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API-first bank Increase launches in the US. Announcing the launch of Increase Bank, bringing a modern bank core together with regulated banking services to help teams build the best financial products with greater speed, precision, and control. Founded in 2020, Increase's banking infrastructure and APIs enable companies like Gusto, Ramp, and Stripe to move, store, and lend hundreds of billions of dollars. With the addition of Increase Bank, an FDIC-member institution, fintech companies now have access to a bank engineered for their needs. "This is a bank built by a team of product-obsessed operators for ambitious companies that are just as obsessed with building the best possible products for their customers," said Darragh Buckley, founder of Increase. "It is programmable at scale and designed for reliability, speed, and flexibility." The idea for Increase was born out of Buckley's experience building Stripe from its earliest days, where he saw the need for banking infrastructure built with the same engineering depth as the fintechs relying on it. Since that time, the fintech industry has become one of the fastest-growing sectors in technology, generating over $650 billion in revenue in 2025 and growing at about 21 percent year over year. Increase now includes Increase Bank and a modern banking core with direct connections to the Federal Reserve, The Clearing House, and Visa. Increase's technology maintains the system of record for account balances and transactions and reconciles to the Federal Reserve in real time. This gives fintechs full control over accounts and enables them to operate with their bank at the same speed and scale at which they operate their business. "A fintech company's ability to scale often comes down to whether they have a banking partner that can move at their pace, build solutions to the edge cases they are solving, and give them direct access to payment rails," said Diede van Lamoen, former head of international at Stripe and advisor. "Increase was built by people who have first-hand experience with these challenges and a drive to support users from the first payment to their billionth." Increase's technology is trusted by some of the largest fintechs and software platforms in the United States, providing flexible, transparent, and reliable primitives for money movement, storage, and card issuance. "At Ramp, we are building AI for finance, and we must move fast to save our customers' most valuable resources - time and money. Increase provides the banking infrastructure we need to do just that. From the ability to open accounts synchronously, fully featured for every payment rail, from day one to the pace they ship new features, Increase just gets it," said Karim Atiyeh, Ramp's co-chief executive officer.

PayPal (PYPL) stock; surges after earnings beat as Stripe takeover door remains open. PayPal posts stronger quarterly results as CEO signals openness to a higher acquisition offer while advancing AI and efficiency initiatives TLDRs; * PayPal posted stronger-than-expected quarterly results, boosting investor confidence despite modest takeover uncertainty. * Stripe's $53.4 billion acquisition proposal remains possible, but PayPal wants greater shareholder value. * CEO Enrique Lores highlighted AI investments, cost reductions, and technology upgrades driving the company's turnaround. * PayPal's payment, crypto, and Venmo businesses remain central as management pursues long-term growth. PayPal (PYPL) stock gained attention after the company delivered better-than-expected second-quarter 2026 results, reinforcing optimism around its ongoing recovery strategy. The payments giant exceeded Wall Street expectations on both revenue and profitability, giving investors renewed confidence in management's efforts to modernize the business. PayPal reported adjusted earnings of $1.38 per share, surpassing analyst expectations of $1.28 per share. Revenue climbed 5% year-over-year to $8.68 billion, beating forecasts of $8.47 billion. The company also generated $1.8 billion in adjusted free cash flow, providing additional financial flexibility to invest in new products, technology, and operational improvements. The stronger financial performance came as PayPal continues navigating pressure from increased competition in digital payments and changing consumer habits. The earnings improvement suggests the company's restructuring initiatives are beginning to deliver results while management focuses on improving efficiency and expanding its platform. Stripe takeover talks remain open. Alongside its earnings announcement, PayPal reignited acquisition speculation after CEO Enrique Lores indicated that the company would consider a deal if it created greater value for shareholders. Stripe and investment firm Advent International previously made a reported $53.4 billion takeover proposal, offering approximately $60.50 per share. However, PayPal appears to believe the offer undervalues the company, particularly following its stronger quarterly performance and progress on its turnaround plan. Lores stopped short of directly confirming discussions with potential buyers, noting that PayPal