Friday Night Fintech: Episode 8; Big Tech Builds a Shared Stablecoin, Visa Cuts 2,600 Jobs, and Papua New Guinea Shows What Financial Inclusion Actually Costs
Right then. Drink poured, shoes off, weekend officially started. It's Friday Night Fintech.
This fortnight the theme is who's building the future and who's paying for it. Over 140 of the biggest names in tech, banking and crypto have quietly agreed to share a stablecoin instead of fighting over one. Visa, meanwhile, has just told 2,600 people their jobs are being reshaped out of existence by the same efficiency logic. And ten thousand miles away, Papua New Guinea is proving that financial inclusion isn't a slide in an investor deck, it's a bank access point in a district that hasn't had one in years. Three stories, one honest question underneath them: when the infrastructure gets rebuilt, who actually benefits? Let's get into it.
Substack version - https://substack.com/home/post/p-209148550
17 Jul 2026
Friday Night Fintech: Episode 7 - Swift Goes Live With Its Blockchain Ledger, CaixaBank Lets an AI Agent Pay, and Equifax Buys Its Way Into Mexico
Right then. Drink poured, shoes off, weekend officially started. It's Friday Night Fintech. This fortnight the theme is infrastructure quietly stopping being theoretical. Swift, the plumbing behind almost every cross-border payment on earth, has moved its blockchain ledger out of the lab and into live pilots with seventeen of the world's biggest banks. CaixaBank and Visa have let an AI agent spend real money on a real card in a real shop, and it worked. And Equifax has written a $750 million cheque for Mexico's fastest-growing credit bureau, betting that the next big data business isn't in Atlanta or London, it's in Mexico City. Three very different stories, one shared thread: the boring-sounding infrastructure decisions being made right now are the ones that will define who controls money movement for the next decade. Let's get into it.
Substack version - https://open.substack.com/pub/fintechproptechdave/p/friday-night-fintech-swift-goes-live?r=7x6hte&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=post%20viewer
3 Jul 2026
Friday Night Fintech: Episode 6 - Meta Buys Its Way Into WhatsApp Payments, Europe Inches Towards a Digital Euro, and Mauritius Makes Its Move
Right then. Drink poured, shoes off, weekend officially started.
It's Friday Night Fintech.
This fortnight we've got three stories that all circle the same question in different ways: who actually controls the rails money moves on. Meta has just spent $900 million to fix a payments problem in India it couldn't solve on its own, and it did so by hiring the man who built the company it's investing in. Brussels has finally got political agreement to start serious talks on a digital euro, eight years after the project was first floated and at a moment when the case for monetary independence from American payment rails has never looked sharper. And Mauritius, the small island nation with an outsized financial services sector, has laid out a four-year plan to become the trusted front door for fintech investment into Africa.
Let's get into it.
19 Jun 2026
Friday Night Fintech: Europe's First Live Agentic Payment, Stablecoins Hit the Checkout, and Klarna Bets on the Dollar
Right then. Drink poured, shoes off, weekend officially started.
It's Friday Night Fintech. This fortnight we're straight off the back of Money 20/20 Amsterdam, and the RAI did not disappoint. The industry's biggest annual gathering in Europe confirmed three things that have been building for a while: AI agents are no longer a thought experiment — they made a real purchase in a live production environment in the Netherlands. Stablecoins crossed a line from crypto infrastructure into mainstream merchant payments, with some very serious names behind the move. And Klarna, the Swedish BNPL giant turned everything-app announced it's launching its own stablecoin, denominated in dollars, which has sparked a debate about what that says about Europe's role in the future of digital money. Let's get into it.
Read the Substack version here - https://substack.com/home/post/p-202614273
5 Jun 2026
Friday Night Fintech: Episode 4 - Mastercard Gets Its Crypto Licence, Monzo Proves the Sceptics Wrong, and Tether Signs Up a Country
Hello and welcome back to Friday Night Fintech. I'm Dave Dhannoo, and this is the show where I pick three fintech stories, strip out the jargon, and try to make it worth your Friday evening.
Three stories tonight. Mastercard, one of the most conservative financial institutions on the planet has just become one of roughly 40 companies in the world to hold a New York BitLicense. It is not the crypto story it might appear to be. Monzo has reported revenues of £1.71 billion and profit for the third year running, posting a number that should genuinely embarrass people who have been dismissive of the neobank model. And Tether has partnered with the government of Georgia to launch the world's first sovereign-aligned, non-dollar stablecoin.
Drink in hand? Good. Let's go.
Read the Substack version here - https://fintechproptechdave.substack.com/p/friday-night-fintech-mastercard-goes
22 May 2026
Friday Night Fintech: Episode 3 - Mercury's Billion-Dollar Moment, The Tokenisation Tipping Point, and Stablecoins Go South
Hello and welcome back to Friday Night Fintech. I'm Dave Dhannoo, and this is the show where I pick three fintech stories, strip out the jargon, and try to make it worth your Friday evening.
Three stories tonight. A startup bank for startups just hit a $5.2 billion valuation — and it got there the old-fashioned way, by actually making money. The FCA and the Bank of England have just published the most important tokenisation document the UK financial system has ever produced, which sounds dry until you understand what it means for every bank and asset manager operating in the City. And a startup called Checker has just raised $8 million to build the payments infrastructure that could make stablecoins genuinely useful in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.
Drink in hand? Good. Let's go.
Read the Substack version here - https://open.substack.com/pub/fintechproptechdave/p/friday-night-fintech-mercurys-billion?r=7x6hte&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web
9 May 2026
Friday Night Fintech: Episode 2 - JPMorgan Copies Its Homework, Mauritania Joins the Chat, and PayPal Calls in the Cost Cutters
Hello and welcome back to Friday Night Fintech. I'm Dave Dhannoo, and this is the show where I handpick fintech stories, strip out the jargon, and make it something you'd actually want to listen to on a Friday evening.
Three stories today, I’ll be honest, maybe this episode should have been called Saturday Morning Fintech, oh well better late than never!
The world's biggest bank has decided the best way to deal with fintech competition is to start acting like a fintech. A country most people couldn't locate on a map is quietly building a mobile-money scene worth knowing about. And PayPal's new boss has been in the job for about two months and has already announced the largest round of job cuts in the company's history.
Drink poured? Feet up? Good. Let's go.
Read the article version here (https://substack.com/home/post/p-196984826).
24 Apr 2026
Friday Night Fintech: Episode 1 - The FCA Gets a GPU, a Philippine Fintech Hits the Jackpot, and Hong Kong Makes Stablecoin History
Right then. Drinks poured, feet up, phone face-down. It’s Friday, and fintech has been busy.
This fortnight we’ve got the FCA going full throttle on AI with a little help from Jensen Huang’s finest silicon, a consumer finance startup from Manila landing a very serious cheque, and Hong Kong doing something historic with stablecoins - and doing it in the most sensible, un-crypto way imaginable. Let’s get into it.
Read the text version here - https://substack.com/home/post/p-195383707
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