Following the planned acquisition, Money Money’s specialized financing engine will be integrated with the Clover cloud-based point-of-sale and business management platform, Fiserv said in a Wednesday (April 23) press release.

Money Money’s financing engine is connected to the receivables’ registry infrastructure regulated by the Central Bank of Brazil, according to the release. This enables business analysis that helps generate personalized offers of working capital and other financial services with competitive rates.

Subject to regulatory approval and customary closing conditions, the acquisition is expected to close during the second quarter, per the release.

“By adding this service to our portfolio, we take an important step to boost the growth of our acquiring clients, facilitating their access to the necessary resources to invest in improvements and processes,” Jorge Valdivia, general manager of Fiserv in Brazil, said in the release. “Our continued investment in the Brazilian market demonstrates our commitment to advance our clients’ business objectives by expanding our local capabilities.”

The planned transaction follows other acquisitions announced by Fiserv.

The company said April 7 that it acquired payment facilitator (PayFac) Pinch Payments, which serves 2,000 merchants in Australia and New Zealand, and its management platform Glassbox. Fiserv said the deal gives it a payment orchestration platform that supports flexible service options and speed to market for PayFacs, independent software vendors (ISVs), business payment solutions providers (BPSPs), independent sales organizations (ISOs) and enterprises.

In March, Fiserv acquired CCV, a payment solutions provider operating in the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany, saying the deal allows Fiserv to speed deployment of the Clover platform throughout Europe. CCV’s services include transaction processing, online and closed-loop payments, acquiring and a range of in-store and self-service payment terminals.

Also in March, Fiserv finalized its purchase of earned wage access (EWA) provider Payfare, saying the deal would accelerate the delivery of embedded finance solutions for all of Fiserv’s clients. The deal was announced late last year.

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The deal will strengthen FundThrough’s digital-first ecosystem, creating a platform for SMBs that sell to larger companies and wait to get paid after invoicing, according to a Tuesday (April 22) news release.

FundThrough provides invoice factoring solutions across B2B sectors, including retail, manufacturing, oil and gas, technology, professional services, and food supply and agriculture, the release said.

“Business owners have increasingly been forced to act like banks for their much larger customers who extend invoice payment terms beyond reasonable lengths,” FundThrough co-founder and CEO Steven Uster said in the release. “They need a seamless way to bridge the cash flow gap, and FundThrough provides a tech-enabled financial solution. Now, Ampla’s technology significantly enhances FundThrough’s AI-powered model, enabling us to level the playing field further.”

With Ampla, FundThrough expects to scale faster, enhance credit underwriting and monitoring processes, and help more SMBs solve cash flow problems, Uster said in the release.

Ampla co-founder and CEO Anthony Santomo will advise FundThrough and will be joined by his core team, according to the release.

Additionally, FundThrough raised $25 million in a Series B funding round, the release said. The company will use the capital to power “aggressive expansion,” including further acquisitions, investments in technology and artificial intelligence, enhanced user experience and accelerated product innovation.

The news followed FundThrough’s acquisition of FinTech company BlueVine’s invoice factoring business in January 2022. The deal helped FundThrough accelerate its focus on embedded finance and expansion efforts in the United States.

SMBs are facing liquidity trouble, and about half of them rely on immediate sales or existing cash for survival, PYMNTS Intelligence found. Business credit cards are the most common form of financing for those with access.

Only 44% of SMBs said they have access to financing and working capital solutions. Those without access to financing are 75% more likely to have no plan to offset any costs arising from the implementation of tariffs, PYMNTS reported in March.

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With approvals announced Friday by the Federal Reserve Board and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), the companies now expect the transaction to close May 18, subject to customary closing conditions, they said in a Friday press release.

“This is an exciting moment for Capital One and Discover,” Capital One founder, Chairman and CEO Richard Fairbank said in the release. “We understand the critical importance of a strong and competitive banking system to our customers and our economy, and we appreciate the thoughtful and diligent engagement of our regulators as they thoroughly reviewed this deal over the past 14 months.”

Discover Interim CEO and President Michael Shepherd said in the release: “This combination of our two great companies will increase competition in payment networks, offer a wide range of products to our customers, increase our resources devoted to innovation and security, and bring meaningful community benefits.”