typically does not comment on merger speculation. However, he suggested that the company would evaluate opportunities that could deliver more value than its current independent strategy. The comments leave the possibility of a higher acquisition offer open, with analysts suggesting PayPal could command a stronger valuation. Some market estimates have placed the company's potential value closer to $70 per share, above both the current market price and Stripe's reported proposal. AI strategy drives PayPal transformation. Beyond takeover discussions, PayPal is focusing heavily on artificial intelligence as a key part of its future growth strategy. The company has incorporated AI into areas including software development, customer support, operational efficiency, and risk management. Management believes AI adoption can help reduce costs while improving customer experiences across its ecosystem. PayPal has set a target of achieving at least $1.5 billion in gross run-rate savings over the next two to three years as part of its broader efficiency program. The company is also restructuring its operations into three major segments: PayPal and checkout solutions, consumer financial services including Venmo, and payment services alongside crypto offerings. Technology upgrades support growth plans. PayPal (PYPL) stock gains attention after a Q2 earnings beat as Stripe's $53.4B takeover bid remains possible amid AI-driven turnaround plans.is also investing in infrastructure improvements as part of its long-term turnaround strategy. The company is transitioning away from traditional data center operations toward cloud-based systems while developing a more flexible and scalable technology architecture. Management expects these changes to reduce complexity and improve the company's ability to launch new financial products. By simplifying its platform and reducing organizational layers, PayPal aims to become more agile in an increasingly competitive payments market. The company's focus on modernization comes as rivals in digital payments continue expanding their offerings. From fintech startups to large technology firms entering financial services, PayPal faces growing pressure to innovate and maintain its position as a leading global payments provider. 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Amazon, OpenAI, and Natural chase different cuts of agentic checkout. Jul 28, 2026 at 5:21 pm Autonomous checkout has moved from demo to disputed business model within a single year. Amazon's Rufus-powered "Buy for Me" now completes purchases on external retailer sites on a shopper's behalf. OpenAI tried a native 4% checkout fee inside ChatGPT and pulled it after six months. A new startup, Natural, has raised $30 million to build payment rails specifically for AI agents, arguing that card and ACH rails still require a human to authorize the final payment step even after an agent has done the vendor comparison. The three companies are testing three different answers to the same question: when the "customer" is software, who captures the margin? Amazon: Zero Commission, for Now Amazon's Buy for Me feature, which launched in beta in April 2025, lets its Rufus assistant (renamed Alexa for Shopping in the US as of May 13, 2026) locate a product on an external retailer's site and complete the purchase using the customer's stored Amazon payment and shipping details. The order still routes through Amazon's checkout, order tracking, and A-to-Z guarantee. As of its beta phase, Amazon does not charge a commission on Buy for Me purchases. By March 2026, the underlying Shop Direct program had grown to more than 100 million products from over 400,000 merchants, with "tens of millions" of items eligible for Buy for Me's agentic checkout. That zero-commission structure sits in sharp contrast to Amazon's standard marketplace economics, where third-party sellers typically pay an 8-15% referral fee on top of separate fulfillment and advertising costs. Buy for Me does not touch that fee structure because the products aren't sold on Amazon's marketplace. They're purchased from the brand's own site, with Amazon acting as the payment and logistics intermediary rather than the merchant of record. The commercial upside for Amazon isn't a transaction fee; it's keeping the checkout relationship, the order history, and the customer inside the Amazon account even when the product isn't Amazon's own inventory. Some external retailers, however, have objected that Amazon is completing purchases on their websites without prior authorization. OpenAI: The Toll Booth That Didn't Scale OpenAI launched Instant Checkout inside ChatGPT on September 29, 2025, built on the Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP) co-developed with Stripe. The model was explicit: OpenAI charged merchants a 4% transaction fee on every completed purchase, layered on top of Stripe's standard processing costs (roughly 2.9% + $0.30). Etsy went live on day one; Shopify brands including Glossier, SKIMS, Spanx, and Vuori followed. PayPal joined as a payment provider on October 28, 2025. On March 4-5, 2026, OpenAI reversed course. According to Shopify president Harley Finkelstein, only about a dozen