Concorde Capital, an investment firm that has been operating in the Ukrainian market since 2004, plans to lower the entry threshold for investors in its projects and launch retail investment products, according to Ihor Sotnyk, managing director of Concorde Capital’s investment banking department.
“We have already prepared this infrastructure and plan to launch products—including government bonds and other products that will be available to retail investors—and to develop this segment,” he said during a discussion on the prospects of the Ukrainian stock market organized by the Kyiv International Economic Forum last week.
Sotnik noted that the investment group began with joint investment initiatives, “investing in infrastructure, in the app, and in an asset management company.”
“The numbers show that there is money in the domestic market and people are still investing,” he explained, referring to Concorde Capital’s plans to develop such investment products.
The department director added that a successful example was the Encraft project for joint investments in distributed generation and energy storage systems, which managed to attract investors and launch the first phase.
In addition, the investment group launched a mobile app and digital investment platform called “Statock,” which currently lists three projects with a minimum investment threshold of $9,000.
At the same time, the Statock website states that in the third quarter of this year, the company plans to launch an investment module with a minimum investment threshold of just 1,000 UAH for government bonds, stocks, and bonds, as well as ETF funds, featuring savings accounts, automatic reinvestment, and portfolio management.
In addition, the launch of an AI-powered robo-advisor for selecting investment instruments and a PFM (personal financial manager) is scheduled for this quarter, while brokerage services are set to launch in the fourth quarter of this year.
It is noted that Statock is a fintech product of Concorde Capital’s subsidiary IT company, Concorde Fintech LLC, which, together with its partners, develops software for automating the retail investment business in Ukraine.
The investment firm Concorde Capital, founded and led by Ihor Mazepa, states on its website that in more than 20 years of operating in the market, it has secured $4 billion in investments for clients, executed more than 100 deals, and has more than 1,000 corporate clients and more than 100,000 investors involved in investments in real businesses.
The National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) has fined iPay (UPR LLC), an online platform for money transfers and online payments, 16.51 million UAH for violating the laws governing the payment market, the regulator announced.
It is noted that the violations, identified as a result of off-site supervision, concerned, in particular, inadequate control over the quality and sufficiency of information accompanying payment transactions.
The company must pay the fine within five business days from the date it is notified of the decision by the NBU’s Committee on Supervision and Regulation of Banking Activities and Oversight of the Payment Infrastructure.
In addition, the regulator issued a written warning to iPay for violating requirements regarding the management and authorization system for financial payment service providers.
The company must rectify the identified violations and take measures to prevent their recurrence within no more than 30 calendar days from the date of receiving the decision.
The committee adopted the relevant decisions on September 2.
As previously reported, in September 2025, the NBU had already fined iPay 16.6 million UAH for violations in the area of financial monitoring, specifically deficiencies in risk assessment, internal controls, handling of customer data, and reporting. At the same time, the company received a written warning for errors in reporting and record-keeping.
Iryna Starominska, Chairwoman of the Board of JSC “UNIVERSAL BANK,” was named the winner of the “Financier of the Year” category as part of the 30th anniversary nationwide “Person of the Year 2025” program.
Starominska has over 25 years of professional experience, the last 16 of which she has spent in leadership roles in the banking sector. She has headed Universal Bank since 2017.
One of the bank’s key projects during this period was the 2017 launch, in collaboration with the Fintech Band team, of the digital banking service monobank, which operates under Universal Bank’s banking license.
As of early June 2026, the monobank ecosystem had over 10.7 million customers, making it one of Ukraine’s largest digital financial services. The project has also been included twice in CNBC’s “Top 250 Fintech Companies in the World” ranking.
The development of monobank has become one of the most notable examples of the transformation of the Ukrainian banking market, where traditional banking infrastructure has been combined with remote services and mobile financial technologies.
Universal Bank is listed among Ukraine’s systemically important banks. According to information provided by the organizers of the “Person of the Year” program, as of the end of 2025, the bank ranked third in Ukraine in terms of retail deposits and second in terms of its retail loan portfolio, and was also among the top five most profitable Ukrainian banks.
For five years, Starominska has also been ranked among the most influential women in Ukraine’s fintech sector. In her management role, she focuses on the development of digital banking services, the automation of operations, and the implementation of technological solutions for retail customers.
