Weekly FinTech & Financial News
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May June 1-5, 2026
Top FinTech Updates this Week
💼 Robinhood, an US-based wealthtech enters Canada as it officially completes acquisition of WonderFi, Toronto-based cryptocurrency company
🚀 Global payment networks Stripe, Visa and Mastercard are close to introducing a new stablecoin platform
🚀 YouSend, Nigeria-based cross-border remittance platform built on stablecoin settlement infrastructure, formally launched in Canada and the UK following a private beta
🚀 Wealthsimple, a Toronto-based wealthtech platform users will soon be able to purchase certain US and Canadian IPOs at the initial offering price, a form of trading that is usually only available to HNIs
🚀 Manulife Wealth & Asset Management launched exclusive offers from leading health and wellness providers now available to eligible Group Retirement plan members and private wealth clients in Canada
🌟 Tim Hortons is exiting the credit card business by October 1, 2026
🌟 Payments Canada approved new members including Beem Credit Union, Ebury, Shaype Canada, Libro Credit Union and Newton Crypto Ltd.
Top Financial Institutions Updates this Week
🚀 BMO officially launches Blue Rewards, a new line of BMO Blue Rewards Mastercard credit cards, a Blue Rewards Chequing Account, and BMO Commercial Cards Blue Rewards
🤝 BMO renewed its long-standing strategic partnership with the Vector Institute for Artificial Intelligence for an additional five years, reinforcing its commitment to advancing responsible AI, talent development, and real-world applications across the financial sector
🤝 Deep Sky, Montreal-based tech-agnostic carbon removal project developer entered into a 10 year agreement with TD Bank Group
🌟 RBC Investor Services (RBCIS), a Canadian provider in asset servicing, reached C$3.1 trillion in AUM in Q2 2026, up 15% year over year
🌟 RBC plans to grow its presence in British Columbia by expanding the Vancouver banking and innovation hub
💼 Scotiabank entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Maple Financial Holdings, Inc. (parent company to MapleMark Bank), a U.S. commercial bank with operations primarily in Dallas, Texas
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Tim Hortons is exiting the credit card business by October 1, 2026
The cards will still work after October 1, but they will be managed solely by the issuer, Canadian fintech Neo Financial. Once that change takes effect, card transactions will no longer earn Tims Rewards Points, effectively severing the link between the card and the coffee chain’s loyalty ecosystem. The company launched its credit card program in June 2023, positioning it as a way to offer Canadians more inclusive, easy-to-access financial tools designed to fit everyday spending habits. | PaymentsJournal
This membership growth reflects growing interest in Canadian payments, including potential participation in Payments Canada’s national payment infrastructure, as well as the recent legislative amendments to the Canadian Payments Act. While some organizations are mandatory members under the Act, the recent amendments expanded membership eligibility to payment service providers (PSPs) under the Retail Payment Activities Act, local credit unions that are members of a central and clearing houses operating payment systems designated under the Payment Clearing and Settlement Act. Expanded membership eligibility provides a wider variety of organizations more flexibility in how they engage with Payments Canada. | Payments.ca
In the private beta, it processed over $1M in transactions through referral-only growth. YouSend's stablecoin settlement model replaces the prefunded float that underlies most legacy remittance services. Where traditional operators hold destination-currency cash reserves, creating settlement delays outside banking hours and hidden FX margin, YouSend settles via stablecoins, enabling near-real-time transfer delivery at any hour. In private beta, 95 percent of transactions completed in under two minutes; the company reports an average settlement time of under 15 seconds across more than 10,000 processed transactions. | PR Newswire
This industry guideline is designed specifically for domestic and international payment originators who are sending wire transfers within or destined for Canada. The document addresses the need for precise payment formatting to prevent misdirected or delayed transactions. Accurate identification of the Canadian financial institution and its specific branch account is essential for efficient, automated payment routing across the country. Aligning with regulatory travel rules requires that all international and domestic payments include the creditor's full legal name and address. | Payments.ca
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It is advancing the previously announced transition from the AIR MILES program to its boldly reimagined rewards program. The new loyalty program will continue to be operated by a subsidiary of BMO. Members can now earn and redeem Blue Points from brands across Canada, with additional partner earning opportunities and features to be announced throughout the year. With affordability top of mind for many Canadians, Blue Rewards expands where and how rewards can be earned and focuses on helping households get more value from their everyday spending by earning rewards on essential purchases. Existing AIR MILES® Reward Miles™ automatically converted to Blue Points – with no loss of value. | Newswire
Under the agreement, TD will purchase over 18,000 verified direct air capture (DAC) carbon dioxide removal credits from Deep Sky. Financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed. The Deep Sky agreement provides TD with Canadian-produced, engineered, permanent removal supply verified on a third party registry for the next decade. | Newswire
The comments came as TD highlighted a growing list of AI deployments across the organization, including agentic AI tools that reduced mortgage pre-adjudication cycle times from roughly 15 hours to three minutes. The bank also said it has more than 40,000 employees using Copilot tools internally and more than 7,000 engineers using AI in software development workflows. | PYMNTS
The partnership is part of the Desjardins Foundation’s ongoing commitment to helping young people succeed in school. The decision isn’t random, either. It’s based on a strong belief in the relevance and efficiency of the model. Founded ten years ago, the School of the Greats relies on a simple yet powerful principle: intergenerational mentorship. Today the program is available in 38 schools across 12 of Quebec’s 17 administrative regions, and half of the CEGEPs in the province. Foundation W. would like to support up to 100,000 Quebec students per year. They hope to reach this goal within the next few years. | Desjardins
The annual list recognizes leaders across the financial services industry who are advancing innovation, transforming client experiences, and shaping the future of banking. Mehrotra leads BMO's Canadian Personal and Business Banking business with a focus on combining human insights with AI and digital capabilities to help clients achieve real financial progress. Meanwhile, as Chief AI and Quantum Officer, Milchanowski leads BMO's enterprise strategy to scale responsible AI, advance quantum readiness, and embed insights across the bank to enhance decision‑making, strengthen risk management, and deliver more personalized experiences for clients. | BMO
