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Tag: Airtel Money

Visa gets a Beijing green light, UPI’s fee waits for Diwali, and stablecoins reach the payout rails

Tuesday, 20 October 2026 · 8 min read

In this issue

🌍 Cross-border ⚡ Domestic & real-time 💳 Cards 🌏 Asia-Pacific ⚖️ Regulation & policy 💰 Deals & funding 🔍 Deep dive

★ Theme of the week

Networks crossing into new territory

Visa got the go-ahead to prepare a domestic card-clearing business in China. Visa and Mastercard both moved stablecoins from pilots into production payout products. India blinked on charging merchants for large UPI payments. And in Washington, the swipe-fee fight got a presidential endorsement.

🌍 Cross-border

3 STORIES

Visa Direct stablecoin prefunding goes into production

On 15 October, Visa said businesses can now prefund Visa Direct payouts with USDC rather than fiat, with Inyo Global as the first enabler and payouts reaching more than 180 countries. Vira Platonova said: “The next chapter for stablecoins is adoption” (Visa).

➜ So what?
Prefunding ties up working capital in every corridor, so a 24/7 dollar token is a practical treasury win, not a crypto bet.

Mastercard and BVNK launch a Global Money Platform

This is the first integration since Mastercard acquired BVNK in August. It combines multi-currency fiat and stablecoin accounts, stablecoin-linked cards and Mastercard Move payouts in one platform (BVNK).

➜ So what?
Visa and Mastercard launched comparable stablecoin products on the same day, so this is now a product race, not an experiment.

TerraPay plugs a Bahraini bank into wallets via Swift

National Bank of Bahrain will use TerraPay’s network, which accepts Swift ISO 20022 messages, to reach what TerraPay says are more than 12 billion bank accounts, wallets and local payment endpoints (TerraPay).

➜ So what?
Banks can reach wallets without building new connections, which keeps correspondent banking relevant in an instant-payments world.

↑ Back to top

⚡ Domestic & real-time

2 STORIES

Pix passes 1 billion keys

Brazil’s central bank data, reported on 9 October, show more than 1 billion registered Pix keys across about 170 million users. Random keys lead with 526 million. In September, 7.1 billion transactions worth R$3.2 trillion passed through the instant payment system (Folha de S.Paulo).

➜ So what?
Random keys outnumber phone, CPF and email keys combined, which suggests users prefer not to hand out personal identifiers.

US bank rails keep adding tokens

Digital Transactions’ 14 October briefs include Cross River integrating Ripple’s RLUSD stablecoin and a Cliq–Vast Bank ACH deal. Accertify also found that agentic checkout is still under 1% of transactions (Digital Transactions).

➜ So what?
Agentic commerce is still mostly a conference topic, while stablecoins are quietly getting bank plumbing.

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💳 Cards

1 STORY

Visa and Mastercard ask the court to approve their merchant settlement

In a 14 October filing, the networks described objectors to their US interchange settlement as a “vocal minority” in a class of more than 12 million merchants. The final approval hearing is on 16 November (Payments Dive).

➜ So what?
Approval would set US card-acceptance economics for years, which is why opponents are pushing for legislation instead (see Regulation).

Visa’s China opening is this week’s biggest card story; see the Asia-Pacific section and the deep dive.

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🌏 Asia-Pacific

3 STORIES

China approves Visa to prepare a yuan clearing business

On 13 October, the PBOC approved Visa Information Technology (Beijing) to prepare a bank card clearing institution, with one year to get ready (Chinese Embassy / Xinhua; Caixin).

➜ So what?
It is a route into domestic RMB card clearing for a wholly foreign-owned network, which Yicai calls a first.

UPI merchant fees deferred until after Diwali

On 13 October, NPCI said the planned merchant discount rate on select UPI merchant payments will apply “immediately post Diwali”, with the date to be notified (NPCI; Business Standard). The proposed structure is 0.4% on P2M payments above ₹2,000, capped at ₹300, with merchants receiving under ₹1 lakh a month exempt (Indian Express). UPI handled 24.07 billion transactions worth ₹29.37 trillion in September, about 802 million a day (The Hindu).

➜ So what?
Payments above ₹2,000 are about 4% of P2M volume but roughly two-thirds of value, so the delay pushes back the first real revenue line for UPI’s operators.

QRIS goes racing

Bank Indonesia logged 200 cross-border QRIS transactions at the Mandalika MotoGP on 9–11 October (Antara).

