Monzo in talks to Nubank 🤝, Revolut trials Pay with Smile 😀, ACH use rises 📈

Monzo is in early talks with Nubank parent Nu Holdings about a potential £8 billion to £10 billion sale, with Morgan Stanley and Qatalyst ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌  ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ 

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Try Genie for Free  See how Genie solves the missing context problem → 📱 News & Trends Monzo in talks about multibillion-pound sale to Brazil's Nubank (6 minute read) Monzo is in early talks with Nubank parent Nu Holdings about a potential £8 billion to £10 billion sale, with Morgan Stanley and Qatalyst advising as Monzo also weighs a new funding round to support European expansion. A deal would give Nubank an immediate UK and European banking foothold through Monzo's 16 million customers and £1.7 billion of annual revenue, while likely ending Monzo's near-term path to a standalone IPO. Revolut trials Pay with Smile (2 minute read) Revolut customers can now pay for coffee with their face at three Kiss the Hippo cafés in Bloomsbury, Chelsea, and Soho. The in-store facial recognition checkout, Revolut Pay with Smile, allows customers to pay for their purchases with a simple glance, with 0% processing fees for merchants on all transactions. ACH use rises for B2B payments (4 minute read) ACH has overtaken checks as the most common US B2B payment method by transaction count, rising from 25% of payments in 2015 to 41% in 2024 while checks fell from 32% to 13%. ACH transaction value nearly doubled to $70 trillion over the period, though wires still dominate by value at roughly $1 quadrillion, showing that businesses are steadily shifting routine payments toward electronic rails even as checks remain widely used. 🚀 Deep Dives & Reports Agent Wars: Amazon vs. Muse (10 minute read) Simon Taylor argues that Amazon's decision to block Meta's Muse agent is an early battle over who owns the customer, captures commerce fees, and bears liability when AI agents transact on users' behalf. He expects the key infrastructure layer to be “Know Your Agent” standards that authenticate agents, define delegated authority, and allocate liability, with merchants, wallets, card networks, platforms, and infrastructure providers all competing to control that trust layer. Deep Dive: Why AI is booming, but productivity isn't (4 minute read) AI tools are already cheap enough to generate positive ROI, but productivity gains are getting trapped inside inefficient organizational processes, meetings, approvals, and poorly designed workflows. The biggest gains appear to accrue to companies that redesign how work gets done around AI, suggesting that AI may widen the gap between strong and weak operators rather than lift productivity evenly across the economy. 💻 Launches & Products A Drone Expert Is Making Flying Cars A Reality (Sponsor) After years on military drones, Doron Merdinger saw where the tech was heading: people flying from their driveways. So he built Doroni. Morgan Stanley projects urban air mobility will reach $9T by 2050. With first deliveries targeted for 2028, you can still invest at the private stage. Invest at $3.30/share before the price changes on 10/23 Cleverbridge completes France's first Passkey-authenticated agentic purchase, on a Revolut card (2 minute read) Cleverbridge, a managed global commerce platform for software and technology companies, today announced that it completed France's first Passkey-authenticated agentic payment in a live checkout in a pilot with Visa and Revolut announced earlier this month. UK banks pilot tokenised deposit transactions (2 minute read) UK banks have collaborated to complete the first live customer transactions using tokenised sterling deposits. The transactions were delivered through the Great British Tokenised Deposit (GBTD) initiative, which was convened by UK Finance and involves Barclays, HSBC UK, Lloyds Banking Group, Monzo, Nationwide, NatWest, and Santander. 🎁 Miscellaneous Numeral raises $100M Series C to expand AI-powered tax compliance (5 minute read) Numeral raised a $100 million Series C led by Insight Partners, bringing total funding to $157 million as it expands its AI-powered sales tax compliance platform across software, manufacturing, distribution, and wholesale. The company says transaction volume is up 327% year over year and is positioning itself as end-to-end tax infrastructure spanning nexus monitoring, registrations, calculation, filings, remittance, and exemption certificates, with support for VAT and GST in more than 90 countries. SEC clarifies that certain staked Ethereum receipt tokens are not securities (3 minute read) SEC staff clarified that liquid-staking receipt tokens tied to non-security crypto assets like ETH generally are not securities when they simply represent ownership of the underlying staked asset and do not add separate rights, returns, or managerial promises. The guidance builds on the SEC's earlier position on liquid staking, but remains staff guidance rather than binding law, meaning its treatment could change through future rulemaking, legislation, or a different administration. ⚡ Quick Links Ramp turns bill pay into a one-night Broadway musical (5 minute read) Ramp is staging Bill Pay The Musical for one night on Broadway on September 25, starring Billy Porter, Billy Zane, and Jessica Vosk as an elaborate promotion for its accounts payable product. Tools Are Getting Better. Are We? (2 minute read) Product work creates both output and learning, and AI risks accelerating the first without compounding the second. BNPL regulation: the growing role of data in credit decisioning (5 minute read) The old BNPL model made borrowing feel like a payment choice rather than a credit decision. Love TLDR? Tell your friends and get rewards! Share your referral link below with friends to get free TLDR swag! https://sparklp.co/328608df/12 Track your referrals here. Want to advertise in TLDR? 📰 If your company is interested in reaching an audience of fintech professionals and decision makers, you may want to advertise with us. Want to work at TLDR? 💼 Apply here, create your own role or send a friend's resume to jobs@tldr.tech and get $1k if we hire them! TLDR is one of Inc.'s Best Bootstrapped businesses of 2025. If you have any comments or feedback, just respond to this email! 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