Colombia's Scalo, Trustly's Brazil cuts and the SEC's tokenized-stock opening

Bancoomeva launches Scalo, a platform to finance fintechs in Colombia.

The cooperative bank projects more than COP 1 billion in credit over four years, and the platform will offer deposits, lending and API-ready technology built specifically for the fintech ecosystem. Scalo was co-created with the founders of Mono, which gives it a credible technical pedigree from the outset.

Dedicated bank-originated credit lines for Colombian fintechs remain scarce, and an incumbent choosing to serve rather than compete with the sector is a useful signal for the local funding stack.

Trustly's 24% layoff falls hardest on its Brazil operation.

The pay-by-bank company cut around 205 roles globally, with the Brazil team described as all or nearly all terminated and the Canadian branch reportedly dissolved; key US legal and compliance staff were also affected. Adjusted EBITDA fell to SEK 42 million in Q2 from SEK 85 million a year earlier, and first-half cash flow was negative SEK 261.7 million, with management telling bondholders it is focused on liquidity.

Brazil is the world's most advanced account-to-account market thanks to Pix, so a foreign pay-by-bank player exiting rather than doubling down says more about Trustly's balance sheet than about the opportunity.

Nubank appoints Sarah Wilson as Chief Legal Officer, effective 28 September.

Wilson joins from Circle Internet Group, where she served as general counsel and co-led the company's NYSE IPO in June 2025.

A senior stablecoin-issuer lawyer arriving at the region's largest neobank is consistent with Nu's push into US-dollar products and its expanding regulatory footprint in Mexico and Colombia.

Nu Mexico signs a framework agreement with Jalisco's Secretariat for Economic Development.

The first initiative, "Generación Nu," funds 300 technology training scholarships for women through Laboratoria, with 12 weeks of intensive training in technical skills and personal financial management. The agreement is aimed at financial and technological inclusion in the state.

The SEC grants tokenized US stock venues a five-year conditional exemption.

Issued on 17 September, two days after the CLARITY Act failed to advance in the Senate, the exemption covers qualifying venues and liquidity providers trading tokenized US equities through automated market makers and liquidity pools. Tokens must preserve equivalent shareholder rights including dividends and voting, synthetic trackers are excluded, access must be permissioned, and venues need 30 days' public notice before launch. Brainfood's read is that the structure is less useful for onshore brokerages than for extending US equities to the Global South.

Revolut breach exposes about 680 high-value crypto customers.

A group calling itself IAmNotAVillain claims to hold identity documents, balances and transaction histories after Revolut fulfilled what it believed was a legitimate government data request sent from a compromised official email domain; the attackers demanded 6,000 XMR, roughly $3 million. The incident lands as Revolut works to satisfy the security conditions of its conditional OCC bank charter and while its CEO talks up a possible dual New York and London listing.

Mercury launches Mercury Books, putting double-entry accounting inside the bank account.

The product offers accrual and cash-basis accounting at $35 a month, free until the end of 2026, with unlimited accountant seats, and Mercury says users need no other accounting software; Ramp is attacking the same workload from inside existing ledgers with Stack. With roughly one in three US startups as customers, $650 million in annualised revenue and a conditional OCC charter, Mercury is positioning to be both the bank and the system of record.

Ramp launches in the UK; Monzo launches Aura, a £15-a-month credit card.

Ramp's UK offer includes cards issued by Stripe on Visa, expense management, bill pay and Xero and QuickBooks integrations, built on its March acquisition of Billhop, with ElevenLabs and Attio among early customers. Monzo's Aura bundles 1% grocery cashback auto-invested into Monzo Investments, waives platform fees on existing ISA and GIA accounts, and adds lounge passes and streaming subscriptions, a UK version of the Robinhood Gold playbook.

Mastercard and Alchemy launch AgentCard for AI-agent purchases.

The product gives AI agents Mastercard credentials usable wherever Mastercard is accepted online, with users controlling spending limits, merchants and individual transactions; Alchemy says developers can equip an agent with an identity, wallet and credentials in under a minute. In the same vein, Mesta launched Agentic Payments and passed $2.5 billion in total payment volume, and Nexi partnered with ReFiBuy on agentic commerce for European merchants.

Enova abandons its $369 million acquisition of Grasshopper Bank; regulators warn core providers.

The high-APR lender cited regulatory uncertainty and political and consumer-advocate pressure. Separately, the OCC, FDIC and Federal Reserve issued a statement that reads as a warning to FIS, Fiserv and Jack Henry over their treatment of community banks.

FedNow is not paying off, and stablecoins make break-even harder.

Three years in, TCH's RTP still processes 97% of US instant transactions; FedNow has around 3% share, helped by Treasury routing large payments through it. The Fed budgeted $230 million in 2026 FedNow expenses against under $1 million in switch fees, 75% of small institutions belong to neither network, and digital currencies now offer the same real-time, irrevocable settlement at lower cost and with cross-border reach.

Proof launches a reusable digital identity credential for banks a week after FinCEN's CIP FAQs.

The 8 September guidance from FinCEN and the four federal bank regulators defines a verifiable credential, confirms that state mobile driver's licences count as documentary ID, and lets banks accept private-issuer credentials that meet their own standards. Proof verifies users to NIST IAL2 and binds a certificate to the phone's hardware key for signing wires and account changes.

Fever raises $250 million Series C led by EQT.

The Madrid-based live-events and experiences platform was joined by Point72 Private Investments and Baillie Gifford, one of the largest Spanish growth rounds of the year. Other European deals in the same edition include Penelope Health (€87 million, Thoreau, Bertelsmann Healthcare Investments, Seedcamp) and Munich's Arcos (€5.5 million seed, HTGF, Bayern Kapital).

Kastle raises $24 million Series A led by Insight Partners for AI agents in banking operations.

The platform has processed more than $1.8 billion in transactions, with agents handling consumer-lending work at banks and large enterprises. Elsewhere, Singapore's dtcpay extended its Series A to $25 million with SBI Group backing, and Airtel Money is reportedly trimming its London IPO target to at least $800 million from $1.5–2 billion.

Circle launches Arc Studio, and Nasdaq Private Market unveils an AI agent for private-market investing.

Arc Studio generates full-stack on-chain applications from natural-language prompts, testable across nine blockchains and exportable to developers' own repositories. Nasdaq Private Market's PAM is designed to help investors navigate private-market data through an AI interface.

Sifted on what US VCs are asking right now.

A field report on the AI questions and concerns dominating US venture conversations, useful for calibrating how European and Latin American founders should pitch American investors this autumn.

Lenny's Newsletter with Peter Sellis, former product chief at Snap and Discord.

A 97-minute conversation on why growth nearly always comes from the core product and why the median PM underperforms.