Karsten Wenzlaff, Advisor
August 26th, 2025
Karsten Wenzlaff is a Crowdfunding and Fintech Expert from Germany. He is Secretary-General of Digit[...]
FINTECH FRIDAY$ Podcast (EP.1-Jul 20): with Samir Bandali of CoinPayments
NCFA Canada | Craig Asano | July 20, 2018
Fintech Fridays Podcast ep1-Jul 20: Interview with Samir Bandali of CoinPayments
Host: Manseeb Khan, NCFA
Guest: Samir Bandali, Director of Strategic Partnerships, CoinPayments
To kickoff the first episode of our Fintech Fridays weekly podcast, our host Manseeb Khan is joined by Samir Bandli, Director of Strategic Partnerships of CoinPayments, to talk about the future of crypto from its role today and its role in the future. CoinPayments offers merchants an option to accept cryptocurrency as a form of payment and currently works with over 700+ altcoins.
Join NCFA's weekly Podcast series 'FINTECH FRIDAY$' where we sit down with the incredible people in the Fintech community and talk about leading fintech products innovations developments and challenges!
Subscribe and tune in each Friday to check out the latest movers and shakers in fintech.
Listen to more Fintech Fridays podcasts here
Transcription of Interview
NCFA: Hey everyone Manseeb Khan and you are tuning into the NCFA Canada's newest podcast series called Fintech Fridays where we sit down with the incredible people in the Fin-tech community and talk about leading fintech products innovations developments and challenges. Today I'm here with Samir Bandali from CoinPayments. Samir thanks so much for being here.
CoinPayments: Thanks for having me Manseeb, I'm very excited share what we do in the world.
NCFA: Yeah before I even started I did a lot of research. Can you tell us what CoinPayments is about? The problem is trying to solve, and I guess the achievements it’s trying to make?
CoinPayments: Sure thing. CoinPayments primarily a multi-currency online wallet allowing users to store and transact with crypto currencies and allowing merchants to accept those crypto currencies for goods services CoinPayments was established in about 2013. As the first alt coin payment processor in the world is in a time when most cryptocurrency companies were focused primarily on bitcoin and our founder and CEO Alex came up with this idea to create a company that's focused on all of the tokens that were available to the market. So CoinPayments solved the problem of utility tokens not having a real-world use case. And over the past five years we've grown into one of the largest. Cryptocurrency payment processors. In the whole world. Today we support over. 535. Different digital currencies. Aligned merchants and users to store hold and use these currencies in one stop. One log international online. At this time, we have one point five million vendors worldwide. We're really starting to see that cryptocurrency is making that next move. Into a mainstream merchant adoption. And real-world utility cases. CoinPayments prides ourselves on being a coin agnostic system. Where we really focus on being.
A support platform for the entire cryptocurrency industry. Yeah 2017 was a huge year for us. We. Experienced exponential growth. Process almost 1 billion dollars in transactions a crypto currency. Things are just picking up. We created a plug in for Shopify recently. Fellow Canadian company there and we also have other plugins. WOOCommerce, OS commerce, Magento. Basically, every major e-commerce platform. In the world.
NCFA: Okay. Damn that's incredible. I'm glad you guys are providing an amazing service, so my next question would be why should merchants consider offering a Crypto payment solution?
CoinPayments: So, I think the big thing to remember here is cryptocurrency is still in the very early infancy stages. Even though bitcoin started out in 2011 we're still innovating technology every day and finding a way to maximize efficiency and really allow people to transact an international scale. So, I think what merchants have to realize when you select crypto currency as a payment option you're tapping into this entirely new market of people all around the world that are holding these coins and basically gaining this value off of this massive increase in markets and don't know what to do with or how to spend it. So if you're running a business and let's say you're making a million dollars in a year of sales realistically if you add cryptos to that maybe one or two percent well we'll start out in crypto so a majority of your business your operations will still be run with traditional fiat currency but you're just giving your users an additional option and tapping into new market so it's really just extra money and a little bit of fun because it gives you the option to speculate maybe hold on to some crypto and learn about where the future of fintech is going and inevitably one day this is going to be worth a lot more market share.
NCFA: So how many wallets do you guys currently connect to?
