Pedro Garcia

Three stories from the past week show regulated finance racing to build its own version of the speed and flexibility crypto has long promised, on infrastructure banks and regulators actually trust. Swift has switched on a blockchain ledger with 17 of the world's largest banks. An institutional crypto trading venue has landed fresh backing from one of Japan's biggest financial groups as it pursues a US bank charter. And Singapore's iFAST is quietly assembling one of Asia's most complete...

Three stories from the past week ask the same underlying question in three very different settings: who stays in control when money starts moving through AI agents, blockchains and cross-ownership deals rather than familiar human-led channels. Robinhood used a London keynote to launch its own public blockchain and a suite of AI-driven trading tools. Canada's EQB completed a landmark acquisition that makes grocery giant Loblaw a near 20 percent shareholder in a bank. And Singapore's financial...

Three stories from the past two weeks show agentic commerce, crypto consolidation and cross-border payment connectivity all maturing from pilot to production on three different continents. In France, an AI agent completed a live purchase entirely inside existing banking infrastructure. In Japan, SBI Holdings placed its biggest bet yet on crypto exchange consolidation ahead of tighter regulation. And between Indonesia and China, a QR payment corridor built over a year of sandbox testing has...