Weekly FinTech & Financial News
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March 9-13, 2026
Top FinTech Updates this Week
💰 Propel Holdings, Toronto-based digital lending player secured $150M to support the launch of FreshLine, an unsecured personal line-of-credit offering
💰 Alan, France-based Insurtech unicorn raised €100M ($157M CAD) which valued the company at more than €5B
💰 Perch Capital, a Canadian private mortgage lender secured a $25M debt facility from a Schedule 1 Canadian bank to support the firm with increased deployable capital to support higher origination volumes and faster execution
💰 General Tensor, a Toronto-based builder of decentralized AI infrastructure, raised $5M across its pre-seed and seed funding rounds
💰 deepidv, a Toronto-based developer of an AI-native identity verification and anti-fraud platform, closed a $1M seed funding round
🌟 APX Lending, Toronto-based crypto-backed lending provider receives regulatory approval to offer USDC loans coast to coast across Canada
🌟 Revolut Bank UK Ltd received regulatory approval from the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) to launch as a bank in the UK
Top Financial Institutions Updates this Week
💰 Fairstone Bank of Canada closed a public $400M three-year senior deposit note offering, underscoring strong and growing investor confidence in the Bank’s credit profile and funding strategy
💼 Royal Bank of Canada acquired Pinch Financial, a Toronto-based FinTech offering innovative mortgage qualification technology
💼 EQ Bank secures Competition Bureau approval for $800M acquisition of PC Financial from Loblaw Companies Ltd
🤝 TD Bank advances embedded banking for US businesses with Workday, an US-based HR management integration in collaboation with FISPAN
🚀 The Bank of Canada, RBC Capital Markets, RBC Investor Services, TD Bank, Export Development Canada completed Project Samara, a collaborative initiative to evaluate how tokenization and distributed ledger technology (DLT) can improve bond issuance and settlement in a real-world setting
🚀 Rogers Bank, Toronto-based banking platform partnered with Mastercard to introduce the Rogers Red World Legend Mastercard, a first-of-its-kind offering in Canada
🚀 The Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC) is expanding its Defence Platform with another $1.2B CAD in funding from the federal government
🌟 Bank of Canada to move domestic repo operations to TMX Group and Clearstream’s Canadian Collateral Management Service (CCMS) by 2027
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The Bank of Canada permitted Toronto-based FinTech company XTM and its affiliated entities to resume payment activities under the supervision of a court-appointed monitor. The central bank said that the Ontario Superior Court issued an order commencing proceedings under the Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act regarding XTM. The order follows reports from clients of Everyday Payments, a platform that restaurants use to distribute gratuities to their staff, who allege that money has gone missing from their digital wallets. XTM co-owns the platform with Edmonton-based Everyday People Financial Corp. | The Globe and Mail
Zoho Payroll officially launched in Canadian, making payroll management smarter, simpler, and fully compliant with federal and provincial regulations. It automate tax calculations, allows to integrate with Zoho apps, offers employee self-service portal and is available in English & French. | LinkedIn
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EQ Bank secures Competition Bureau approval for $800M acquisition of PC Financial from Loblaw Companies Ltd. The proposal would see EQ Bank take over PC Financials’ nearly 3.5 million customers and its retail pavilions and ATMs, while Loblaw would take a 16-per-cent stake in the bank. EQ Bank would also become the exclusive financial partner of the Optimum loyalty program. The deal still requires approval by the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions and the Minister of Finance. | The Globe and Mail
TD Bank advances embedded banking for US businesses with Workday, an US-based HR management integration in collaboration with FISPAN. Propel designed FreshLine, developed in collaboration with Column, to court the near-prime population, which is often overlooked by traditional lenders. Propel aims to offer “vastly superior credit” to the underbanked population, and lines of credit serve as the company’s primary product. | Open Banking Expo
Bank of Canada to move domestic repo operations to TMX Group and Clearstream’s Canadian Collateral Management Service (CCMS) by 2027. CCMS will enhance Canada’s financial infrastructure for securities financing transactions, including for the repurchase, or repo, market that is a core funding market in Canada. | Bank of Canada
Royal Bank of Canada acquired Pinch Financial, a Toronto-based FinTech offering innovative mortgage qualification technology. Pinch operates a cutting-edge platform that verifies borrower information online to help qualify Canadians for a mortgage and submit applications to lenders. This acquisition supports RBCs vision of leveraging new technologies to create exceptional, personalized experiences for Canadians. | RBC
