http://www.banks.am/ Բիզնես լուրեր Հայաստանից, ֆինանսական լուրեր, բանկեր, աշխատատեղեր, դոլար, եվրո, փոխարժեքներ en-us Thu, 04 Jun 2026 20:51:29 +0400 https://banks.am/en/news//30796 https://banks.am/en/news//30796 Apple is prepping an iPhone feature that will enable users to split bills in by taking a photograph of a receipt.
The feature will be unveiled next week when Apple introduces iOS 27, says Bloomberg, citing sources. 

It will be available in the Wallet and Messages apps.

Users will be able to take photos of receipts, assign items to different people and generate payment requests. The tool can calculate a person's share of the bill, including the item cost, tax and tip.

The tool is tied to the Apple Cash P2P payments service and users will be able to approve payments from an Apple Watch.

The partner of Fintech section is   ]]> Thu, 04 Jun 2026 10:34:00 +0400 https://banks.am/en/news//30743 https://banks.am/en/news//30743 Revolut has launched its first physical crypto debit card.
The new card features a Dogecoin-themed design and an LED display that lights up during contactless payments.

Available to all POS terminals that accept Visa and Mastercard, the initial roll out covers the UK and and European Economic Area, with the exception of Hungary, Switzerland and Portugal, Finextra informs.

Revolut says users making purchases with the card will not face additional exchange fees, although crypto transactions will still be subject to exchange rates at the time of payment. The company also notes that crypto-linked transactions may create tax obligations depending on local regulations.

The partner of Fintech section is   ]]> Fri, 22 May 2026 10:24:00 +0400 https://banks.am/en/news//30737 https://banks.am/en/news//30737 JPMorgan Chase has launched its retail digital bank in Germany, introducing a fee-free savings account.
The giant US bank has been building out its plans for European expansion over the past few years. The arrival in Germany marks its second foray into Europe after the 2021 launch of its UK digital bank, which now claims nearly three million customers.

Chase is offering four per cent interest on overnight deposits for four months as part of its launch campaign in a competitive market. This will then switch to a variable base rate of two per cent> Finextra reports.

By 2028, the bank plans to have in place a full portfolio of services, including current accounts, investments, and lending products. 

Chase is not the only outside giant looking to find a foothold in Germany. Last year, Spain's BBVA launched a digital offering in the country.

The partner of Fintech section is   ]]> Thu, 21 May 2026 10:29:00 +0400 https://banks.am/en/news//30716 https://banks.am/en/news//30716 Revolut is set to expand its investment services in the UK after securing a series of permissions from the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA).
According to Revolut, the move opens the door to "more sophisticated wealth management services" and a broader product suite, including leveraged products.

Two of the permissions granted allow Revolut to manage investments and to deal as a principal.

This means that the challenger bank can provide more than just a basic brokerage service. It also allows Revolut to service high net worth investors and advanced traders in the same 'ecosystem' as retail investors. 

“These permissions are the missing piece allowing us to unite investment, advisory and portfolio management under one roof, making them even more accessible," said Revolut Trading Limited's head of operations Victoria Laffey. 

"Our mission has always been to remove the friction of fragmented financial services; and we can now put sophisticated wealth management products and tools in the hands of every type of investor, helping our customers build and manage wealth with confidence.”

The partner of Fintech section is   ]]> Mon, 18 May 2026 10:31:00 +0400 https://banks.am/en/news//30694 https://banks.am/en/news//30694 Global card issuer and processor Paymentology has raised $175 million in investment co-led by Apis Partners and Aspirity Partners.
Paymentology claims that despite the global payments market being estimated at $49 trillion by 2026, much of the issuing layer remains constrained by legacy infrastructure, limiting innovation, speed and the quality of end-user payment experiences.

The firm is enabling real-time processing at scale for clients across 68 countries and giving issuers the flexibility to launch, adapt and manage card and digital payment experiences more efficiently across markets, Finextra reports.

