The Weekly Wrap: all you need to know by Friday COB | June 12th

By Puja Sharma

The Weekly Wrap is published every Friday and recaps the week’s main stories and deals, as well as upcoming events and announcements for Prime subscribers only.

The Big Story

Backbase has announced a strategic collaboration with Mastercard to integrate Mastercard Move into its AI-native Banking OS, enabling banks to deploy cross-border payment services more quickly and with reduced implementation complexity.

The integration has provided Backbase customers with access to Mastercard Move through a pre-built connector, allowing financial institutions to incorporate international payment capabilities into existing digital banking experiences. The companies have said the arrangement is intended to accelerate the adoption of near real-time cross-border payments while reducing the effort associated with building and maintaining bespoke integrations.

Mastercard Move has enabled money movement across more than 200 countries and territories, connecting over 17 billion endpoints and supporting transactions in 150 currencies. By making the service available through the Backbase platform, banks have been able to access global payment capabilities through a single integration layer.

According to Backbase, the collaboration has streamlined payment flow management from customer initiation through to settlement and reconciliation. The company has also said the integration forms part of its broader ecosystem strategy, which brings together payments, fraud management, open banking, dispute management and other banking services within its AI-native Banking OS.

The partnership has sought to address growing demand for faster and more transparent international payments. While traditional correspondent banking models have often involved multiple intermediaries and limited visibility, customers and businesses have increasingly expected seamless cross-border transaction experiences.

Deals of the week

• Lumiq raises $5.9m in Series B to scale AI platforms
• ING partners bolttech on embedded insurance
• Trustap secures $10m for AI-driven commerce expansion
• FinregE unveils blueprint for safe AI adoption in financial supervision
• Enterprise AI firm Celebal Technologies raises $5.2m from BlackSoil Capital
• Union Investment taps Fenergo to modernise KYC operations
• DGTAL revamps leadership as revenue tops €1m
• AXS and NTT DATA expand cross-border bill payments

Be on the lookout for

Asia has continued to lead global innovation in domestic digital payments, but cross-border payment systems across the region have remained significantly inefficient, according to a whitepaper released by Saber, a stablecoin-based cross-border payment infrastructure provider.