Advisory Insights: September Edition

The Storyline

August marks the beginning of conference season with great conversations and insights across the fintech community. Our team was busy sharing perspectives on the evolving landscape, with Emily Goodman discussing crypto mortgage strategies,  Evey Guo providing insights on emerging banking ventures, and Jasper Sneff Nanni joining the 11:FS Fintech Insider podcast to discuss Revolut's U.S. banking ambitions and Klarna's IPO prospects. As we wrap up summer and head into the heart of conference season, we hope to see you at one of the upcoming events where we'll be connecting with the fintech community. Let's jump into this month's stories.

The crypto IPO wave gained momentum with successful debuts from Bullish, which raised $1.1 billion in an IPO priced at $37 per share and achieved a valuation of $5.4-$5.6 billion. Meanwhile, Klarna is targeting a September IPO and could raise as much as $1.46 billion. This public market momentum parallels accelerating banking charter activity as multiple firms pursued regulated status under the newly enacted GENIUS Act framework. Anchorage Digital Bank became the first federally chartered stablecoin issuer following the law's implementation. Paxos applied for a national trust bank charter, while U.K. neobanks Revolut and Starling are considering acquiring U.S. banks to obtain domestic licensing.

Strategic partnerships reshaped competitive dynamics in payments and digital assets. JPMorgan emerged as a key player across multiple deals, striking an agreement with Coinbase to integrate USDC settlement for institutional crypto trading while simultaneously nearing an agreement to take over Apple's credit card program from Goldman Sachs. Payment firm GoCardless is reportedly in acquisition talks with Mollie, demonstrating continued consolidation in the European payments landscape.

Funding rounds demonstrated strong investor confidence across diverse fintech categories. Rain raised $58 million in Series B funding to accelerate its mission of becoming the enterprise stablecoin platform of record. Stablecoin infrastructure provider M0 raised a $40 million Series B, strengthening the stablecoin ecosystem infrastructure. Stable secured $28 million in seed funding to develop its USDT-optimized Layer-1 blockchain for seamless stablecoin payment rails. Mesh secured additional capital toward its $130 million Series B to advance crypto-payments infrastructure enabling seamless user payments across 100+ wallets with real-time asset conversion capabilities. Wingspan raised $24 million in Series B to scale its contractor-focused payroll platform, while Grasshopper, a digital bank for small businesses, raised $46.6 million to fuel its next phase of growth.

Major acquisitions strengthened market positioning across fintech segments. Ripple acquired stablecoin payments platform Rail for $200 million to reinforce its leadership in stablecoin-based payment solutions. Gusto entered into an agreement to acquire Guideline after the 401(k) provider served around 65,000 customers and managed over $20 billion in assets, expanding Gusto's comprehensive payroll and benefits platform.

Cross-platform integration initiatives expanded service capabilities as traditional finance embraced digital innovation. FIS partnered with Circle to enable stablecoin-based money movement through USDC, while SoFi revealed plans to introduce crypto staking, borrowing, and stablecoin support as part of its digital finance expansion. American Express partnered with restaurant POS firm Toast, and Navan joined the American Express Sync platform to streamline spend management for business users. Checkout.com partnered with Visa to launch a card-issuing service for businesses, while Wise is partnering with Google to integrate FX rates into relevant searches. Airwallex announced a new partnership with Pipe to help scale its platform reach, and Arcade.dev partnered with Lithic to build AI-powered e-commerce agents capable of autonomously searching, comparing, and completing secure purchases in one streamlined process.

Network Spotlight

This month we sat down with Assaf Baciu, President and Co-Founder at Persado. Persado provides the only Motivation AI platform that enables personalized communications at scale, inspiring each individual to engage and act.

Tell us a little about yourself and Persado.

I’m Co-founder and President of Persado, an AI platform that provides high performance creative generation and automated review and resolution of compliance risk for retail, sponsor banks and fintechs. I spent most of my career working on language technologies within companies like Bevocal and Nuance and then I met Alex Vratskides, now CEO and Co-founder of Persado. Alex observed in his previous company that seemingly small changes in wording in mobile messages drive significant changes in responses and conversions, so we set out to enable brands to systematically generate better-performing marketing messages—and…Persado was born in 2012. Our first customer in the U.S. was Amex, and since then we’ve grown to serve 8 of the top 10 U.S. banks, along with many others in the U.S. and around the world.