Paymentology boasts of new sales rising 117% year-on-year in 2025 and transaction volumes increasing 65%, with growth driven by strong demand from digital banks, embedded finance providers, digital asset-linked card programmes and expense management platforms.

The new capital will be used to expand beyond core issuer processing into adjacent areas including credit, stablecoin, tokenisation and AI-driven services.

The partner of Fintech section is   ]]> Wed, 13 May 2026 10:28:00 +0400 https://banks.am/en/news//30686 https://banks.am/en/news//30686 Visa has introduced technology lets people verify their identity or activate a new card by tapping their physical card to their mobile inside the issuer’s banking app.
The payments giant has teamed up with fintech Keyno and Fidelity Bank (Bahamas) for the first deployment of the Tap to Confirm and Tap to Activate technology, Finextra informs.

Instead of relying on one-time passcodes, call centre verification, or other complex authentication processes, cardholders can now tap to confirm their identity for things like high-value transfers or account changes and to activate new cards,

"Identity verification has become one of the defining challenges of digital commerce - and one of the biggest points of friction for consumers and issuers alike. With tap authentication, Visa is transforming the card in your wallet into a secure, intuitive identity credential, delivering an experience that is easier for consumers and more secure for issuers," says Mike Romero, head, Visa digital solutions, Visa Latin America and the Caribbean.

The partner of Fintech section is   ]]> Tue, 12 May 2026 09:48:00 +0400 https://banks.am/en/news//30662 https://banks.am/en/news//30662 Anthropic has announced a $1.5bn services-led joint venture with Goldman Sachs, Blackstone, and Hellman & Friedman, with additional backing from Apollo and General Atlantic.
The new entity will work alongside the engineering teams of portfolio companies to build custom AI agents, redesign workflows and integrate AI into core operations, Finextra reports.

The initial focus will be on the investors’ PE-owned firms spanning healthcare, manufacturing, financial services, retail, and real estate, giving Anthropic a pipeline into hundred of captive clients in the mid-market sector.

“Enterprise demand for Claude is significantly outpacing any single delivery model. Our partnerships with the world's leading systems integrators are central to how Claude reaches large enterprises. This new firm brings additional operating capability to the ecosystem and capital from leading alternative asset managers,” says Anthropic CFO Krishna Rao. 

The partner of Fintech section is   ]]> Wed, 06 May 2026 09:56:00 +0400 https://banks.am/en/news//30616 https://banks.am/en/news//30616 ABN Amro is to give customers indirect exposure to cryptocurrencies through the introduction Crypto Exchange Traded Products (ETPs) and Capital Protected Notes (CPNs)
Crypto ETPs track the value of one or more cryptocurrencies, allowing clients to gain exposure without having to buy, store or safeguard the digital assets themselves, Finextra reports.

The products are being added via ABN Amro’s existing investment platforms, alongside ETFs and other exchange traded products.

In addition, ABN Amro is offering bitcoin-linked structured products - Capital-Protected Notes - to eligible wealth clients, enabling them to gain exposure to the popular crypto coin.

Mark te Riele, head of wealth management products at ABN Amro says the bank is seeing growing interest in cryptocurrencies among investors, both professional and nonprofessional.

“More and more clients are interested in crypto, but want to invest within a reliable and regulated environment,” he says. “We are now taking steps by making them available to all investment clients. This reflects both growing client interest and our conviction that access to crypto should take place with clear information and within a transparent, controlled investment framework.”

The partner of Fintech section is   ]]> Tue, 21 Apr 2026 11:15:00 +0400 https://banks.am/en/news//30581 https://banks.am/en/news//30581 Revolut has launched a new AI assistant to help customers with money management tasks, enabling users to get instant spending insights, check investments, manage subscriptions or plan a trip all through a single in-app conversation.
AI by Revolut (AIR) moves beyond the traditional chatbot and allows users to navigate their financial life through simple conversation, Finextra reports.

