Mercurius Media Capital (MMC), the first US-based pooled media-for-equity fund, has made a $5m media-for-equity investment in Copper, a financial empowerment platform helping Americans earn rewards and make better financial decisions. The funding will give Copper access to MMC's premium media network and advertising inventory, with the aim of speeding up customer acquisition, broadening brand awareness, and continuing to invest...

Traditional document-based identity verification is rapidly losing the battle against AI-powered fraud. Solutions built on document capture and liveness checks, the backbone of most onboarding and authentication systems deployed over the past decade, were never engineered for the digital environment.  According to Hopae, advanced physical security features such as ultraviolet and infrared controls simply cannot be replicated online, leaving businesses...

Picture the scene: a financial institution is onboarding a new corporate client with operations spanning the UAE, the UK, and the EU. Before any relationship can be formalised, the compliance team must establish exactly what anti-money laundering obligations apply across all three jurisdictions. According to Sherlocq, in theory, it is a routine task. In practice, it requires navigating three distinct...

Regulated businesses are facing an escalating challenge: fraud tactics have grown considerably more sophisticated, and conventional detection methods are struggling to keep pace. According to SmartSearch, where a single obvious red flag once triggered an alert, teams must now navigate a landscape involving manipulated documents, synthetic identities, impersonation schemes, and complex digital deception. SmartSearch recently discussed how AI is transforming fraud...

A third of UK consumers would consider switching their bank to access a wooden payment card, according to new research by Copecto, a sustainable payment card manufacturer, highlighting growing consumer appetite for environmentally conscious banking products. The findings, published in Copecto's "Premium with Purpose" report, reveal that 68% of consumers expressed interest in wooden payment cards. Of that group, half...

Tenet Security, a North America-based CyberTech startup focused on protecting autonomous AI agents from attack, has emerged from stealth with $6m in seed funding. The round was co-led by The Westly Group, an early backer of SentinelOne, and MizMaa Ventures. The capital will fund ongoing product development, the expansion of Tenet Threat Labs, growth of the company's North American go-to-market...

1Password has acquired Apono, a just-in-time access governance specialist, in a move designed to extend its reach from securing credentials to governing what every human, machine, and AI agent is permitted to do at runtime. The deal brings together 1Password's credential security infrastructure with Apono's dynamic, policy-driven access provisioning, creating what the company describes as a unified control plane for enterprise...

Earnix, an AI decisioning platform purpose-built for the insurance sector, has unveiled AIOS, its AI Orchestration System for Insurance, designed to embed governed artificial intelligence across the full insurance lifecycle. The product extends Earnix's existing decisioning engine into areas including risk evaluation, underwriting, claims management, customer engagement, and retention, bringing consistency and speed to the moments that most directly shape...

Trace Finance, a regulated financial infrastructure provider for cross-border payments and stablecoin settlement, has closed a $32m Series A funding round led by CoinFund to scale its operations across Brazil, the United States and emerging markets. The round drew participation from Coinbase Ventures, Haun Ventures, Jump Crypto, Valor Capital, Paxos and HOF Capital, among others. Strategic backers Chainlink Labs and...

Key US WealthTech investment stats in Q1 2026: US WealthTech funding surged by 83% YoY in Q1 Deal activity projected to grow by 27% for 2026 as capital flowed into more diverse range of businesses from investors Nasdaq Private Market, a New York-based provider of liquidity and investment solutions for the private market ecosystem, raised $37.6m in a Series...