What key challenges do you see fintech companies facing when creating marketing content that converts, and how does Persado address them?

Retail banks and fintechs have long created marketing content through two disjointed team efforts—Marketing for performance and compliance for safety. The result? Twenty-seven million hours of legal time (collectively, in the U.S. banking sector alone) wasted each year in the back-and-forth with marketing, only to arrive at content that either underperforms or fails compliance. This comes to about $5.75 billion annually.

However, Persado’s AI innovations empower banks to finally benefit from Martech and Regtech, merged into a single platform, striking a balance to rapidly create high-performing, fully compliant content for multiple channels at scale.

Persado’s Agentic AI replaces the old, siloed process. Multiple intelligent agents work together—negotiating performance and compliance in real time—to analyze, generate and personalize content for performance and compliance, even at the design stage, such as within Figma. The impact and time savings are sizeable: more revenue, better compliance, and far faster time to market.

How do you see AI-powered marketing content evolving in the fintech space over the next few years, and what role will platforms like Persado play in shaping that future?

In the near future it’s about using AI to automate creation and optimization of all types of media. For example BaaS banks struggle to analyze and approve the tsunami of videos submitted by their fintech programs. AI agents are able to not only fully automate the analysis, but also recommend and execute changes to resolve for compliance and improve performance. Beyond that, we see a much greater adoption of AI agents—within banks and fintechs, but also by consumers. This means that institutions need to be ready to communicate with humans and their agents. Persado will be there to drive that.  

Bank marketers at Finovate Fall in NYC on Sept 8 can learn more by attending my Power Panel session: "Getting Beyond the Hype - How finserv providers can harness AI, GenAI, & Agentic AI to make or save money."

How can people get a hold of you?

Email is best, assaf.baciu@persado.com

What's a hobby or passion that helps you unwind?

I’m usually thinking a lot about the future, so my favorite way to unwind is hanging out with the ones who’ll actually shape it—my twin kids. We do sports, play and debate together, and honestly, they keep me on my toes more than anyone else.

Product Launches

• Solo introduced a comprehensive data-sharing network designed to enhance transparency and streamline connectivity across fintech service providers.
• Chipper Cash, Western Union, and Zoona expanded their international money transfer capabilities, introducing new cross-border remittance solutions to serve emerging markets.
• Flex launched its first debit card offering daily cashback rewards on rent payments, targeting consumers' largest recurring expense.
• PayPal expanded its crypto payment acceptance to support over 100 digital currencies, including Bitcoin and Ethereum, for merchant transactions.
• Huntington Bank rolled out a comprehensive brand refresh featuring new digital banking products and enhanced customer experiences, while partnering with True Link to introduce specialized teen banking services.
• Shopify unveiled three new agentic commerce solutions: Checkout Kit enabling embedded commerce widgets in chat interfaces, Shopify Catalog providing global product discovery across merchant networks, and Universal Cart allowing unified shopping experiences across multiple stores.
• Wix debuted its integrated financial services platform, launching Wix Checking for business banking and Wix Capital for merchant cash advances, enabling small businesses to manage finances and access capital within a single ecosystem.
• BVNK released Smart Treasury, leveraging AI to automate real-time stablecoin liquidity optimization across multiple blockchain networks for institutional clients.
• Remitly partnered with Bridge to introduce Remitly Wallet, a multi-currency digital solution supporting both traditional currencies and stablecoins for enhanced cross-border payments (currently in beta testing).
• Gemini expanded beyond exchange services with the launch of a self-custodial smart wallet, broadening its cryptocurrency infrastructure offerings.

FS Vector Calendar

• JAM FINTOP Conference | September 3-5 |  Nashville, TN
• FinovateFall | September 8-10 | New York, NY
• 2025 MTRA Annual Conference | September 8-11 | Louisville, KY
• Boston Fintech Week | September 15-19 | Boston, MA
• DC Fintech Week | October 14-17 | Washington, D.C.
• Money20/20 | October 26-29 | Las Vegas, NV
• AFC Policy Summit | November 18 | Washington, D.C.
• Fintech NerdCon | November 19-20 | Miami, FL

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