CoinPayments: So, as I mentioned before CoinPayments currently supports our 535 different currencies. Now a lot of those currencies are just a wallet solution for somewhere to store and for users to be able to send and receive with other like peer to peer. Our merchant API connects to just about a hundred of those currencies. So those wallets basically enable merchants to accept any of the 100 currencies support with the API. And additionally, we have a really cool feature called Pay by name. And what that does is it allows a store or a person to set up a quick nickname we call it a cash tags sign let's say Samir for myself. That immediately opens up the gateway to access all the currencies that are available in a shopping cart. So rather than providing a defense hash or wallet ID all you have to do is a dollar sign and CFA and someone can send you any of the currencies that we close for them.
NCFA: Damn, I love the sound of that and that's awesome. So, what would be the hottest crypto currencies that you are currently seeing and like the type of volumes that you're seeing.
CoinPayments: So I mean we were in a highly volatile market here so there's a flavor of the month… every day sometimes you know me recently we're part of the integration between Verge and Pornhub which were his largest porn site in the world to accept our Verge currency which is a privacy coin. We've been trying to build relationships with different communities and very close with the decred community Token pay a couple couple coins that are focusing on merchant adoption but I think we're still in a BTC dominated world in my opinion the hottest cryptocurrency will always be bitcoin because it's the only one with the true liquidity at this point I guess. And and I'd say 60 to 70 percent of our overall volume still comes in bitcoin even though we focus on all these markets so instead of us.
So how do you see Coinpayments play a role into like things like cannabis right because cannabis is just starting to get legal in Canada. It's been getting legal in a couple of states. There's definitely a being online merchants for cannabis like hemp products and all that so I guess how do you see crypto playing a role in that? So that one's actually a little bit tricky. The reason being both cannabis and cryptocurrency are very new emerging markets as far as regulatory jurisdiction. And really how authorities are going to be looking at the legalities and how it all fits in and cannabis has been obviously illegal for a long time and even that I think yesterday the government passed that bill making it legal but it's still very much a gray area. A lot of people it's it's kind of like a stigma around it. The crypocurrency is very much the same way basically your regulatory authorities haven't found a clear path as to how they want to treat cryptocurrency whether it's a currency or commodity security whatever you want to call it. So, I mean the big thing with cannabis becoming legal is tax right? and government is going to make access of this a big problem with cops right now as direction as to how taxes and cryptocurrency relate. So, I think it's probably going to be a little bit of time before we really see a true marriage between cryptocurrency and cannabis although it is inevitable down the line. I think both markets need to find clear direction and a clear path to regulatory authority before we can really merge them because at this time if you're taking one gray area into another gray area and just gets a lot darker gray. Yeah yeah.
NCFA: Very, very true as we heard the CoinPayments is currently running a airdrop campaign. You talk a little bit more about that?
CoinPayments: For sure. So, as I said that we've been around for about five years now and we have 1.5 million users worldwide and a lot of merchants who've been with us from the start and stop with us over the times as we develop all these new exciting features like pay by name and a few that I can't even name right now but are rolling out in the next few months here. We decided it will be a cool opportunity to give a little bit back to our customers who've been loyal to us for a long time and at the same time create some sort of incentive to be able to compete with all these new emerging companies trying to do the same thing that we're doing. So, we decided to do an airdrop to create our own basically native platform token and it will allow all of our users to save 50 percent on transaction fees and conversion fees. Wow. I'm transacting with that coin as well as upcoming allocations and ICOs that are using CoinPayments as the payment gateway for the platform. So, our users will now be able to participate in these projects using the CPS coin that we're dropping the airdrop is officially happening on July 1st. So, there's still time if anybody wants to get involved. You can check out more information at W W W dot CoinPayments coin dot com or just sign up for an account add. WWW.Coinpayments.net. And. You're eligible for free tokens right off the bat. Giving 100 free coins each user. Which equates to about twelve dollars in value.
NCFA: So, I guess what are future opportunities that you guys are seeing a CoinPayments like can you give me like a rough roadmap and I guess some of the challenges ahead.
