Latest news by Rick Steves
OpenPayd takes SPAC route to Nasdaq at $1.145bn
OpenPayd is heading to Nasdaq through a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) at a $1.145 billion valuation, and the structural detail worth noting is what the route says about how mid-cap fintech infrastructure now reaches…
Riverty opens Luxembourg bank as BNPL firms chase charters
Riverty begins operating as a licensed Luxembourg bank in July 2026, and the more revealing detail is not the licence itself but the direction of travel it confirms: buy now, pay later (BNPL) firms on…
GENIUS Act deadline lands with foreign issuers in limbo
The GENIUS Act's one-year rulemaking deadline expired on July 18, 2026, but the foreign payment stablecoin issuer regime — the provision that decides whether roughly $189 billion of offshore-issued USDT can lawfully reach US users…
UK BNPL rules start as four jurisdictions split on scope
Buy Now Pay Later came under Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) regulation in the United Kingdom on July 15, 2026, four months before the European Union's Consumer Credit Directive 2 applies and 13 months after Australia's…
NinjaTrader cuts off Alpha Futures over rival platform
Klarna filed for a US bank charter to stop renting a balance sheet from WebBank. Alpha Futures built its own trading platform to stop renting execution from NinjaTrader. One of those vertical-integration bids is proceeding…
Fed’s skinny payment account won’t replace a bank charter
Klarna filed for a US bank charter to end its WebBank dependence. Nubank is pushing for one too. Both are expensive, multi-year undertakings — and the Federal Reserve has just proposed something that looks like…
JetBlue ties TrueBlue points to BNPL in ClarityPay launch
JetBlue and New York-based ClarityPay launched what they call the first personalised pay-later programme with loyalty earning on July 15, 2026 — TrueBlue points accrue on financed bookings, with 0% APR introductory terms up to…
FATF review: Travel Rule at 83% as stablecoins take focus
The Financial Action Task Force's July 16, 2026 targeted update reports that 83% of surveyed jurisdictions have now passed Travel Rule legislation — up from 73% a year earlier — while warning that most identified…
Stripe, Advent bid $53bn for PayPal in record fintech deal
Stripe and Advent International have offered more than $53 billion to take PayPal private at $60.50 per share — a 28% premium — in what would be the largest fintech acquisition ever completed. Combine the…
Sage and GoCardless put Pay by Bank on UK SME invoices
Three announcements in five days have turned UK small-business payments into the most contested layer in European fintech. Sage and GoCardless embedded instant one-off Pay by Bank transfers into Sage Business Cloud Accounting on July…