Markets end week mixed as earnings season winds down
Klarna’s stock took a sharp hit this week after the company trimmed its full-year outlook, even as its card product showed explosive user growth. The buy-now-pay-later firm now expects gross merchandise volume of $149-$151 billion, down from a prior forecast of more than $155 billion, citing weakened discretionary spending in Germany. Shares fell more than 20% following the results.
The pullback came despite strong adoption numbers for Klarna Card, which reached 6.5 million active users across 16 countries, up from 1.3 million a year earlier. Paying subscribers hit 2 million, roughly eight times the year-earlier level. The company is clearly finding more ways to monetize its existing customer base through pay-in-full transactions, subscriptions, and larger-ticket financing.
Still, the lowered guidance serves as a reminder that a broader product set doesn’t insulate Klarna from the consumer spending cycle. Its heavy exposure to German retail, where shoppers have pulled back, outweighs the good news on engagement. Whether the newer businesses can eventually make revenue less dependent on the shopping cycle remains an open question, and investors voted with their feet this week.
Related: Markets swing amid August volatility
Visa and Mastercard move on AI agent payments
Visa and Mastercard both joined the newly launched Agentic Payments Alliance, an initiative led by Rain that also includes Fiserv, Circle, Solana, and Remitly. The group aims to develop standards for how AI agents will handle transactions. The coalition will focus on agent identity, authorization, fraud, loyalty, and regulation — the infrastructure questions that need answers before agents can transact at meaningful scale.
The debate is shifting from whether an AI agent can buy something to who gives that agent permission to pay, what limits apply, and who carries responsibility when something goes wrong. Visa and Mastercard’s participation matters because those decisions will shape how the existing payments system adapts to software acting on behalf of consumers. The networks are essentially helping define the rules of agentic commerce rather than waiting for them to emerge.
For the people who will eventually use these systems, the practical effect is hard to see yet. But the involvement of the two largest card networks suggests that when AI agents do start making purchases, they’ll likely do so through the same rails that process card payments today. That could mean faster adoption of agent-based shopping, but it also means the existing fees and settlement structures will probably carry over into a new form of commerce.
Citi builds custody for a 24/7 market
Citi launched Custody+, a suite of near- and real-time custody capabilities designed for compressed settlement cycles, continuous markets, and increasingly automated investment decisions. The bank is also building digital-asset custody on the same architecture, with bitcoin expected to be the first asset supported later this year.
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Custody has historically been built around batches, cutoffs, and end-of-day processes. Citi is effectively acknowledging that the underlying financial system is moving toward continuous activity, and custody has to move with it. Rather than treating crypto as a separate infrastructure layer, the bank is trying to make it another asset type within the same custody system.
That approach could simplify things for institutional clients who want to hold both traditional securities and digital assets without maintaining separate arrangements. It also positions Citi to serve clients who are shortening their settlement cycles and trading more frequently, though the real test will be whether the platform performs reliably when markets get volatile.
PayPal and Venmo go after tuition payments
PayPal and Venmo are expanding into tuition payments through integrations with Illumia, Nelnet Campus Commerce, and TouchNet. The partnerships let students and families pay schools directly through the platforms. The integrations are already live at Bellarmine, Butler, Kansas State, and Michigan State, with more institutions expected to join.
Related: Hahnair revamps global airline payment systems
Tuition is a large, recurring payment that still runs through fragmented systems at many schools. PayPal is trying to insert itself into an existing institutional workflow rather than simply compete for another checkout transaction. If its wallets can handle more of the payments people already make, the network becomes more embedded in everyday financial activity.
Robinhood pushes for tokenized stocks
Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev is urging U.S. policymakers to update securities rules to allow tokenized stocks, arguing that American investors shouldn’t be excluded from infrastructure being built around American assets. The company says its Robinhood Chain has already processed 100 million transactions, while its Stock Tokens provide exposure to more than 190 U.S. stocks across 120-plus countries.
Robinhood is now lobbying for the regulatory framework that would let tokenized assets become a mainstream part of U.S. markets. That makes this a bigger strategic bet on how ownership itself could work, including 24/7 trading and faster settlement. The regulatory push also highlights an unresolved question: tokenizing an asset doesn’t automatically mean you’ve preserved all the protections and market infrastructure surrounding the underlying security. Regulators will have to decide how much of that existing framework carries over to the tokenized version.
