TLDR Fintech 2026-02-09

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Goldman Sachs is working with Anthropic to deploy AI agents that automate accounting, compliance, and client onboarding tasks, aiming to boost efficiency and constrain future headcount growth rather than trigger near-term layoffs.

Nubank founder David Vélez is entering “Act Three” of the company's growth by expanding beyond Latin America into markets like the US, where it has received conditional approval for a national bank license. The move is a long-term bet that Nubank's self-service, branchless, and AI-driven model can compete in one of the world's most crowded banking markets, even if near-term returns fall below its Latin American benchmarks.

Revolut is expanding its internal corporate development team to manage secondary share sales in-house, after a self-run transaction last year helped cement a $75 billion valuation. Instead of fully relying on banks like Morgan Stanley, the fintech has built a small financial strategy group that has executed multiple share sales at different price points, generating hundreds of millions in arbitrage gains. The move highlights how late-stage fintechs are staying private longer, cutting advisory fees, and treating secondary liquidity as a core strategic function rather than a Wall Street-led process.

While AI is structurally pressuring legacy SaaS valuations and may push incumbents down the stack over time, software is far from dying, with cloud migrations still ongoing and most disruption likely to play out slowly and unevenly rather than in a near-term collapse.

AI will not kill software but instead dramatically increase how much software gets built, just as prior computing shifts did with PCs, e-commerce, and streaming. Disruption is being misread as a sudden endpoint rather than a long transition, where legacy systems persist, new companies emerge, and domain expertise becomes even more important over time.

Accenture's latest report paints 2026 as the start of “Unconstrained Banking,” where advances in generative and agentic AI, digital money, and modern tech stacks are dissolving old limits and reshaping how banks create value and serve customers. The firm identifies six core shifts, from intelligent programmable money and conversational, everywhere banking experiences to AI-augmented workforces, modernized technology, integrated risk management, and new competitive dynamics, that together demand banks modernize infrastructure, rethink talent and risk approaches, and become ecosystem orchestrators rather than siloed product factories.

Contrary's annual Tech Trends Report breaks down the foundational technology shifts shaping the next generation of iconic companies, with a focus on how extraordinary people and second-order social effects create the biggest opportunities.

Apex Prediction Markets introduces a vendor-agnostic way for firms to offer CFTC-regulated event contract trading without building their own futures commission merchant infrastructure. The platform supports 24/7 trading on real-world outcomes such as sports, politics, and economic indicators, with contracts held in segregated accounts and settled automatically via the Ascend Ledger. The launch reflects growing institutional interest in prediction markets and highlights how infrastructure providers are lowering the barrier for brokers and fintechs to experiment with event-driven trading products.

Cleo is relaunching in the UK after focusing on the US market since 2022, bringing its AI-driven approach to budgeting, spending insights, and personalized financial coaching back to its home market. Known for its conversational tone and features like “roast mode” and “hype mode,” the app has already been adopted by millions of users in the US and aims to make money management feel more accessible and less intimidating. The return follows Cleo's $500 million valuation from a 2022 funding round.

Visa has rolled out a new SDK that allows payment providers and software platforms to enable contactless payments directly on an iPhone, removing the need for dedicated card readers or terminals. The capability lets merchants accept in-person payments through compatible iOS apps, whether they rely on third-party payment providers or build their own solutions in-house. The move lowers the barrier to entry for small and mobile merchants, reinforcing smartphones as full-fledged payment acceptance tools rather than just point-of-sale companions.

New benchmarks show Anthropic's Opus 4.6 sharply improving agent performance on legal and corporate tasks, signaling faster-than-expected progress that doesn't replace lawyers yet, but meaningfully challenges the idea that professional legal work is safely out of reach for AI.

Crypto fintech Kontigo pitched itself as a stablecoin-based financial platform for inflation-hit Latin American users. Behind the scenes, the company became a key channel for moving money into and out of Venezuela, enabling transactions that helped bypass US sanctions as the government increasingly relied on dollar-pegged crypto to route oil revenues. That exposure has triggered bank and payments shutdowns from firms like JPMorgan Chase and Stripe.

A stock analyst report argued prediction-market users (including on Kalshi) were losing money faster than they do on mainstream gambling apps, a conclusion Kalshi called “flat-out wrong.” Kalshi then alleged the data startup behind the analysis was trying to “extort” the company, before later walking that back and saying it no longer believed extortion was the intent after reviewing more information.

Giannis has taken a small ownership stake in a regulated prediction platform, marking a rare crossover between elite sports and financial market infrastructure.

Public has rolled out a new partnership with OpenClaw that lets users trade stocks, options, and crypto through a single integrated experience.

Fintech Nerdcon is back for its second year, heading to San Diego on November 19–20.