CoinPayments: I know you definitely thought of it like there's some tokens you can't talk about yet although I do have a couple of things I can release to the public so I find it kind of a natural evolution in our company to start to morph towards. Not only just a wallet provider and a payment processor but it's also kind of build out an exchange and allow users to really have a one stop shop to use crypto currency in any way that they want. So are our long-term plan here is to be able to basically create an environment that allows users to converge freely between the coins that we host on our system as much as you want on a regular exchange. And also following that would be. To allow merchants. And easy fiat. Settlements option or even users an easy fiat on-boarding. So, for CoinPayments Is to truly be that place where. You can log into the site. Deposit. Some money buy some crypto. Change or for whatever other crypto you want to use. Use that crypto in the real world to buy tangible products and services and potentially cash that back out to your bank account if you're if you're wanting to do that. So, we're really working towards becoming full service one stop shop. And I think over the next three or four months we're going to roll out some features that are going to surprise a lot of people and really make us competitive with the large players in this industry like the Coinbases. What would be your top two to three golden nuggets when it comes fintech and investors and FinTech founders that are trying to build something with in Canada.
I am a huge advocate on education right now. I believe the next big jump for crypto to really start to make a dent in FinTech is truly educating people on what's cryptocurrency as how to use cryptocurrency. Like I've been involved in this space for a few years now and I can still say that well over 90 percent of my friends don't even understand what bitcoin is or the fact that you can divide a bitcoin into 100 million pieces or you can actually buy a car or a watch or a T-shirt with that question on the Internet right now. People are still in this weird phase where you're seeing mainstream media outlets extremely uneducated sharing useless facts with people and guys like Rebel CEO being like we're going to be bigger than Bitcoin. There's all this weird fud in the market and I just think that the big thing for all of us and a responsibility we have by being in this industry is to educate people and walk them through how they can be a part of this emerging cryptocurrency phenomenon.
NCFA: Yeah now that makes sense because if we want everybody to use it helps that everybody knows how to use it and when to use and where to use right and that comes with like all working together like I think the overall market share of crypto towards money is like zero point one percent on a global scale.
CoinPayments: Now as we grow there is enough room for everyone and it's definitely going to be about working together building communities. And you see that a lot of crypto each of these different projects have very active communities. People who are involved in the early days are engaged and they want to learn, and they want to spread that learning and education everybody so in any couple of years coming up a bench.
NCFA: Yeah, I think so too because like from what I'm taking away your I guess your golden nugget would be just like make sure you not only share within the community that you've built around your company but share within the complete world still community in general right. So as long as everybody kind of knows what to expect or they get they get everyone get kind of navigate within the huge crypto ship together. Right. Definitely. Awesome. Okay cool. So, wrapping up would be the best way to contact you if anybody has any questions. Would it be through Twitter, do I WhatsApp, do I Snapchat you how I would be the best way to contact you.
CoinPayments: think that I have a couple different forms of communication with the community. But the best way I get in touch with us is either through Twitter on which our handle is @Coinpayments.net. Through my email directly. PR@coinpayments.net. I'm always open for any sort of opportunities and collaboration to find synergy with other companies that have similar interests.
NCFA: Thank you so much for sitting down with me today. I mean like I'm super excited, everything that company is about to do. Becoming a full service one stop shop that should be really exciting. And yeah, I can't wait to buy socks with bitcoin that would be really awesome. That's like I'm really excited for. Oh my gosh.
CoinPayments: We've had about 300 Shopify stores sign up in the last two months since we went live with that integration. And I can tell you right I thought my I'd like at least a dozen stores where you can buy stocks right now. Actually, it runs www.alwayshodl.com. Oh good He's got some real cool crypto on merchandise and allows you to buy crypto swag with the type of crypto that it's representing. So pretty good.
NCFA: That's really it that's a really cool concept. All right well Samir thanks so much for sitting down with me. This has been super enlightening, super educational and best of luck on everything. All right thanks alot man.
CoinPayments: All right thanks alot man.
