Reports: European B2B Office of CFO SaaS: 2025 Market Trends and Key Investments; Framework for Trusted Agentic Commerce; Blockchain and Artificial Intelligence: The New Payments Paradigm;

Let’s dive into this week’s curated collection of fintech reports, whitepapers, and expert guidelines in the latest edition of Fintech Wrap Up. Every resource featured is available for download

Insights & Reports:

1️⃣ DeFAI Unstacked: The Future of On-Chain Finance

2️⃣ Blockchain and Artificial Intelligence: The New Payments Paradigm

3️⃣ Framework for Trusted Agentic Commerce

4️⃣ Real-World Asset Tokenisation in Trade Finance: Unlocking Capital for Global Trade

5️⃣ Digital era banking systems revisited

6️⃣ European B2B Office of CFO SaaS: 2025 Market Trends and Key Investments

7️⃣ How platforms can drive payment adoption

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TL;DR:

Welcome to this week’s Fintech Wrap Up!

DeFAI—Decentralized Financial AI—is pushing DeFi into a new era of intelligent, autonomous agents that can trade, govern, and optimize in real time. The ecosystem is forming across four layers: frameworks, protocols, agents, and marketplaces. But as automation grows, so do concerns around transparency and control.

AI and Web3 are also merging to transform payments. By removing intermediaries and using tools like Zero-Knowledge Proofs, Web3 platforms promise faster, cheaper, and more private transactions. AI adds personalization and smarter financial decision-making.

To support this shift, new trust frameworks are emerging—featuring verified agent directories, consent metadata, and real-time fraud detection—to ensure agents can transact securely on users’ behalf.

Tokenising trade finance is unlocking capital for SMEs. Standard Chartered’s $500M pilot shows how blockchain can turn receivables into investable digital assets. By 2034, tokenised trade finance could make up 16% of all tokenised assets.

Banks are rethinking their architecture. Instead of replacing legacy cores, they’re layering “systems of intelligence” to orchestrate real-time services, GenAI, and embedded finance.

And in Europe, CFO SaaS platforms are booming as automation, regulation, and embedded fintech converge. Platforms like Shopify prove that embedded payments aren’t just a feature—they’re a revenue engine.

Every resource featured is available for download!

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Insights

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Reports

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DeFAI Unstacked: The Future of On-Chain Finance

👉 Key Takeaways

🔹 DeFAI (Decentralized Financial AI) is emerging as a foundational evolution in decentralized finance, embedding intelligence, autonomy, and real-time optimization into DeFi protocols, governance mechanisms, and trading strategies.

🔹 The ecosystem is crystallizing into four distinct architectural layers, each playing a unique role in the lifecycle and scalability of autonomous agents:

- Frameworks (e.g., ARC, ElizaOS): Provide the core logic and development environment, defining agent behavior, modularity, and autonomy.

- Agent Protocols (e.g., Modius, Wayfinder): Function as deployment engines, allowing users to configure and launch DeFi agents at scale through low-code or no-code interfaces.

- AI Agents (e.g., AIXBT, Griffain): Represent the operational frontier — live, autonomous agents executing financial strategies, optimizing liquidity, and participating in on-chain governance.

- Agent Marketplaces (e.g., Auto.fun, Virtuals): Serve as distribution platforms where agents can be discovered, customized, rented, and monetized as tradable digital primitives.

🔹 Critical open questions remain around ownership, transparency, and governance — particularly as the commoditization and cross-chain propagation of autonomous systems continues to accelerate.