Somewhere between the AI hype cycle and the fintech funding comeback, the machines started opening wallets. Yesterday, Mastercard handed autonomous AI agents a payment network. Meanwhile, two neobanks raised serious money without bothering to go public. Totally normal week.
🤖 Mastercard Built a Checkout for Robots
Mastercard $MA ( ▼ 0.1% ) launched Agent Pay for Machines — AP4M — on Wednesday, a payments framework that lets AI agents authorize, coordinate, and settle transactions across its global network with zero human involvement. We're talking micropayments, fractions of a cent, processed at machine speed across cards, bank accounts, and stablecoins.
Thirty-plus partners signed at launch: Coinbase (COIN), Stripe, Adyen (ADYEY), Global Payments (GPN), Ripple, Cloudflare, and Chicago stablecoin startup Coinflow among them. Agent credentials live on Polygon, Solana, and Base blockchains. Mastercard CPO Jorn Lambert called it "a superbloom of AI business models" — while also admitting it won't move the revenue needle next year. This is a five-year infrastructure bet, not a Q3 catalyst.
The tell: stablecoins aren't bolted on here — they're a first-class payment rail alongside cards and bank accounts from day one. That's Mastercard quietly conceding that programmable money belongs in enterprise commerce. Coinbase's seat at this table isn't an accident.
Takeaway: Mastercard just built the payment layer for agentic commerce — and crypto rails were invited to the founding.
💵 Current Raised $80M and Wants to Be Your Only Bank
New York neobank Current closed an $80M Series E yesterday led by Springcoast Partners, which also gets a board seat. The round values Current at $1.5 billion. Andreessen Horowitz, Tiger Global, and QED are already on the cap table — so the room has seen a few neobanks come and go.
Founded in 2015, Current targets everyday consumers with banking, payments, and credit products, and has been pushing into AI-powered financial tools. Management says profitability is on the table this year. The new capital goes toward product and expansion. No IPO timeline, no dramatic pivot — just a neobank that raised a clean round and wants to keep growing.
The competitive set is brutal: Chime (CHYM) is public and trading near 52-week lows. Dave (DAVE) is still fighting for margin. Current's edge, if it has one, is the bet that better AI tooling builds stickier users before the consolidation wave hits.
Takeaway: Current just bought more runway in a crowded lane — now it has to prove the product earns the valuation.
🍁 Koho Convinced Abu Dhabi It's the Next Great Canadian Bank
Toronto-based Koho raised $130M at a $1.33B valuation — up from $800M in 2024 — with Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund Mubadala leading the round. Shopify (SHOP) CEO Tobi Lütke and Affirm (AFRM) COO Michael Linford also wrote checks. Mubadala manages US$385B in assets and took Canadian wealth manager CI Financial private in a $12.1B deal last year, so this isn't tourist money.
The funding serves a specific purpose: satisfying capital requirements to obtain a Canadian banking licence, something Koho has been chasing since 2021. CEO Daniel Eberhard says Koho is "getting very close." Revenue is in the "mid-two hundreds" of millions with a staff of 250. His stated outcome target: "$30 to $50 billion." Modest.
Sovereign wealth funds parking capital in North American neobank charter races is a 2026 theme worth watching — it's the same playbook as LATAM fintech land-grabs, just colder.
Takeaway: Koho got Abu Dhabi money to become a real bank — the charter race just got a very serious co-signer.
Recap
Mastercard handed the machines a payment network, Current grabbed $80M to outrun the neobank pack, and Koho got sovereign backing to finally put "bank" in its name.
If this hit different, forward it to someone who still thinks fintech is boring. Subscribe to Fintech Stacks for your daily signal. Follow my trades in real time on Robinhood Social. Catch the full breakdown on the Fintech Stacks podcast and YouTube.
This content is for information and entertainment only and is not investment advice. I may or may not hold positions in some of the companies mentioned. Assume I at least own a fintech hoodie and a bunch of debit cards.