"We believe the era of navigating through endless tabs and menus is over. With AIR, we’re delivering a new level of money intelligence that’s both powerful and effortless. It’s not just an assistant; it’s a co-pilot that elevates everyday life, making financial management as easy and natural as sending a text", said Julia Ponomareva, director and general manager of CX and AI products at Revolut.

The partner of Fintech section is   ]]> Wed, 15 Apr 2026 09:46:00 +0400 https://banks.am/en/news//30575 https://banks.am/en/news//30575 HSBC has been granted a stablecoin issuer licence by the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA).
HSBC aims to launch a Hong Kong Dollar (HKD) stablecoin in the second half of 2026, Finextra reports.

The HKD stablecoin will be accessible to users through PayMe and HSBC apps. Users will be able to use stablecoin to transact Peer-to-Peer payments, Peer-to-Merchants payments, and tokenised investments.

Stablecoins issued by HSBC will be backed by liquid assets held in segregated accounts.

In May 2025, HSBC introduced a tokenised deposit service in Hong Kong. 

The partner of Fintech section is   ]]> Tue, 14 Apr 2026 09:56:00 +0400 https://banks.am/en/news//30543 https://banks.am/en/news//30543 Lloyds Banking Group has completed the first-known experiment into how quantum computing could help to identify money mules, Finextra reports.
Over the nine-month project, this team worked alongside Lloyds’ economic crime prevention experts and IBM’s specialists to explore how quantum computing could one day help uncover complex fraud patterns that can be challenging for traditional computers to detect.

The experiment tested multiple quantum algorithms to see whether patterns of known money mule behaviour could be identified within a larger transactional graph. The team used anonymised data on one of IBM’s 156-qubit quantum computers.

The solution successfully identified a real money mule that had been deliberately embedded in the data to validate the approach, demonstrating how real-world financial crime challenges could be tackled in the future using algorithms running on quantum computers.

The partner of Fintech section is   ]]> Wed, 08 Apr 2026 10:22:00 +0400 https://banks.am/en/news//30532 https://banks.am/en/news//30532 Social media platform TikTok is reportedly seeking approval from the Brazilian central bank for financial services licences that would allow it to operate as an electronic money and credit company.
Quoting two sources, Reuters reports that TikTok has applied for two licences with the regulator. One would allow it to operate as an 'electronic money issuer', offering prepaid accounts for users to hold balances, receive funds and make payments within its app.

The second licence would make it a 'direct credit company' enabling it to lend its own capital or act as a platform connecting borrowers and lenders.

If approved, the move would allow TikTok to offer a suite of basic financial services to Brazilians, running a playbook popularized by Nubank, the country's largest digital bank.

Both TikTok and the Brazillian central bank declined to comment, Finextra informs.

The partner of Fintech section is   ]]> Tue, 07 Apr 2026 10:00:00 +0400 https://banks.am/en/news//30526 https://banks.am/en/news//30526 The Italian competition authority has fined Revolut €11.5 million.

The regulator said it fined Revolut Securities Europe UAB and Revolut Group Holdings €5 million for failing "to clearly disclose, from the very first point of contact with clients, the additional costs and limitations involved in commission-free investments".

The two unite were hit with another €5 million penalty for "aggressive practices in managing the suspension, limitation and blocking of payment accounts, while omitting (or failing to clearly provide) key information on the relevant terms and procedures". 
Revolut also faces a €1.5 million fine for not providing "clear and exhaustive" information on the requirements and timeframe for obtaining an Italian IBAN instead of a Lithuanian IBAN, Finextra reports. 

Revolut says it will appeal the decision in court, with the firm telling Reuters in a statement: 

“We remain confident that our communications are clear and transparent. Protecting our millions of customers is our absolute priority.” ]]> Mon, 06 Apr 2026 09:44:00 +0400 https://banks.am/en/news//30448 https://banks.am/en/news//30448 Mastercard is betting that its new foundational AI model, trained on billions of anonymised transactions, will help improve everything from its cyber defences to loyalty programmes.

