News: Nuvei splashes the cash on Payoneer, Current raises $80M to improve Americans' financial health

**Ross Gallagher** (0:05)
This is Fintech Insider News. This week, Nuve makes a $2.75 billion bet on the future of global payments. Current raises $80 million, giving us a chance to check in on the state of the American consumer.
And Barclays snaps up GoHenry as the battle for young customers heats up. We'll be tackling all of this and more on today's new show. So don't go anywhere.

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**Ross Gallagher** (1:11)
Hello and welcome to Episode 1074 of Fintech Insider News brought to you by 11FS, the now six-time Consultancy of the Year that works with financial providers, big and small, to build the next generation of financial services. I am Ross Gallagher, the head of consulting at 11FS, to help me unpack the biggest and most interesting stories from fintech and financial services from the past week. I am genuinely delighted to be joined by a quite brilliant panel of guests. First up, we have a welcome back to the show for Maia Bittner, investment partner at X Factor Ventures. Maia, it's great to have you. Thank you for coming back on the show.
How are things with you?

**Maia Bittner** (1:50)
Hey, Ross. So good to see you guys again. Really excited to be here. We have such fun stories for today.

**Ross Gallagher** (1:56)
Yeah, we do. I can't wait to get into it. We also have a very welcome return to the show for the one and only Sam Maule, head of business development at Moov.
Sam, this is obviously an audio format, so I don't think people can really appreciate your V1 OG Fintech Insider t-shirt, but it's great to have you back, how are things?

**Sam Maule** (2:18)
It's really good. So Ross is my favorite. He's the BBC one, Radio One voice, just the most dulcet tones when it comes to a Fintech Insider host. So I'm thrilled.

**Ross Gallagher** (2:30)
I'm delighted with that. That's going to make my week.
Excellent. All right. And then, well, we think making a debut in the news format, but certainly not his first rodeo. I'm also delighted to be joined by Liam Gray, head of account management, Europe Plaid. Liam Gray, to have you, great to see you. Maybe you can just reintroduce yourself to our audience.

**Liam Gray** (2:55)
Absolutely. Great to be here and thank you for having me. It's been a while. I think the last time was probably in Shortick Insider, many moons ago. But yeah, to reintroduce myself, I'm Liam Gray, head of account management here for Plaid in Europe. Been here for about five years, five of the seven that Plaid's been in Europe. For those who aren't familiar with Plaid, we're an open banking, open finance company founded back in 2012
We work with over 8,000 companies globally and connect to about 12,000 financial institutions.

**Ross Gallagher** (3:25)
Love that. You guys, Liam, just released a new report on the state of intelligent finance in the UK. Maybe you can tell us just a little bit about that.

**Liam Gray** (3:35)
Absolutely. This is a new report that we've released with Harris Poll, all about how people are interacting with AI agents and the trust around those relationships in general in the UK.
I suppose without spoiling too much, one of the headline figures is around the fact that over 50 percent of Brits have used AI to manage their finances over the last year, which is quite surprising given that it's quite polarizing thing at times when we're talking about AI and finances. So yeah, happy to share more about that at some point, but do go and have a look at the report if you have time.

**Ross Gallagher** (4:12)
It's incredible to think that it's over 50 percent, right? That really feels like a tipping point and probably points to some real accelerated adoption. Yes, I appreciate that you didn't probably give us too many spoilers. If any listeners want to get a copy, then we'll leave the link to the report in the show description as well, so you can access that directly and get your teeth into it.
Okay, cool. Well, look, I promised you a great panel. I don't think I'm going to disappoint you. So let's get started. Let's get into the news. Now, this first story comes from Fintech Global with the headline, Nuvei acquires Payoneer in $2.75 billion payments deal. So Nuvei has agreed to acquire cross-border payments platform Payoneer in a $2.75 billion all cash deal. The transaction combines Nuvei's payment acceptance capabilities with Payoneer's global payouts network, multi-currency accounts, and regulatory licenses across more than 150 markets. Together, the companies say they aim to create a unified financial infrastructure platform that supports businesses across the full transaction life cycle, from accepting payments through to settlement, treasury, and embedded financial services.