Weekly FinTech & Financial News
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June 29-July 3, 2026
Top FinTech Updates this Week
💰 Judi.ai, Vancouver-based small business lending analytics software for relationship lenders secured an undisclosed investment from Conexus Venture Capital, Regina-based investment branch of Conexus Credit Union
🤝 Shopify, Nuvei and Neo Financial are among the 140 businesses that have signed up to use, share reserve earnings from, and participate in the governance of the new stablecoin Open USD by Open Standard, US-based open stablecoin infrastructure for businesses
🤝 Nuvei, a Montreal-based payment infrastructure provider completed a live agentic-commerce proof of concept with Visa, Arvato Systems, and fashion brand Kings and Priests
🚀 Robinhood, an US-based wealthtech accelerates global expansion with Robinhood Chain Mainnet, Stock Tokens, Agentic Trading and New Suite of DeFi products
🚀 Stowe, Toronto-based a personal finance app that helps users finds where they're overpaying and helps them save more of their money, officially launched
🌟The Department of Finance published draft open banking regulations that would govern how the long-awaited financial data-sharing system would work in Canada
Top Financial Institutions Updates this Week
🤝 Luma Financial Technologies, Ohio-based technology provider for annuities and life insurance and TD Securities have partnered to provide Canadian investment professionals with an integrated structured products management platform
🚀 CIBC Global Asset Management launched CIBC Private Infrastructure Fund, advancing the firm's expansion into private markets and its collaboration with J.P. Morgan Asset Management
💼 EQB completes acquisition of PC Financial and welcomes Galen G. Weston and Richard Dufresne to its Board of Directors
💼 SoFi acquired Composer, a Toronto-based no-code platform for retail investors for an undisclosed amount
💼 BMO Financial Group entered into a definitive agreement to acquire the Australia-based capital markets business of Euroz Hartleys Group Limited, a leading metals and mining-focused equity capital markets, M&A and strategic advisory firm
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By shifting from a payment provider to a travel companion, Visa offers unique benefits in dining, culture, and entertainment through global partnerships. The Visa Destinations platform redefines the journey by focusing on passion-led travel pillars such as food, fashion, and sports. Instead of merely facilitating transactions, Visa now provides tastemaker recommendations and city guides that help travelers discover hidden gems. Key features include: Priority Access to iconic landmarks like the Louvre and Rockefeller Center | Curated dining experiences recommended by local experts | Exclusive viewing moments for cultural and sporting events. | Merchants Eye
The proof of concept moves agentic commerce beyond discovery by keeping the purchase, authorization, and payment inside the first-party agent. It also establishes a proof point for Nuvei Agentic: a protocol-agnostic execution layer any AI agent can call to pay. In the transaction, a merchant's AI agent initiated a product purchase on a shopper's behalf and paid inside the agent, with no hand-off to a separate payment flow. Multiple issuers across Europe took part completing agentic payments settled on live Visa rails using a tokenized Visa credential within Visa Intelligent Commerce. These were governed by shopper-set guardrails, including spend caps and approved categories. | Nuvei
By leveraging Visa's internal defense capabilities, the platform provides actionable intelligence on malware, vulnerabilities, and compromised credentials to secure the global payments ecosystem. The Visa Threat Intelligence Platform solves the problem of fragmented security data by unifying cyber and payments intelligence into a single actionable stream. Because fraud is typically a downstream outcome of cyberattacks—such as data breaches or credential theft—VTIP allows institutions to identify risks earlier in the attack lifecycle. The platform utilizes VisaNet insights to enrich dark web data, transforming raw information into specific alerts for fraud teams. | Fintech Finance News
Square launches ChatGPT and Claude integrations to drive AI-powered merchant discovery
This allows customers to discover businesses and place orders directly through AI conversations. Eligible Square sellers are automatically enrolled with no additional fees, technical setup, or marketplace commissions, streamlining AI-driven customer acquisition. By syncing real-time data—including menus, hours, and availability—Square ensures that when a user asks an AI for a recommendation, the business information is accurate and actionable. The system is designed to front-load valuable data directly into the AI's knowledge base, ensuring merchants are visible at the exact moment of a purchasing decision: Zero technical setup required for eligible Square Online merchants. | Real-time synchronization of inventory and business hours. | Direct ordering capabilities via Order by Cash App integration. | Merchants Eye
