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Ideas for the next decade of finance.

Weekly analysis of the banking and financial services stories that matter, written for the people who have to act on them. Press ⌘K to search.

latest · essay · 8 min

From prompt engineering to context engineering

An agent's quality is decided by what goes into its context window, not by the wording of its prompt. For a bank, that context is a governed data supply chain.

OCT 18, 2026 · AI in Banking
Brief4 min

Amex's $350m AML penalty puts card flows inside the risk assessment

US regulators found American Express missed about $13bn of suspected trade-based laundering because its AML programme was built around deposits, not the card business.

OCT 11, 2026 · Risk & RegTech
Essay9 min

AI does not break the SDLC. It breaks its pace and its gates

Code written with AI is still deterministic. What strains is the lifecycle around it: human-paced sprints, review gates and requirements. The AIDLC redesigns them for a bank.

OCT 04, 2026 · AI in Banking
Brief4 min

The Fed's stablecoin rules land 113 days before the GENIUS deadline

With every federal regulator's draft now published, US banks must decide before January whether stablecoins are a product, a threat to deposits, or both.

SEP 27, 2026 · Payments
Essay3 min

US open banking is about to get a price. Banks should set it well

The CFPB's rewrite of the Section 1033 rule is heading for review with data-access fees on the table. The banks that design fair pricing will shape what follows.

AUG 23, 2026 · Open Banking
Brief2 min

Wells Fargo takes tokenised deposits to corporate clients

A launch starting with dollar-to-sterling payments this autumn moves tokenised bank money from industry initiative to client product.

AUG 09, 2026 · Payments
Essay3 min

The Fed's payment account and the end of bank-only payment rails

A proposed account would give eligible non-traditional institutions direct access to Fedwire and FedNow. Correspondent banking for fintechs is about to change.

JUL 26, 2026 · Payments
Brief2 min

Klarna applies for a US bank charter through the ILC route

Buy now, pay later's largest player wants to bring its US banking in-house, joining PayPal and Affirm in the queue for industrial loan company charters.

JUL 12, 2026 · Fintech
Essay3 min

US banks are not choosing between deposit tokens and stablecoins

In one week, the largest US banks backed tokenised deposits for settlement and a Zelle stablecoin for remittances. Each form of digital money is finding its own job.

JUN 21, 2026 · Payments
Brief2 min

Seventeen US banks back a shared network for tokenised deposits

The Clearing House's initiative puts on-chain settlement of bank money inside the existing banking system, connected to RTP and CHIPS.

JUN 07, 2026 · Payments
Framework2 min

Before you switch on a vendor's AI agent: a five-step check

Core and technology providers are now shipping AI agents that act inside banks' systems. Here is what to establish before the first one goes live.

MAY 31, 2026 · AI in Banking
Brief2 min

Fiserv's agentOS turns the core provider into an agent platform

The largest US core provider now wants to run banks' AI agents as well as their accounts. That changes the build-or-buy question for every community bank.

MAY 17, 2026 · AI in Banking
Brief2 min

Adyen buys Talon.One to decide the offer before the payment

A €750m deal moves loyalty and promotions into the payment flow, the moment a merchant knows exactly who the customer is.

APR 26, 2026 · Payments