Payment Expert’s Fintech Unwrapped delivers the latest and developing news that has shaped the sector over the course of the week.
This week, investors continue to place trust in AI-powered companies after Ramp raised $750m in a recent funding round to bring its valuation to $44bn.
Also this week, Checkout.com and Coinbase collaborated to bring stablecoin payment acceptance to merchant checkouts, Stripe is now offering buy-now-pay-later in the UK while elsewhere in the UK, Adyen has been selected by the UK government to process its public sector payments.
Ramp’s $750m additional capital complements recent growth
Ramp has raised $750m in a recent funding round to bring its valuation to $44bn to expand its AI services throughout the financial services sector.
The funding round was led by ICONIQ, GIC and Ontario Teacher’s Pension Plan, with new investors such as Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, also funding additional capital.
Ramp has generated over $1bn in revenue since 1 June, 2026, as well as $200bn in annualised purchase volume. The company streamlines the expense process for clients by leveraging AI, issuing physical and corporate cards to clients such as Visa, Uber and Anduril.
Ramp revealed it saved clients 50% more dollars and 32% hours with its automated expense processes per year than a year earlier.
Eric Glyman, Co-Founder and CEO of Ramp, said: “For 500 years, business ran on two pillars of spend: people and vendors. In the last 24 months, a third arrived – intelligence, paid by the token and invisible to every system we’ve built to manage cost. Ramp is the infrastructure for the third pillar.”
New stablecoin acceptance available via Checkout.com
Checkout.com and Coinbase formed a new partnership designed to enable stablecoin acceptance for merchants across Europe.
Announced during Money 20/20 Europe this week, the new offering for Checkout.com clients will be powered by Coinbase Payments and will allow merchants to accept stablecoins from consumers at online checkouts.
The partnership seeks to add flexibility to payment options at the checkout by leaning on the rise in interest in stablecoins over the last year. This is part of Checkout.com’s strategy to adopt more digital currencies under regulatory compliance in Europe and the US.
Meron Colbeci, Chief Product Officer at Checkout.com, said: “Stablecoins are becoming a real way for people to pay, and our job is to make accepting them effortless for merchants.
“We’re adding this to a network already trusted to move billions in payments – so merchants get a new way to capture consumer preference on top of the performance they rely on, not instead of it.”
Stripe and Adyen bring BNPL options to the UK
Stripe is offering buy-now-pay-later services to UK merchants for the first time in collaboration with Affirm.
Rolling out in July, merchants will be able to add Affirm to their online checkouts, designed to create greater flexibility and consumer choice.
Both companies revealed they are collaborating on future AI-powered commerce opportunities for the UK market with agentic payments.
Earlier this year, Affirm and Stripe announced plans to support Shared Payment Tokens to help enable secure pay-over-time experiences in AI-powered commerce environments
Ruth Spratt, VP and UK Country Manager at Affirm, said: “Consumers are increasingly seeking payment options that offer more control and clarity, and merchants are seeing the impact that can have on conversion and customer loyalty.”
Adyen to process UK public sector payments
Adyen has been selected by the UK Government Digital Service (GDS) to become its new payment service provider for non-crown card payments and pay-by-bank.
GOV.UK Pay, built by GDS, will utilise Adyen’s payment infrastructure for public sector organisations, such as local councils, armed forces and police, transitioning, replacing Stripe as their payment processing.
Adyen will supply its financial technology platform to GOV.UK Pay to support enterprise-scale transaction volumes, faster innovation cycles and evolving consumer payment preferences.
The integration is expected to take place in phases. GOV.UK Pay will remain responsible for managing supplier relationships, compliance and the technical infrastructure.
Nicole Olbe, Adyen’s UK&I Managing Director, said: “Public sector organisations are under growing pressure to deliver seamless digital experiences while maintaining trust, resilience and efficiency, which is why we are proud to partner with GOV.UK Pay.”
Paymentology to help issuers go global
Paymentology has launched Lume, a cloud-native issuer processing platform designed for banks and fintechs to scale their card programmes globally.
Lume has three core priorities for modern issuers: global scale, localisation and innovation, processing payments through a single platform, available across every continent around the globe to help issuers expand internationally.
Its localisation capabilities connect to local payment rails, sovereign requirements and market-specific preferences, while its broader product stack is designed to support the next phase of payments innovation, such as crypto and stablecoin payments
Jeff Parker, CEO at Paymentology, said: “Issuer processing is entering a major shift. The market has changed fundamentally, but much of the infrastructure underneath it has not.
“Financial institutions want to move faster, launch globally, localise effectively and keep innovating as customer expectations evolve. But many platforms were not designed for that level of scale or adaptability. Lume responds directly to that challenge.”
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