Sam Boboev's Linkedin Analytics

🚨 CARDS: Ramp to launch stablecoin-backed cards powered by Stripe Ramp and Stripe's stablecoin-backed corporate cards eliminate these pain points, offering businesses dramatically faster settlements, lower costs, built-in protection from currency volatility, and seamless card issuance — enabling global growth without global headaches: Fund: Businesses can fund a wallet with Ramp using local currency, which is converted to stablecoin, or by depositing stablecoins directly. 🔹 Transact: Card purchases work as standard local payments. The cardholder simply pays in their local fiat currency, and the merchant receives fiat currency. 🔹 Protect: Funds are held in dollar-equivalent value, shielded against local currency devaluation. 🔹 Simplify: With Ramp's corporate card, businesses can also access Ramp's full suite of spend management and financial automation tools globally. "Ramp believes in not just responding to industry trends but creating the future itself," said Subham Agarwal, Director of Product and Head of Product Marketing at Ramp. "The product we are developing in partnership with Stripe is about improving how businesses spend globally, empowering our customers everywhere with a radically simpler and more stable way to transact across borders. We saw the pain our customers experience from inefficiencies in international finance, and are working hard to fix it." Building the Future of Global Commerce By working with Stripe to extend Ramp's platform to previously unreachable markets, businesses in emerging economies will gain access to the same advanced financial tools that have helped over 30,000+ U.S. companies save billions of dollars and millions of hours. This combination of stablecoin-backed cards and Ramp's powerful financial platform will accelerate business growth and commerce in regions that need it most. The integration enables issuance of new card programs in multiple countries at once, starting with select Latin American markets. The focus on Latin America aims to address the growing demand for businesses to utilize stablecoins to store value and fund purchases. Availability will expand to countries in Europe, Africa and Asia thereafter. 👉 Subscribe for more insights https://lnkd.in/d94JgWBU Source PR Newswire #fintech #cards #stablecoins

🚨 EMBEDDED FINANCE: CrediLinq.Ai Secures $8.5M Series A to Scale AI-Powered B2B Embedded Finance CrediLinq, the AI-powered B2B embedded finance platform, announced today the close of its USD $8.5 million Series A funding round. The round was led by OM/VC and MS&AD Ventures . New investors include Citi North America and Rustem Family office. Returning investors include 500 Global, Epic Angels, 1982 Ventures and Big Sky Capital VC. CrediLinq will accelerate geographic expansion across the United States, United Kingdom and Australia. In addition, CrediLinq will strengthen its leadership bench in sales, marketing, product and tech to support expansion. A significant portion of the funds will also be invested in enhancing the company's technology stack — with continual improvement of AI-led credit algorithms. Deep Singh, Founder and Group CEO of CrediLinq, remarked: "Today marks a pivotal moment for CrediLinq as we accelerate the growth of embedded finance globally, helping platforms empower digital native SMEs with flexible, transparent and seamless access to capital. With this new funding, we are excited to deepen our partnerships, expand into new markets, and invest in talent and technology that will support the next phase of our growth." Vikram Kotibhaskar, Co-Founder of CrediLinq. added: "The embedded credit revolution continues to gain momentum, and CrediLinq is at the forefront. By being integrated within platforms, our Credit-as-a-Service stack leverages API connectivity, transactional data and credit algorithms for quick decision-making and easy checkout within the partner ecosystem. This results in a fast, frictionless and transparent customer experience and platform partners benefit with higher stickiness, trust, and scalability." CrediLinq's solutions covers verticals across procurement, supply chain, e-commerce, freelancing, banking, accounting, and payments. In e-commerce for example, it has integrations with Amazon, Lazada and TikTok Shop. Mark Munoz, Managing Partner at OM/VC commented: "As a long-term investor in Credilinq, we're proud to support their growth into a global leader in credit-as-a-service. Their innovative use of technologies like AI to drive positive revenue outcomes for clients is aligned with our investment philosophy. It's also encouraging to see that many of its users have reported consistent, immediate ROI from their crediting platforms, underscoring the value that Credilinq is delivering at scale." 👉 Subscribe for more insights https://lnkd.in/d94JgWBU Source PR Newswire #fintech #ai #embeddedfinance

