Monoup News Digest: Main Updates from Fintech Industry

As usual, today we're looking and bringing you our weekly digest. Let’s discuss! British FCA has begun liquidation proceedings against a 19-year veteran of payments market that had been accumulating high-risk clients for years. How this happened, why it went unnoticed for so long, and what the scheme actually looked like — we break it down below.

Meanwhile, Thailand is dealing with its own payments troubles, and in trying to fix them, authorities are shifting responsibility for forex fraud onto the payment systems processing transactions for these illegal platforms. As it turns out, dozens of unlicensed sites have been operating in the country alongside P2P exchangers, forming substantial flows of grey money. Recent raids shut down several of them at once and, in the process, reminded payment providers of their obligation to verify their clients.

Let's go through these stories and others in order.

FCA Shuts Down Payment System Operating for Almost 20 years Over Money Laundering

The UK regulator has halted Euro Exchange Securities, a firm that, since 2007, progressed from an API license to Electronic Money Institution status and principal membership with Mastercard. The company is now under special administration, as its operations turned out to be incompatible further financial operations.

As it emerged, in just the last 12 months the firm processed over 20,000 payments totaling £2.1 billion, with nearly all of that volume tied to just 14 clients the company itself classified as high-risk. Geographically, most of these clients were registered in North and South America, with one client based in Cambodia, and all of them were members of financial industry. Euro Exchange Securities functioned not as a typical payment service but more as a correspondent bank, trying to be an intermediary between other market players. Volumes that flowed through became increasingly difficult for the regulator to trace and assess.

FCA isn't directly accusing the company of money laundering itself, but confirms that a company control system proved incapable of identifying and managing the risks tied to its own client base. Regulator had been monitoring the company since 2024, and during that time issued a warning about inadequate onboarding and client monitoring measures, yet the situation didn't change enough to avoid a forced shutdown.

Euro Exchange Securities was part of a group whose roots go back to 1983, the group even has its own bank in Puerto Rico. Therefore, this isn’t some small startup, but a structure with decades of history. UK has shut down London link in that chain, but the other related jurisdictions — the US and Spain — are currently operating without direct restrictions, although the FCA is already seeking recognition of the proceedings in US courts as well.

Payment Systems in Thailand to Share Responsibility for Forex Scams

Thailand's central bank is tightening controls on illegal forex platforms, and payment providers are becoming the main point of accountability. Regulator emphasizes that no retail broker in the country holds a license, meaning any such platform is illegal by definition.

A complicated situation around currency exchange has built up in the country overall. The recent launch of a cross-border QR channel between Thailand and China last October triggered a flow of fraudulent payments bypassing legal exchange channels, largely through P2P schemes. At the same time, new fake investment sites keep popping up in the country, luring people in with promises of high returns. Penalties for this activity are fairly significant: operators of illegal exchanges and trading platforms face up to 3 years in prison, while those advertising them face 5 to 10 years.

Since these companies can't function without accepting payments, payment systems ended up in the spotlight. Payment providers are now required to step up KYB checks and maintain ongoing transaction monitoring; failure to comply risks a fine or license revocation. The central bank's statement emphasizes this after a successful operation against forex brokers in Bangkok and other regions. Police raids managed to seize 65 million baht in cash, along with equipment and luxury goods across 24 locations. The platforms involved include QRS Global, HFM, GOFX, and Eterwealth, along with payment companies Rainy Corporation and PaySolution, which served these brokers.

Ukraine Completes its First Agentic Transaction

Mastercard and PrivatBank have completed testing of the Agent Pay protocol, confirming technical readiness for agentic payments on an ongoing basis. This is one of many events in a constantly moving chain. Mastercard has already run similar tests in the US, Australia, New Zealand, and Europe — the volume of real agentic payments is still small, but the payment system is betting on having its rails ready before demand becomes mass-market. Visa is doing similar work with issuers, while Google and Stripe are building out processing infrastructure.

Tech giants are racing to develop AI tooling, but for the average user, all of this still feels unclear. That said, the original idea is for the process to be simple: within the bank's app, a customer will connect an AI agent to a specific card and set the terms — limits, allowed spending categories, expiration date. A token is assigned to that combination, through which Mastercard, the AI agent (ChatGPT or another), and the bank sync on every purchase within the set rules.

In practice, this would let any cardholder create an AI assistant, avoid constant need to enter card details at checkout, and still keep their money secure (since limits are in place). But it's worth keeping in mind that real availability of this technology and the speed of its rollout depend on specific banks, and some countries will clearly start using AI at scale faster than others.

MoonPay Moves Toward Automated AI Accounting

One of the most labor-intensive processes in the crypto industry has taken a serious hit from automation, as MoonPay has acquired Entendre, an AI accounting platform, claiming the system can automate 93% of journal entries.

The platform links blockchain transactions to accounting systems, classifies payments, reconciles balances, and generates entries — and the output can also be used for audits. It genuinely solves an existing industry problem, since manually reconciling crypto payments is complicated by the sheer number of wallets, tokens, and data formats, unlike standard fiat transfers. The system can also handle multiple legal entities within a single project, along with dozens of accounts and tens of thousands of transactions — something that has historically been a weak point for manual bookkeeping and many existing systems as well.

That said, this isn't about fully replacing accountants — but it will meaningfully cut down on manual work. Creating journal entries and verifying them has long been a task that eats up time and introduces manual entry errors.

This is how we saw this week. For more news, deep dives, and expert articles, check out the MonoTalks section, and you can get instant updates through our Telegram channel.