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Sweden also needs to step up its work on cheap, efficient and secure payments between currencies, says the Riksbank: “Efficient mobile payments across countries and currencies can also be achieved by linking local solutions, such as Swish in Sweden, with similar solutions in other countries. The Riksbank considers that this solution would benefit Swedish consumers and companies and therefore encourages Getswish and its owners to work towards linking Swish.”

From: Swedish central bank threatens banks with action over instant payments.

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Coinbase is betting on AI payments as its core crypto brokerage business struggles with a broad market downturn. It is also developing AI agents that can be used for executing crypto trades, as well as a marketplace and wallets for AI agents.

From: Coinbase Dives Into AI Agent Payments — The Information.

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Beyond individual safety and convenience, the integration of fast payments and digital identity also helps create jobs and improve people’s lives. By reducing payment frictions, fraud risk, and onboarding barriers, these systems help small firms operate formally, get paid reliably, and scale their activities, while enabling workers and microentrepreneurs to participate more fully in the digital economy.

From: Fast payments and digital ID: Making everyday payments safer, simpler, and more efficient.

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At the start of this year, a video popped up on social media sites in India showing the chief executive of the Bombay Stock Exchange, Sundararaman Ramamurthy, giving investors advice on which stocks to buy.
Viewers were promised handsome returns if they heeded his advice.
The only problem was, it was not Ramamurthy speaking. It was a deepfake video of him, made using artificial intelligence.

From: Deepfake attack: ‘Many people could have been cheated’ – BBC News.

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The level of uncertainty about AI’s economic effects is so high—and the quality and supply of real-world, real-time information about its economic effects so paltry—that even serious conversations about AI from otherwise analytical people often veer toward the genre of fiction rather than the category of empirical analysis. AI land is so full of science fiction precisely because the space is so bereft of official high-quality data.

From: Nobody Knows Anything – Derek Thompson.

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And, while cash is still accepted by 77% of small and medium sized retailers, some 14% have gone cashless in just the last year.

A recent inquiry by the Treasury Select Committee into cash acceptance warned that without action, the UK risks creating a two-tier high street, where some customers are effectively shut out of shops, cafés, and local services because they cannot pay digitally.

The biggest driver to becoming a ‘cashless’ business is fraud prevention (22%) followed by security concerns (21%) and lack of customer demand (20%). One-fifth (19%) also highlight that digital payments made bookkeeping and accounting much easier to manage. A lack of deposit facilities (13%) and the closure of the local bank branch (11%) is also cited.

From: One in seven UK high street shops went cashless in last year – survey.

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“In some videos you can see someone going to the toilet, or getting undressed. I don’t think they know, because if they knew they wouldn’t be recording.”

From: Meta’s AI Smart Glasses and Data Privacy Concerns: Workers Say “We See Everything”.

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Oh, and as a final point… this piece was largely drafted by AI, executing an extensive prompt laying out the arguments we wanted to make and examples we wanted to use in one iteration, with only slight tweaks and edits required afterwards. While analysts will remain the source of ideation and need to write their thoughts in the form of a comprehensive prompt, AI is enabling better and faster execution.

From: AI disruption, wage deflation, research abundance.

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Revenues jumped to £4.5bn last year from £3.1bn in 2024.

The results are the latest sign of Revolut’s improving fortunes after the $75bn fintech this month clinched a full UK banking licence after a four-year-long tussle with UK regulators.

Founder and chief executive Nik Storonsky had said the accreditation was Revolut’s “number-one priority”, arguing that the licence will be key to its growth.

The licence will allow it to lend at scale in the UK and push into lucrative markets dominated by traditional banks. Finance chief Victor Stinga said on a media call that credit cards and overdrafts would be the first products to be launched for UK consumers now that Revolut had secured the permit.

Tuesday’s results showed that the company’s performance was underpinned by a rise in customer numbers to 68.3mn, up from 52.5mn the previous year.

The higher market share boosted Revolut’s fees from card payments as well as the interest earned on deposits, two important profit engines.

Fees from card payments rose 45 per cent to £1bn while interest income climbed 23 per cent to £974mn. Revolut also generated £708mn from customer subscriptions in 2025, up 67 per cent.

Revolut charges monthly fees for premium tiers that give users perks such as higher interest on savings, travel insurance and fewer fees on currency exchanges.

Revolut’s wealth business, which includes revenues from users trading digital assets, has become a cornerstone of its business model, and helped lift the group to its first profit in 2021. However, the division was among Revolut’s slowest-growing business lines, increasing revenues by 31 per cent to £663mn following a slump in major cryptocurrencies.

From: Revolut profits surge to record £1.7bn as it wins more customers.

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Kimberly Sutherland, global head of fraud and identity at LexisNexis Risk Solutions, said financial institutions have tools to detect fraud patterns and understand the behavior of their customers.

From: True crime, fake romance: Inside one victim’s fight with banks | American Banker.

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