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Fintech’s biggest players are moving fast. Barclays is buying Best Egg for $800 million to expand in U.S. lending, while PayPal plugged into ChatGPT to power instant checkout. Coinbase built a payments rail for AI agents, and Mastercard launched new fraud intelligence to keep issuers and acquirers ahead of attacks.

At Money20/20, AI took center stage as Wells Fargo, Starling, and Anthropic showed how automation is reshaping banking. DXC and Splitit teamed up to help banks fight back against BNPL.

Earnings also told a strong story. Capital One rebounded from last quarter’s loss, Citi posted solid growth across every business line, and LendingClub more than tripled profit as originations surged. SoFi hit record revenue with nearly a million new members, while TransUnion raised its full-year guidance after another quarter of steady gains in lending.

Here’s what’s happening across fintech right now.

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Barclays to Buy U.S. Lending Startup Best Egg for $800 Million

Barclays is diving deeper into U.S. consumer finance, agreeing to purchase lending startup Best Egg for $800 million. This move signals the British bank's strong appetite for the American market, despite recent questions about its American credit-card business. Founded in 2013, Best Egg operates an online platform arranging personal loans, primarily unsecured loans up to $50,000 for customers with high FICO scores, and sells most of them to asset managers. The deal, which aims to boost the bank's stock and deepen relations with asset-management clients, will be funded by selling receivables from Barclays's co-branded American Airlines credit cards. Analysts view the acquisition as a way for Barclays to replace lost business and expand in the "deep and sophisticated U.S. consumer finance market". The acquisition is set to close next year. [WSJ]

Fintech Firm Ava Raises $15.5M to Fight US Debt Crisis

Fintech newcomer Ava just secured a "substantial" $15 million seed funding round, aiming to tackle America's "record-high" consumer debt crisis. Ava, an AI-powered consumer finance company, uses an autonomous app, priced at $10/month, to improve users' credit profiles and connect them with the best financial products. The platform is scaling its AI system to continuously optimize members' credit health, with a long-term goal of executing "one-click" loan origination to eliminate the "cumbersome" manual refinancing process. Ava has already gained "strong traction" since its 2021 launch, doubling revenue in 2025 and building a subscriber base of over 175,000 members. Greylock and Transform VC led the funding, praising Ava’s lender-agnostic model for "aligning fully with users’ interests" and attacking a "massive $100B market". Ava plans to use the capital to expand its teams, increase financial ecosystem partnerships, and scale its one-click loan origination product nationwide. [EIN Presswire]

Gemini Launches Solana Credit Card With Automatic Staking Rewards

Gemini just launched a Solana edition of its Gemini Credit Card, a move that brilliantly merges traditional payments with the mechanics of decentralized finance (DeFi). The card is designed to deepen network engagement by automatically staking Solana (SOL) rewards for users, offering a juicy yield that currently stands at a "soaring" 6.77%. This new card lets users earn up to 4% back in SOL on categories like gas and rideshare, with 3% on dining and 2% on groceries. Gemini chose Solana specifically for its "high throughput and active developer ecosystem," a smart bet given that Solana rewards have been among the platform’s top-performing assets. In fact, cardholders who simply held their rewards for at least one year saw "soaring" gains "exceeding 290%". [Blockworks]

Americans Losing Grip on Debt as Delinquencies Surge and Borrowing Costs Bite

American borrowers are starting to lose their grip on debt, as delinquencies on auto loans, credit cards, and student loans are "surging" to the fastest pace in over a decade. This comes as total household debt hit a "record" $18.4 trillion in the second quarter of 2025, signaling "growing financial strain" for many families. The pain is not evenly distributed; younger borrowers in Gen Z and millennial generations are missing payments at far "higher rates" than older generations. Specifically, about 5% of auto borrowers are 90 days past due, and nearly 12% of credit card balances are now 90 days delinquent—the highest level seen since before the pandemic. Experts warn that "a gradual loss of financial control" is spreading from the margins inward, though they stress this is a "slow bleed" and not yet a repeat of the 2008 crisis. [ConsumerAffairs]

Affirm Expands Long-Standing Partnership With Wayfair

Affirm, the payment network that empowers consumers, just announced an expanded, "long-standing" partnership with Wayfair, the go-to destination for home goods. This key expansion brings Affirm's pay-over-time solution directly to the checkout across the entire Wayfair family of brands, including Joss & Main, AllModern, and Perigold. Shoppers can now select Affirm online or in-store and, if approved, see "customized" biweekly or monthly payment plans stretching up to 36 months, with rates as low as 0% APR. Wayfair is excited to offer customers even more clarity and convenience just in time for its Way Day sales event and the peak holiday shopping season. Affirm’s SVP of Revenue noted that "Home is where many shoppers choose Affirm," making this expanded partnership a natural fit to make shopping for the home easier. Affirm guarantees it never charges late or hidden fees, aligning with its mission to deliver honest financial products. [Affirm]