End of Podcast
The National Crowdfunding & Fintech Association of Canada (NCFA Canada) is a cross-Canada non-profit actively engaged with cryptocurrency, blockchain, crowdfunding, alternative finance, fintech, P2P, ICO, STO, and online investing stakeholders globally. NCFA Canada provides education, research, industry stewardship, services, and networking opportunities to thousands of members and subscribers and works closely with industry, government, academia, community and eco-system partners and affiliates to create a strong and vibrant crowdfunding and fintech industry. Join Canada's Fintech & Funding Community today FREE! Or become a contributing member and get perks. For more information, please visit: ncfacanada.org
Click for News:
Aug 29, 2026 | NCFA Fintech Whisperer | Digital Assets Blockchain And Tokenization, Competition And Market Structure, Regulation And Policy, Risk Compliance And Regtech, Lending Consumer Credit And BNPL, Cross Border Payments And FX, Digital Banking And BaaS, Capital Markets Infrastructure And Funding, Wealthtech Investing And Trading, Payments Infrastructure And Money Movement 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, February 7-13, 2026, February 14-20, 2026, February 21-27, 2026, February 28-March 6, 2026, March 7-13, 2026, March 14-20, 2026, March 21-27, 2026, March 28-April 3, 2026, April 4-10, 2026, April 11-17, 2026, April 18-24, 2026, April 25-May 1, 2026, May 2-8, 2026, May ...
September 4, 2026 | NCFA Insight | Digital Identity And Trust, Digital Assets Blockchain And Tokenization, Regulation And Policy Alternative Naming Systems, DNS Control and a September 21 Deadline On August 10, 2026, ICANN opened a consultation on alternative naming systems that could affect how blockchain based and other naming systems work alongside the global Domain Name System. Comments are open until September 21, 2026 at 23:59 UTC. ICANN is the nonprofit organization that coordinates the global Domain Name System, including the rules for top level domains such as .com, .org and newer gTLDs. The consultation matters most to domain registries, Web3 naming providers, digital identity firms, wallet and payment companies, cybersecurity specialists and brands that could be affected if the same name appears across multiple naming systems. ICANN is dealing with a problem that did not exist when the DNS was designed. Alternative naming systems can create names outside the global DNS, while registry operators and potential applicants in the 2026 New gTLD Program are now interested in using some of the same top level strings in both systems. If that happens, users need confidence that the same name is controlled by the same party wherever they encounter it ...
September 4, 2026 | NCFA Market Activity | Lending Consumer Credit And BNPL, Digital Assets, Embedded Finance Revolving Crypto Credit With 60% LTV and Partial Liquidation On September 3, 2026, Toronto-based APX Lending launched a five-year crypto-backed line of credit that lets eligible borrowers pledge Bitcoin, Ethereum or both, draw funds, repay them and borrow again. APX says the facility supports borrowing up to 60% loan to value, with annual rates from 10.49% to 11.99% depending on the outstanding balance. Interest applies only to money actually borrowed, with no charge on unused capacity. APX also says there are no origination, prepayment or liquidation fees. The biggest change from APX's existing fixed-term loans is that borrowers can use the credit line more than once. They can keep approved collateral in place, draw funds when needed, repay them and borrow again. Three Takeaways 1. Bitcoin and Ethereum Can Support Repeat Borrowing APX gives the example of C$200,000 of Bitcoin and C$100,000 of Ethereum supporting up to C$180,000 of borrowing at the maximum 60% LTV. Available credit changes with the value of the collateral, so a falling crypto market can reduce borrowing capacity quickly. The basic idea will be familiar to anyone who ...
September 3, 2026 | NCFA Story Intelligence | Competition And Market Structure, Banking And Lending, Capital Markets And Market Infrastructure, Open Banking Open Finance And Data Sharing A Huge Non Bank Base Meets Faster Challenger Growth And Wider Market Access On September 3, 2026, Bank of Canada staff released new non bank finance data showing that Canada’s non bank financial sector held C$14.0 trillion in assets at the end of 2024, equal to 60.9% of the financial system. The Bank's broad definition includes pension funds, insurers, investment funds, financial auxiliaries and other intermediaries. Much of the 2024 increase also came from stronger market valuations. The headline number is only part of the story. Faster growth is appearing in narrower bank like activities, online brokerage and specialty finance, while commercial banks still retain enormous asset and distribution advantages. Canada already had a huge financial system outside deposit taking banks. What's changing is how customers reach it, where credit can originate and how many firms can compete for data, payments, investing and banking services. C$14.0T Non bank assets 60.9% Share of financial system assets 34.5% Commercial bank share +12.1% Narrow NBFI assets +35.4% Non bank broker dealers 95% Broker dealer assets still ...