Unlike the popular large language models trained on huge amounts of unstructured data, Mastercard, working with Nvidia and Databricks, has built a large tabular model, or LTM, which is trained on structured data, such as large-scale tables or datasets.

The LTM is trained on billions of anonymised transactions, with Mastercard planning to ramp this up to include hundreds of billions of payments transactions, as well as additional types of datasets, including merchant location data, fraud data, authorisation data, chargeback data and loyalty programme data.

The partner of Fintech section is   ]]> Fri, 20 Mar 2026 09:51:00 +0400 https://banks.am/en/news//30416 https://banks.am/en/news//30416 Revolut received regulatory approval to launch a British bank, allowing it to compete head-to-head with high street lenders in areas such as current accounts and consumer lending.

The London-based firm, which has amassed 13 million customers in Britain but no physical branches since it was founded just over a decade ago, was granted a banking licence with restrictions in July 2024 after a three-year wait.

Nik Storonsky, Revolut's co-founder and CEO, has said getting a licence in its home market was his top 1 priority.

Revolut will now take on Britain's incumbent banks including Barclays, Lloyds and NatWest, opens new tab and said it expects to start rolling out current accounts to new clients "in a few days".

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It predicted the process of moving customers to the new bank to take "a few months in total", Reuters reported.

Founded in 2015, Revolut has grown rapidly around the world in the last decade, with more than 65 million customers globally and a $75 billion private market valuation.

The partner of Fintech section is   ]]> Fri, 13 Mar 2026 09:52:00 +0400 https://banks.am/en/news//30408 https://banks.am/en/news//30408 Mastercard is developing an AI-powered virtual C-suite for small businesses, promising the kind of strategic support usually reserved for large corporations, Finextra reports.

Mastercard says that each agent will act as a digital executive, aiding in key responsibilities from finance, to security, to marketing, giving business owners deeper views into their operations.

The virtual C-Suite brings agentic AI-powered intelligence into the accounting systems, business software and banking applications that small businesses use. The agents then continuously analyse business performance, identify risks and opportunities, predict likely outcomes, and recommend prompt steps and longer-term actions.

“Our goal is to turn operational complexity into clarity — helping entrepreneurs regain time, make smarter decisions, and translate their ambition into measurable growth”, said Mark Barnett, global head, SMEs, Mastercard, says.

The partner of Fintech section is   ]]> Wed, 11 Mar 2026 13:33:00 +0400 https://banks.am/en/news//30391 https://banks.am/en/news//30391 Revolut has applied to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation for a US national bank charter, Finextra reports.

The firm has veered away from its initial plan to buy a lender in the country in the face of a more relaxed regime for bank charters under the Trump administration.

To spearhead its launch, the firm Revolut has appointed Cetin Duransoy US CEO.

Duransoy held senior leadership banking and payments roles at Capital One and VISA.

Revolut co founder and CEO, Nik Storonsky says: “The United States is a key pillar of our global growth strategy. Filing for a national bank charter is a major milestone toward our vision of building the world’s first truly global banking platform. This charter will give us the direct control needed to innovate faster and deliver the Revolut experience to millions more Americans as we move toward our goal of 100 million customers.”

If approved the charter will enable the firm to ramp up its operations, providing direct acces to payment rails and new revenue streams from card and credit operations.

The partner of Fintech section is   ]]> Sun, 08 Mar 2026 23:00:00 +0400 https://banks.am/en/news//30384 https://banks.am/en/news//30384 The increasing popularity of stablecoins could lead to a decline in retail deposits for banks in the eurozone and weaken the effectiveness of monetary policy, according to a European Central Bank study.

The growing use of stablecoins can lead people and firms to move money out of traditional bank deposits and into digital assets, says the working paper quoted by Finextra.

Banks rely heavily on deposits as a stable and low-cost source of funding to support lending to households and businesses. When deposits decline, banks may be forced to rely more on wholesale or market-based funding, which is typically more expensive and less stable.

