The Monday Roundup: what we are watching this week | May 25th

By Puja Sharma

The Monday Roundup sets the scene for the week’s biggest news stories, industry deals, and upcoming events. For Prime subscribers only.

Investment in Cloud-Native Core 

US Senate Federal Credit Union has partnered with Thought Machine to modernise its banking infrastructure through deployment of the Vault platform, as financial institutions continue shifting away from legacy core systems toward real-time, cloud-native architectures.

Under the agreement, USSFCU will implement Thought Machine’s unified stack of Vault Core and Vault Payments to replace traditional batch-based processing systems with an integrated real-time banking and payments environment. The migration is intended to provide a single source of truth across ledger and payment data, enabling transactions to be processed in milliseconds with end-to-end visibility.

The deployment will also allow the credit union to configure banking products through smart contract-based technology rather than modifying underlying core code. The approach is expected to support faster product development and enable the institution to respond more quickly to changing member requirements across savings, lending and payments services. As part of the transformation programme, USSFCU will undertake a phased migration of payment rails, beginning with ACH and Fedwire infrastructure while aligning with ISO 20022 messaging standards. The institution also plans to introduce card services and FedNow capabilities through the Vault platform, supporting instant and always-on payment functionality.

Franklin Templeton has partnered with Singapore-based digital asset exchange DigiFT to expand institutional access to its Benji tokenisation platform across Asia, reflecting growing momentum around tokenised financial products in regulated markets.

Under the partnership, DigiFT will distribute Franklin Templeton’s Benji Technology Platform and related tokenised investment products to accredited and institutional investors in the region. Both firms said the collaboration is expected to expand over time as demand for tokenised financial infrastructure continues to grow. The Benji platform supports tokenised U.S. government securities strategies and includes features such as continuous yield accrual and Franklin Templeton’s patent-pending Intraday Yield mechanism. The platform also enables 24/7 transfers between permissioned wallets and near-instant on-chain settlement, supporting potential use cases in treasury management, payments, collateral management and settlement operations.

The partnership highlights the increasing convergence between traditional asset management and blockchain-based financial infrastructure, particularly as institutional investors seek regulated access to tokenised products.

Omnichannel retail banking platform

Canadian FinTech Relay has secured a $50 million investment from General Catalyst’s Customer Value Fund (CVF) to accelerate customer acquisition and support continued product expansion.

Unlike traditional funding rounds, the investment does not require Relay to give up equity. Instead, General Catalyst’s CVF model provides capital to fund sales, marketing and customer acquisition costs in exchange for a capped share of revenue generated from new customers. According to General Catalyst, the structure is designed to reduce financial pressure on growth-stage firms. If new customer acquisition does not generate revenue, the investment firm absorbs the downside risk. Relay said the funding removes the typical “growth-versus-burn” tradeoff faced by startups relying on conventional equity financing. The company plans to use the capital to expand its customer base while continuing to invest in product innovation and operational growth.

Founded in 2018, Relay provides online business banking and money management tools for small and medium-sized businesses. Its platform includes business checking and savings accounts, accounts payable and receivable tools, expense management, and payment request services.

Tirana Bank has gone live with a new omnichannel retail banking platform built on Backbase’s AI-native Banking OS, marking a significant step in the Albanian bank’s digital transformation strategy.

Delivered in 12 months and deployed on Microsoft Azure, the rollout has introduced unified digital banking services across mobile and web channels, with business banking capabilities expected to follow later this year. The implementation has expanded Tirana Bank’s digital servicing capabilities across accounts, deposits, transfers, bill payments, card management and online lending. Customers can now apply for consumer loans and credit cards digitally, manage multi-currency accounts in Albanian lek and euros, and access financial services without visiting a branch for most routine banking activities.

The launch reflects wider investment across regional banking markets in cloud-native and AI-enabled banking infrastructure aimed at improving customer experience, accelerating product delivery and reducing operational complexity. Personal finance management tools embedded into the platform also provide customers with real-time spending insights, an area becoming increasingly important as banks compete with digital-first financial platforms and FinTech providers.

What is the Buzz

Hexaware Technologies, a global IT services and solutions provider, today announced that it has entered into an agreement to acquire Consulting Professionals Services Holdings Limited, together with its wholly owned subsidiary Consulting Professionals Services Limited (“CPS”). The transaction is expected to close within two weeks.

Primarily based in the United Kingdom and the United Arab Emirates, CPS is a specialist technology consulting and professional services firm delivering high-value consulting covering regulatory compliance, technology infrastructure, governance and risk, and business transformation to an FTSE 100 client. Hexaware has an existing relationship with this FTSE 100 client and is among its top IT service providers. The acquisition of CPS is expected to consolidate client spend, strengthening Hexaware’s strategic positioning within the client’s consolidated supplier landscape.

In addition, this acquisition will strengthen Hexaware’s ambition to be a trusted AI and cloud transformation partner to leading financial institutions and blue-chip organisations—from consulting and advisory to implementation and operations. CPS deepens this through its advisory maturity and interconnected local and global delivery models. Together, the companies expect to drive significant market expansion and diversification across large enterprise accounts.