September 3, 2026 | NCFA Story Intelligence | Artificial Intelligence And Data, Competition And Market Structure, Fintech And Innovation Nvidia Buys Hugging Face As Open Source AI Faces A New Owner On September 3, 2026, Nvidia announced a definitive agreement to acquire Hugging Face for US$12.9303 billion. The deal would put one of the biggest platforms for open source and open weight AI alongside the company that already dominates much of the market for AI computing. The price includes about US$11.9 billion for Hugging Face stockholders and up to US$1 billion in equity awards for employees joining Nvidia. The transaction hasn't closed. Nvidia says it expects completion in the first half of 2027, subject to regulatory approvals and other closing conditions. Nvidia is making a very public promise with the deal. Hugging Face will remain open. Developers will still be able to choose their models, clouds, inference providers and computing platforms. Nvidia hardware will not be required. That promise goes directly to the tension. Hugging Face became valuable because developers, startups, researchers and rival chip companies could all build there. Nvidia can make that ecosystem stronger. Ownership can also make some of those same users wonder whether an open source ...
Sep 3, 2026 Some buy now, pay later activity reaches Canadian credit files. Most routine instalment plans currently do not. That is the short answer, and the qualifications matter more than the answer does. Whether a buy now, pay later arrangement appears on a credit file in Canada depends on the provider, on which credit bureau is involved, on whether a payment was missed, and on the month in which the question is asked. Payments made on time and payments missed follow different routes. Two people financing identical purchases through different providers may find entirely different records. What follows sets out what is reported, by whom, to which bureau, and with what effect on a score, then explains why the answer is this unsatisfying. The position described reflects Canadian reporting as of September 2026, and it is moving. What buy now, pay later actually is The Financial Consumer Agency of Canada describes buy now, pay later plans as arrangements that finance a purchase with credit. Its research characterises the category as covering a wide range of credit arrangements and as generally a type of consumer credit, comparable to instalment lending. That framing is the reason the credit-file question arises at ...
September 3, 2026 | NCFA Market Activity | Digital Banking And BaaS, Regulation And Policy, Payments Infrastructure And Money Movement Revolut Bank US, 2027 Launch Plans and U.S. Banking Products On September 3, 2026, Revolut received conditional U.S. bank approval from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency form Revolut Bank US, N.A., a federally chartered national bank headquartered in Stamford, Connecticut. Revolut says it is still working through FDIC, Federal Reserve and final OCC approvals and remains on track for a 2027 launch. U.S. customers cannot open accounts with Revolut Bank US yet. Revolut already serves U.S. customers, but the regulated banking are with other institutions. Lead Bank supports Revolut's prepaid card accounts and banking services, while Savings Vault funds are held at Cross River Bank. Revolut controls the app and customer experience, but those partner banks hold deposits and perform key regulated functions. Revolut says the proposed bank would offer loans, credit cards and FDIC insured deposits, alongside access to stablecoins and cryptocurrencies. Its charter application also describes deposits, savings, business credit, payments, remittances and foreign exchange. Some investment and digital asset services could still sit with affiliates or outside providers rather than inside the bank itself. Revolut ...
Sep 3, 2026 Anyone who has onboarded a client at a fintech startup knows the bottleneck. The product works, the API integration is done, and then someone emails a photo of a passport taken at an angle in bad light, with half the machine-readable zone cut off. Multiply that by fifty applicants a week and your compliance queue turns into a photo-editing job. Small lenders, brokerages and crypto exchanges all hit the same wall. Identity verification and record-keeping are document-heavy by law, and the documents arrive in whatever format the customer's phone produced. That is the gap a mobile scanner fills. OKEN, listed on the Play Store under the longer name OKEN - camscanner, pdf scanner and published under the name CAMBYTE Pte. Ltd., is a Productivity app that turns a phone camera into a document scanner with edge detection, OCR text recognition, and export to PDF, JPG, Word or TXT. It also reads QR codes, which matters more than it sounds in a payments context. What OKEN Does With a Photographed Document The core loop is straightforward. Point the camera at a page, let the app find the borders, and it flattens the perspective into something that looks like ...
