#sebastian-siemiatkowski

#sebastian-siemiatkowski

Reports suggest that Stripe is considering a PayPal acquisition, although negotiations on the subject are in early stages with no guarantee of going through.

I'm the general manager of Paze, one of the business units of Early Warning Services. The mandate is really to take Paze and bring this new payment checkout system to the masses - both on the consumer side and on the merchant side - really making sure that our goal of becoming one of the top three wallets for checkout in the next five years becomes reality.

The problem Finperks is solving is structural. The prepaid market is large and growing but operationally fragmented: a bank that wants to offer brand-funded cashback to retain customers, or an HR platform looking to distribute Germany's €50-per-month tax-free employee benefit known as the Sachbezug, currently has to navigate multiple providers across multiple functions.

We power the experience economy. We enable businesses to deliver the moments that matter and can be found anywhere you shop, dine, stay, or play. In a world where AI is evolving rapidly and investors are struggling to pick the future winners, we offer a physical payment experience in environments that demand a face-to-face interaction.

Within the first days of the year, the BNPL firm rolled out a series of announcements: a rent payments tie-up with Esusu, a bank charter application, debit-card-embedded BNPL through Fiserv, default checkout positioning with Bolt, and integration into QuickBooks invoices.

I am excited to get stuck into my new role in such an innovative and fast-growing media company. Adverty provides unique ad formats, and its potential is huge - despite a challenging trading environment as we start the new year. Adverty is genuinely setting a new standard for generating revenue and we anticipate many high-value deals and strategic long-term partnerships in the pipeline.

According to new analysis from the British Business Bank, challenger banks accounted for 60 per cent of SME lending in 2025, unchanged from the previous year. The figure marks only the second time in more than a decade that their market share has not increased, raising questions about whether the post-financial crisis disruption of the SME lending market has reached a plateau.

The problem was not growth or demand or even competition. It was settlement. Payments took days to clear. Reconciliation took weeks. Cash piled up in the wrong places. Finance teams spent their time explaining why the numbers did not match instead of planning what came next.

Launching our UK bank has been a long-term strategic priority for Revolut and marks a significant moment in our journey. The UK is our home market and central to our growth. We look forward to introducing a full suite of banking services to our millions of UK customers, bringing the same innovative experience we already provide across the rest of Europe.

Consider this snapshot of the near future: You're in a taxi on the other side of the world. You pay your driver with the same digital wallet you use at home, and he receives the money in his wallet linked to the local instant payments network. He's set a rule in his bank app-"send 30% of every payout to my family back home"-and funds are converted immediately to a third currency and delivered to relatives in a country thousands of miles away.

Denmark-based Danske Bank will now allow customers to invest in cryptocurrency-linked products tied to Bitcoin, marking a shift for Denmark's largest lender after years of resistance to the asset class. The bank said customers using Danske eBanking and Danske Mobile Banking can now gain exposure through exchange traded products, or ETPs, that track the performance of Bitcoin or Ethereum. The offering includes three products at launch, with two linked to Bitcoin and one linked to Ethereum.

Marketers have spent decades optimising for blue links on a search results page. Now every CMO conversation starts with the same question: 'How do we look in ChatGPT?' People ask an AI assistant and get a short list of recommended options. If your brand isn't in that answer, you're effectively invisible, even if you did everything 'right' in SEO. Kime exists to make that visibility gap measurable and give teams a way to act on it.

The fintech giant has unveiled a new strategic direction for Revolut Pay, announcing plans to make its one-tap checkout work seamlessly across all agentic commerce platforms in the UK and the European Economic Area (EEA). At the heart of the move is Revolut Pay's compatibility with Google's Agent Payments Protocol (AP2), positioning the company early in a fast-moving mix of payments and artificial intelligence.

Beast Industries, owned by YouTuber Jimmy "MrBeast" Donaldson, announced on Monday that it has acquired Step, a banking app designed for teens and young adults. The move comes a couple of months after Donaldson announced plans to start a new YouTube channel centered on personal finance and investing. His main channel has 466 million subscribers and has long been one of the most popular on YouTube, frequently featuring videos where Donaldson gives away huge sums of money.

If Q4 is the holiday shopping season, then Q1 might be the season of returns, or more specifically the season of return fraud. Retailers and ecommerce merchants are seeing a growing trend of returns and fulfillment scams that drain profit margins after big sales. This fraud was the impetus for Thursday's launch of Pinch AI, a startup that aims to mitigate such losses to fraud and marketing scams, with $5 million in venture backing.