➜ So what?
A small number, but events are where tourists first try a local QR scheme.

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⚖️ Regulation & policy

1 STORY

Trump backs the Credit Card Competition Act

On 12 October, President Trump posted that Senator Roger Marshall “is working tirelessly to pass the Credit Card Competition Act, in order to stop the out of control Swipe Fee ripoff!” (NACS).

➜ So what?
Routing mandates now have the White House behind them just as the networks seek court approval for their settlement, which raises the stakes on both tracks.

Visa’s China approval and India’s UPI fee deferral, both covered above, were the week’s other big policy moves.

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💰 Deals & funding

4 STORIES

Airtel Money listed in London on 14 October under the ticker AMC, with 2.7 billion shares admitted (Investegate).

➜ So what?
GCash follows in Manila on 20 October, so mobile money is having its public-markets moment.

Ramp raised $1.85 billion at a $60 billion valuation, led by Dragoneer. It reports more than $2 billion in annualised revenue and $275 billion in annualised purchase volume (PR Newswire).

➜ So what?
Corporate cards plus AI finance tools are now valued as a platform, not as a card programme.

Payward, Kraken’s parent, agreed to acquire Saldo Finance and its Saldo Bank unit, and Nuvei received a South African approval (Digital Transactions).

➜ So what?
Crypto exchanges are buying banking licences to own the fiat side.

Fragment raised $12 million in a round led by FirstMark (Digital Transactions).

➜ So what?
Investors are still funding payments infrastructure tooling.

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🔍 Deep dive

Visa’s road to Beijing

On 13 October, the People’s Bank of China approved Visa Information Technology (Beijing) Co. to begin preparing a bank card clearing institution. It sounds procedural, but it matters.

Today, Visa in China is essentially a foreign-currency brand. Its cards work for Chinese travellers abroad and for visitors paying in foreign currency, but domestic yuan clearing has belonged to UnionPay. Once fully licensed, Visa could clear and support the issuance of RMB-denominated cards for domestic payments, competing on home turf (Caixin).

There is still a long way to go. The approval is only to prepare, and Visa has a year to do it. The licence itself needs joint approval from the PBOC and the National Financial Regulatory Administration (Chinese Embassy / Xinhua). The precedents are sobering. American Express received approval in 2018 and started operations in 2020. Mastercard got its approval in 2020 and began operating in 2024. Yicai describes Visa’s vehicle as the first wholly foreign-owned bank card clearing firm to reach this stage (Yicai).

Visa’s CEO, Ryan McInerney, called it “a significant step forward in Visa’s long-standing commitment to China.”

Why now? Beijing has been making payments easier for inbound visitors. In late September, Tencent launched a payments app for travellers, and Weixin Pay reported overseas e-wallet transaction value up 80.6% in January–August (Xinhua). Licensing a foreign scheme signals openness at a moment when China wants foreign tourists and business travellers spending freely.

Expectations should stay modest. In a market built around Alipay, WeChat Pay and UnionPay, a Visa-branded RMB card is more likely to compete for bank partners and for premium, cross-border-heavy customers than for the street-food QR code. For Chinese issuers, though, another scheme able to clear domestic cards could be useful leverage in fee negotiations, and for Visa it is a foothold that compounds over time.

Still, the strategic logic is clear. A domestic licence turns Visa from a toll on Chinese travel into a potential participant in the world’s largest domestic payments market. Watch for the bank partners Visa signs during the preparation year, as they will show how serious the push is.

📖 Word of the week

MDR

The merchant discount rate (MDR) is the fee a merchant pays, usually as a percentage of the transaction, to accept a digital payment. It is shared among the acquirer, the issuer and the network or scheme operator. UPI merchant payments have been free for merchants, and this week’s deferral shows how hard it is to reintroduce a fee once a rail has been free (NPCI).

💡 Payment fact of the week

In September 1958, Bank of America mailed 65,000 unsolicited BankAmericards to residents of Fresno, California, in what became known as the “Fresno drop”. The programme was renamed Visa in 1976 (Wikipedia). Sixty-eight years later, that brand has a ticket to clear yuan in Beijing, pending a licence.

Compiled from public sources dated within the week covered. Not investment advice.

