February 13, 2026 | NCFA Fintech Whisperer Weekly Intelligence | Regulation And Policy, Digital Assets Blockchain And Tokenization, Risk Compliance And Regtech, Payments And Money Movement, Digital Banking And BaaS

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This live weekly NCFA intelligence page tracks financial technology developments that significantly affect how fintechs build, sell, raise capital, and operate under scrutiny. Coverage prioritizes Canada and includes global events that directly influence competitive conditions, market access, and execution realities across fintech sectors.  This page will be updated throughout the week with market movers in a live format and then each week we'll close the prior week's contents in prep for the upcoming week, and continue on a rolling basis.  (Missed prior week's Fintech Whisperer?  (December 6-12, 2025, December 13-19, 2025, January 1-9, 2026, January 10-16, 2026, January 17-23, 2026, January 24-30, 2026, January 31-February 6, 2026).

Weekly Fintech Market Intelligence Feb 7-13, 2026

Regulation And Policy

Bessent Urges Congress To Pass A Crypto Regulation Bill This Spring

• Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent calls on Congress to pass a crypto regulation bill this spring.
• The report links stablecoin rules and broader crypto market structure to current policy debate, with banks and crypto firms pushing competing views on how far stablecoins can go inside everyday payments.
• The report describes bank lobbying tension around stablecoins, including concerns about deposit flight and how reward features could accelerate it.

If Congress moves in the spring, US partners will start asking harder questions now on stablecoin rewards, reserve treatment, and how customer funds and disclosures work across the full stack. Canadian fintechs that sell into US banks, issuers, brokers, or payment programs should treat this as a near term diligence trigger and tighten their positioning on governance, controls, and commercial terms before counterparties freeze decisions waiting for clarity.

US Treasury Opens A Whistleblower Intake For Fraud And Sanctions Evasion

• The release says FinCEN launches a dedicated intake page for confidential tips tied to fraud, money laundering, and sanctions violations.
• It points tipsters to the confidential whistleblower tips page on the FinCEN site.
• Complex fraud rings and sanctions evasion patterns surface faster through insiders, vendors, or counterparties, not only through bank monitoring.

This can tighten the enforcement loop for fintech ecosystems that touch payments, onboarding, compliance tooling, crypto rails, and cross border flows. Expect more partner questions on how you detect red flags, how you document decisions, and how quickly you can freeze, unwind, and report activity when a credible tip lands. Teams that treat case management and audit trails as part of the product will move faster in enterprise sales and face fewer surprises when an investigation starts.

CIRO Publishes InnovateSafe Application Guidance For Firms

• Sets out eligibility, intake materials, review stages, and expectations for time limited testing under CIRO oversight with clear non-endorsement guardrails.
• Practical path for firms that need room to test novel investor facing models while staying inside dealer rules.
• Gives founders a clearer way to plan timelines, evidence controls, and shorten the loop with regulators when a model does not fit standard categories.

This matters because sandbox access only helps when it reduces time and uncertainty. Teams that show strong governance, clear client protections, and clean reporting will move faster than teams that treat testing as a demo day.  Learn about eligibility of the application process.

Hong Kong Sets Out A Digital Asset Policy With Tokenization In Focus

• The statement links current digital asset policy work to market structure outcomes, with a clear focus on tokenization moving closer to real world deployment.
• Tokenization momentum as institutional adoption increases, which puts pressure on regulators to make rules usable for live products, not just pilots.
• Regulation as a competitive lever, where clarity can attract issuers, platforms, and service providers that need stable operating conditions.

When a major hub ties tokenization to competitiveness, it raises the stakes for everyone else. Canadian fintechs that sell tokenized rails, custody, compliance, or payments infrastructure should watch how Hong Kong turns policy into approvals, because global buyers will compare jurisdictions and pick the one that reduces execution risk. The winners will package governance, controls, and reporting into the product so expansion doesn't turn into a compliance rebuild.