Combined, they establish the core legal framework essential to the system’s safety, efficiency and resilience ahead of its launch in Q4 2026. Developed through extensive collaboration—including formal public consultations in 2020 and 2025, a series of educational webinars and close industry engagement—the RTR By-law and RTR Rules reflects broad ecosystem input and support. Payments Canada extends its thanks to all organizations and individuals who submitted feedback throughout this process. The input has been invaluable preparing for the forthcoming launch of Canada’s RTR: new national payment infrastructure that will enable instant, data-rich payments in Canada, 24/7, 365 days a year. | Payments.ca
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This collaboration centralizes lifecycle tracking, analytics, and performance reporting for both TD-issued and third-party notes, eliminating manual workflows and fragmented data systems for wealth management firms across Canada. The collaboration between Luma and TD Securities addresses the critical need for centralized data hubs in the wealth management sector. By integrating Luma’s technology, Canadian advisors can now manage their entire book of business—including multi-issuer structured notes—within a single interface. | Fintech Finance News
The Acquisition represents a step change in EQB's position as Canada's Challenger Bank™, expanding its scale to serve nearly 4 million Canadians while broadening its diversified portfolio of financial services. This marks the start of EQB's long-term strategic relationship with Loblaw and establishes EQB as the exclusive financial services partner for the PC Optimum™ loyalty program with its more than 18 million active members. Under the agreement, EQB acquired PC Financial at 1.15x book value. The consideration was satisfied by the issuance to Loblaw of 7.2 million common shares of EQB and cash of $234.5 million. PC Bank is now a wholly owned subsidiary of Equitable Bank, with capital ratios reflecting its consolidation. EQB's Q3 results will include one month of earnings contribution from PC Financial. | PR Newswire
SoFi also revealed Composer by SoFi, a new AI-powered investing platform within its financial app, built on its acquisition of Composer. The new tool will allow SoFi’s 14 million members to turn their investing ideas into full strategies. Using natural language, users can define their strategy, and the Composer tool walks them through building, testing, and automating a rules-based roadmap to invest based on their thesis. | BetaKit
This important milestone advances Laurentian Bank’s strategic transformation to sharpen its focus as a leading specialty commercial bank. The completion of the Acquisition Transaction is subject to the satisfaction of other closing conditions, including the closing of the acquisition by National Bank of Canada of Laurentian Bank’s retail and SME banking portfolios. The Transactions have also received the necessary approvals from the Superintendent of Financial Institutions, and the Competition Act approval condition to closing for both Transactions has been satisfied, provided that there is no change in circumstances relating to the Competition Bureau. Each of the Transactions also requires approval by the Canadian Investment Regulatory Organization and the relevant securities regulatory authorities. | National Bank of Canada
The fund is designed, in partnership with JPMAM's Alternative Investments Strategy & Solutions (AISS) team, to offer Canadian accredited investors direct access to institutional-grade private infrastructure. It provides exposure to essential physical services that support society and is structured to help insulate investors from traditional macroeconomic and market cycles. This launch represents a significant step in CIBC Global Asset Management's commitment to product innovation, providing investors with distinctive access to global alternative investments. | CIBC
Euroz Hartleys Group's private wealth business will remain independent and will enter into a strategic alliance agreement with BMO to preserve the interconnected relationship between the capital markets and private wealth businesses and support continued collaboration, research access and distribution opportunities. The transaction is anticipated to close in the fourth quarter of calendar year 2026 and is subject to Euroz Hartleys shareholder approval, applicable regulatory approvals and other customary conditions. The transaction will combine BMO's market-leading metals and mining franchise with one of Australia's premier equity distribution platforms and will create a truly integrated global capability for clients. | BMO
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Open USD introduces three key design principles: Build for scale. Businesses can mint and redeem Open USD at no cost and with no artificial limits on volume. | Earn by default. Partners receive all of the earnings from Open USD’s reserves, less a small management fee to cover Open USD’s operational costs. | Govern collaboratively. Open USD will be operated by Open Standard, an independent company with a board made up of Open USD’s partners, ensuring decisions are made for the collective interest, not a single entity. | Open Standard
