This week’s edition of Finovate Global showcases fintech news from Lithuania.
Genome launches Visa and Mastercard payment acceptance for online merchants
Lithuanian electronic money institution Genome has launched Visa and Mastercard payment acceptance for online sellers. Merchants will now be able to accept card payments via Genome’s hosted payment page or through a direct, host-to-host integration, providing a fully on-site checkout under their own domain. Funds are settled directly into the merchant’s Genome account, the same account used for SEPA Instant and SWIFT transfers, currency exchange, business cards, and bulk payments.
Merchants can receive their settlements in EUR, USD, or GBP as early as the next business day. Genome offers Pay by Bank as well, so merchants can now offer customers both bank and card payment options at checkout. Genome plans to offer Apple Pay and Google Pay next.
Founded in 2018, Genome is headquartered in Vilnius, Lithuania. From its origins as an e-wallet, Genome today is a multi-level financial system and electronic money institution that serves both businesses and individuals. The company enables seamless SEPA Instant, credit, and international transactions worldwide, and its platform offers multi-currency access, supporting spending or conversion via web, app, or cards. Named a top 10 finalist in the Payments & Fintech category of the E-commerce Germany Awards, Genome was named “Best All-in-One Business Finance Platform – 2026” in the Global Excellence Awards by Acquisition International.
Axiology Secures Approval to Expand Investment Services
European capital markets infrastructure provider Axiology has won approval from the Bank of Lithuania to extend its EU investment firm authorization. This will enable the Vilnius-based fintech to offer additional brokerage services along with its existing trading and settlement infrastructure, and it will streamline institutional access to tokenized financial instruments, including money market funds.
“Tokenization has the potential to make capital markets much more efficient, but there’s little benefit in simplifying the technology if investors still have to navigate a complicated process to access it,” Axiology CEO Marius Jurgilas said. “For treasury teams, that means dealing with multiple providers to place an order, complete a transaction, and manage their holdings.”
The extended authorization will enable Axiology to receive and transmit orders and execute them on behalf of clients, adding two major investment services to its existing license. This will allow the company to accept client investment instructions, execute transactions on their behalf, or pass orders to other venues and counterparties. Along with its existing permissions, Axiology will be able to support essential stages of the investment process within a single regulated firm, from managing orders to trading, settlement, and custody.
“Extending our authorization is a deliberate step toward bringing the full investment process under one regulated roof,” Jurgilas added. “By combining brokerage with our existing infrastructure, we can make it easier for clients to access and manage these investments through one regulated provider.”
Axiology’s expansion comes as tokenized money market funds are growing rapidly in popularity. According to the European Central Bank, the global market capitalization for these funds grew by approximately 110% in 2025, nearing €7 billion by February 2026.
Founded in 2023, Axiology operates a DLT Trading and Settlement System under the EU DLT Pilot Regime and holds a MiFID brokerage license, both supervised by the Bank of Lithuania. In September, Axiology was one of four companies live at the launch of the Eurosystem’s distributed ledger technology solution Pontes, settling tokenized securities in central bank currency.
DriveWealth Wins Authorization from the Bank of Lithuania to Provide Crypto-Asset Services
International Brokerage-as-a-Service platform DriveWealth announced that its European affiliate, UAB DriveWealth Europe, has secured authorization from the Bank of Lithuania to serve as a crypto-asset service provider under the European Union’s Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA).
The authorization builds on UAB DriveWealth Europe’s current MiFID II license, also issued by the Bank of Lithuania, and gives DriveWealth a single EU entity regulated for both securities and crypto-assets. The authorization establishes DriveWealth as a regulated crypto-asset provider and boosts the company’s mission of opening access to US markets via a single regulated platform for multiple asset classes. Banks, fintechs, digital wallets, and brokers will benefit from having a single integration and a single regulatory partner across US equities, exchange-traded funds, fixed income, options, and soon digital assets and cryptocurrencies.
“Finance is moving toward a world where stocks, stablecoins, and tokenized assets sit side by side, and that future has to be built on a regulated foundation,” DriveWealth CEO Naureen Hassan said. “MiCA authorization is another step in that direction. We’re doing the regulatory work first, so when we bring crypto-asset services online, our partners will be able to offer them through the same trusted infrastructure they already use across US asset classes.”
DriveWealth’s authorization announcement comes in the wake of the company’s partnership with blockchain solutions provider and fellow Finovate alum Ripple. The partnership will bring RLUSD stablecoin settlement, cross-border payments, and digital asset custody into DriveWealth’s infrastructure, starting in Europe.
Founded in 2012 and headquartered in Chatham, New Jersey, DriveWealth last demonstrated its technology on the Finovate stage at FinovateAsia 2016 in Hong Kong. The company won Best of Show for its demo at FinovateEurope earlier that year.
Here is our look at fintech innovation around the world.
Asia-Pacific
- Mastercard has opened an innovation center of excellence in Singapore.
- Singapore-based stablecoin-powered payments infrastructure provider WasabiCard launched its local issuing solution.
- The Asian Business Review looked at the sudden drop in Japan’s fintech funding in Q2 2026.
Sub-Saharan Africa
- Open-source payment infrastructure company Mojaloop to power Guinea’s national Inclusive Instant Payments System (IIPS), NimbaPay.
- South African fintech Lumepay raised $6 million in pre-seed funding.
- Nigerian fintech Raenest acquired UK payments firm Remitse.
Central and Eastern Europe
- N26 previewed the launch of its new private retirement account in Germany.
- Azerbaijan-based e-commerce, banking, and payments ecosystem Bir announced a partnership with CineMastercard, one of the country’s largest cinema networks.
- Crédit Agricole Deutschland announced a partnership with European card issuing and processing company Enfuce.
Middle East and Northern Africa
- MENA-based banking group Emirates NBD unveiled its real-time AI market insights feature for its digital wealth customers.
- Oman unveiled its national fintech strategy and digital gateway to promote financial innovation.
- Neobank Abhi, which specializes in Earned Wage Access (EWA) and SME lending, teamed up with InDebted to manage debt collections in the UAE.
Central and Southern Asia
- India’s Razorpay secured approval from the Securities and Exchange Board of India for its upcoming IPO.
- Malaysia’s RewardinMe, an AI-powered mareketing platform, announced its entry into Myanmar.
- The Kathmandu Post featured Niraj Sharma, the new CEO of eSewa, Nepal’s largest digital wallet.
Latin America and the Caribbean
- Mexican corporate spend management platform Clara secured $65 million in Series C funding.
- Paraguay-based digital bank Ueno has been placed into resolution and seized by the country’s central bank.
- The Central Bank of Trinidad and Tobago (CBTT) partnered with Compliant Risk Technology (CRT) to support the institution’s supervisory operations.
Photo by Maksim Shutov on Unsplash
