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Payments and FinTech Daily delivers a concise, executive-level briefing on the most important developments in payments, banking, and financial technology. In today's episode: Circle launches Arc to expand its role in institutional payments; PayPal’s stablecoin platform PYUSDx goes live, integrating with existing payment systems; UK’s FCA outlines crypto regulations impacting exchanges and payments firms; Revolut’s expansion with Colombian and Swiss banking licences; Grab acquires stake in Atome Financial, enhancing its credit services; Checkout.com starts direct US acquiring with a new charter; Visa links stablecoin card programs to onchain credit; BBVA leads with Swift’s new global payments scheme for faster international transfers.
Today's episode is brought to you by: BNewshel Consulting
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ElevenLabs: try.elevenlabs.io
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Payments Brief is your daily, executive-level podcast keeping you current on payments, banking, and fintech. In just a few minutes, you’ll stay current on key stories and news, wherever money is moving. Receive high-signal intelligence on real-time payments, stablecoins and crypto, AI and agentic trends, embedded finance, and more. We break down the major partnerships, product launches, and regulatory shifts shaping the future of financial services. Designed for decision-makers, operators, and tech leaders who need total clarity before the first meeting of the day. New episodes published every morning.
This is Payments Brief, Thursday, September 17, 2026 —
Today’s signal is clear: payments infrastructure is moving deeper into regulated banking, programmable settlement, and embedded financial services. Stablecoins, acquiring, cross-border payments, and compliance are no longer separate product categories; they are converging into a single competitive infrastructure layer.
Today’s episode is brought to you by BNewshel Consulting. Affiliate links include ElevenLabs and Square.
Circle has launched the public mainnet of Arc, a Layer 1 blockchain designed for institutional payments, real-time money movement, and what the company describes as agentic economic activity. The move expands Circle’s position beyond stablecoin issuance into settlement infrastructure for financial institutions and fintech platforms. If Arc gains adoption, it could support programmable treasury, automated payments, and institutional transfers without relying entirely on existing correspondent banking workflows. The strategic question is whether institutions want a purpose-built chain from a payments company, or prefer to build on more general-purpose networks. Either way, Circle is positioning itself closer to the transaction layer where payment economics are ultimately determined.
Meanwhile, PayPal’s PYUSDx stablecoin platform reportedly went live, adding another major consumer and merchant payments brand to the digital-dollar infrastructure market. PayPal already has distribution across checkout, wallets, and merchant services, so the significance is less about creating another token and more about connecting stablecoin functionality to existing payment relationships. The launch could put pressure on banks, processors, and fintechs to support stablecoin settlement as a normal back-end capability rather than a specialist product. It also reinforces a broader trend: the companies with the strongest payment distribution may have an advantage over firms that only provide blockchain infrastructure.
Turning to regulation, the UK Financial Conduct Authority has published guidance on the country’s upcoming crypto regime. The guidance is relevant to exchanges, custodians, stablecoin issuers, and payments firms operating in or serving the UK market. For companies, the immediate impact is likely to be on compliance planning, product approvals, disclosures, and the design of custody and transaction-monitoring systems. The broader signal is that crypto regulation is moving from high-level policy into operational detail. That tends to favor firms with mature compliance infrastructure and raise the cost of entry for smaller providers.
In parallel, Revolut has applied for a Swiss banking licence after securing a banking licence in Colombia. The two developments show the company continuing to expand its regulated banking footprint across multiple jurisdictions. A Swiss licence could strengthen Revolut’s ability to offer deposit, lending, and wealth products in a major financial center, while the Colombian licence supports further growth in Latin America. The benefit is greater control over product delivery and local regulatory relationships. The trade-off is that every new licence also adds capital, governance, reporting, and supervisory requirements, making geographic expansion increasingly dependent on operating discipline.
Worth noting, Grab has agreed to acquire a 60 percent stake in Atome Financial for 1.49 billion dollars. The transaction would deepen Grab’s presence in consumer credit and payments-linked financial services across Southeast Asia. For Grab, the deal adds financial products to an ecosystem that already includes mobility, commerce, and consumer engagement. For Atome, the transaction provides access to a larger distribution platform and potentially more customer data and payment volume. The second-order effect is further consolidation in embedded finance, where scale, underwriting data, and daily customer interactions are becoming as important as the lending product itself.
Next, Checkout.com has launched direct US acquiring under its Merchant Acquirer Limited Purpose Bank charter in Georgia. This gives the company more direct control over acquiring economics, processing relationships, and the merchant experience in one of the world’s largest payments markets. The move places Checkout.com in more direct competition with established global acquirers and modern payment platforms seeking to own more of the transaction stack. Direct acquiring can improve control and potentially expand margin opportunities, but it also brings greater responsibility for risk, settlement, regulatory compliance, and operational resilience. For merchants, the competitive benefit may be more choice among providers that combine global reach with local acquiring capabilities.
Also, Visa has introduced an onchain credit approach for stablecoin-linked card programs and fintechs. The model is designed to help those businesses access working capital using onchain lending infrastructure and Visa data. That is strategically important because stablecoin payment programs often face liquidity and funding constraints even when transaction demand is strong. Visa is effectively connecting its traditional network position with financing mechanisms native to digital-asset markets. If successful, the approach could help stablecoin card issuers scale faster, while giving Visa a role in the credit layer surrounding emerging payment rails.
BBVA has become the first Spanish bank to launch Swift’s new global retail payments scheme, designed to support faster, more transparent, and twenty-four-seven international payments for individuals and small businesses. The development highlights the continued modernization of cross-border transfers, particularly for retail and SME customers that have historically faced delays, limited tracking, and opaque pricing. Bank participation will be critical to making the scheme useful beyond pilot deployments. It also shows that traditional financial institutions are not standing still as fintechs and blockchain networks compete to improve international settlement.
The common thread today is infrastructure ownership. Payment companies are moving into banking, banks are modernizing cross-border rails, and stablecoin providers are building toward institutional settlement and credit. Regulation and compliance are becoming part of the product architecture, not merely a control function.
Somewhere, a treasury team is reconciling three different settlement models in one spreadsheet.
That's it for today — money’s always moving, talk to you tomorrow!