of Shopify's millions of merchants had ever gone live with the feature. OpenAI itself said the initial version "did not offer the level of flexibility that we aspire to provide," and confirmed to Modern Retail that checkout was "moving to Apps." Walmart data cited in coverage of the reversal showed ChatGPT checkout converting roughly three times worse than a click-through to Walmart's own site, even though ChatGPT reportedly drove about double the new-customer rate Walmart sees from search engines. Purchases now route through dedicated retailer apps inside ChatGPT, i.e. Instacart, Target, DoorDash, Walmart, and others where the retailer, not OpenAI, owns the checkout and the payment relationship. The 4% native fee no longer applies to a live product. The ACP protocol survived the retreat even though the fee model didn't. Stripe continued building on it, launching Link Agents (April 29, 2026) to let Stripe-managed consumer wallets approve agent purchases via Shared Payment Tokens, and x402 (February 10, 2026, with Coinbase) for stablecoin settlement on Base, Solana, and Tempo. As of recent, x402 protocol has also introduced batch settlement, a new payment scheme designed for high-frequency, micro low-value transactions performed by AI agents within predefined rules. Natural and Stripe: Competing for the Rail, Not the Retailer Natural, a San Francisco startup founded by CEO Kahlil Lalji, closed a $30 million Series A led by Forerunner Ventures' Kirsten Green on July 20, 2026 - 193 days after the company launched, bringing total funding past $40 million. The company has 17 employees. Its pitch is structural. Traditional card and ACH rails were built for human-authorized payments, and even the most autonomous shopping agent today still hits a human-in-the-loop step at the moment money actually moves. Natural wants agents to hold wallets, pay invoices, and settle with each other without that step, and plans to support both stablecoins and traditional bank rails. It views Stripe, now valued above $150 billion, as its primary competitor, alongside smaller entrants Ralio and Paygentic. "Agents are going to become one of the most, if not the most, important financial actors in the global economy. The question is not whether agents will move money. The question is who builds the infrastructure that makes agentic payments safe, reliable, compliant, and useful at scale. That is what we are building at Natural." Kahlil Lalji, CEO and Co-founder of Natural Stripe's own answer is the Agentic Commerce Protocol stack: ACP for the checkout handshake, Shared Payment Tokens that scope an agent's access to a specific merchant, amount, and expiration window, and Link Agents for consumer wallet approval. Because Shared Payment Tokens are ultimately mapped to Visa's or Mastercard's network tokens, a card-rail ACP transaction still carries standard interchange typically cited at 1.5-3.5% of cart value and standard settlement timing (T+1 to T+2). That's the specific agentic payments gap Natural and rivals are targeting: interchange and settlement lag baked into the card model, versus a purpose-built agent rail that could settle faster and cheaper, particularly for the sub-dollar, agent-to-agent transactions card rails were never designed to handle. Who Takes a Cut Today | Layer | Rate | Status (July 2026) | | Amazon Buy for Me | 0% commission | Live; beta pricing, no merchant fee disclosed beyond standard product cost | | OpenAI Instant Checkout native fee | 4% (on top of processing) | Discontinued March 2026; checkout now handled by retailer apps | | Card network interchange (via ACP/Stripe) | ~1.5-3.5%, "typically ~2%" Live; applies to any ACP transaction settled over card rails | | Stripe processing (standalone) | ~2.9% + $0.30 | Live; standard rate, independent of agentic layer | | Natural | Not yet publicly disclosed | Beta; targeting the authorization/settlement layer rather than a checkout fee | The current data point is that the only company that tried to charge an explicit, separate fee for agent-initiated checkout, OpenAI pulled it within six months, before it reached meaningful volume. What remains live and monetizing today is the layer nobody markets as an "AI fee" at all: card network interchange, unchanged whether a human or an agent initiates the transaction. Amazon and OpenAI's retailer-app model both keep the payment inside existing card-processing economics. Natural and Stripe's parallel infrastructure bets (Link Agents, x402, and Natural's own rail) are wagers that a new fee layer becomes viable once agent-to-agent and agent-to-vendor volume, not just agent-to-consumer checkout, starts to move real money. Estimates of that opportunity vary by an order of magnitude depending on definition: eMarketer's narrowest measure (checkout completed inside an AI platform) puts 2026 US volume at $20.57 billion, while McKinsey's broadest measure of AI-orchestrated retail revenue reaches $3-5 trillion globally by 2030. Nina bobro. 2091 Posts Nina is passionate about financial technologies and environmental issues, reporting on the industry news and the most exciting projects that build their offerings around the intersection of fintech and sustainability.