Payment Expert’s Fintech Unwrapped delivers the latest developing news that has shaped the sector over the course of the last week
This week, Kraken launched its multi-asset Krak Card in the US, letting customers spend from more than 600 currencies and assets and earn cashback in dollars or Bitcoin.
Also this week, Rain formed the Agentic Payments Alliance with Visa and Mastercard, Monzo suffered an outage and confirmed its chairman will step down, MoonPay added Cash App Pay for US crypto purchases, and Adyen named a new president for EMEA.
Kraken launches Krak Card in the US
Kraken launched its multi-asset debit card, the Krak Card, in the US on 18 August, roughly eight months after introducing the card in the UK and the European Economic Area. Kraken’s card is issued through Krak, the money app built by the Kraken team behind the crypto exchange, and runs on Visa.
Kraken’s Krak Card lets customers hold balances across more than 600 fiat currencies and cryptoassets and spend any of them at checkout, with holdings converted into US dollars in real time at the point of sale. Customers can choose which assets are used first and split a single purchase across multiple balances.
Kraken’s card pays up to 2% cashback in US dollars or Bitcoin, with the rate tied to how much a customer holds on the platform. Krak said it has issued more than 135,000 cards across the UK and EEA since the December 2025 rollout. Kraken is moving forward with a US initial public offering and holds a Wyoming bank charter.
Rain forms Agentic Payments Alliance with Visa and Mastercard
Rain, an infrastructure provider for stablecoin-powered payments, announced the launch of the Agentic Payments Alliance (APA) on 18 August. Founding members include Visa, Mastercard, Fiserv, Circle, Solana and Remitly, with more than 25 companies across payments, financial services and digital assets joining the coalition.
The alliance will focus on how AI agents make payments on behalf of users, covering agent authorisation, fraud detection, identity, and how loyalty and rewards attach to agent-based transactions.
It will operate as a working coalition controlled by its founding members, which will set its charter and mission together rather than place it under one company’s control. McKinsey projects between $3trn and $5trn in global agentic commerce by 2030.
Farooq Malik, Co-founder and CEO of Rain, said: “No single company should get to decide how agents transact on someone’s behalf. That has to come from the platforms building the rails, the regulators setting the rules, and the innovators closest to how agents are actually being used today.”
Monzo hit by outage as chairman Hoffman confirms exit
Monzo suffered an outage on 19 August that left thousands of customers unable to make payments or transfers. More than 3,000 users reported problems to DownDetector after 12pm, with reports peaking around 1pm.
Customers logging into the app were shown a message stating the bank was investigating a technical issue.
Monzo activated Monzo Stand-in, its backup system, which the bank said allowed customers to still make card payments, withdraw cash, freeze a card, and send and receive bank transfers.
Some customers reported on X that the backup service was also affected and that cards were being declined. Monzo said it was rolling out a fix to restore full service.
The outage followed confirmation on 17 August that chairman Gary Hoffman will step down in early September. Hoffman is departing after nearly eight years and before his nine-year term allows.
He will be replaced on an interim basis by non-executive director Karen Peacock, pending regulatory approval, while Monzo searches for a permanent successor. Hoffman’s exit comes months after a shareholder revolt tied to the departure of former CEO TS Anil, though the company said his decision to leave is his own and followed treatment for prostate cancer. Monzo grew from 1.6 million customers when Hoffman joined to 16 million by August 2026.
MoonPay adds Cash App Pay for US crypto purchases
MoonPay integrated Cash App Pay into its platform on 18 August, letting eligible US customers buy digital assets using their Cash App balance. MoonPay said it is the first and only platform to offer Cash App Pay as a payment method for digital asset purchases.
Once linked, customers can complete a purchase without leaving the MoonPay buy flow, with no redirects or re-authentication.
The option is live across MoonPay’s checkout and select partners including Trust Wallet, Bitcoin.com, MetaMask, Moonshot, Ledger, BitPay, Uniswap, Tangem, LOBSTR and Edge. Cash App Pay joins PayPal and Venmo among the payment methods MoonPay supports. Cash App, owned by Block, reported 59 million active users in June.
Ivan Soto-Wright, CEO and Co-founder of MoonPay, said: “Cash App is where tens of millions of Americans already manage their money. This integration means that those users can access the digital asset ecosystem, funded instantly from an app they already know and trust.”
Morgan Kuntze, Global Partnerships Lead at Block, added: “While bitcoin remains at the core of our digital asset strategy, we want to give customers choice and flexibility wherever and however they choose to pay.”
Adyen names Nicole Olbe as President, EMEA
Adyen appointed Nicole Olbe as President for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, effective 1 September. Olbe succeeds Alexa von Bismarck, who moves into the role of Senior Vice President of global account management, based in San Francisco.
Olbe will be accountable for the performance and growth of the EMEA business, with a mandate spanning regional functions across commercial execution, cross-functional strategy and operational alignment. She brings more than 20 years of experience in global payments and fintech, having held senior roles at Barclaycard and Verifone before joining Adyen as UK Managing Director in 2023.
Roelant Prins, Chief Commercial Officer at Adyen, said Olbe’s track record in global payments and her team-first leadership make her well-suited to lead EMEA operations, adding that her ability to bridge regional needs with the company’s global commercial strategy would be valuable as the business continues to expand.\
Have a story that the industry needs to know to be featured on Fintech Unwrapped? Contact: [email protected]
If you would like to read more from Payment Expert this week, sign up to our weekly LinkedIn newsletter, ‘This Week In Payments’, featuring the biggest news stories and in-depth features from within fintech, payments, crypto and more.
