This week on On The Ground, we sit down with Anthony Soohoo, CEO and Chairman of MoneyGram, to talk about MGUSD, MoneyGram's new native stablecoin, and why the company is betting on digital assets to make cross-border payments faster, cheaper, and more transparent. We dig into why MoneyGram built its own coin instead of relying solely on USDC or USDT, how it plans to vertically integrate its network (with an Apple silicon analogy), what role MoneyGram's 500,000+ agent locations still play in a digital-first world, and his take on OpenUSD's 140-company alliance and Swift's new blockchain ledger pilot.

Then Sam and Otabek break down the week's biggest fintech and payments news:

- Stripe and Advent International's $53B+ bid for PayPal, and why PayPal's board says the offer is "inadequate"

- Monzo founder Tom Blomfield leaving Y Combinator to join Anthropic's compute team

- Moonshot AI's Kimi K3, the 2.8-trillion-parameter open model rattling OpenAI and Anthropic

- The European Central Bank's 36-firm CBDC/stablecoin pilot, and whether Europe can catch up to the dollar-backed stablecoin market

Subscribe for weekly conversations with the people building the future of payments, banking, and stablecoins.

#fintech #stablecoins #moneygram #payments #crypto

OpenUSD launched with 140 backers. Bitget Wallet crossed 100 million users. US banks are trying to buy their way around Durbin. And Swift just went live with a blockchain-based shared ledger for tokenized bank deposits. This episode covers all four.

Sam sat down with Alvin, COO of Bitget Wallet, to break down OpenUSD's consortium stablecoin model, why it shifts stablecoin yield from the reserve layer to the distribution layer, and what Bitget's 100 million user milestone actually measures. We also get into why Bitget is betting on emerging markets over the US and UK, how the wallet works without a banking license, and where AI agent payments are headed.

Then Otabek and Sam cover the week's biggest infrastructure news.

JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and PNC are reportedly in informal talks to acquire Star and Accel, the debit networks owned by Fiserv, whose stock has fallen sharply this year. The real motive is the Durbin Amendment, which caps debit interchange fees for large banks when transactions route over an outside network, but exempts banks that own the network itself. It is the same loophole logic behind Capital One's acquisition of Discover, and we discuss whether this leads to more merchant and consumer costs, and whether the payments world is fragmenting instead of consolidating around a few big rails.

We also break down Swift's new blockchain-based shared ledger, now ready for initial use after nine months of development. Seventeen banks across six continents, including ANZ, BNP Paribas, Citi, DBS, HSBC, Lloyds, MUFG, Standard Chartered, and UBS, are piloting live transactions using tokenized bank deposits instead of stablecoins. We get into how this differs structurally from USDT and USDC, why it overlaps with a separate live initiative from Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds, and NatWest, whether Swift's 11,500-bank network gives it a structural edge over consortium stablecoins like OpenUSD, and why smaller emerging markets, including Central Asia, are still missing from every major cross-border rail being built right now.

Subscribe for weekly conversations on payments, stablecoins, and fintech infrastructure. Leave us five stars on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

TIMECODES:

00:00 Cold open

00:54 Bearish on trading, bullish on stablecoins

01:31 Open USD: 140 companies, one stablecoin

02:45 Cathie Wood's warning: can OUSD beat USDT and USDC?

03:40 The three layers: reserve, distribution, network

06:29 Governance: getting 140 rivals to agree

07:38 Trading vs payments — two different games

08:56 Inside Bitget Wallet: 100M users, cards and QR

11:47 Why emerging markets, and the "borderless generation"

13:03 $177B settled, and no banking licence

14:15 Can AI agents make payments?

16:48 Will the wallet become your bank account?

18:48 First time ever: payments overtake trading

21:19 Why not the US, UK and Europe?

23:00 News desk: Otabek is back

23:29 Story 1: Big banks want to own a debit network

27:14 The Durbin loophole and the Capital One precedent

29:28 Story 2: Is SWIFT a monopoly?

30:25 SWIFT's blockchain ledger: 17 banks, tokenized deposits

33:09 Fragmentation — is anyone actually coordinating?

34:42 The corridors nobody serves

37:25 Wrap: the ground is shifting

140 companies just launched a stablecoin to take on Tether and Circle. Stripe, Visa, Mastercard, Amex, BlackRock, Coinbase, Ripple, Google, Shopify, and DoorDash are all behind Open USDT. Unlike USDC and USDT, most of the reserve income gets shared back with partners instead of kept. Stripe already made it the default for its businesses. Circle's stock dropped 17% on the news, and CEO Jeremy Allaire publicly pushed back, calling the model unsustainable.

