Payment Expert’s Fintech Unwrapped delivers the latest and developing news that has shaped the sector over the course of the week.
Over the Christmas period, Fiserv became the latest payment company to confirm its interest in the burgeoning agentic commerce space by partnering with Mastercard to leverage Agent Pay, Shift4 launched a new stablecoin settlement service, and a crypto exchange returned to the UK.
Fiserv to uncover new possibilities with agentic commerce with Mastercard
Fiserv became one of the first major payment processors to leverage Mastercard’s agentic commerce service, Agent Pay on December 22.
Fiserv will adopt the Mastercard Agent Pay Acceptance Framework, which enables AI agents to perform transactions on behalf of customers with tokenisation, strong authentication, fraud prevention, and governance to simplify merchant participation in the growing agentic commerce space.
The company will also integrate Mastercard’s Secure Card on File solution to work as a network token request service for merchants to utilise tokenisation technology to deliver secure and seamless transactions.
“Fiserv and Mastercard are working together to establish the foundation for secure, intelligent, and interoperable agentic commerce experiences,” said Sanjay Saraf, SVP and Global Chief Product Officer of Merchant Solutions at Fiserv.
“Together, we are enabling merchants of all sizes to confidently participate in this new era of commerce, leveraging trusted standards and programmable payments to unlock growth.”
Shift4 opens new stablecoin settlement service
Shift4 launched a new stablecoin settlement platform on December 22 to help merchants move stablecoins quicker with 24/7 availability.
The new solution is open outside typical banking hours, enabling merchants to settle in popular stablecoins such as USDT, USDC and EURC, as well as access to networks like Ethereum and Solana.
“As Shift4 becomes an increasingly global company, this offering will support businesses around the world as stablecoins continue to play a growing role in the modern payments ecosystem,” said Pietro Moran, Shift4’s Director of Crypto.
“It is not surprising that more businesses want the added flexibility and speed of stablecoins in our 24/7 global economy and we’re here to power commerce no matter what payment type is being used by the consumer or settled for the merchant.”
Finastra opens two new offices in US and India
On December 22, Finastra unveiled two new global offices in the US and India in its bid to continue its global growth and modernisation strategies.
The US office is located in Atlanta, Georgia whilst Trivandrum, Kerala is the location of the India office. Finastra also confirmed it has plans to expand the office space in its existing India office in Pune, one of its largest global engineering hubs.
“Atlanta has emerged as one of the world’s leading fintech hubs, and India remains a central role to our engineering and data strategy,” said Chris Walters, CEO of Finastra. “These new and expanded offices position us to accelerate modernisation, strengthen customer partnerships, and deliver secure, reliable innovation at global scale.”
Moneyhash to boost payment orchestration in Middle East and Africa
Moneyhash and Mastercard announced a collaboration on December 18 to help merchants gain greater access to the Merchant Cloud platform to enhance payment performance across relevant markets.
Merchants across the Middle East and Africa will be able to connect to the platform by connecting to Mastercard’s Gateway via a single unified API to access the payment orchestration platform which can perform transaction routing, enhance success rates and reduce payment failures.
“We bring together the best of both worlds – our advanced orchestration capabilities and Mastercard’s world-class payment infrastructure – to equip merchants with the tools they need to grow their businesses efficiently and effectively,” said Nader Abdelrazik, Co-Founder and CEO MoneyHash.
Bybit re-enters the UK after exiting two years ago
Bybit officially relaunched in the UK following a two-year absence after partnering with Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) compliant Archax on December 18.
The crypto exchange will offer spot trading of more than 100 trading pairs, peer-to-peer payment services to buy and sell digital assets directly from its platform. Bybit also revealed it intends to launch educational programs for traders and other initiatives such as workshops and seminars across the country for investors of all experience levels.
Ben Zhou, Co-Founder and CEO of Bybit, described Europe as “one of the key growth engines of Bybit’s long-term vision”, highlighting that Bybit is “investing in the region’s future as a leader in responsible digital-asset innovation.”
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