Most neobanks still burn cash. The handful that turn a profit rely on a narrow set of mechanics — interchange, credit risk pricing, and operational leverage at scale.
A treasurer's guide to stablecoins in 2026: where they earn their place as a settlement rail, where they don't, and the controls that make conservative use defensible.
Standing up a neobank is easier than ever. Staying compliant once you have customers is where most of the operational risk sits — and where choosing the wrong RegTech stack becomes expensive.
Banks held data about their customers but kept it to themselves. Open banking changed the deal: with your consent, that data can now flow to the services you actually want to use.
The EU's Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation is the first major attempt to build a comprehensive legal framework for crypto across an entire economic bloc. What it covers — and what it doesn't — determines who can legally operate in Europe.
Robo-advisers were just the start. Machine learning is now embedded in portfolio construction, tax optimisation, risk profiling, and research analysis — though what it cannot do is as instructive as what it can.
Every fintech that touches money has to answer three questions about its customers: who are you, what is your business, and are you laundering money? The answers determine whether the firm operates or gets shut down.
Neobanks grew fast by offering free accounts — but free is not the same as unprofitable. Here is how Monzo, Revolut, Starling, Chime and their peers actually generate revenue, and why turning a profit has taken longer than the hype suggested.
Trading desks are deploying machine learning to spot misconduct months before compliance flags it. The technology is rewriting risk oversight.
The era of funding every neobank is over. In 2026 the capital is flowing to B2B infrastructure, embedded finance, AI-native fintech and compliance tooling — and the bar for a Series A has moved.
DORA has applied since January 2025. A year on, most firms have the policies — but the register of information and concentration-risk obligations are where the real exposure sits. Here is the 2026 operational playbook.
Big-bang cutovers are losing. The transformation leads who are actually shipping cloud-native core banking are running greenfield-and-migrate — standing up the new ledger alongside the old and moving customers in cohorts.
Central bank digital currencies are sovereign money in digital form. Here is how retail and wholesale CBDCs work — and where major projects stand.
Buy now, pay later spread from Scandinavian fashion checkout buttons to a global consumer credit product worth hundreds of billions. The 'no interest, no credit check' pitch obscured a more complicated business model — one that regulators are now examining closely.
BaaS promised to turn any software company into a bank. The infrastructure exists — but the Synapse collapse exposed exactly what happens when the middleware layer fails.
Every software platform now wants to be a bank. The infrastructure exists — but the margin, the risk, and the regulatory scrutiny are not where most people think.
A function-by-function map of where AI is actually deployed across banking and finance in 2026 — and why the durable value sits in the back office, not the demo-stage chatbot.
Moving money directly between bank accounts costs a fraction of what card networks charge merchants. The technology exists, the regulatory framework is in place, and the card networks are paying attention.
Synthetic data is solving AI's privacy paradox in finance. How banks and fintechs are using algorithmically generated data to train models without exposing real customers.
Payment orchestration routes transactions across multiple providers through a unified API. Here's the technical architecture behind routing logic, failover, and why merchants are migrating.
Embedded insurance is moving from travel sites to B2B software. Here's how the distribution economics work and where the margin really sits.
Machine learning models trained on alternative data are reshaping credit decisioning — and the big banks are scrambling to keep up.
After years of cautious pilots, banks are moving mission-critical workloads to the cloud. The economics have become impossible to ignore.
PayPal, Visa, and several central banks are now settling real transactions in stablecoins. The window for incumbents to form a view is closing.
Regulatory technology has matured from point solutions into comprehensive compliance platforms. Here is what is worth evaluating right now.
Every SaaS platform wants to be a bank. The infrastructure now exists to make that possible, and the winners are moving fast.
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