Crowdcube Says FCA Removes Fundraising Caps Pathway

• Crowdcube presents this as a material change for companies raising on its platform.  See FCA new rules for public offers and admissions to trading regime.
• The post connects the change to UK fundraising rules and the practical ability to raise larger rounds through platform led offers.
• The update matters for founders and investors because it can change round sizing, syndication strategy, and platform selection in the UK market.

If the UK market truly removes practical caps for platform led raises, UK equity crowdfunding starts to compete more directly with later stage private rounds, not just seed. Canadian issuers and Canadian investors who already treat the UK as a secondary capital lane should watch how this affects round structure, disclosure burden, investor protections, and the cost of running a raise at scale.

Canada Launches 2026 Canada Luxembourg Financial Policy Dialogue

• The Prime Minister and Luxembourg Prime Minister announce the launch of the 2026 Canada Luxembourg Financial Sector Policy Dialogue that brings together finance officials to advance collaboration on financial stability, sustainable finance, fintech innovation, and capital markets development.
• The release also welcomes the establishment of the McGill Luxembourg Centre for Finance and a Master of Management in Finance program, with a focus on research collaboration and student and talent exchanges.
• The leaders also point to ongoing discussions on the Defence, Security and Resilience Bank, framed as multi-year low-cost financing for defence, security, and resilience initiatives.

This opens a practical channel for policy and market alignment with a top tier global finance hub. Fintechs that sell into banks, asset managers, or capital markets should track what this dialogue prioritizes, because it can influence what partners will fund, which standards they adopt, and where they source talent. Teams that can show real solutions in sustainable finance workflows, regulated innovation, and cross border market plumbing can use this moment to get in front of the right officials and decision makers early.

SEC Remarks Put Tokenized Securities Back Inside Market Rules

• Links tokenized securities to the same core outcomes buyers already demand, clear custody responsibility, reliable recordkeeping, and workable settlement.
• Sets expectations that product teams need to map on chain design to existing obligations, not treat tokenization as a separate lane.
• Raises the bar for any firm pitching tokenized market access, because partners will ask how controls, supervision, and investor protections work end to end.

This matters because institutional adoption follows clarity. If your product cannot explain who holds control, who reconciles records, and how disputes get resolved, distribution will slow down no matter how good the tech looks.

EU Competition Case Targets WhatsApp Access For Third Party AI Assistants

• The Commission sends a Statement of Objections that sets out a preliminary view that Meta breaches EU antitrust rules by excluding third party general purpose AI assistants from accessing and interacting with users on WhatsApp.
• The Commission says Meta announces updated WhatsApp Business Solution Terms on Oct 15, 2025 that effectively ban third party general purpose AI assistants, and since Jan 15, 2026 only Meta AI remains available on WhatsApp while competitors are excluded.
• The Commission says it intends to impose interim measures to prevent serious and irreparable harm to competition, subject to Meta’s reply and rights of defence, and it references the ongoing case file AT.41034 in the public case register ('Exclusion of AI competitors from WhatsApp").

Competition under the microscope, and it matters far beyond chatbots. If regulators treat access to high reach consumer channels as a competition issue, fintechs and financial institutions that rely on dominant platforms for onboarding, support, commerce, and embedded services should expect tighter questions about platform dependency, partner lock in, and contingency plans when a gatekeeper changes the rules.

Digital Banking And BaaS

Raqami Secures Pakistan Digital Retail Bank Licence

• The State Bank of Pakistan granted Raqami Islamic Digital Bank a Digital Retail Bank licence and declared it a scheduled bank effective February 6, 2026.
• The approval moves Raqami beyond restricted pilot operations into commercial digital retail banking.
• Raqami is launching a fully digital, Shariah-compliant banking model designed to serve individuals, freelancers, women, agricultural customers, youth and underserved communities.