Capital One announced the proposed acquisition in February 2024, saying the all-stock transaction, valued at $35.3 billion, will create a global payments platform with 70 million merchant acceptance points in more than 200 countries and territories.

In July, facing some criticism from community groups that feared the planned takeover would reduce services and increase costs for Americans, Capital One said that a combination of Capital One and Discover would provide more benefits to underserved communities than the companies would offer separately.

The Federal Reserve Board announced its approval of the proposed merger in a Friday press release, saying: “The Board evaluated the application under the statutory factors it is required to consider, including the financial and managerial resources of the companies, the convenience and needs of the communities to be served by the combined organization, and the competitive and financial stability impacts of the proposal.”

The OCC said in a Friday press release announcing its conditional approval of the deal that it made its decision after analyzing the effect of the merger on communities, the banking industry and the U.S. financial system.

The regulator said its approval is conditioned upon approved plans to address and remediate any outstanding enforcement actions against Discover.

“The OCC is committed to a regulatory framework that expands access to financial services for consumers, businesses and communities,” Acting Comptroller of the Currency Rodney E. Hood said in the release.

These announcements came on the same day that the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) and the Federal Reserve Board said they fined Discover Financial Services and two of its subsidiaries, alleging that they misclassified consumer credit cards as commercial, thereby requiring merchants to pay higher interchange fees.

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This combination will create a platform that enables financial institutions to leverage their customers and operational data to eliminate process inefficiencies and deliver personalized experiences in branches and online, the companies said in a Wednesday press release.

“Together, we’re creating an integrated banking operations platform that unifies branch automation, document workflow and digital connectivity with powerful data intelligence capabilities,” Kinective CEO Stephen Baker said in the release. “By aggregating data from core systems, account opening, lending and other previously disconnected systems, institutions will see their operation through an entirely new lens.”

With the addition of Datava’s data aggregation and intelligence solutions for financial institutions, the platform will collect, normalize and unify data across business systems; facilitate intelligent analytics through artificial intelligence (AI)-powered dashboards, predictive modeling and robust reporting; and gain a 360-degree view of customers, according to the release.

Datava President and CEO Gordon Flammer, who will join Kinective’s leadership team, said in the release that the combination will accelerate the companies’ shared vision of “delivering transformative data intelligence to financial institutions.”

“Our team has spent years building a powerful platform to empower credit unions and banks to make smarter, faster and more personalized decisions that deepen services to their members and customers,” Flammer said.

This announcement came about nine months after Kinective acquired Nexus Software, a provider of branch device management for financial institutions.

At the time, the Nexus platform served 1,100 financial institutions and supported 400,000 branches in 100 countries.

Baker said in a July press release announcing the acquisition: “Their addition enhances Kinective’s product suite in branch automation, expands our footprint across international markets and opens new partnership channels.”

In October, Kinective partnered with credit union service organization Velera to give credit unions access to Kinective Gateway, an integration technology designed to eliminate the development challenges typically found when introducing new software products into a “diverse ecosystem of core banking systems.”

With Kinective Gateway, credit unions get a single integration point that “opens access to an entire ecosystem of core systems,” the companies said at the time.

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Hi.health will continue to operate independently, while using Pliant’s infrastructure to support its product offering: a digital interface between insurance carriers and customers that enables insured individuals to submit healthcare invoices and prescriptions for reimbursement via a mobile app, rather than having to pay upfront, the companies said in a Wednesday press release.

“Hi.health has developed an impressive solution at the intersection of FinTech and insurance,” Pliant CEO Malte Rau said in the release. “By embedding a payment option into the submission process, they are revolutionizing what has traditionally been a cumbersome reimbursement workflow and creating real value in the process.”

Sebastian Gruber, CEO and co-founder of hi.health, said in the release that the partnership with Pliant “allows us to think even bigger about our mission.”

“Together, we have the opportunity to transform financial processes in the insurance and healthcare industries — eliminating the cumbersome reimbursement procedures and significantly improving the experience for both users and healthcare providers,” Gruber said.

