Euronet acquires Spanish payments fintech PaynoPain

Euronet Worldwide’s acquisition of PaynoPain strengthens its European merchant acquiring position, adding digital-first payment capabilities across e-commerce, hospitality and marketplace verticals.

Euronet Worldwide has agreed to acquire PaynoPain, a Spanish fintech offering online payment solutions to businesses. The deal gives Euronet a direct foothold in Spain’s digital commerce infrastructure in sectors such as e-commerce, hospitality, microfinance and marketplaces.

The acquisition fits a pattern of US-listed payment processors buying European merchant-facing fintechs as they seek to build scale in the region. Euronet, better known for electronic payments and transfer processing, has been steadily broadening its merchant services division. PaynoPain’s digital-first positioning and multi-vertical client base give it a ready-made distribution layer in one of Europe’s faster-growing e-commerce markets.

For European acquirers and payment service providers, the deal is another signal that mid-market merchant payments businesses with strong vertical penetration are attractive targets, particularly in southern European markets where digital payment adoption is still accelerating.

Editorial note: A concrete M&A transaction that illustrates ongoing consolidation in European merchant acquiring, relevant to competitive strategy across the payments industry.

Sources: Euronet acquires PaynoPain — Finextra

EU commissioner frames open finance as prerequisite for trustworthy AI in financial services

Commissioner Albuquerque told the Harvard Symposium that open finance is a necessary condition for competitive, trustworthy AI in Europe’s financial sector, tying the regulatory framework directly to the EU’s AI ambitions.

Open finance is not merely a competition measure but an essential foundation for developing AI applications in European financial services, EU Commissioner Maria Luis Albuquerque said at the 24th Annual Harvard Symposium. The framing explicitly links the open finance regulatory agenda under PSD3 and the Financial Data Access (FiDA) framework to the EU’s broader strategy on AI.

This is a notable rhetorical shift. Open finance in Europe has typically been positioned around consumer empowerment and competition. By recasting it as infrastructure for AI, the commissioner is building a new political case for the framework at a moment when legislative progress on FiDA has been slower than hoped. The argument runs that without standardised, consent-driven data access, European financial AI will be built on fragmented or proprietary datasets, leaving the sector at a disadvantage.

For firms planning around FiDA’s timeline, the speech signals that the Commission sees open finance as strategically urgent rather than a second-order regulatory exercise. It may also foreshadow attempts to accelerate implementation or strengthen the framework’s scope.

Editorial note: A senior EU policymaker explicitly linking open finance to AI competitiveness is a meaningful development in the political narrative around FiDA and PSD3, with implications for how the framework is prioritised.

Sources: Commissioner Albuquerque Speech at the 24th Annual Harvard Symposium — Kurzy.cz