October 20, 2026

Stablecoins hit the plumbing: OUSD goes live, Swift’s ledger runs, Australia bans surcharges

Tuesday, 6 October 2026 · 8 min read

In this issue

🌍 Cross-border ⚡ Domestic & real-time 💳 Cards 🌏 Asia-Pacific ⚖️ Regulation & policy 💰 Deals & funding 🔍 Deep dive

★ Theme of the week

The incumbents take over the stablecoin plumbing

At Sibos in Miami, the incumbents’ answer to stablecoins was not “no” but “yes, through us”. Visa, Mastercard, Stripe and Coinbase switched on a shared dollar token. Swift showed its ledger carrying live tokenised deposits. Lloyds settled with Visa in USDC over a weekend. Meanwhile, Australia made the most visible change of the week for consumers: card surcharges are gone.

🌍 Cross-border

3 STORIES

Swift’s ledger is live and its consumer scheme is scaling

Opening Sibos on 28 September, Swift said most of the 17 first-mover banks on its blockchain-based ledger have now used it for 24/7 tokenised-deposit payments in five currencies (EUR, GBP, HKD, SGD and USD). It also said more than 100 institutions are live or going live on its consumer payments framework (Swift). A pay-by-alias proof of concept has 14 institutions, including BBVA and DBS (The Fintech Times).

➜ So what?
Swift is casting itself as the interoperability layer for tokenised money rather than the incumbent that tokenised money disrupts.

Lloyds and Visa settle $750,000 in USDC

In a seven-day live pilot, Lloyds used USDC bought through Archax to settle $750,000 of payment obligations with Visa. Funds reached Visa in under an hour, including at the weekend (The Block).

➜ So what?
Weekend settlement between a bank and a card network is the banking-hours problem stablecoins claim to solve, now tested with live money.

Europe’s wallets agree to talk to each other

Bancomat, Bizum, EPI (Wero), SIBS (MB WAY) and Vipps MobilePay have set up the European Network for Payments, a Madrid-based joint entity in which they are equal shareholders. Together they reach about 130 million users in 13 countries. The rollout starts with cross-border P2P, then moves to e-commerce and point of sale (Vipps MobilePay; SIBS).

➜ So what?
Europe is stitching national champions together instead of building one pan-European wallet, a faster route to scale against the card schemes.

↑ Back to top

⚡ Domestic & real-time

1 STORY

Fiserv puts a bank stablecoin into production

On 1 October, Fiserv said its Digital Asset Platform is live. The first use case is Bank of North Dakota’s dollar-backed Roughrider Coin, for payments between North Dakota institutions. VersaBank is the issuer and Fireblocks provides the infrastructure (Fiserv). The pilot starts with four institutions (Dakota News Network).

➜ So what?
Distribution through a core processor matters more than the token: if it works in North Dakota, Fiserv has thousands of banks to switch on.

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💳 Cards

2 STORIES

Visa: stablecoin cards are going to work

Visa said about 17% of stablecoin-linked card volume so far in FY26 came from business and commercial programmes. It now supports more than 160 stablecoin-linked programmes, and their volume is up nearly 200% year on year (Visa).

➜ So what?
Cards are becoming the spending end of stablecoin balances, which keeps interchange in the picture.

Mastercard targets the supplier-acceptance problem

Mastercard’s new Advanced B2B Analytics uses AI “acceptance propensity scoring” to show issuers which suppliers are likely to take commercial cards. Absa and Emirates NBD are the first partners (Finextra).

➜ So what?
Supplier acceptance, not buyer appetite, is the bottleneck in commercial cards.

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🌏 Asia-Pacific

3 STORIES

Australia’s surcharge ban is live

Since 1 October, Australian businesses can no longer surcharge Visa, Mastercard, eftpos or Amex payments. Weekend and public-holiday surcharges are not affected, and the RBA is also lowering interchange caps (business.gov.au).

➜ So what?
Card costs now go into shelf prices, so expect merchants to push harder on least-cost routing and acquirer pricing.

Japan tests stablecoins in trade settlement

On 29 September, Japan’s FSA approved a Payment Innovation Project trial of stablecoin settlement for trade transactions. It is led by TradeWaltz with NTT Data and the three megabanks (TradeWaltz).

➜ So what?
Japan’s megabanks are approaching stablecoins through trade finance, the least glamorous and most paper-heavy corner of cross-border payments.

QRIS keeps expanding

On 25 September, Bank Indonesia signed a payments MoU with Timor-Leste’s central bank. Cross-border QRIS already links six countries, and foreign visitors had made 17.8 million QRIS transactions worth IDR 6.2 trillion by the end of August (CNA).

➜ So what?
Indonesia is building a regional QR network one bilateral deal at a time.