Pliant currently provides payment solutions to the travel, mobility and banking sectors, according to the release.

The company raised $19 million in a Series A extension led by PayPal Ventures that brought its total Series A financing to more than $53 million in April 2024.

Pliant said at the time that the new funding would allow it to expand beyond the European Union for the first time, starting with the U.K.

PayPal Ventures Partner Ashish Aggarwal said at the time in a press release: “Pliant has emerged as a leading player in B2B payments in continental Europe, thanks to its next-generation, multi-tenant credit card-as-a-service platform that allows easy integration via application programming interfaces or embedded user interfaces.”

Pliant’s offering of multicurrency capabilities in 11 different currencies enables clients to receive bills in the same currency they transact in, while addressing the diverse needs of European companies with subsidiaries in non-euro markets like the Nordics, Rau told PYMNTS in an interview posted in January 2024.

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It sold its issuer solutions business to FIS for $13.5 billion and simultaneously bought Worldpay for a net price of $22.7 billion, according to a Thursday press release. Worldpay is currently co-owned by FIS and private equity firm GTCR.

Global Payments will fully exit the issuer processing field, turning that operation over to FIS as it doubles down on merchant solutions, the release said.

FIS also announced in a separate Thursday press release that it would divest its remaining stake in Worldpay to Global Payments for $6.6 billion, speeding up the monetization of its minority holding.

The moves aim to clarify each company’s strategic focus. Global Payments becomes a pure-play merchant solutions provider, while FIS strengthens its banking and payments suite by bolstering its credit processing scale. Both deals are slated to close in the first half of 2026, pending regulatory approvals.

Under the new structure, Global Payments consolidates its merchant-focused platform with Worldpay’s capabilities in eCommerce and enterprise transactions. This combined enterprise is expected to serve 6 million customers, enabling around 94 billion transactions and $3.7 trillion in payment volumes across more than 175 countries, per the first release.

FIS, meanwhile, intends to use Issuer Solutions’ comprehensive credit processing technology, which spans more than 40 billion transactions annually, to deepen relationships with global financial institutions, according to the second release.

“The acquisition of Issuer Solutions is a strategic and accretive transaction that will expand FIS’ payment product suite,” FIS CEO and President Stephanie Ferris said in the second release, adding that it replaces a “non-cash generating” minority stake with growing recurring revenues and cash flow.

Global Payments CEO Cameron Bready described these agreements as transformative, sharpening the company’s focus on merchant solutions at scale and boosting its offerings for everything from point-of-sale systems to integrated and embedded payments.

“We could not be more excited about the future,” Bready said in the first release.

Worldpay CEO Charles Drucker also underscored in the first release how the deal knits together “two strong teams with similar histories, a shared culture of innovation and deep payments expertise.”

FIS stands to integrate Issuer Solutions’ credit processing suite into its established debit, loyalty and network services, expecting to drive more than $150 million in net EBITDA synergies within three years, according to the first release. The company also projects $45 million in incremental revenue synergies in that period, expanding to at least $125 million in the longer term. In financial terms, Issuer Solutions is expected to give FIS over $500 million in additional adjusted free cash flow within the first 12 months post-closing. While taking on $8 billion in new debt and transferring the value from its Worldpay stake to fund the acquisition, FIS anticipates its pro forma gross leverage to be about 3.4 times and plans to reduce that to 2.8 times within 18 months.

Looking ahead, both Global Payments and FIS reaffirmed their 2025 outlooks. Global Payments cited first-quarter adjusted net revenue growth of over 5%, excluding dispositions, while FIS reported about 4% adjusted revenue growth for the period, per their respective releases. Each company plans to report more detailed quarterly results May 6. In the near term, FIS intends to maintain its dividend strategy and execute M&A and share repurchases, although it expects to pause buybacks briefly after closing to accelerate deleveraging.

If regulators and shareholders give their blessing, the transactions will likely reshape the competitive landscape in digital payments and processing, creating a more specialized ecosystem in which Global Payments focuses entirely on merchant solutions and FIS assumes a more active role in issuer processing for financial institutions worldwide.

