Revolut is trialling Pay with Smile, a new payment experience that allows customers to make purchases using facial recognition. The technology is being tested as a potential alternative to traditional payment methods, using a customer’s face to authenticate transactions. The move highlights how fintechs are exploring biometric authentication to make payments faster and more seamless. If expanded, facial payments could offer another way for customers to complete transactions without needing to present a physical card or phone. The trial also puts Revolut at the forefront of experimentation around biometric payments and identity.
Video of the Day
Insight of the Day
Amazon Bedrock AgentCore payments is now generally available
Agents have evolved from simple chat applications to autonomous, long-running systems that dynamically discover and compose dozens of tools per task without human oversight. On the other side, service and content providers are moving from human-centric subscription-based, one-size-fits-all pricing to pay-per-use, per-execution models where costs are often a few cents. Today, agents are doing a great job at reasoning, choosing tools, and completing tasks, but they hit a roadblock when payment is involved. To address this, we launched AgentCore payments in collaboration with Coinbase and Stripe in preview in May, enabling agent developers to equip their agents to autonomously pay for paid APIs, MCPs, and content with a few lines of code. Today, we are happy to announce that this service is generally available, enabling enterprises to power agentic payments with security, guardrails, and observability for production workloads.
Use cases
Pay for paid web content
Publishers hosting content on the web today are blocking agent access and monetizing agent traffic. Enterprises deploying AI agents that access the web in real time, whether for information retrieval or web-based automation, AI browser tool providers, and agentic web search providers would benefit from integrating with the AgentCore payments service, which enables their agentic solutions to pay for paywalled web content without breaking the agent workflow. To enable this, we continue to collaborate with Content Delivery Networks (CDN) including Amazon CloudFront and Cloudflare. One of our customers, Anchor Browser, integrated with AgentCore payments to unlock paywalled web content for their customers.
Pay per inference
Pay-per-inference is an emerging use case for agentic transactions, enabling agent developers to dynamically switch between models to optimize for cost without compromising on quality and the overhead of managing API keys and subscriptions with individual model providers. One of our customers, SpreadX, used AgentCore Payments in their new AI product, Incarna, to pay for inference through BlockRun — a routing and payment layer where agents pay per call over the x402 protocol.
Consumer and deep research use case
Travala, a travel provider, has integrated AgentCore payments into their Travala Travel MCP servers, enabling end customers using agentic platforms like Claude to safely and securely book hotels conversationally in a single chat. Similarly, Elsa AI and Heurist AI use AgentCore payments to deliver financial research and advisory to their end customers by accessing pay-per-use APIs over the x402 protocol.
Curated News
💳 Payments
UK Banks Make First Interbank Transactions Using Tokenised Deposits
UK banks have completed their first interbank transactions using tokenised deposits, marking a step toward integrating tokenised money into the banking system.
Source
Citi and HSBC Back iPiD’s $16M Round to Make Instant Payments Safer Across Borders
Payment intelligence company iPiD has raised $16 million in funding backed by Citi and HSBC to improve the safety of cross-border instant payments.
Source
Cleverbridge Completes First Live AI Agent-Initiated Payment in France with Visa and Revolut
Cleverbridge has completed what it describes as the first live AI agent-initiated payment in France, using Visa and Revolut.
Source
FedNow to Enable Cross-Border Payments
FedNow is set to expand its capabilities toward cross-border payments, potentially connecting the US instant-payment infrastructure with international payment networks.
Source
Solaris Goes Live on ACI Connetic for SEPA Instant Payments
Solaris has gone live on ACI Worldwide’s ACI Connetic platform to support SEPA instant payments.
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Finix Enables Businesses to Deploy Custom Apps on Payment Terminals
Finix is enabling businesses to deploy custom applications directly on payment terminals, expanding what merchants can do through their existing payment hardware.
Source
🏦 Banking
IBM Expands Digital Asset Platform with Swift Ledger Integration
IBM is expanding its digital-asset platform through integration with Swift’s ledger infrastructure.
Source
The Clearing House Partners with Quant to Advance the On-Chain Money Initiative
The Clearing House and Quant are partnering on an initiative focused on advancing on-chain money and digital payment infrastructure.
Source
Crux Analytics Secures $2.2M to Scale Small Business Banking
Crux Analytics has raised $2.2 million to expand its small-business banking technology for community lenders.
Source
BNP Paribas and Google Cloud Announce Partnership on Agentic AI and Cloud Innovation
BNP Paribas and Google Cloud have announced a new partnership focused on agentic AI and cloud innovation in financial services.
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Trustly Slashes 200 Jobs
Swedish fintech Trustly is cutting around 200 jobs as the company restructures its workforce.
Source
💼 Fintech
Narmi Launches AI Marketplace for Financial Institutions
Narmi has launched an AI marketplace designed to bring practical AI tools directly into financial-institution workflows.
Source
Numeral Lands $100M Series C to Expand AI Tax Compliance
Tax-compliance fintech Numeral has raised $100 million in Series C funding to expand its AI-powered tax compliance platform.
Source
mika Raises €6M to Make Tax Advisers Optional for German Small Businesses
German fintech mika has raised €6 million to develop tools aimed at automating tax-related work for small businesses.
Source
🪙 Crypto
US Aims to Turn Stablecoins Into a Weapon for Dollar Dominance
The US is exploring how stablecoins could reinforce the global role of the dollar, according to the report.
Source
Solana Foundation Hires Binance’s Former Global CMO for Institutional Push
The Solana Foundation has hired Binance’s former global chief marketing officer as it seeks to strengthen its institutional presence.
Source
Canada’s Six Biggest Banks Team Up on a Shared Digital-Dollar Network
Canada’s largest banks are joining forces on a shared digital-dollar network focused on digital payment infrastructure.
Source
⚖️ Regulation
New York and Polymarket File Dueling Lawsuits Amid Illegal Gambling Claims
New York and Polymarket are involved in competing legal actions concerning allegations that the prediction-market platform operates illegal gambling activities.
Source
🌍 Other
Revolut Customers Hit by Second Data Breach in Just One Month
Revolut customers have reportedly been affected by a second data breach within a month, raising further questions around the security of customer information.
Source
Swift and Wells Fargo Join Linux Foundation Decentralized Trust
Swift and Wells Fargo have joined the Linux Foundation Decentralized Trust initiative, expanding participation from major financial institutions.
Source
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