🤯 FINTECH + AI: Perplexity partners with PayPal for in-chat shopping Perplexity today announced that it has partnered with PayPal to power agentic commerce across its Perplexity Pro platform. Starting this summer in the U.S., consumers can check out instantly with PayPal or Venmo when they ask Perplexity to find products, book travel, or buy tickets. "Perplexity wants to have accurate, trustworthy answers wherever people are making decisions. PayPal is a natural partner because we share a vision for how important trust is in the age of AI," said Aravind Srinivas, Cofounder and CEO of Perplexity. "This partnership unlocks new possibilities, where conversations now drive commerce," said Alex Chriss, President and CEO of PayPal. "We're making it easy and secure to shop right in the chat when inspiration strikes. It's a powerful step in making conversational commerce a reality." The entire process, including payment, shipping, tracking, and invoicing will be handled behind the scenes with PayPal's account linking, secure tokenized wallet and emerging passkey checkout flows, which could eliminate the need for passwords and streamline the experience to a single user query or click. Key features include: 🔹 Agentic Commerce: Integration of PayPal's commerce solutions, enabling users to buy products or services directly in Perplexity's chat interface. 🔹 Global Reach: Expanding Perplexity's commerce tools to PayPal's 430+ million active accounts across approximately 200 markets. 🔹 Secure Transactions: Leveraging PayPal's robust fraud detection and data security protocols. Perplexity is a conversational search and discovery engine that fuses live web data with generative models to deliver cited answers—and the next best action—in a single chat. Whether users are researching a topic, comparing products, or planning a trip, Perplexity turns natural questions into trustworthy, ready-to-use results, streamlining how people learn, decide, and get things done online. 👉 Subscribe for more insights https://lnkd.in/d94JgWBU Source Paypal #paypal #ai #fintech

The Corporate Case for Open Banking Open banking empowers corporate treasury teams to operate with real-time data, enabling quicker access to information and more efficient processes. With shorter distribution cycles and rising digital commerce adoption, liquidity management faces growing challenges. Less predictable cash flows hinder accurate forecasting. Real-time reporting and open banking APIs allow treasury teams to respond efficiently in today’s 24/7 global business environment. 👉 Open Banking and Real-Time Treasury Large multinational corporations must manage counterparty risk, local collections, and payroll across global accounts and banks. Traditionally, treasurers rely on Swift to receive account data, but the speed and quality of information vary across banks. In many cases, by the time Swift messages are received, the data is already outdated—hindering effective forecasting and investment decisions. To get real-time data, treasury teams often log into each bank’s digital portal. For large enterprises, this is an administrative burden and poses cybersecurity risks. Open banking solves this with balance inquiry APIs, offering a real-time, consolidated view of accounts across countries. API aggregators connect directly with local banks and plug into TMS platforms, delivering consistent information, enabling efficient decisions, and improving liquidity mobilization. Open banking APIs also reduce dependency on traditional payment rails. They support fund movements, credit/debit alerts, and payment initiation, streamlining operations. 👉 Enhancing Liquidity Management Optimizing liquidity means ensuring funds are available to meet obligations while maximizing returns. For companies with decentralized accounts, covering intraday payments often involves manual, inefficient transfers. Swift-based processes are too slow to keep up with real-time demands, leading to idle funds that could be better invested. Real-time liquidity sharing allows companies to use pooled balances for intraday payments, with end-of-day sweeps to reconcile exposures. This setup helps fund activity without mixing accounts across entities. Alternatively, virtual accounts allow for segregation within a single physical account, supporting liquidity access and reconciliation by business line or legal entity. Open banking doesn’t just strengthen internal treasury functions—it creates external value by enabling innovative tools, encouraging market competition, and enhancing user experiences. 👉 Open Banking and Artificial Intelligence Open banking APIs already support real-time liquidity and BaaS solutions. Looking forward, making financial data accessible via APIs will unlock powerful AI-driven opportunities. AI can analyze financial data to improve decision-making and uncover new efficiencies. Open banking ensures this data is accessible, enabling AI to support both current and future use cases. 👉 More insights https://lnkd.in/d94JgWBU Source Citi

