Too big to fail, but not too big to fine

Morgan Stanley set up a Digital Asset Lab to test stablecoins, tokenized deposits, tokenized money-market funds, CBDCs and DeFi vaults, walled off from the systems that run its day-to-day banking business.

US Bank launched a new suite of identity, privacy and credit monitoring services for customers to track their data on the dark web.

France has watched its borrowing costs spike as the 10-year yield briefly topped 5% and the spread over German bunds widened above 150 bps, the highest since late 2011. Lecornu’s 2027 budget proposed unpopular spending cuts to bring the deficit to 5% of GDP.

Anchorage Digital teamed up with Standard Chartered to add USD accounts and SWIFT payment access for international institutional clients, plus 24/7 settlement with counterparties.

Mastercard is enabling its European cardholders to make offline payments during power and network outages.

HSBC is planning sweeping UK wealth management job cuts in an AI push, with about half of management and specialist roles and roughly 70% of financial advisers set to go.

DNB cut about 400 jobs in its Technology and Services division as AI agents take over work in KYC.

The Trump Admin’s HUD launched a fair-lending investigation into Wells Fargo to determine if its race-targeted lending programs—meant to boost Black homeownership—violate federal law by offering race-based lending terms.

Plaid (our parent company) rolled out new AI models for credit, fraud and payments as part of its Fall Product Release. They included LendScore 2, which predicts repayment 42% better than traditional credit data alone, and LendScore Arc, its first transformer-based credit score. A new fraud foundation model also delivered up to 40% relative improvement over prior baselines.

The Financial Planning Association relaunched PlannerSearch, its CFP-matching platform.

Lumin Digital launched Lumin Signal, a behavioral analytics tool for banks and credit unions.

CRX Trade debuted a Swiss institutional prime brokerage that gives hedge funds and trading firms one account spanning eight crypto venues plus CME Group and Nasdaq.

OKXICE, the 50-50 joint venture between OKX and ICE, filed with the SEC for a 24/7 tokenized U.S. stock venue covering 63 NYSE-listed companies. OKX also unveiled OKX Money, a standalone app for saving, sending and spending digital dollars in select markets.

WeMoney introduced an AI lending assessment service built on Australia’s Consumer Data Right open banking framework.

Verifone rolled out Commander Capital, powered by YouLend, which offers retailers working capital based on their payment activity.

Meta and OpenAI are leaning into cuteness to sell their new AI agents. Meta paired its Muse assistant with a fluffy beige mascot named Jolly, and OpenAI used fuzzy, colorful shapes for its Dots agent. Both agents can connect to users’ financial accounts, calendars and apps.

Revolut moved toward a Philippine digital banking licence.

In an opinion piece, EarnIn executive Raghu Mittal argues that the FDIC’s proposed program to help community banks take on fintech partners was useful but cannot account for the ongoing, unique operational and credit risks that emerge once two individual companies enter an active working partnership.

A Pennsylvania retirement fund filed a class-action lawsuit against Coastal Financial Corporation following a massive drop in the bank's stock. The complaint alleges that Coastal misled investors regarding its fintech partnership segment and falsely claimed to be nearly fully indemnified against risk. Credit deterioration in a single $500 million fintech loan portfolio forced Coastal to record a $68.8 million credit expense, resulting in a $42.1 million quarterly loss and erasing $470 million in market cap.

South Korean President Lee Jae Myung ordered a sweeping investigation after a string of cyberattacks hit Shinhan Bank, KB Kookmin Bank, Hana Bank, Woori Bank and Yegaram Savings Bank. The attacks exposed more than 60,000 customer records.