Pakistan has moved a fully digital Islamic bank from pilot to commercial operations. The market test is now whether API-first banking and Shariah-compliant products can expand formal financial access at scale while meeting the control, resilience and trust expectations attached to a newly licensed bank.

Digital Assets, Blockchain And Tokenization

UK Treasury Appoints HSBC For Digital Gilt Instrument (DIGIT) Pilot

• Confirms a platform provider for the Digital Gilt Instrument pilot tied to the UK wholesale digital markets work.
• Puts tokenized sovereign issuance into an execution phase that forces choices around onboarding, settlement operations, and legal certainty.
• Creates a clear reference point for vendors that sell issuance tooling, custody, post trade workflows, and compliance automation.

The DIGIT pilot forces a few hard questions that every tokenized issuance vendor will face next. Who carries legal finality at each step. How participants reconcile token records with existing books without creating mismatches in stress. How the platform handles failed settlement, partial fills, and corporate actions without manual fire drills. HSBC’s selection also sets a benchmark for what UK buyers treat as table stakes, clean integration into current dealer and custodian workflows, clear control over keys and permissions, and audit ready evidence for every movement. If you sell issuance tooling, custody, post trade automation, or compliance workflows, you should map your roadmap to those practical asks now, because this pilot will shape the next wave of due diligence questions across wholesale markets.

Standard Chartered And B2C2 Partner To Expand Institutional Access To Digital Assets

• The announcement sets out a strategic partnership that combines a global bank’s banking rails and settlement capabilities with institutional crypto liquidity across spot and options markets.
• The plan gives B2C2 clients a path to direct connectivity and liquidity provision into a regulated banking network, which targets faster and more reliable fiat to crypto settlement.
• The release positions the partnership as a way to reduce friction in fiat to crypto flows for asset managers, hedge funds, corporates, and family offices.

This puts distribution and settlement on the same track as liquidity. Fintechs selling custody, treasury, payments, or compliance tooling should expect tougher buyer questions on how funds move end to end, how controls stay intact through banking rails, and how settlement risk gets boxed in when volume spikes.

Bank Negara Malaysia Onboards Ringgit Stablecoin And Tokenized Deposit Pilots

• Bank Negara Malaysia onboards three initiatives under its Digital Asset Innovation Hub to test real world applications involving ringgit stablecoins and tokenized deposits during 2026.
• The initiatives focus on wholesale payment use cases across domestic and cross border transactions, including settlement of tokenized assets.
• One participating institution says it received approval to participate in the hub and plans to explore tokenization of sukuk issuance and tokenized deposit representations to support end to end payment and settlement workflows.

If Malaysia standardizes supervised testing around wholesale payments and asset settlement, builders should track what the regulator expects around issuance controls, settlement finality, and operational risk. For banks and fintech partners, the fastest path to scale usually comes from proving how the money behaves under stress, not from polishing the user interface.

FCA Starts Legal Action Against HTX Over Crypto Promotions

• The regulator begins legal proceedings against HTX (formerly Huobi) for promoting cryptoasset services to UK consumers without complying with the UK crypto financial promotions regime.
• The FCA asked social media platforms to block HTX accounts for UK users and asked for removal of HTX apps from UK app stores.
• They said HTX took steps to restrict new UK customer registrations after proceedings began, but it says existing UK users can still log in and access unlawful promotions, and it points readers to the warning list for unauthorised firms.

Fintech teams that rely on paid social, affiliates, influencers, or embedded widgets should treat marketing controls as part of the product. Buyers and partners will ask who approves copy, how teams prove UK targeting rules, and how fast they can pull campaigns across every channel. The teams that answer those questions cleanly keep momentum. The teams that cannot will watch growth stall at the trust layer.  On a similar vein in Canada, the CSA and CIRO Set Clear Rules for Finfluencers.

