The Central Bank of Egypt (CBE) and African Export – Import Bank (Afreximbank) (www.Afreximbank.com) yesterday signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for the establishment of a pan African Gold Bank. This strategic initiative aims to formalise gold value chains, strengthen Central Bank reserves and reduce Africa’s reliance on foreign refining and trading hubs.

S64, the global alternative investments fintech and solutions partner to the wealth management industry, and Bridgepoint Group, one of the world’s leading mid-market growth investors, are pleased to announce their collaboration to launch Bridgepoint Generations, a new open-ended evergreen private equity fund that has been tailored for the wealth management industry in EMEA and APAC.

Sardine, the leading agentic risk management platform designed to protect companies from financial crime, today announced its partnership with Helix by Q2 (NYSE: QTWO), an award-winning, cloud-native core purpose-built for embedded finance. Through this partnership, Sardine will deliver real-time transaction monitoring, fraud interdiction, and BSA/AML compliance tools, helping Helix’s sponsor banks and fintechs strengthen risk management.

Akamai Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ: AKAM), the cybersecurity and cloud computing company that powers and protects business online, today announced a strategic collaboration with Visa to bring stronger identity, user recognition, and security controls to the emerging world of agentic commerce. Through its integration of Visa’s Trusted Agent Protocol with Akamai’s edge-based behavioral intelligence, user recognition, and bot and abuse protection, the companies will deliver the identity, authentication, and fraud controls required to let merchants confidently welcome AI agents with commerce intent into their digital storefronts.

Duco, a leading SaaS provider of AI-powered operational data automation, has announced a strategic collaboration with Phoenix Group, one of the UK’s largest long-term savings and retirement businesses, to modernise reconciliation infrastructure, empower operational teams, and scale efficiently across its Asset Management division.

OCR Studio, a developer of AI-powered document recognition systems, has adapted its OCR MRZ-scan solution in advance of the upcoming ICAO/ISO changes to the machine-readable zone (MRZ) format in identity documents. The system correctly handles IDs that follow the current ICAO Doc 9303 specification as well as those that will comply with the new standard once it is officially adopted. This helps banks, fintech companies, telecom operators, government agencies, and other regulated businesses maintain stable KYC and border-control workflows throughout the transition period.

As federal policymakers explore faster, more decentralized approaches to disaster relief, new research from Socure reveals that these programs are deeply vulnerable to fraud, and that bad actors possess the scale and sophistication to exploit existing weaknesses, as well as those introduced by proposed reforms.

Sequence today announced a $20M Series A led by 645 Ventures, alongside a16z, Firstminute Capital, Passion Capital, Dig Ventures and Vor Capital. A group of world class founders and execs including the CFOs at Decagon, Klaviyo and Wise also joined the round. The new financing comes after a year of 10x ARR growth, driven by mid-market and enterprise companies like Cognition, Legora, Bridge, 11x, and Incident.io choosing Sequence to automate revenue operations. Sequence has raised $40M to date and will use the new capital to accelerate investment on their agent roadmap to eliminate manual finance work, expanding both the engineering and go to market teams.

MANTL, an Alkami solution team and a leading provider of loan and deposit account opening technology, today announced a strategic partnership with Method Financial (Method), a provider of consumer permissioned financial connectivity. Through this partnership, Method’s real-time liability data will be integrated directly into the MANTL Loan Origination platform, empowering financial institutions to streamline decisioning, improve prequalification accuracy, and deliver a faster, more transparent refinancing and debt consolidation experience across their physical and digital banking channels.

Apiture, a leading provider of digital banking solutions — now part of CSI — today announced the launch of My Data Exchange™, a new feature enabling financial institutions to offer account holders greater visibility and control over how their data is shared with third parties. With My Data Exchange, consumers and businesses can securely locate and link their financial accounts to budgeting, lending, accounting, and other apps directly within those third-party experiences.

myTU, the AI-native, cloud-first digital banking platform, has introduced SEPA Direct Debit to expand its payment capabilities for businesses across the European Union. The new feature enables companies to collect both recurring and one-off payments directly from customer bank accounts under the SEPA CORE scheme.

BridgeWise, the global leader in AI for investments, today announced the development of FixedWise, a new solution designed to transform how European and global investors analyse corporate bonds. Built to address the unique dynamics of Europe’s expanding debt market, this is the first solution delivering granular, AI-driven bond insights at scale and providing in-depth analysis at the individual bond level for every investor, from retail to institutional.

Signicat, Europe’s leading provider of digital identity and fraud prevention solutions, and Markaaz, the leading global business identity and intelligence platform, today announced a strategic partnership to enhance Signicat’s Digital Identity and Orchestration Platform with the most complete and continuously verified global business identity intelligence available.

HSBC Holdings plc (“HSBC Group” or “HSBC”) and The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation Limited (“HSBC Asia Pacific”) today announced the despatch of the scheme document regarding the proposal for the privatisation of Hang Seng Bank by way of a scheme of arrangement (the “Scheme” and together the “Scheme Document”).

Eltropy, the leading AI-powered conversations platform for community financial institutions (CFIs), today announced the launch of E-Notary, allowing CFIs to complete secure, state-compliant electronic notarizations during live video banking sessions. The new capability addresses a critical operational bottleneck that delays loan closings by days or weeks and drives member abandonment.