The Week in Review

Here are the new and noteworthy stories we have been following this week.

Chase exploring crypto backed lending

According to the Financial Times, JPMorgan Chase is exploring plans to lend against clients' cryptocurrency holdings, including Bitcoin and Ethereum. Pending regulatory clarity and internal approvals this could begin as early as 2026.

This marks a significant shift in Chase’s stance regarding cryptocurrency, signals institutional acceptance of crypto as collateral, and allows clients to unlock liquidity without selling their crypto holdings.

New Rakuten credit card

Rakuten launched a new credit card program offering 4% cash back on Rakuten purchases, 10% at Rakuten partner restaurants, 2% for groceries and dining, and 1% for all other purchases. The card is metallic and comes in two colors. The card will operate on the American Express network with Imprint Payments handling processing and program management and First Electronic Bank as the issuer. Previously Synchrony was the issuer of the Rakuten Visa credit card.

While the card is well positioned, it appears that the target market leans towards sub-prime given the max APR is 33.99%.

PNC partners with Coinbase

PNC has announced a strategic partnership with Coinbase to expand access to digital asset solutions to PNC's banking clients and institutional investors. PNC will also provide select banking services to Coinbase. According to the PNC press release, PNC and Coinbase will work together to develop an initial offering that will allow clients to buy, hold, and sell cryptocurrencies.

A progressive move by a bank that has dubbed itself as “boring” in its new national advertising campaign… but underscores the rapid ongoing mainstreaming of crypto.

Quavo raises $300 million

Quavo, a provider of fraud and dispute management solutions and software for financial institutions has raised $300MM from Spectrum Equity to further its growth. Under the terms of the deal, existing investor FINTOP Capital will sell its stake while Quavo’s co-founders and Pegasystems, which has been a strategic investor and technology partner will remain significant shareholders following the transaction.

The investment highlights the importance and continued growth of the dispute and fraud management space as it extends from cards to other payment types … and continues to bring in new players, eg. ServiceNow/Visa, Salesforce/Mastercard.

BNY and Goldman Sachs launch tokenized money market funds solution

The Bank of New York Mellon Corporation (BNY) and Goldman Sachs have announced a collaborative initiative by which BNY will employ blockchain technology developed by Goldman Sachs to maintain a record of customers’ ownership of select Money Market Funds (MMFs). Investors will be able to subscribe and redeem MMF shares through BNY’s LiquidityDirect platform, which offers connectivity to GS DAP® via integration with BNY’s Digital Assets platform. BlackRock, BNY Investments Dreyfus, Federated Hermes, Fidelity Investments, and Goldman Sachs Asset Management are expected to participate in the initial launch.

This is a prominent step in digitizing and tokenizing the $7.1T money market industry with potentially massive future efficiency gains in trading, transferability, and collateralization.

PayPal World

PayPal has announced a series of global partnerships with a view to expanding its payments network globally – connect some of the world’s largest payment systems and digital wallets on a single platform, starting with interoperability with PayPal and Venmo. According to PayPal, the launch partners represent nearly 2B users globally. The first payment systems and digital wallets that will launch with PayPal World are Mercado Pago, NPCI International Payments Limited (UPI), PayPal, Tenpay Global, and Venmo.

The Venmo/PayPal integration at PayPal merchants has considerable potential in opening up a new market of young, urban, affluent, and digitally native Venmo users… but the global payments systems and wallet interoperability is reminiscent of the Discover international bilateral network arrangement that has had limited success.

Corpay to acquire Alpha Group

Corpay has announced the acquisition of Alpha Group International plc for an enterprise valuation of approximately $2.2B. Alpha is a UK-based provider of B2B cross-border FX solutions to corporations and investment funds in the UK and Europe. Alpha pioneered alternative bank accounts as a simpler, faster way for investment managers to fund their investments and pay expenses anywhere in Europe - Alpha holds approximately $3B of deposits in over 7,000 client accounts. In related news, Corpay will be divesting one of its legacy lower growth private label fuel card portfolios and redeploy about $100MM in capital towards the Alpha acquisition.

This is another solid acquisition for Corpay enabling it to expand and extend its FX business while leveraging complementary synergies.

Fiserv expands in Canada with TD merchant deal

Fiserv and TD Bank have executed a multi-year strategic management services program whereby TD Merchant Solutions (Canada) will use Fiserv technology, including the Clover POS system, for its business. As part of the deal, Fiserv is also acquiring a portfolio of approximately 3400 TD merchant relationships with 30,000 locations that will migrate to its processing system and Clover.

The deal is a nice win for Fiserv with potential upside in buying more of TD’s merchant portfolio in Canada as well as the US but appears to be a strategic misstep for TD in retreating from the merchant business at a time when large NA banks are returning to it.

Synovus and Pinnacle to combine

Synovus Financial Corp. and Pinnacle Financial Partners announced that they have entered into a definitive agreement to combine in an all-stock transaction valued at $8.6B. This transaction creates a new $100B+ asset regional bank in the Southeast.

While there is strong strategic rationale behind the deal, the market is skeptical with the stock for both Pinnacle and Synovus down 10%+ post the deal announcement.

Samsung brings installment payments via Splitit

Samsung Electronics America has announced that installment payments will be available to Samsung Wallet users in select states beginning July 2025 with expansion to all states planned by the end of 2025. Samsung is working with Atlanta-based Splitit to enable credit card-based installment payments using the cards available credit. Currently four different installment plans are available.

Nice win for Splitit which has a unique installment payment business model that uses the cards existing open to buy thereby eliminating the need to apply for additional credit and/or take on new debt.