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⚖️ Regulation & policy

3 STORIES

The UK opens its crypto gateway

The FCA’s authorisation gateway for crypto firms opened on 30 September and closes on 28 February 2027. The regime takes effect on 25 October 2027 (FCA).

➜ So what?
UK stablecoin and crypto payment firms finally have dates to plan around.

The Fed’s GENIUS Act proposal is out

The Fed’s proposal for Board-supervised permitted payment stablecoin issuers, which also covers the Act’s tying prohibition, was published on 29 September. Comments are due by 30 November (Federal Register).

➜ So what?
The US regime is moving from statute to rulebook, and the tying rules could shape how banks bundle stablecoin services.

Waller on AI agents

At Sibos, Fed Governor Christopher Waller set out the open questions on agent payments: authentication, liability and fraud. “Who is on the hook if an agent makes the wrong purchase?” he asked (Federal Reserve).

➜ So what?
With liability unresolved, network rules will probably fill the gap before regulation does.

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💰 Deals & funding

3 STORIES

Valley National to buy Bluevine for about $340 million (75% cash, 25% stock), with closing expected in early 2027 (Banking Dive).

➜ So what?
Banks are buying digital small-business franchises rather than building them.

Jeeves raised $110 million in a round led by CoinFund. It cites more than $5 billion in annualised volume, and its stablecoin cards are expanding from 25 to 35 countries (PR Newswire).

➜ So what?
Stablecoins are being sold as a feature of corporate cards, not a separate product.

Airtel Money priced its London IPO at £1.96 a share, a market capitalisation of about £5.3 billion, with admission expected on 14 October (LSE RNS).

➜ So what?
African mobile money now has a public-market valuation benchmark.

↑ Back to top

🔍 Deep dive

OUSD and the card networks’ shared dollar

On 30 September, Open Standard’s dollar stablecoin, OUSD, went live. On paper it is just another dollar token. Look at who is behind it, though.

The mechanics are simple. OUSD can be minted and redeemed 1:1 for dollars at no cost. It runs on Base, Ethereum, Solana and Tempo. Bridge, a Stripe company, is the issuer, and reserves sit with BlackRock, Lead Bank and others. At launch it was available through BVNK, Stripe and the Visa Stablecoin Platform, with Coinbase following on 1 October (Open Standard).

The cast matters more than the mechanics. American Banker reports a consortium of more than 140 members (Open Standard itself cites 200+ partners) and $1 billion of initial liquidity from Mastercard, Visa, Stripe and Coinbase (American Banker).

Why would rivals back the same token? Stablecoins threatened the networks twice over: a dominant issuer could capture the float on reserves, and platforms could settle on-chain and bypass the card rails. A shared, consortium-backed token answers both threats at once. The economics are spread across the members, and the networks stay in the flow as distributors, settlement agents and card issuers. That fits Visa’s own data this week: stablecoin-linked card volume is up nearly 200%, and Visa’s stablecoin settlement has passed a $20 billion annualised run rate (The Block).

For merchants and platforms, the pitch is a dollar token they can mint and redeem at no cost, through partners they already use for card acquiring or payouts, with no need to pick a single crypto-native issuer. For treasurers, it promises settlement outside banking hours without leaving the regulated perimeter the GENIUS Act is now defining.

The obvious loser is the incumbent issuer model. American Banker quotes KeyBanc analysts who see Circle as most negatively affected.

Three things will decide whether OUSD becomes infrastructure: whether the members actually route payouts and settlement through it, how the GENIUS Act rules treat a token whose economics are shared among competitors, and whether banks prefer it to issuing their own tokenised deposits, as Lloyds, Swift’s first movers and Fiserv’s pilot suggest. The likely result is not one winner. It is a world of many monies, in which the networks get paid to move value between all of them.

📖 Word of the week

tokenised deposit

A tokenised deposit is an ordinary commercial bank deposit recorded as a token on a digital ledger. It remains a liability of the issuing bank, with the same regulatory treatment as the deposit behind it. A stablecoin, by contrast, is a claim on a separate issuer backed by reserves. Tokenised deposits are what Swift’s first-mover banks are moving on its new ledger (Swift).

💡 Payment fact of the week

Swift was founded on 3 May 1973 by 239 banks from 15 countries. Its first message was sent on 9 May 1977 by Prince Albert of Belgium (Wikipedia). Fifty-three years on, the same co-operative runs a blockchain ledger.

Compiled from public sources dated within the week covered. Not investment advice.

October 6, 2026