This week's Transaction Finance Weekly covers the European Parliament advancing the digital euro, Swift's blockchain pilot with 17 banks, and SCB's launch of Citi's 24/7 dollar clearing in Thailand.

This week's Asian Banker Weekly Brief covers the collapsed US-Iran ceasefire and oil surge, a $2.1 trillion chip selloff, Swift's blockchain payments pilot, and Circle's national trust bank approval.

Emirates NBD partners with Techstars on AI adoption and Tabby launches a digital banking app, as Deutsche Bank expands in Saudi Arabia and Qatar and CBUAE licences reinforce the UAE's fintech hub status.

Record Wall Street profits from trading and dealmaking contrast with muted consumer banking growth, as the UK regulates BNPL, Klarna seeks a US bank charter, and Nubank completes its Mexico conversion.

Revolut wins an Australian banking licence, Stripe and Advent reportedly bid $53 billion for PayPal, and Pix enters a US trade dispute, leading a week of shifts across global retail banking and payments.

Robust capital markets activity and lower credit provisions lifted first-half earnings at leading US banks, but gains were concentrated among the largest, most diversified institutions. JPMorgan Chase led the group in absolute pre-tax profit, while limited margin expansion and slower revenue growth at regional lenders exposed a widening earnings divide.

Swift has moved its blockchain-based shared ledger from concept to readiness for initial use in nine months, with 17 banks preparing to pilot live tokenised-deposit transactions. The test is whether a messaging cooperative can coordinate separate bank liabilities across borders without itself becoming a settlement institution.

This week, Bank Nizwa moved to acquire Oman's Alizz Islamic Bank, Revolut won approval to expand digital asset services in Dubai and UAE banks pressed ahead with blockchain payments and national card infrastructure.

This week, the European Commission proposed freer capital and liquidity movement across banking groups, JPMorgan pushed back on uneven US capital reforms, and the ECB flagged trade tensions tightening euro-area corporate lending.

From Emirates NBD's real-time dollar payments to Deutsche Bank's trade finance guarantees and BBVA's Swift retail scheme, this week saw banks racing to modernise cross-border and SME payment infrastructure.

Wall Street earnings, Europe's push to unlock bank liquidity and renewed monetary tightening in Asia highlighted a week in which banks balanced resilient profitability with an increasingly complex policy and operating environment.

CIMB has launched its Private Wealth proposition in Malaysia as part of a regional rollout across ASEAN. By combining regional investment advice, treasury capabilities and local relationship management, the bank aims to deepen affluent relationships and support Forward30’s target of doubling wealth assets under management by 2030.

Finance China 2026 highlighted how China's banking industry is moving beyond early AI deployment towards enterprise-wide transformation, with governance, customer outcomes and institutional capability emerging as the defining priorities for the next stage of adoption.

This year’s awards show how Chinese banks are embedding artificial intelligence (AI) into core operations, strengthening transaction banking capabilities and advancing digitally enabled retail and wealth management services.

North America's leading corporate and investment banks retained their global dominance in 2025, although their performance revealed widening efficiency gaps as revenue growth, regulatory changes and remediation costs shaped results.