OpenAI has reportedly proposed giving the US government a 5% stake worth $42.6 billion. Sam Altman wants Google and Meta to do the same, folding it into a sovereign wealth fund-style vehicle. Anthropic has refused any government equity arrangement. A regulator becoming a shareholder is a conflict of interest waiting to happen.

Europe's MiCA rules kicked in July 1, and Tether's USDT just got locked out of EU exchanges, including Coinbase, Kraken, and Crypto.com. Circle's USDC stays compliant. Tether says MiCA's reserve rules, which force issuers into smaller, less capable European banks, could hurt consumers more than protect them.

SpaceX reportedly showed investors an AI phone prototype sleeker than an iPhone, ahead of its IPO. Musk denies it. The device would run on a custom OS built around xAI, and could position SpaceX to take on Verizon and AT&T in wireless. AI hardware has a graveyard already, Humane and Rabbit both flopped.

Klarna just won nearly $2 billion from Google. A Swedish court found Google illegally favored its own shopping service over Klarna's PriceRunner for 15 years. It's the largest antitrust award in Swedish history. Google is appealing.

ElevenLabs doubled its valuation to $22 billion in five months. The AI voice startup holds under 1% of the broader AI voice market, and independent leaderboards rank Google's Gemini TTS and Inworld ahead of it. The valuation is being driven by enterprise distribution, not the best model.

Subscribe for weekly breakdowns of the news shaping fintech, crypto, and payments, and let us know what you think of the new format in the comments.

WorldPay went offline during England vs Ghana. Pubs, restaurants, Tesco — none of them could take card payments for hours. Transaction volumes in bars were up 148% that day. The cause was a third-party power grid disruption. Cash lines formed.

OpenAI is pushing its IPO to 2027. Sam Altman won't go public below a $1 trillion valuation while burning $21B a year and paying Google, Microsoft, and AWS for the compute it needs to compete against them.

Airwallex raised $320M at $11B, up from $8B in December. Revenue grew 74% to $1.3B annualized. A Ramp board member publicly called it a Chinese data backdoor. The CEO rejected it. Make of that what you will.

Meta is building a prediction market app. 3.5 billion daily users, AI-powered, starting with virtual points. The ad revenue and data play is obvious. Kalshi just raised at a $40B valuation, doubling from $22B two months ago.

Starling Bank deployed an AI agent running on Gemini that intercepts payments it suspects are fraud and asks the customer questions before the money moves. APP fraud hit $576M in the UK last year.

Binance suspended EU operations after failing to get a MiCA license from Greece, Latvia, or Ireland. Revolut immediately ran a campaign targeting their customers.

We discuss why the ecosystem nearly doubled in size, where venture capital is flowing, and which categories are emerging as the biggest winners.

We also dive into one of the biggest announcements of the week: Adyen launching Agentic, a new orchestration layer that aims to connect merchants to AI commerce platforms through a single integration. Can Adyen challenge Stripe and become the operating system for agentic commerce?

We also unpack the growing importance of "Know Your Agent" infrastructure, the rise of AI agent security startups, and why investors are pouring money into companies focused on trust, identity, governance, and fraud prevention.

Topics covered:

• Why CB Insights expanded its Agentic Commerce Market Map from 90 to 170 companies

• Adyen's new Agentic Commerce platform and what it means for Stripe

• Why AI agent orchestration is becoming a critical layer

• The rise of Know Your Agent (KYA) infrastructure

• AI agent security, governance, and fraud prevention

• The startup categories attracting the most investment in 2026

• Why trust remains the biggest obstacle to agentic commerce adoption

• Whether consumers will ever allow AI agents to spend money on their behalf

• The future of shopping, payments, and customer relationships in an AI-first world

Subscribe for weekly discussions on fintech, payments, stablecoins, AI agents, digital banking, crypto, and the technologies reshaping financial services.

This week on On The Ground, Sam and Otabek try a new format and bring their own biggest stories of the week to debate live. The result? One of the most important weeks we've seen across AI, payments, fintech, and technology.