September 3, 2026 | NCFA Market Interest | Digital Assets Blockchain And Tokenization, Capital Markets And Market Infrastructure, Wealth Investing And Trading Payward Revenue Growth, IPO Delay and Its US$20B Valuation Kraken parent Payward has reportedly delayed its U.S. IPO again, this time to the second quarter of 2027 at the earliest. The company confidentially filed a draft registration statement in November 2025, then put the listing on hold in March as crypto prices, trading volumes and valuations weakened. Payward hasn't confirmed the new 2027 timing, so it remains a reported window rather than a scheduled IPO date. The delay comes at an interesting point for the business. Payward reported US$508 million in Q2 adjusted revenue, up 17% year over year. Funded accounts rose 42% to 6.6 million, while assets on the platform were US$40 billion. Adjusted EBITDA was much thinner at US$23 million, and total platform transaction volume fell 18% to US$310 billion as crypto spot trading cooled. Those numbers give Payward a pretty clear reason to wait. Revenue and customers are growing, but the company is still proving how much earnings it can generate when trading activity softens. Going public now would put that question in front of ...
September 3, 2026 | NCFA Story Intelligence | Trade And Tariffs, Canadian Economy, Cross Border Finance, Public Policy Record Non U.S. Exports Meet Retaliation, Stalled Talks And A New Sovereignty Fight On September 3, 2026, Canada's July trade report put two stories beside each other. Exports to the United States fell 6.6%, while exports to countries outside the U.S. rose 7.4% to a record C$25.6 billion. Canada's merchandise trade surplus with the world narrowed from C$4.2 billion in June to C$769 million. Its surplus with the United States fell from C$10.3 billion to C$5.9 billion. Those numbers now sit inside a much rougher political relationship. On August 22, the United States imposed a 50% tariff on roughly US$20 billion of Canadian exports, while the Government of Canada values the affected goods at C$27.6 billion. Canada has rejected the terms on offer and announced matching counter tariffs on C$27.6 billion of U.S. imports, scheduled to take effect on September 8. Canada is still deeply tied to the U.S. economy, but the reaction is no longer confined to government. Buy Canadian sentiment has returned. Companies are reviewing suppliers and customers. Travel choices have changed. More Canadian businesses are looking beyond the U.S ...
Aug 29, 2026 | NCFA Fintech Whisperer | Digital Assets Blockchain And Tokenization, Competition And Market Structure, Regulation And Policy, Risk Compliance And Regtech, Lending Consumer Credit And BNPL, Cross Border Payments And FX, Digital Banking And BaaS, Capital Markets Infrastructure And Funding, Wealthtech Investing And Trading, Payments Infrastructure And Money Movement 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, February 7-13, 2026, February 14-20, 2026, February 21-27, 2026, February 28-March 6, 2026, March 7-13, 2026, March 14-20, 2026, March 21-27, 2026, March 28-April 3, 2026, April 4-10, 2026, April 11-17, 2026, April 18-24, 2026, April 25-May 1, 2026, May 2-8, 2026, May ...
September 4, 2026 | NCFA Insight | Digital Identity And Trust, Digital Assets Blockchain And Tokenization, Regulation And Policy Alternative Naming Systems, DNS Control and a September 21 Deadline On August 10, 2026, ICANN opened a consultation on alternative naming systems that could affect how blockchain based and other naming systems work alongside the global Domain Name System. Comments are open until September 21, 2026 at 23:59 UTC. ICANN is the nonprofit organization that coordinates the global Domain Name System, including the rules for top level domains such as .com, .org and newer gTLDs. The consultation matters most to domain registries, Web3 naming providers, digital identity firms, wallet and payment companies, cybersecurity specialists and brands that could be affected if the same name appears across multiple naming systems. ICANN is dealing with a problem that did not exist when the DNS was designed. Alternative naming systems can create names outside the global DNS, while registry operators and potential applicants in the 2026 New gTLD Program are now interested in using some of the same top level strings in both systems. If that happens, users need confidence that the same name is controlled by the same party wherever they encounter it ...
