On The Ground

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

Welcome to the first episode of "On the Ground Show", where we break down the biggest stories shaping fintech, payments, crypto, and financial infrastructure.

In this episode, we cover PayPal and Coinbase cutting thousands of jobs as both companies restructure around AI, signaling how automation is reshaping financial services. We analyze a wave of major acquisitions, including Kraken’s $600 million purchase of stablecoin payments firm Reap, Bullish’s $4.2 billion acquisition of Equiniti to build tokenized securities infrastructure, and the $6.3 billion take-private of Amex Global Business Travel.

We also discuss Ramp’s potential $40+ billion valuation and what it says about the rise of AI-powered CFO software, the UK FCA’s rare competition probe into Mastercard, Visa, and PayPal, Robinhood’s struggles compared with Interactive Brokers, and why UK fintech funding is rebounding as capital concentrates into late-stage winners.

If you want to understand where fintech is heading—from stablecoins and tokenization to AI-driven finance and regulatory change—this episode provides the context and key insights you need.