Payment Expert’s Fintech Unwrapped delivers the latest and developing news that has shaped the sector over the course of the week.
This week, Mastercard has launched an agentic AI service that supports Small and Medium-sized businesses owners to learn from agents with C-suite level experience.
Also this week, Santander becomes the latest bank to harness the potential of agentic payments, two leading European institutions agreed to a partnership extension, and there has been capital raised by a new stablecoin payment firm and Uzbekistan’s leading fintech.
Mastercard invites SME owners to learn from AI C-suite executives
Mastercard is providing an agentic AI infrastructure service, titled Virtual C-suite, to small businesses to leverage executive insights and decision making.
The service is an extension of Mastercard Agent Suite with each AI agent acting as an executive, enabling small business owners to gain insights from how an executive in a C-suite role would handle certain business tasks.
The service analyses business performance, identifies risks and opportunities, predicts likely outcomes, and recommends prompt steps and longer-term actions that help optimize operations and growth.
“Small businesses are the cornerstones of communities, but it’s easy for owners to lose sight of the passions that inspired them when they’re buried in spreadsheets and stretched across multiple roles,” said Mark Barnett, Global Head of Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) at Mastercard.
“We hear these pressures from entrepreneurs every day. Our goal is to turn operational complexity into clarity — helping entrepreneurs regain time, make smarter decisions, and translate their ambition into measurable growth.”
Santander to bring agentic payments to LatAm
Santander is set to promote agentic payments across the Latin American region after a successful pilot alongside Visa.
The agentic commerce pilot was conducted in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico and Uruguay, leveraging Visa’s Intelligent Commerce solution to perform Santander’s first agentic transactions for commerce.
The bank used the pilot to develop use cases of how LatAm consumers can delegate shopping tasks to AI agents, while also helping establish a framework to support responsible and scalable adoption across the region with Visa.
“This is a major step toward making AI-assisted shopping a practical reality,” said Matías Sánchez, Global Head of Cards and Digital Solutions at Banco Santander.
“By testing real transactions, we demonstrated how these technologies act as enablers of secure, interoperable agentic commerce that maintains strong consumer protections and issuer controls.”
ABN AMRO and Worldline secure partnership extension
Dutch bank ABN AMRO has extended its partnership with Worldline to process SEPA Credit Transfers and Instant Payments in Europe.
Under the renewed contract, Worldline will continue to provide payment services to ABN AMRO, such as overseeing card issuing and a suite of payment solutions.
Worldline leverages its modern and future proof technology stack that creates compelling opportunities for new digital journeys and services. This approach enables ABN AMRO to deliver modern and reliable payment services to its customers.
“We are very proud that ABN AMRO has once again chosen Worldline as its key partner in payment services,” says Madalena Cascais Tomé, Chief Processing and Financial Institutions at Worldline.
“Together, we are poised to shape the future of payments innovation in an evolving market while strengthening sovereignty, resilience and performance.”
KAST latest stablecoin firm to expand globally
Stablecoin payment platform KAST raised $80m in a funding round on 9 March to expand its services across new markets.
The Series A funding round was co-led by QED Investors and Left Lane Capital. KAST intends to use the capital to expand into North America, Latin America and the Middle East as stablecoin payment interest continues to surge.
Since launching in July 2024, KAST has reached more than one million users and is processing nearly $5bn in annualised transaction volume.
Raagulan Pathy, Founder and CEO of KAST, said: “Our end game is clear, to be the leading neobank for the stablecoin world, both for consumers and businesses.
“The pace at which we move, the team, and the world-class talent we’re attracting will play out further in 2026 and beyond.”
UZUM continues raising capital
Uzbekistan’s largest fintech company Uzum announced a $130m strategic investment to scale its service offerings to include commerce, digital banking, payments, and consumer lending.
The investment saw funding from China’s Tencent, as well as VR Capital and FinSight Ventures. Uzum stated this brings it to a pre-money valuation reference point of $2.3bn.
This builds off the $65.5m Uzum raised in August 2025 which brought its valuation at the time to $1.5bn.
Djasur Djumaev, Founder and CEO of Uzum, said: This investment is a strong endorsement of both Uzum’s strategy and Uzbekistan’s digital potential.
“We are focused on building an infrastructure of national scale — technology-driven, inclusive, and designed for everyday use by millions of people and businesses.
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