Lesaka awaits SARB’s regulatory shift to drive fintech growth
Fintech firm Lesaka Technologies is looking forward to the South African Reserve Bank (SARB) opening the payments market to non-banking players.
So said Lincoln Mali, CEO of Lesaka Southern Africa, today in an interview with ITWeb, after the JSE- and Nasdaq-listed company announced its financial results for the third quarter of fiscal 2025 (Q3 2025).
SARB recently announced its intention to include non-bank entities in the national clearing and settlement system.
Airtel plans 2026 IPO for mobile money unit in push against M-Pesa, MoMo
Airtel Africa plans to list its mobile money unit, Airtel Money, in the first half of 2026 as the telecoms giant seeks to capitalise on the growing demand for digital payment services across the continent.
On Thursday, Airtel confirmed the listing plan amid growing investor appetite for Africa’s fintech sector, particularly mobile payment platforms that offer millions of unbanked users access to transactions, credit, and remittances. Airtel Africa, listed in London and operating in 14 African countries, told Reuters the IPO would give Airtel Money the independence and visibility to scale its operations.
The planned IPO signals Airtel Money’s move to close the gap with rivals like Safaricom’s M-Pesa and MTN’s MoMo in the booming digital payments market. By getting autonomy and raising capital from the IPO, Airtel Money hopes to compete with heavyweights that enjoy large user bases and deep market penetration.
Read more: https://techcabal.com/2025/05/08/airtel-money-africa-ipo-2026/
PayPal and dLocal expand payments services in emerging markets
dLocal has expanded its partnership with PayPal to provide businesses with enhanced capabilities to process payments in more than 40 new emerging markets.
This leverages dLocal’s platform to facilitate both B2B and B2C payment flows without establishing local entities.
The tie-up leverages PayPal Enterprise Payments, previously known as Braintree, transforming the way merchants approach international e-commerce.
Read more: https://www.electronicpaymentsinternational.com/news/dlocal-paypal-payments-markets/
Stripe Launches Stablecoin Accounts and AI Model for Payments
Stripe announced Wednesday (May 7) new product launches focused on leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) and stablecoins to support business growth.
Among these, the company debuted an AI foundation model to improve fraud detection and authorization rates. Dubbed the Payments Foundation Model, it is trained on tens of billions of transactions and incorporates hundreds of “subtle signals” per payment, which it said specialized models cannot capture.
The technology firm plans to deploy this model across its payments suite to improve performance in ways that were previously unattainable. Stripe stated that early results indicate the model’s effectiveness, particularly against card testing attacks, where it increased detection rates beyond the 80% reduction achieved over two years with previous models.
Mastercard Launches UK-Based Open Banking Pact With Cardstream
Mastercard has teamed with British FinTech Cardstream to promote open banking payments.
The partnership will allow Cardstream to bolster its Payment Facilitation-as-a-Service (PFaaS) platform and allow customers to offer open banking payments to merchants and retailers throughout the U.K., the companies said in a Wednesday (May 7) news release.
“There’s strong demand for open banking payments as a secure and convenient way to pay alongside cards,” Adam Sharpe, CEO of Cardstream, said in the announcement.
Juice Secures £25M to Expand SME Lending in the UK
London-based fintech lending platform Juice has secured £25 million in funding to bolster its mission of making finance more accessible to digital SME founders.
The funding, which includes backing from family offices Aern Capital and Falco Capital and a credit facility from Paragon Bank, will support Juice’s efforts to provide tailored growth capital solutions for small and medium-sized businesses.
The UK is currently facing a £22 billion funding gap for SMEs, with more than half of businesses turning away from traditional high street banks to meet their lending needs.
Read more: https://fintechnews.ch/funding/juice-raises-25m-sme-lending-uk/76029/