Mastercard Taps Jill Kramer to Lead Global Marketing and Communications

Mastercard is making a big leadership move, naming Jill Kramer as its new Chief Marketing and Communications Officer, effective December 1, 2025. This transition aims to strengthen the company’s global brand and communications strategy, and she succeeds Raja Rajamannar, who is shifting to a senior fellow role. Kramer previously held the Chief Marketing and Communications Officer title at Accenture, where she spent a decade leading a "global, integrated, and tech-driven" marketing function. During her "decade at Accenture," the company's brand value saw a "substantial" increase, nearly doubling from US$12 billion to US$20.9 billion. Mastercard CEO Michael Miebach enthusiastically welcomed Kramer, stating that her "global perspective and deep expertise in B2B marketing will be invaluable" as the company continues to accelerate its growth and innovation. [Fintech News]

OpenAI and PayPal Team Up to Power Instant Checkout and Agentic Commerce in ChatGPT

PayPal is making a "substantial" push into the future of commerce by teaming up with OpenAI to integrate its services directly into ChatGPT. This partnership means millions of ChatGPT users will soon be able to check out instantly using PayPal's wallet, with all the benefits of its buyer/seller protections and post-purchase services. By adopting the Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP), PayPal will connect its "global merchant network" of tens of millions of businesses to OpenAI, making their product catalogs discoverable and purchasable directly through ChatGPT. Essentially, PayPal is leveraging this partnership to "power payments and commerce experiences that help people go from chat to checkout in just a few taps," according to CEO Alex Chriss. Furthermore, PayPal is expanding its own AI strategy by scaling access to ChatGPT Enterprise for its "over 24,000" employees and broadly expanding the direct use of OpenAI's APIs. [PayPal]

Payments MCP: Bringing Wallets, Onramps, and Payments to Every Agent

Coinbase is taking a "substantial" leap toward "agentic commerce" by launching Payments MCP (Model Context Protocol), which gives AI agents the financial tools they need to act in the global economy. This "first-of-its-kind" tool lets popular Large Language Models (LLMs) like Claude, Gemini, and Codex access a wallet, onramp, and payments, all from a simple prompt window and with no API key required. Coinbase believes crypto rails, particularly stablecoins, are the "ideal payment infrastructure" for this new era, as they "move at the speed of code" and integrate seamlessly. Payments MCP is the "missing link" that bridges AI and decentralized finance, allowing agents to perform tasks like paying for compute, retrieving paywalled data, or managing lightweight business operations autonomously. To ensure safety, users can easily set spending limits and manage permissions, making it easy to experiment with autonomous payments without compromising security. [Coinbase]

Thredd Enters the Credit Space Partnering with LoanPro to Power Next-Generation Credit Capabilities

Thredd, the leading next-generation global payments processor, is diving into the credit space by partnering with LoanPro, a modern credit platform. This strategic partnership aims to offer "scalable and compliant credit solutions" across the U.S. and globally, marking a "significant milestone" in Thredd's plan to deliver full-stack embedded issuing and processing capabilities (credit, debit, and prepaid). By integrating LoanPro’s "advanced, composable credit infrastructure" with Thredd’s real-time card issuance, clients can now design, launch, and scale "differentiated credit products" with "unprecedented speed and personalization". Thredd's CEO, Jim McCarthy, noted that credit-based value propositions "drive not only more opportunities for both B2B and B2C verticals, but also generate more revenue for issuers, fintechs and enterprises". LoanPro’s Co-Founder & CEO, Rhett Roberts, added that this collaboration brings together the entire ecosystem needed to launch revolving credit products, allowing clients to personalize their offerings at scale. [Thredd]

Money20/20 USA: AI Takes Centre Stage on Opening Day

AI clearly stole the show on the opening day of Money20/20 USA in Las Vegas, as Wells Fargo, a massive bank, Starling Bank, a digital banking platform, and Anthropic, the company behind the AI model Claude, dropped some serious news about the future of finance. Wells Fargo revealed they are taking a "comprehensive" approach to integrating AI across all their banking functions, even telling their employees to "Forget about everything you know about being a banker" to truly innovate. Meanwhile, Starling Bank launched its new Scam Intelligence tool, an AI-powered fraud fighter that showed its effectiveness in testing by achieving "over a 300% increase in cancelled scam payments." Not to be outdone, identity verification company Incode unveiled its Agentic Identity solution to combat the rising threat of deepfake fraud, noting that "crime is now operating at the speed of AI." Anthropic also launched a specialized Claude for Financial Services V2, focusing on deep data integration and specialized skills like discounted cash flow analysis. These major players are demonstrating that AI is no longer a "nice to have" but is quickly becoming essential infrastructure for the entire financial landscape. [Fintech Futures]