The ECB analysis shows that increasing interest in and attention toward stablecoins are associated with a measurable decline in retail bank deposits and a reduction in bank lending to firms.

"In other words, stablecoins can reduce the amount of credit banks provide to the real economy."

The paper also warns that when stablecoins are linked to non-euro currencies, such as the US dollar, the risks to monetary policy increase.

"In simple terms, foreign monetary conditions could be “imported” into the euro area through stablecoins. This would weaken the central bank’s control over financial conditions, reduce the effectiveness of traditional monetary policy instruments, and make it harder to stabilize inflation and economic activity, especially during periods of financial stress", write the authors.

To mitigate the risks, the paper suggests stronger transparency requirements for stablecoin reserves, robust redemption guarantees, adequate capital buffer to absorb losses and effective oversight. It also claims that the planed digital euro can offer a stablecoin alternative that preserves monetary sovereignty.

The partner of Fintech section is   ]]> Fri, 06 Mar 2026 09:48:00 +0400 https://banks.am/en/news//30375 https://banks.am/en/news//30375 Revolut Business is taking on American Express with the launch of an ultra-premium corporate card.

The Titan Visa card incorporates premium executive-travel perks and reconciliation tools for finance teams, alongside 10GB of monthly global data and subscriptions, including WeWork, The Economist and Perplexity, Finextra informs.

An independent survey commissioned by Revolut Business found that while 82% of business decision makers plan to increase travel spend this year, 34% remain concerned about a lack of spend visibility when employees are abroad. Titan aims to eliminate this friction by offering comprehensive expense management and real-time analytics alongside a suite of benefits, many geared towards boosting travel experience for users.

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Built on the core Revolut Business platform, the card gives teams tools for real-time expense tracking, automated receipt matching, and reconciliation. Travel benefits include access to over 600 airport lounges worldwide, travel insurance and everyday purchase protection, covering delays and lost luggage

Beyond data and subscriptions, Titan users can earn RevPoints at a 1:1 rate, which can be transferred to a customer’s personal Revolut account and redeemed for airline miles, stays, experiences and gift cards.

It is launching for businesses in the UK customers at a monthly £65 + VAT per user.

The partner of Fintech section is   ]]> Thu, 05 Mar 2026 09:27:00 +0400 https://banks.am/en/news//30298 https://banks.am/en/news//30298 After three years of declining investment, the global fintech market turned a corner in 2025, attracting $116 billion, up from $95.5 billion in 2024, according to KPMG latest Pulse of Fintech report.

While overall deal volume continued to decline - falling to 4,719 deals, an eight-year low - the increase in total capital deployed points to larger deal sizes, renewed confidence, and a more selective investment environment, says KPMG.

Global M&A deal value rose to $55.4 billion, driven primarily by the United States ($27.5 billion) and EMEA ($11 billion), while VC investment climbed to $56.7 billion.

The digital assets sector emerged as a central focus for investors in 2025, supported by improving market conditions and increased regulatory clarity. 

There was a sharp rise in investment in digital assets-focused startups, which nearly doubled from $11.2 billion in 2024 to $19.1 billion in 2025.

AI inevitably also saw strong interest, raking in $16,8 billion across the year.

Investment in payments remained steady, totalling $19.2 billion, compared with $20.4 billion in 2024. Investor interest remained particularly strong in B2B payments infrastructure, real-time payments, and emerging markets, where digital payments adoption continues to accelerate.

“Looking ahead to 2026, the fintech sector is entering a more balanced phase - one defined by selective growth, clearer paths to profitability, and improving liquidity. While macroeconomic and geopolitical risks remain, the combination of stronger exit markets, greater regulatory clarity, and accelerating innovation provides a constructive foundation for sustained investment and long-term value creation”, said Karim Haji, global head of financial services at KPMG International.

The partner of Fintech section is  

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