September 4, 2026 | NCFA Market Activity | Lending Consumer Credit And BNPL, Digital Assets, Embedded Finance Revolving Crypto Credit With 60% LTV and Partial Liquidation On September 3, 2026, Toronto-based APX Lending launched a five-year crypto-backed line of credit that lets eligible borrowers pledge Bitcoin, Ethereum or both, draw funds, repay them and borrow again. APX says the facility supports borrowing up to 60% loan to value, with annual rates from 10.49% to 11.99% depending on the outstanding balance. Interest applies only to money actually borrowed, with no charge on unused capacity. APX also says there are no origination, prepayment or liquidation fees. The biggest change from APX's existing fixed-term loans is that borrowers can use the credit line more than once. They can keep approved collateral in place, draw funds when needed, repay them and borrow again. Three Takeaways 1. Bitcoin and Ethereum Can Support Repeat Borrowing APX gives the example of C$200,000 of Bitcoin and C$100,000 of Ethereum supporting up to C$180,000 of borrowing at the maximum 60% LTV. Available credit changes with the value of the collateral, so a falling crypto market can reduce borrowing capacity quickly. The basic idea will be familiar to anyone who ...
September 3, 2026 | NCFA Story Intelligence | Competition And Market Structure, Banking And Lending, Capital Markets And Market Infrastructure, Open Banking Open Finance And Data Sharing A Huge Non Bank Base Meets Faster Challenger Growth And Wider Market Access On September 3, 2026, Bank of Canada staff released new non bank finance data showing that Canada’s non bank financial sector held C$14.0 trillion in assets at the end of 2024, equal to 60.9% of the financial system. The Bank's broad definition includes pension funds, insurers, investment funds, financial auxiliaries and other intermediaries. Much of the 2024 increase also came from stronger market valuations. The headline number is only part of the story. Faster growth is appearing in narrower bank like activities, online brokerage and specialty finance, while commercial banks still retain enormous asset and distribution advantages. Canada already had a huge financial system outside deposit taking banks. What's changing is how customers reach it, where credit can originate and how many firms can compete for data, payments, investing and banking services. C$14.0T Non bank assets 60.9% Share of financial system assets 34.5% Commercial bank share +12.1% Narrow NBFI assets +35.4% Non bank broker dealers 95% Broker dealer assets still ...
September 3, 2026 | NCFA Story Intelligence | Artificial Intelligence And Data, Competition And Market Structure, Fintech And Innovation Nvidia Buys Hugging Face As Open Source AI Faces A New Owner On September 3, 2026, Nvidia announced a definitive agreement to acquire Hugging Face for US$12.9303 billion. The deal would put one of the biggest platforms for open source and open weight AI alongside the company that already dominates much of the market for AI computing. The price includes about US$11.9 billion for Hugging Face stockholders and up to US$1 billion in equity awards for employees joining Nvidia. The transaction hasn't closed. Nvidia says it expects completion in the first half of 2027, subject to regulatory approvals and other closing conditions. Nvidia is making a very public promise with the deal. Hugging Face will remain open. Developers will still be able to choose their models, clouds, inference providers and computing platforms. Nvidia hardware will not be required. That promise goes directly to the tension. Hugging Face became valuable because developers, startups, researchers and rival chip companies could all build there. Nvidia can make that ecosystem stronger. Ownership can also make some of those same users wonder whether an open source ...
Sep 3, 2026 Some buy now, pay later activity reaches Canadian credit files. Most routine instalment plans currently do not. That is the short answer, and the qualifications matter more than the answer does. Whether a buy now, pay later arrangement appears on a credit file in Canada depends on the provider, on which credit bureau is involved, on whether a payment was missed, and on the month in which the question is asked. Payments made on time and payments missed follow different routes. Two people financing identical purchases through different providers may find entirely different records. What follows sets out what is reported, by whom, to which bureau, and with what effect on a score, then explains why the answer is this unsatisfying. The position described reflects Canadian reporting as of September 2026, and it is moving. What buy now, pay later actually is The Financial Consumer Agency of Canada describes buy now, pay later plans as arrangements that finance a purchase with credit. Its research characterises the category as covering a wide range of credit arrangements and as generally a type of consumer credit, comparable to instalment lending. That framing is the reason the credit-file question arises at ...