A founding supporter of the Vector Institute since 2017, BMO has played a key role in helping build one of the world's leading AI ecosystems. Through this collaboration, BMO will continue to deepen its access to leading research, specialized talent, and applied AI programs that support its digital-first, AI-powered strategy. The renewed partnership builds on a strong track record of collaboration across research, talent development, and applied innovation. Together, BMO and the Vector Institute have advanced initiatives spanning machine learning, large language models, responsible AI governance, and AI risk management. | BMO
TD also received the highest score in all four study factors, including: Information, Design, System Performance and Tools and Capabilities.The TD Canadian mobile app enables its 8.8 million active mobile clients2 to access their banking, rewards, and view trading accounts3 through a single app. TD has the highest number of mobile active users in Canada among the big 5 banks, a record it's held for the past 12 years. TD clients have engaged with the TD mobile app an average of 22 times a month and totaling more than 2 billion mobile sessions in fiscal 2025. | TD
The milestone reflects the momentum of RBCIS's strategic focus and commitment to the Canadian market to win for its clients, employees and RBC. Backed by Canada's largest bank, and with 125 years of industry expertise, RBCIS invest in the talent and technology clients need to thrive in the Canadian market. | RBC
Forty communities across Canada including municipalities, schools and community groups will each receive grants of up to $40,000 to fund physical accessibility improvements through RBC Barrier Buster Grants Program. Over half (64 per cent) of Canadians have a disability or live with or take care of someone who does making this program relevant to the majority of Canadian households. The 40 recipients of the RBC Barrier Buster Grants Program include groups across the country with 20 from the West Coast, 12 from Central Canada and 8 from Atlantic Canada. | RBC
Since its opening last November, the hub has contributed to the city's vibrant tech ecosystem, offering meaningful employment in high-demand technology fields and commercial banking. It expands RBC's current Vancouver Borealis AI hub, and integrates AI capabilities across cloud, cyber, digital and analytics to accelerate innovation. RBC recently announced its goal to achieve $700 million to $1 billion in enterprise value generated from AI-driven benefits by 2027 and has several use cases, all designed in a responsible way that meets regulatory requirements and keeps employee and client data safe. The hub will also serve key client groups within the bank's commercial banking business. | RBC
The transaction is subject to customary closing conditions and receipt of regulatory approvals and is not expected to have a material impact on Scotiabank's earnings or CET ratio. The acquisition of MapleMark Bank allows Scotiabank to offer FDIC deposit insurance to clients, which is important for Mortgage Capital Markets business and deposit growth strategy. MapleMark Bank is a well-run bank primarily operating in Dallas, Texas and further supports our strategic focus within the North American corridor. | Scotiabank
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U.S.-listed cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase (COIN) is also looking into the possibility of participating in the stablecoin platform. Coinbase, Stripe and Visa declined to comment. Mastercard had not responded to requests for comment by publication time. Stablecoins, one of the busiest areas of crypto, have become a focal point for the large card networks and payments players. The total stablecoin market cap is about $325 billion, according to CoinGecko data. The market is dominated by Tether's USDT, at $115 billion. | CoinDesk
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The acquisition marks Robinhood's entry into Canada through a well-established operator of regulated digital asset platforms, positioning Robinhood to deliver a new standard of innovative financial products in the country. WonderFi operates two of Canada’s longest-standing regulated crypto platforms, Bitbuy and Coinsquare, which will become part of the Robinhood brand. Robinhood’s expansion to Canada supports its vision of building the leading integrated global financial ecosystem. Robinhood now has more than 1 million international funded customers, including approximately 300,000 funded customers from WonderFi. | Robinhood
It aims to continue scaling AI-native data infrastructure for capital markets. | LinkedIn
Wealthsimple says that it’s able to offer the IPO Access feature as an “invitee of investment banks,” where the banks allocate a certain number of shares to Wealthsimple to provide to users. It doesn’t work as an underwriter nor directly with the company going public. Wealthsimple is anticipating high demand and tempering user expectations accordingly. If users want more shares than are available for a given company, the company says participating clients will be chosen “through a transparent process that is disclosed in advance of each IPO” and may differ between IPOs. | BetaKit
Designed to help make it easier for clients and members to take action on everyday wellbeing, from building healthy habits to planning for the years ahead, the new offers connect them with trusted providers at preferred rates, offering accessible entry points to health and wellness to help solve for the longevity challenge. These exclusive offers will be made available to eligible Manulife Group Retirement plan members in Canada, and some may already be available through other Manulife products. | Manulife
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As part of the partnership, Nium joins CPN as a global payout partner, providing financial institutions on the network with direct access to Nium’s payout infrastructure across more than 190 countries and in 100 currencies. With Nium now part of CPN, financial institutions can route payments through the CPN network to Nium’s payout infrastructure, including access to Nium’s entire portfolio of countries and currencies through a single integration. Payments using CPN will now be supported by integrated FX optimization and smart routing, enabling efficient conversion and delivery without the need to source and manage multiple local providers. | Fintech Finance News
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Version One Ventures, Vancouver-based VC raised $108M USD ($150M CAD) for two new funds
It closed $78-million USD for its fifth Version One Fund, and $30-million USD for its third Opportunities Fund. The venture firm said its investment focus has evolved alongside major technological shifts, with a renewed focus on AI infrastructure and applications, robotics and physical AI, deep tech, and biology. It’s also looking at investing in emerging global ecosystems like India and Africa. | BetaKit
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