Can fintech close the financial access gap? (TWIF 6/19)

Hello Fintech Friends,

Welcome to the new readers who’ve joined us since last week. You’re joining 175,000+ other subscribers who love fintech. Art above by Synthia Saint James.

Juneteenth commemorates the moment freedom finally reached those it had long been promised to.

It’s always a fitting occasion to ask whether economic freedom followed suit.

Black and Hispanic Americans are more than twice as likely as white Americans to be unbanked or underbanked, and are more likely than white counterparts to have no usable credit score or to be "credit invisible."

Leading up to the Great Recession, Black borrowers were issued a disproportionately high number of predatory and subprime loans, and roughly 30% of Black borrowers' homes went into foreclosure. In 2024, more than two in five Black (43%) and Hispanic (46%) adults reported difficulty paying their bills due to monthly income fluctuations.

The policy environment is changing in ways that matter here. The CFPB announced in 2025 that it is no longer using "disparate impact,” the legal doctrine that allowed regulators to challenge lending practices that disproportionately harm minority borrowers, in its enforcement of fair lending laws

The fintech industry has promised to be the equalizer. And there are genuine bright spots.

Alt credit data (like rent payment history), mobile banking, and lower-cost lending have genuinely brought financial services to people the traditional banking sector ignored. Fintechs like Esusu, which reports rent payments to credit bureaus, document increases in credit scores and new credit tradelines for renters who were previously credit invisible. Many consumers in the Southeast US who have difficulty opening bank accounts are still able to use Cash App as their primary banking and payment method.

The infrastructure of financial access is being rebuilt in real time: through stablecoins, embedded finance, and the integration of AI into banking and investing platforms.

Whether that rebuilt infrastructure serves everyone equitably is a design question, not a destiny. There is still more work to do!

Please enjoy another week of fintech and banking news below.

Have feedback for us? Let us know. Find me at @nikmilanovic, @twifintech, and @ndm

Visa rolled out Click to Pay for eligible Revolut cardholders across the UK and Europe, automatically enrolling more than 53 million customers.

Fifth Third launched an AI-powered interface in its mobile app that lets customers type natural-language requests to navigate directly to the relevant feature.

Fidelity moved to capture a slice of the stablecoin reserve management market, launching its "Fidelity Reserves Digital Fund,” days after rival State Street unveiled a similar product targeting the same fast-growing opportunity.

BlackRock capped redemptions from its $25 billion HPS Corporate Lending Fund (HLEND) for the second straight quarter after investors sought to pull roughly 13% of shares.

China is reportedly nearing a commercial rollout of mBridge, the blockchain-based cross-border payment platform backed by the central banks of China, Hong Kong, Thailand, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia, with a Hong Kong entity set to run the platform and transaction fees expected to be roughly half those of traditional networks like Swift.

HSBC signed a multi-year AI partnership with Google Cloud, committing to develop more than 200 use cases over two years using Google DeepMind models and agentic tools.

Lloyds Banking Group announced the closure of 79 additional branches across its Lloyds and Halifax brands.

UniCredit edged closer to completing its contested €35 billion takeover of Commerzbank, with shareholder acceptances climbing to nearly 12% of the German lender's capital as the first offer period closed.

Rain rolled out Rewards, a native loyalty capability built directly into its stablecoin card issuing stack, letting partners launch fully branded points programs. A private beta with Avalanche Card already showed a 25% lift in cardholder spend among enrolled users.

Adyen announced Adyen Agentic, a modular API suite designed to let merchants integrate once and transact across any conversational AI commerce platform. Early ecosystem partners include American Express, Mastercard, Salesforce, and Visa.

Glia launched AI Outreach, an outbound voice and SMS engagement tool for community and regional banks and credit unions that uses AI agents to proactively contact customers.

Salesforce introduced Agentic Advisor, a suite of six AI-powered capabilities built into Agentforce for Financial Services that automates meeting prep, task prioritization, and client record updates for wealth managers.

Glean expanded its financial services MCP ecosystem with integrations from CB Insights, Crunchbase, Daloopa, FactSet, and S&P Global, enabling financial services teams to pull market intelligence AI workflows alongside their own internal data.

Coinbase announced plans to launch 1:1-backed tokenized U.S. stocks on its Base blockchain, with onchain dividend payments and no synthetic exposure.

Mercury* launched Command, an AI assistant that lets its 300,000+ business banking customers complete financial tasks through natural language prompts.

Melio launched an agent-powered B2B payment network that allows buyers to pay suppliers directly through their existing AR systems without requiring supplier onboarding.

Early Warning Services (parent of Zelle) will launch its ZLUSD stablecoin in 2027, marking the first major multi-bank stablecoin debut, with India targeted as the first remittance corridor.

Nubank sent thousands of customers an erroneous message claiming the Brazilian digital bank had been liquidated by the country's central bank — a false alert triggered when a developer accidentally activated an internal protocol.

Sabre Global Technologies was fined £1 million by the UK's Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation for continuing to provide sanctioned Russian carrier Ural Airlines access to its Global Distribution System for seven months, the largest Russia-related sanctions penalty issued since the 2022 invasion.

Robinhood cut roughly 10% of its full-time workforce — approximately 290 roles — incurring $28 million in restructuring charges.