Mastercard Debuts Threat Intelligence Solution for Issuers and Acquirers

Mastercard, the global payment technology giant, just rolled out its new Threat Intelligence solution to help issuing and acquiring banks get ahead of the payments fraud game. This savvy new offering takes Mastercard's "global network visibility" and fraud insights and smashes them together with the curated cyber threat intelligence from the Recorded Future platform. The goal is to close the communication gap between banks' security and fraud teams, arming them with the real-time, "actionable" risk insights they need to "disrupt fraudulent transactions." The platform features digital skimming intelligence, card testing detection, and weekly reports on "emerging threats," all of which help banks move toward a more proactive defense. This is a direct result of Mastercard's substantial $2.65 billion acquisition of Recorded Future, which added AI-powered analytics to its cybersecurity toolkit. Simply put, Mastercard is now looking "broadly across the entire digital interaction rather than specifically the payment" to keep consumers safe. [PYMNTS]

AI Goes Mainstream in Fintech Customer Operations

Gradient Labs and SoFi are both proving that artificial intelligence can deliver measurable results in financial services. London-based Gradient Labs, founded by former Monzo employees, has entered the U.S. market after reaching more than 32 million users in Europe with its AI agents that automate customer operations for regulated sectors. At the same time, SoFi’s Galileo-powered chatbot, Konecta, has improved service speed, reduced escalations, and increased customer engagement. Both companies show how AI is becoming a practical tool for improving efficiency, compliance, and customer satisfaction in banking and fintech. [Yahoo! Finance][Business Cloud][PR Web]

Mastercard and PayPal Join Forces To Accelerate Secure Global Agentic Commerce

Mastercard and PayPal are expanding their "longstanding partnership" to be an engine for the future of secure, seamless "agentic commerce". This collaboration centers on integrating Mastercard Agent Pay, the company's agentic payments platform, directly into PayPal's wallet. This integration will allow AI agents to securely complete transactions for "hundreds of millions of consumers and tens of millions of merchants globally" who use PayPal. The move enhances security for AI-powered shopping while significantly expanding user choice, making it easier for merchants who offer PayPal checkout to participate in AI-driven commerce without complex technical requirements. This teamwork is about pushing the "boundaries of what’s possible in commerce," enabling merchants and consumers to transact with confidence, speed, and trust in the rapidly evolving AI landscape. [Mastercard]

Federal Reserve Fintech Conference Launches AI-Driven DeFi Era

The U.S. Federal Reserve held its first-ever Payment Innovation Conference, dramatically signaling a shift toward digitally integrated finance and the coming era of "AI-driven decentralized finance (DeFi)". A major moment was Governor Christopher Waller introducing the concept of a "streamlined master account," which will allow regulated stablecoin issuers and digital payment firms to directly access the Fed's payment system. Key discussion highlights included the "accelerating stablecoin regulation," the "inevitable tokenization" of assets, and the vital role of integrating AI with blockchain. Amid this "substantial" institutional push, BC DEFI, an AI-driven decentralized finance platform, is being positioned at the forefront. BC DEFI uses "AI computing" to enable users to earn "up to 0.8% daily yield" and promises benefits like transparent, automated resource allocation, and near-instant cross-border payments via stablecoins. [GlobeNewswire]

DXC and Splitit Partner to Enable Installment Payments for 300+ Million Bank Account Holders

DXC Technology, a Fortune 500 technology services provider, and Splitit, the pioneer of embedded card-linked installments, just teamed up to let banks fight back against Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) platforms. Leveraging DXC’s Hogan core banking platform, which powers over "300 million" accounts, the partnership gives banks a turnkey way to offer their customers installment plans at checkout and post-purchase. This move puts banks back in control, letting them offer their own branded installment offers that appear natively at checkout or within their online portal. Crucially, the plan extends access through debit, meaning any customer with a bank account, not just a credit card, can enroll. This strategic collaboration also unlocks a predictable and "scalable" new revenue stream for issuers and targets the growing installment payment solution market. Splitit's CEO noted the partnership "resets the playing field," empowering banks to compete head-on with BNPL providers. [DXC]

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