September 3, 2026 | NCFA Market Activity | Digital Banking And BaaS, Regulation And Policy, Payments Infrastructure And Money Movement Revolut Bank US, 2027 Launch Plans and U.S. Banking Products On September 3, 2026, Revolut received conditional U.S. bank approval from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency form Revolut Bank US, N.A., a federally chartered national bank headquartered in Stamford, Connecticut. Revolut says it is still working through FDIC, Federal Reserve and final OCC approvals and remains on track for a 2027 launch. U.S. customers cannot open accounts with Revolut Bank US yet. Revolut already serves U.S. customers, but the regulated banking are with other institutions. Lead Bank supports Revolut's prepaid card accounts and banking services, while Savings Vault funds are held at Cross River Bank. Revolut controls the app and customer experience, but those partner banks hold deposits and perform key regulated functions. Revolut says the proposed bank would offer loans, credit cards and FDIC insured deposits, alongside access to stablecoins and cryptocurrencies. Its charter application also describes deposits, savings, business credit, payments, remittances and foreign exchange. Some investment and digital asset services could still sit with affiliates or outside providers rather than inside the bank itself. Revolut ...
Sep 3, 2026 Anyone who has onboarded a client at a fintech startup knows the bottleneck. The product works, the API integration is done, and then someone emails a photo of a passport taken at an angle in bad light, with half the machine-readable zone cut off. Multiply that by fifty applicants a week and your compliance queue turns into a photo-editing job. Small lenders, brokerages and crypto exchanges all hit the same wall. Identity verification and record-keeping are document-heavy by law, and the documents arrive in whatever format the customer's phone produced. That is the gap a mobile scanner fills. OKEN, listed on the Play Store under the longer name OKEN - camscanner, pdf scanner and published under the name CAMBYTE Pte. Ltd., is a Productivity app that turns a phone camera into a document scanner with edge detection, OCR text recognition, and export to PDF, JPG, Word or TXT. It also reads QR codes, which matters more than it sounds in a payments context. What OKEN Does With a Photographed Document The core loop is straightforward. Point the camera at a page, let the app find the borders, and it flattens the perspective into something that looks like ...
September 3, 2026 | NCFA Market Interest | Digital Assets Blockchain And Tokenization, Capital Markets And Market Infrastructure, Wealth Investing And Trading Payward Revenue Growth, IPO Delay and Its US$20B Valuation Kraken parent Payward has reportedly delayed its U.S. IPO again, this time to the second quarter of 2027 at the earliest. The company confidentially filed a draft registration statement in November 2025, then put the listing on hold in March as crypto prices, trading volumes and valuations weakened. Payward hasn't confirmed the new 2027 timing, so it remains a reported window rather than a scheduled IPO date. The delay comes at an interesting point for the business. Payward reported US$508 million in Q2 adjusted revenue, up 17% year over year. Funded accounts rose 42% to 6.6 million, while assets on the platform were US$40 billion. Adjusted EBITDA was much thinner at US$23 million, and total platform transaction volume fell 18% to US$310 billion as crypto spot trading cooled. Those numbers give Payward a pretty clear reason to wait. Revenue and customers are growing, but the company is still proving how much earnings it can generate when trading activity softens. Going public now would put that question in front of ...
September 3, 2026 | NCFA Story Intelligence | Trade And Tariffs, Canadian Economy, Cross Border Finance, Public Policy Record Non U.S. Exports Meet Retaliation, Stalled Talks And A New Sovereignty Fight On September 3, 2026, Canada's July trade report put two stories beside each other. Exports to the United States fell 6.6%, while exports to countries outside the U.S. rose 7.4% to a record C$25.6 billion. Canada's merchandise trade surplus with the world narrowed from C$4.2 billion in June to C$769 million. Its surplus with the United States fell from C$10.3 billion to C$5.9 billion. Those numbers now sit inside a much rougher political relationship. On August 22, the United States imposed a 50% tariff on roughly US$20 billion of Canadian exports, while the Government of Canada values the affected goods at C$27.6 billion. Canada has rejected the terms on offer and announced matching counter tariffs on C$27.6 billion of U.S. imports, scheduled to take effect on September 8. Canada is still deeply tied to the U.S. economy, but the reaction is no longer confined to government. Buy Canadian sentiment has returned. Companies are reviewing suppliers and customers. Travel choices have changed. More Canadian businesses are looking beyond the U.S ...
Leave a Reply