The Bank of Canada, RBC Capital Markets, RBC Investor Services, TD Bank, Export Development Canada completed Project Samara, a collaborative initiative to evaluate how tokenization and distributed ledger technology (DLT) can improve bond issuance and settlement in a real-world setting. The Samara Platform was designed for the experiment to support end-to-end transactions throughout the bond’s life cycle—including cash and bond issuance, bidding, coupon payment, redemption and secondary trading—on DLT infrastructure. Built on Hyperledger Fabric, the platform integrates separate bond and cash ledgers and enables the transaction to be settled instantly, as well as secondary market trading and settlement of the tokenized bond, directly on-chain. Building on earlier experimental work from the series of Jasper projects, Samara tested the real-world feasibility and implications of a DLT-based platform for capital markets, using a real bond funded and traded with central bank money. The project was structured as a limited experiment, involving the issuance of a single security—a $100 million Canadian dollar–denominated bond of less than 3 months—to a closed investor group. | Bank of Canada
Fairstone Bank of Canada closed a public $400M three-year senior deposit note offering, underscoring strong and growing investor confidence in the Bank’s credit profile and funding strategy. The offering attracted strong institutional demand, generating an order book of approximately $1.1 billion from 33 investors—including 13 participating in the Bank’s deposit note program for the first time—representing an oversubscription of nearly three times. Originally launched with a minimum size of $300 million, the transaction was upsized to $400 million, exceeding the Bank’s inaugural $250 million issuance completed in September 2025. | Fairstone
Rogers Bank, Toronto-based banking platform partnered with Mastercard to introduce the Rogers Red World Legend Mastercard, a first-of-its-kind offering in Canada. The Rogers Red World Legend Mastercard turns experiences into earning through a premier suite of connectivity, travel and dining benefits. With this new card, customers get more value out of their Rogers services, combined with Mastercard’s global benefits. The Rogers Red World Legend Mastercard is introduced alongside The Mastercard Collection, a suite of globally connected dining, entertainment and travel benefits now available to Mastercard’s World, World Elite and World Legend cardholders. | Mastercard
The Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC) is expanding its Defence Platform with another $1.2B CAD in funding from the federal government. This comes in addition to the $1 billion BDC was promised by the Government of Canada in Budget 2025 to support its Defence Platform, which was launched in December. BDC claims this latest $1.2-billion federal injection will help the organization deploy up to $6 billion in loans and investments to domestic small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) targeting opportunities in Canada’s burgeoning defence sector. | BDC
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APX Lending, Toronto-based crypto-backed lending provider receives regulatory approval to offer USDC loans coast to coast across Canada. The Ontario Securities Commission (OSC), acting as principal regulator under the Canadian Securities Administrators Passport System, has granted updated exemptive relief enabling the company to offer U.S. dollar loans advanced and repaid in USD Coin (USDC) nationwide. The decision builds upon CSA's 2025 approval granted to APX Lending the first approval of its kind issued in Canada to permit regulated Bitcoin and Ethereum-backed lending and now extends that framework to include USDC loans. | Newswire
DeFi Technologies, a Toronto-based decentralised finance company receives Nasdaq notification letter regarding Minimum Bid Price deficiency. Pursuant to Nasdaq Listing Rule 5810(c)(3)(A), the Company has a compliance period of 180 calendar days, or until September 1, 2026, to regain compliance with the Minimum Bid Price Rule. To regain compliance, the closing bid price of the Company's common shares must be at least $1.00 per common share for a minimum of ten consecutive business days. If at any time during this 180-day period the closing bid price per share of the Company's common shares is at least $1.00 for a minimum of ten consecutive business days, Nasdaq will provide the Company with written confirmation of compliance and the matter will be closed. | PR Newswire
General Tensor, a Toronto-based builder of decentralized AI infrastructure, raised $5M across its pre-seed and seed funding rounds. The seed round was anchored by Good Morning Holdings (led by Lok Lee and backed by Goldman Sachs), while the 2024 pre-seed was led by Lvna Capital with participation from DCG, X Ventures, Proof of Talk, and Outliers Fund. The company intends to use the funds to expand its validator operations, accelerate the development of high-performance Bittensor subnet infrastructure, and scale a suite of consumer-facing DeFi applications. The company combines organic development with the acquisition of early-stage fintech protocols to expand its footprint within the open-source AI economy. | FinSMEs
