Financial Infrastructure

Johannesburg – October 01, 2026 -- Absa Group has selected Thunes as a strategic Multicurrency Clearing partner, expanding a collaboration that links Absa's Pan-African banking footprint to Thunes' Direct Global Network spanning more than 140 countries, 90 currencies, and 220 payment methods.

Deal builds on South Africa's Absa Global Pay launch

The new agreement extends the two companies' prior rollout of Absa Global Pay in South Africa, which combined Absa's banking franchise with Thunes' global payment connectivity and local-market capabilities. The expanded partnership now underpins Absa's broader cross-border payments strategy across African and global markets.

Clearing link enables payouts beyond bank accounts

By connecting directly to Thunes' network, the collaboration allows Absa to route payouts to mobile wallets and card rails, not just bank accounts, with 24/7 liquidity and enterprise-grade compliance built in.

Miami – September 29, 2026 -- Chainlink said it is enabling financial institutions to connect their systems and key-signing infrastructure to Swift's blockchain ledger, opening a path for banks to run 24/7 tokenized deposit payments without replacing existing settlement arrangements.

Chainlink Runtime Environment powers a self-signing model for bank connectivity

The solution centers on a self-signing model built through the Chainlink Runtime Environment (CRE), which orchestrates workflows linking financial institutions to Swift's ledger while institutions retain control of transaction-authorizing keys. Banks can adopt round-the-clock tokenized payment workflows while preserving current security governance, approval processes, and operating models.

Singapore – September 23, 2026 -- Enterprise spending on AI tokens is outpacing the infrastructure built to manage it, with McKinsey reporting that enterprise LLM spending tripled over twelve months even as per-token costs fell sharply. Goldman Sachs projects token consumption will rise 24-fold by 2030, exposing a gap in how companies track and finance one of their fastest-growing cost lines.

Accels upgrades its routing platform to cover 150+ AI models

Singapore-based Accels is expanding its Accels Router product to provide access to 15 leading model providers and more than 150 AI models through a single API. The platform, which has served customers in recent years, delivers low-latency routing across large language models.