🚨 BANKING: Zopa Bank raises £80m with its first LSE bond listing Zopa Bank has raised £80m in its first-ever London Stock Exchange bond listing as it gears up to launch current accounts. The fintech will transfer to an unlisted public company within six months following the transaction as it inches closer to the possibility of a float on the LSE. The oversubscribed fundraise was completed on the International Securities Market (ISM) of the London Stock Exchange. The Additional Tier 1 (AT1) capital raise lets the company boost its financial strength by selling special bonds that can absorb losses in difficult periods. This follows a period of rapid acceleration for the lender, where pre-tax profit doubled to £34.2m in the 2024 financial year. The firm has also set out plans to double its office foot print in a move to canary wharf. Revenue grew 30.2 per cent to £303.4m. This was driven by an over 60 per cent surge in its deposits base to £5.5bn. Steve Hulme, Zopa’s finance boss, told City AM: “Our latest capital raise is another strong vote of confidence in Zopa’s momentum and model. “Following a successful equity round just six months ago, this non-dilutive capital strengthens our balance sheet and positions us firmly on the starting line for our bank account launch.” 👉 Subscribe for more insights https://lnkd.in/d94JgWBU Source City AM #fintech #banking #payments

🚨 FINTECH: $25B-valued Chime files for an IPO, reveals $33M deal with Dallas Mavericks At long last, digital consumer bank Chime has moved forward with its IPO by filing its S-1 paperwork Tuesday. Chime had reportedly filed confidential S-1 paperwork back in December. S-1 filings typically reveal all kinds of information, covering financial, legal, and other risk factors. But Chime’s S-1 documents still have a lot of blank spaces. We don’t know how many shares it hopes to sell or at what price. Chime could be aiming to raise $1 billion, IPO specialist Renaissance Capital believes. We also don’t know how many shares insiders plan to sell as part of the IPO. This includes its major backers, a list that includes billionaire Yuri Milner’s DST Global, Michael Stark’s Crosslink Capital, billionaire Len Blavatnik’s Access Industries, as well as VC firms General Atlantic, Menlo Ventures (led by board member Shawn Carolan), the Sino French Innovation Fund, and Iconiq, according to the paperwork. Chime raised $2.65 billion total as a private company, including its last raise in 2021 that valued it at $25 billion, PitchBook estimates. As a result, there are many more VCs on its cap table. They, too, could be in for big paydays. For instance, Kirsten Green's Forerunner Ventures and Hunter Walk’s Homebrew both claim Chime as a portfolio company. Chime offered one detail that suggests the company believes it will be a huge IPO. Chime enlisted an army of big name investment bankers, including Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, and JP Morgan. The financials show why investors may grow excited. The company finished 2024 with $1.67 billion in revenue and $25 million in losses, compared to nearly $1.3 billion in revenue and $203 million in losses in 2023. Its 2025 first-quarter revenue was already $519 million. So, by Silicon Valley math, that puts it on track for $2 billion this year and near profitability. Chime offers consumer checking, savings, debit, and credit cards and claims 8.6 million active users. One interesting reveal in the paperwork. Its board member Cynthia Marshall served as the CEO of the Dallas Mavericks from 2018 to December 2024. Chime became a Mavericks sponsor during that time. It paid around $33 million over three years (2022-2024), which gained it the Chime logo on the team’s jersey, among other marketing benefits. Without that deal, it might have already been profitable. 👉 Subscribe for more insights https://lnkd.in/d94JgWBU Source Techcrunch #fintecch #payments #banking