Topics covered:

• Visa's new partnership with OpenAI and what it means for agentic commerce

• Why Mastercard is building payments for AI agents and machines

• The battle to become the trust layer for AI-powered transactions

• SpaceX reaching a $2 trillion valuation and Elon Musk becoming the world's first trillionaire

• The future of AI infrastructure, compute, and data centers in space

• The European Central Bank's secret restrictions on Revolut's product launches

• Whether Europe is making it harder for fintech champions to scale

• FIFA World Cup, Visa's payments strategy, and the growing role of fintech in sports

• Stripe's major partnership with Lloyds Banking Group and what it means for UK payments

The biggest theme running through all these stories is simple: AI agents are becoming economic participants. Visa, Mastercard, OpenAI, Stripe, Google, Coinbase, and others are racing to build the infrastructure that will allow machines to buy, sell, negotiate, and transact on our behalf.

Who wins this race may define the future of commerce.

This week, we break down why JPMorgan's Jamie Dimon publicly challenged ‪Coinbase‬, why JPMorgan, ‪Citi‬, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo are building a tokenized deposit network, and why ‪stripe‬, ‪Visa‬, ‪Mastercard‬, and Coinbase are reportedly backing a new stablecoin platform that could reshape global payments.

We also discuss why Mastercard is expanding stablecoin settlement across multiple blockchains, and why Revolut wants to launch a U.S. bank with stablecoin services built in from day one.

On the AI front, Ramp just hit a $44 billion valuation and launched Stack, an AI-powered operating system for accounting firms. If AI can automate reconciliation, month-end close, bookkeeping, and finance operations, what happens to accountants?

Plus:

• ‪Revolut‬ launches a major credit card push in the UK

• Revolut CTO Vlad Yatsenko steps down after helping build Europe's largest fintech

• Worldline, ING, and Mastercard complete one of Europe's first live agentic payment transactions

• OnePay, backed by Walmart, reaches millions of users and takes aim at banks

• Why stablecoins are becoming the battleground between banks, fintechs, card networks, and crypto companies

The financial industry is changing fast.

JPMorgan, Coinbase, Stripe, Visa, Mastercard, Revolut, Ramp, Walmart, Citi, and Bank of America are all making bets on the future of money.

The question is simple:

Who wins when stablecoins, AI, and agentic commerce collide with traditional banking?

Robinhood is letting AI agents trade and spend money on behalf of users. Visa is investing in agentic payments through Replit. Cash App is bringing stablecoins to nearly 60 million users. Tether is launching a national stablecoin with the Georgian government. PayPal and WeChat Pay are connecting payment ecosystems across China.

Meanwhile, regulators are questioning whether traditional markets are ready for 24/7 trading, and banks are still trying to figure out whether stablecoins are a threat or an opportunity.

The financial system is changing fast. The question is whether banks will lead the transition or get left behind.

Topics covered:

• Tether's GEL₮ stablecoin launch in Georgia

• Mastercard and the fallout from Brazil's banking crisis

• Banks' stablecoin strategy dilemma

• Robinhood's AI-powered trading agents

• PayPal and WeChat Pay interoperability

• Visa's investment in Replit

• Cash App's stablecoin rollout

• The debate over 24/7 financial markets

JPMorgan says the future of Wall Street needs fewer bankers and more AI engineers. Klarna is bringing shopping directly into ChatGPT. Google wants to follow your shopping behavior across the entire internet. Revolut just launched a physical crypto card. Meanwhile, stablecoins are moving deeper into the financial system while regulators struggle to keep up.

NOTICE:

Nothing in this video is financial advice. All opinions are our own.

CHAPTERS:

00:00 Intro

01:02 Will AI Replace Bankers? JP Morgan's $20B Bet

07:32 Monzo's Record Profits — and the Revolut Threat

11:16 Revolut's LED Crypto Card: Hype or Habit?

14:56 Klarna Brings Shopping Inside ChatGPT

17:57 Google's Universal Cart vs. the AI-Search Shift

21:42 Trump Tells the Fed to Open Up to Fintech

25:02 The SEC's Tokenized-Stock U-Turn

30:17 Why the ECB Is Saying No to a Global Digital Euro

34:57 Mercury's $200M Raise & the Race for a Bank Charter

38:02 Wrap-Up & What We're Watching

In this episode of the On the Ground Podcast, I break down the most important developments shaping fintech, banking, payments, AI, and digital assets.

This week’s biggest stories include:

• Wise moving its primary listing from London to Nasdaq
• Circle raising $222 million from BlackRock and Apollo Global Management
• Kraken exploring fundraising at a $20 billion valuation
• JPMorgan Chase expanding tokenization and digital banking in Europe
• Fiserv partnering with OpenAI
• Klarna reporting strong results driven by AI efficiencies
• Bank of England reconsidering stablecoin rules
• Plaid integrating with OpenAI to power personalized financial advice