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The deal, announced Wednesday (April 16), will see Lyft acquire the Germany-based company from BMW and Mercedes-Benz Mobility. It also marks the ride-hailing service’s largest expansion outside of North America.

“We’re on an ambitious path to build the best, most customer-obsessed mobility platform in the world, and entering Europe is an important step in our growth journey,” Lyft CEO David Risher said in a news release.

“We found the perfect partner in FreeNow and can learn a lot from the team. FreeNow’s local-first approach mirrors Lyft’s values and embodies our purpose — to serve and connect.”

The deal will allow Lyft to fuel growth in more than 150 cities across Austria, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Poland, Spain and the United Kingdom.

The company added that the acquisition is expected to almost double Lyft’s total addressable market to more than 300 billion personal vehicle trips per year, increasing annualized gross bookings by approximately 1 billion euros ($1.1 billion).

Lyft recently announced it plans to begin adding autonomous vehicles (AVs) to its ridesharing platform as soon as this summer.

“And over time, AVs will account for a larger share of cars, and a larger percentage of rides,” Jeremy Bird, executive vice president of driver experience at Lyft, wrote in a post on the company’s blog last month.

He also addressed how the arrival of AVs could affect human drivers already offering their services for Lyft. Bird acknowledged the company was still wrestling with that question, but said Lyft expects there will still be opportunities for drivers because the addition of AVs doesn’t have to mean there will be fewer rides to be served by drivers.

“Adding cars to our platform — whether they’re driven by humans or AVs — improves arrival times and creates a better rider experience,” Bird wrote. “That gets people to take more rides, creating more opportunities for drivers.”

Meanwhile, Lyft rival Uber said this week that it had opened up a waiting list for riders who want to take part in its AV offering in Atlanta in partnership with Google-owned Waymo.

“With 14 AV partners to date — and tens of thousands of autonomous trips happening every month — we’re excited to expand our years-long partnership with Waymo, recently bringing autonomous rides to Austin, and soon Atlanta, exclusively through the Uber app,” Uber said.

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In purchasing Touchcast, Infinite Reality gets access to products that include artificial intelligence (AI) agent offerings. “Agentic AI is a big part of how consumers and businesses will interact with the web in the future,” Infinite Reality CEO and founder John Acunto said in the announcement.

The $500 million deal comes weeks after Infinite Reality announced plans to purchase music brand Napster, Bloomberg News reported Wednesday. That acquisition is one of several the company is making, the report added, as Infinite Reality tries to establish itself as a key player in the AI and eCommerce spaces.

Touchcast’s technology can convincingly duplicate someone’s speech, so that — to use Bloomberg’s example — a company could create a digital doppelganger of their CEO for investor pitches.

Touchcast Co-founder and CEO Edo Segal told Bloomberg that AI would give Infinite Reality users access to an “infinite universe of agents that occupy different personas and different professions,” essentially giving people access to a stable of AI employees.

The Touchcast acquisition is Infinite Reality’s third purchase this year and its biggest to date, the report said. The company in January announced a $3 billion investment from an unidentified backer whose portfolio focuses on global technology and real estate.

In other artificial intelligence news, PYMNTS wrote Wednesday about the technology’s use in amplifying the potential of data — particularly transaction and payments data — for retailers.

“Legacy silos and fragmented tech stacks have stifled innovation in retail. Yet GenAI’s arrival has intensified the urgency for cohesive data strategies,” that report said. “Early adopters are moving quickly to unify disparate data sources, from point of sale (POS) and customer relationship management (CRM) to inventory, social and customer sentiment, and layer governance and accessibility frameworks on top.”

According to research from “GenAI Applications in Retail Transaction Analysis: Industry Trends and Insights,” a collaboration between PYMNTS Intelligence and Fiserv, more than 90% of surveyed retailers, each of generating at least $500 million in yearly revenue, have integrated GenAI into their transaction data workflows.

“There’s a widening gap between retailers who are AI-enabled and those who are still manually pulling reports from six different systems,” PYMNTS wrote. “It’s not just about speed. It’s about resilience, adaptability and long-term relevance.”

