersection of fintech, crypto and alternative markets.
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📈 WealthTech
True Potential Joins Origo Integration Hub
UK wealth manager True Potential has joined Origo’s Integration Hub, giving advisers greater access to valuation data. The integration is designed to improve connectivity and efficiency across wealth management workflows.
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⚖️ Regulation
FCA Selects Five Fintechs for Scale-up Support
The FCA’s Scale-up Unit has selected five fintechs for additional support as they grow. The programme reflects regulators’ increasing focus on helping innovative financial companies scale while navigating regulatory requirements.
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Brits Lose Money After Following Social Media Financial Advice
More than half of surveyed Brits reportedly lost money after acting on financial advice encountered through social media. The findings highlight growing concerns around the quality and reliability of financial influencers and online investment content.
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