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The Public Mainnet of Robinhood Chain. Built using the Arbitrum Platform to institutional standards and natively connected to Robinhood's onchain users, this Layer 2 blockchain provides a turnkey environment for builders. Stock Tokens are available today on the Robinhood Wallet in more than 120 countries, although availability varies by jurisdiction. With the new Stock Tokens, eligible individuals can unlock possibilities like 24/7 trading directly on the Robinhood Chain, including asset productivity through activities such as deploying tokens into lending pools and utilizing them as trading collateral across the broader DeFi ecosystem. Robinhood Earn allows people to lend their dollar-backed USDG through a self-custody wallet at an estimated 7% APY, with insurance procured through Lloyd's of London and RELM to protect covered losses in the event of cyber or smart contract exploits. Agentic Trading for Crypto will begin rolling out soon to eligible US traders at no additional cost. Agentic Accounts for crypto launched using our Trading MCP, eligible US traders can connect their AI model of choice to Robinhood data sources and tools. | Robinhood
Closing of the Transaction remains subject to the satisfaction of customary conditions, including receipt of regulatory approvals. The necessary regulatory review processes are currently underway, including the FINRA Continuing Membership Application (CMA) process in connection with the proposed change of ownership of FavorPoint. There can be no assurance as to the timing of the receipt of such approvals or that all required approvals will be obtained. The Company will provide further updates as the process advances. | Newsfile Corp.
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The capital will be used to scale the company’s US expansion, as well as product development, customer service, and marketing development. While neither organization disclosed the amount of the investment, capital comes via CVC’s Fund 2, a $30 million portfolio with a focus on Canadian, early-stage companies. The fund, typically invests anywhere between $500,000 and $3 million. Alongside CVC, the round saw participation from Unitus Community Credit Union in Oregon, as well as several returning investors from Judi’s cap sheet. | BetaKit
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This AI-driven tool helps lenders and fintechs improve underwriting accuracy and risk assessment, resulting in a 13.6% reduction in loan default risk for users. The sequential foundation model represents a significant leap from analyzing isolated transactions to understanding long-term financial health. By evaluating how various financial events interact over time, Plaid provides a holistic consumer view that traditional credit scoring often misses. This technology allows financial institutions to predict future behavior with higher precision, leading to smarter lending decisions and more robust fraud prevention strategies. | Fintech Finance News
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The proposed rules, which outline how FinTechs can participate and what data banks would be required to share with them, are open for a 60-day public consultation period. Under the proposed system, which aims to give consumers more control over their financial information, banks and other financial institutions would be required to share data like account numbers, product and service terms and fees, past balances, and other transaction data upon request. This would theoretically eliminate the need for FinTech companies that offer products based on this data to use the insecure practice of “screen-scraping,” which the feds are considering banning. | BetaKit
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The startup raised $4.1 million CAD ($3 million USD). It witnessed meaningful participation from MaRS Investment Accelerator Fund (IAF), AQC Capital and Anges Québec. As consumers face persistent inflation and economic uncertainty, SELLIT9 provides a seamless way to unlock liquidity from underutilized household items. Starting with electronics and expanding to multiple categories, the platform allows consumers to quickly trade-in unused objects. For retail partners, SELLIT9 drives customer loyalty, boosts new sales through trade-in incentives, and helps brands meet their sustainability goals, all without handling the traded inventory. | Newswire
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Inside Stowe, one can: Track and cancel subscriptions in-app | Find the best credit card for actual spending | Compare cell phone plans and switch | Get a daily money check-in that keeps one on top of bills, spending, and savings | Ask anything about money and get answers based on actual finances | Add partner, share what you want, and keep the rest private. They are out of beta and live on the App Store. | Stowe
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The platform leverages semantic AI search capability, allowing users to search in plain language, and features a plug-in that allows the marketplace platform to integrate with a client’s pre-existing applicant tracking systems (ATS). While still in beta, the platform is a business-to-business, software-as-a-service product that allows recruiters and companies to search Toast’s roughly 35,000-strong membership base across metrics like role, skill set, seniority, location, and more. | BetaKit
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