But in spite of growing enthusiasm, the research spotlights an obvious gap between ambition and execution. Under one-third of three retailers rate their data analytics capabilities as “high,” and just 22% felt strong confidence in cross-functional data sharing and collaboration.

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This acquisition adds Glean.ai’s artificial intelligence (AI)-powered spend management offering to Pipe’s embedded financial solutions for software platforms that serve small businesses, Pipe said in a Tuesday (April 15) press release.

“With seamless access to capital and smarter spend insights, we’re enabling sustainable growth, better operational oversight and long-term success for small businesses,” Pipe CEO Luke Voiles said in the release.

Glean.ai’s spend management solution provides small businesses with one-click access to spending trends, billing errors and savings opportunities, according to the release. It also offers real-time, cross-functional budgeting and bill pay tools and, with the help of AI, helps business owners make timely, data-driven decisions.

This solution complements Pipe’s embedded capital and business charge card solution that is delivered to small businesses through the company’s payments and vertical software partners, the release said.

While the Glean.ai product is being integrated into Pipe’s internal processes, it will continue to be available directly from Glean.ai, per the release.

Glean.ai founder and CEO Howard Katzenberg, who will join Pipe, said in the release that the combination represents “a game-changing opportunity for small businesses.”

“They get the support and resources to grow, while Pipe and Glean together create a more powerful, unified platform that accelerates their success,” Katzenberg said.

Pipe’s sweet spot lies with small businesses that see sales of $100,000 to about $1 million on an annualized basis, Voiles told PYMNTS CEO Karen Webster in an interview posted in October.

In an earlier interview, posted in June, Voiles said that by embedding financing solutions into the point-of-sale (POS) systems and software platforms that business owners rely on to run their daily operations, FinTechs like Pipe can connect small businesses with innovative capital and lending products that would have otherwise remained unattainable.

“It’s a powerful thing to give someone that has never had access to capital, but has an amazing small business … It can be a huge multiplier,” Voiles said.

Voiles added that Pipe is developing a broader suite of financial services.

“What you can do is offer secondary features where capital becomes this security blanket for businesses that’s within the software they use every day,” Voiles said.

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The deal, announced Monday (April 14), will see Intuit acquire “key technology” and team members from Deserve, part of what Intuit says is its strategy to expand its money management offerings.

“This agreement aligns to our strategy to further invest in and expand our money offerings to support our goal of addressing the critical challenges businesses face: managing cash flow and gaining real-time financial visibility,” the company said in a news release. “These challenges are significant, with over 80% of business failures linked to cash flow issues.”

“Select members” of Deserve’s team will join Intuit as part of this acquisition, per the release. Terms of the deal, set to close in the third quarter of the year, have not been disclosed.

Intuit’s comments about the cash flow management challenges facing businesses match PYMNTS Intelligence research that shows roughly half of all small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) depend on immediate sales or existing cash for survival.

“SMBs with access to some method of financing demonstrate greater confidence in navigating economic challenges,” PYMNTS wrote last month.

“Interestingly, many SMBs not using financing claim that it’s unnecessary, but also lack access. Overall, the report highlights the crucial role of financing in SMB stability and growth while also identifying disparities in access and utilization.”

And with around half of these smaller businesses relying just on cash at hand to remain afloat, that leaves a substantial number SMBs acutely vulnerable, particularly hotels, restaurants and entertainment businesses, the most likely to be dependent on these limited cash stockpiles.

Additional research by PYMNTS Intelligence and American Express finds that limited cash reserves presents an ongoing challenge, with nearly 70% of SMBs holding less than four months’ worth of cash, making them vulnerable to disruptions.

With 90% of their revenue spent on daily operations, many business owners juggle tight cash flow, with 45% having to sacrifice their own paychecks due to cash flow issues and 22% struggling to stay on top essential bills, pushing them toward closure.

“These factors underscore a need for SMBs to evaluate their cash flow strategies,” PYMNTS wrote in January. “In fact, 45% of global CEOs recognize the need to assess their business models to optimize cash flow, and the concern is even greater among smaller firms.”

The research also found that 56% of CEOs from businesses earning less than $100 million are concerned about their long-term viability it their cash management practices remain unchanged.

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