Bithumb Mistakenly Sends Bitcoin Worth $44B To Users

• Bithumb confirms it mistakenly sends bitcoin to users after a glitch in its reward distribution system.
• The mistaken distribution totals about $44B worth of bitcoin and the exchange asks users to return the funds.
• Police also urge recipients to return the mistakenly sent bitcoin.
• Lee Chan-jin, governor of the Financial Supervisory Service (FSS) says tougher crypto rules needed, "It is a case that shows the structural problems of electronic systems for virtual assets. There are many areas we are seriously looking into, and we are particularly worried about the issue of electronic systems."

This kind of operational failure rarely stays a one day headline in regulated markets. It turns into tougher questions from banks, insurers, and regulators about change controls, payout logic, segregation, and how quickly a platform can prove what happened. Fintech teams should treat payment engines and automated transfers like critical infrastructure, with tight permissions, clear audit trails, and hard stops that prevent a bad config from turning into a balance sheet event.

Market Infrastructure

LSEG Plans An On Chain Settlement Capability With A Digital Securities Depository

• The release describes plans for an on chain settlement capability through an LSEG Digital Securities Depository, subject to regulatory approval.
• It positions interoperability between traditional and digital market infrastructure as a core requirement for tokenized settlement at scale.
• It raises expectations for integration, resiliency, and operational control across token records and existing post trade systems.

LSEG putting its name behind on chain settlement changes the competitive map, where regulators, CCPs, CSDs, custodians, and major brokers set the rules of the road. Interoperability becomes the make or break issue, not chain choice, because participants will demand one operating model that works across traditional settlement, collateral, corporate actions, and reporting. Fintechs that want to matter here should lean into the hard parts, how they reconcile token and legacy records without gaps, how they manage permissions and key control at institutional scale, and how they keep settlement predictable during spikes, outages, and exceptions. The winners will look like the safest pair of hands in the room, with proof that their tooling reduces manual breaks and shrinks settlement risk for real participants, not just pilot users.

South Africa Plans To Use ECB Repo Liquidity Lines For Euro Backstop

• The South African Reserve Bank governor says South Africa wants to use new European Central Bank repo liquidity lines if they are available.
• The ECB plans to make its repo liquidity lines cheaper and easier to access, and that the lines let foreign central banks borrow euros against euro denominated collateral during stress periods.
• The governor links the value of a repo line to trade and investment ties with Europe and says it would help underpin that trade.

This matters because cross border money movement often breaks first when liquidity gets tight. A stronger euro backstop can reduce settlement fear for banks that route Europe linked flows, and it can change how counterparties price risk in FX, trade finance, and payouts. Fintechs that sell treasury, FX, and cross border payment tooling can stand out when they show how their rails behave under stress and how they keep funds moving when funding markets turn ugly.

Conclusion

Stablecoin reward design sits on the desk of banks and lawmakers. CIRO custody expectations raise the standard for how platforms document segregation and access. The UK payments plan turns into real requirements that land inside onboarding, fraud controls, and settlement resilience. Tokenized assets, including tokenized gold, now face the same demand from buyers, show custody, show redemption, and show who owns the problem when something goes wrong. NCFA offers various curated resources to help founders and investors stay current on developments that impact fintech markets, subscribe to NCFA weekly newsletter updates, view a rundown of current fintech news and insights, or dive into the latest fintech industry research.

The National Crowdfunding & Fintech Association (NCFA Canada) is a financial innovation ecosystem that provides education, market intelligence, industry stewardship, networking and funding opportunities and services to thousands of community members and works closely with industry, government, partners and affiliates to create a vibrant and innovative fintech and funding industry in Canada. Decentralized and distributed, NCFA is engaged with global stakeholders and helps incubate projects and investment in fintech, alternative finance, crowdfunding, peer-to-peer finance, payments, digital assets and tokens, artificial intelligence, blockchain, cryptocurrency, regtech, and insurtech sectors. Join Canada's Fintech & Funding Community today FREE! Or become a contributing member and get perks. For more information, please visit: www.ncfacanada.org

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