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Manulife selects Akka , US-based provider powering the next generation of agentic AI systems and distributed applications as its latest partner to support the development of its enterprise agentic AI platform. By bringing Akka’s durable and highly available runtime into the ecosystem, Manulife will strengthen the platform’s security, reliability, and performance as it embeds AI into critical workflows and expands adoption across the organization. Manulife’s enterprise AI platform, now in beta testing, provides a secure, integrated foundation for building and deploying AI agents – intelligent systems that understand tasks, help make decisions, and take action to support customers and colleagues. | Fintech Finance News
Alan, France-based Insurtech unicorn raised €100M ($157 million CAD) which valued the company at more than €5B. The round was led by Index Ventures through its growth fund, with participation from other international investment firms and angel investors, including prominent Canadian tech leaders like Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke and Wealthsimple CEO Mike Katchen. The funding will be used to continue Alan’s international expansion, including in Canada, where it launched last April with the intention of bringing more competition to the country’s health insurance market. | BetaKit
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Propel Holdings, Toronto-based digital lending player secured $150M to support the launch of FreshLine, an unsecured personal line-of-credit offering. Propel designed FreshLine, developed in collaboration with Column, to court the near-prime population, which is often overlooked by traditional lenders. Propel aims to offer “vastly superior credit” to the underbanked population, and lines of credit serve as the company’s primary product. | PYMNTS
Perch Capital, a Canadian private mortgage lender secured a $25M debt facility from a Schedule 1 Canadian bank to support the firm with increased deployable capital to support higher origination volumes and faster execution. The facility, secured in part because of Perch Capital’s proprietary underwriting technology and auto-adjudication capabilities, also allows the firm to offer competitive pricing that smaller, individually-funded private lenders typically can’t match. With the additional capital, Perch Capital is actively expanding its broker network across Ontario, British Columbia, and Alberta, targeting reputable mortgage professionals who need a reliable, responsive private lending partner. | GlobeNewswire
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Revolut Bank UK Ltd received regulatory approval from the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) to launch as a bank in the UK. The launch comes with an existing base of 13 million UK customers and follows Revolut's recent commitment to invest £3bn ($4bn) and create 1,000 high-skilled jobs in the UK. This milestone means that Revolut Bank UK Ltd will be able to start offering accounts as a fully licensed bank for both retail and business customers. It enables Revolut to offer deposit accounts protected by the FSCS on eligible deposits and paves the way for a wider range of services in the future, including lending and other products. Revolut will gradually begin the process of rolling out current accounts to new customers in a few days, starting with a small group and expanding over the coming weeks to ensure a smooth user experience. | Fintech Finance News
Tide, UK-based SMB banking platform partners with Gigs, an US-based embedded mobile service provider to launch Tide Business Phone Number (BPN), a mobile service built for small businesses. It is fully embedded in the Tide app. This marks the first time a business banking provider has integrated a full mobile plan with UK phone number directly into its platform. The launch is designed to help Tide’s nearly 800,000 UK members (14% of the small business market), better separate their personal and professional lives. Tide BPN is available for free to members on Smart, Pro, and Max plans, offering a business number with unlimited calls and texts. | Tide
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deepidv, a Toronto-based developer of an AI-native identity verification and anti-fraud platform, closed a $1M seed funding round. The company intends to use the funds to accelerate product development, expand its go-to-market operations across the United States, and grow its engineering and sales teams across its three North American hubs. The company is currently onboarding customers across the fintech, proptech, hospitality, HR, and iGaming sectors. | FinSMEs
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