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Besides the inherent fragility of stablecoins, the emerging regulatory divergence is worrying. The United States is advancing its own stablecoin regime through the GENIUS Act, signed into law by President Trump on 18 July. The Act, which could be operational within weeks, introduces a federal framework which, while broadly in line with the EU’s Markets in Crypto-assets (MiCA) Regulation in spirit, as it addresses many of the above-mentioned concerns, is more lenient in some areas. As a result, market analysts project that stablecoin supply could grow from USD 230 billion in 2025 to USD 2 trillion by the end of 2028.

From: From hype to hazard: what stablecoins mean for Europe.

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Preference is key. Research conducted by S&P Global Market Intelligence 451 Alliance found that for most merchants, all their payments needs cannot be addressed by a single provider. “40% of merchants are working with four or more payment processing partners. Additionally, the percentage of merchants that prefer to work with multiple providers to process transactions has risen to 62%, up from 50% in 2023,” the research revealed.

From: Why are orchestration tools essential within today’s payments arena?.

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Banking lobbies including the American Bankers Association, the Bank Policy Institute and the Consumer Bankers Association last week warned lawmakers of a “loophole” in regulation that will let some crypto exchanges indirectly pay interest to stablecoin holders.

From: US banks lobby to block stablecoin interest over fears of deposit flight.

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Grasshopper Bank launched a first-of-its-kind Model Context Protocol (MCP) server that will enable its business banking clients to get personalized financial analysis and insights through Claude, Anthropic’s generative AI platform. While Claude is the first integration, the infrastructure sets the stage for future connectivity with other large language models (LLMs).

From: Grasshopper Bank’s MCP: The Next Generation Of Small Business Banking.

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MCP was originally developed by Anthropic but is now also supported by OpenAI. In March, the OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said that OpenAI will add support for MCP, across its products, including the desktop app for ChatGPT. Other companies, including Block and Apollo have added MCP support for their platforms. The protocol itself allows AI models to bring in data from a variety of sources so that developers can build two-way connections between data sources and AI-powered applications, such as chatbots.

From: Why You Need To Know About The Model Context Protocol.

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While an MCP unlocks powerful contextual AI, it introduces critical risks regarding:

Data leakage and inference risks. MCP consolidation of sensitive customer data (transactions, balances, ratios) poses a risk if breached. Even anonymized outputs can be reverse-engineered if inference patterns are too revealing. Security controls must tightly guard storage, access paths, and output logs.
Data privacy and retention compliance. A MCP deals with granular financial data. Banks must ensure compliance with privacy regulations, especially for multi-jurisdictional clients. Policies must govern data retention, deletion workflows, and usage for model training versus inference.

From: Grasshopper Bank’s MCP: The Next Generation Of Small Business Banking.

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I find this vision of agentic commerce really exciting but in order to realize the benefits, it is important that we have the necessary infrastructure to make it safe, secure and cost-effective. MCP does not define a standard mechanism for servers and clients to mutually authenticate (is that Walmart’s agent? is that Dave Birch’s agent?) and nor does it set out how to delegate authentication with APIs (so that my agent can use open banking).

From: Why You Need To Know About The Model Context Protocol.

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Progress towards secure agentic commerce is steady

 

 

 

 

Well, Tom’s prediction has (as is generally case) come true.

Visa has shut down its US open banking unit amid regulatory uncertainty and bank plans to charge for customer data access, according to Bloomberg.

From: Visa shuts US open banking unit – Bloomberg.

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Roughly 70,000 phones were snatched in London last year—almost one for every 100 people. Britain accounts for 40% of phone thefts in Europe.

From: Britain leads the world in a new global business—a criminal one.

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A person involved in discussions said that since the so-called Genius Act was passed, EU officials had been “rethinking plans for the digital euro”.

People familiar with the matter added that officials were now considering running a digital euro on a public blockchain such as ethereum or solana rather than a private one, which had previously been expected, due to privacy concerns.

From: EU speeds up plans for digital euro after US stablecoin law.

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Lloyds Bank has warned that it received 29% more reports of conveyancing fraud in the second half of last year compared with the first half.

It also found that victims lost an average of £47,000 and around 45% of victims were aged 39 or under, signalling that first-time buyers may be most at risk.

From: Scammers steal home deposits in callous conveyancing scams – Which?.

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European fintech company Papaya Ltd. has officially become one of the first Electronic Money Institutions (EMIs) in Europe to secure direct access to SEPA, including both SEPA Credit Transfers (SCT) and SEPA Instant (SCT Inst). As of today, Papaya is listed in the European Payments Council’s official register of SEPA participants.

From: Papaya becomes one of the first EMIs in Europe with direct SEPA access.

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The yield-bearing stablecoin model mirrors broader momentum toward “productive capital.” Tokenized money‑market funds, on-chain reverse‑repo vaults and wrapped, non‑rebasing versions of yield coins (such as cUSDO) give traders familiar cash‑equivalent instruments while keeping their working capital on the blockchain.

From: OpenEden: Has Stablecoin Summer Peaked?.

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