A new BCG report and a fresh $2M raise out of Nairobi show how the global beyond-banking thesis is finally getting structural, and why ESG fintech is set to absorb $123.7bn this year alone. For most of the last decade, "beyond banking" was a slide in a venture deck. This week it became something closer to a balance sheet. A pair of fresh signals, one from Boston Consulting Group's new continent-wide diagnostic of African fintech, the other from a Kenyan working-capital lender

Paymentology, the global issuer-processor serving clients in 68 countries, has secured a $175 million investment co-led by Apis Partners and Aspirity Partners, capital earmarked to accelerate expansion into credit, stablecoin and tokenisation services. The London-headquartered company, announced on 12 May 2026, will deploy the funding against a backdrop of a payments market projected to reach $49 trillion by year-end, where the issuing layer remains one of the last segments s

Inside Wall Street's tokenization sprint: DTCC's October launch, NYSE's Securitize bet, BlackRock's onchain treasuries. The new market plumbing is here.

iFAST Global Bank has become the first UK-licensed bank to plug into Alipay+, Ant International's cross-border wallet gateway, giving its Digital Personal Banking clients the ability to pay by QR code at more than 150 million merchants across 220-plus markets. The Alipay+ partnership, launched on 11 May 2026 and branded "Worldwide Scan & Pay," routes transactions directly from clients' multi-currency current accounts at iFAST Global Bank, removing the need for a physical card