Charitable and social projects remain a separate area of activity for Universal Bank and monobank. According to data provided by the award organizers, from the start of the full-scale invasion through April 2026, the total amount of charitable aid provided by the bank and its team exceeded 497 million UAH.
Of this amount, approximately 386 million UAH was allocated to support the Armed Forces of Ukraine, military units, and charitable foundations that assist the army. Another approximately 111 million UAH was allocated to cultural and social projects. The bank also participates in charitable initiatives alongside the UNITED24 fundraising platform and other foundations.
Universal Bank operates in the Ukrainian banking market as a universal financial institution serving both individuals and businesses. Since 2017, the bank has been a partner of Fintech Band in the development of monobank. The bank is part of the TAS Group and is included in the list of systemically important banks in Ukraine.
Open4Business is an information partner of the nationwide “Person of the Year 2025” program.
BANK, FINANCE, FINTECH, MONOBANK, UKRAINE, UNIVERSAL BANK, Старомінська
The National Securities and Stock Market Commission (NSSMC) has registered the 16th issue of Series “P” bonds by the international financial service NovaPay (TM NovaPay), part of the Nova Group, issued by its subsidiary “NovaPay Credit,” with a face value of 200 million hryvnia, according to the bond prospectus.
It is noted that the issue involves the placement of 200,000 registered, interest-bearing, unsecured bonds with a par value of 1,000 UAH each. The interest rate on these bonds will be 18% per annum.
The public offering of the bonds is scheduled to run from September 4, 2026, to August 3, 2027, provided the prospectus remains in effect. The bonds will be offered for listing on the “Perspektiva” stock exchange. “Univer Capital” LLC has been appointed as the administrator for the “R” series issue.
The company plans to use the proceeds from the offering for lending: 80% to individuals and 20% to legal entities.
Redemption of the bonds is scheduled for September 4–10, 2029.
As previously reported, in July, the National Securities and Stock Market Commission (NSSMC) registered NovaPay’s 15th Series “O” bond issue with a face value of 200 million UAH. In early June, the company announced the full placement of its 14th Series “N” issue of the same volume.
Based on the results for the first half of 2026, NovaPay Credit increased its net profit 3.2-fold compared to the same period in 2025—to 172.01 million UAH—and its revenue 2.2-fold, to 586.42 million UAH.
The company’s equity as of the end of June stood at 688.5 million UAH, compared to 516.5 million UAH at the beginning of the year, while liabilities totaled 1.69 billion UAH, compared to 1.37 billion UAH.
The company’s proceeds from bond sales during this period rose to 693 million UAH from 355.63 million UAH a year earlier, while expenses related to their redemption increased to 578.80 million UAH from 244.92 million UAH, respectively.
According to Fixygen, the standoff between traditional banks and cryptocurrencies is gradually changing in nature: the largest financial institutions are no longer trying to prove that they don’t need blockchain; instead, they are beginning to migrate bank deposits and payments to the very same technological infrastructure on which stablecoins operate.
One of the most significant developments in August was the creation of the BankChain Alliance in the U.S., which brought together banking associations from 39 states. The project aims to create a banking blockchain network by 2027 that will be capable of supporting tokenized deposits, stablecoins, automated settlements, and programmable payments.
In effect, small and regional U.S. banks are trying to develop their own alternative to cryptocurrency payment infrastructure, rather than ceding this market to Circle, Coinbase, and tech companies.
Major banks are moving in the same direction.
On August 4, Wells Fargo announced the launch of tokenized deposits for corporate clients. These funds are bank money recorded on the blockchain and enable round-the-clock settlements, including on weekends. The first phase involves transactions between the U.S. dollar and the British pound, and by 2027, the bank intends to expand its geographic reach and list of currencies.
The fundamental difference between a tokenized deposit and USDC or USDT lies in who the issuer is.
In the case of a traditional stablecoin, the customer holds a digital claim against a specialized issuer. In the case of a tokenized deposit, the customer still holds a bank deposit, but the infrastructure for managing it is blockchain-based.
Therefore, banks are essentially telling the crypto industry: we accept the technology, but we want to keep the money within the banking system.
Payment systems have gone even further.
Visa reported that its annual volume of transactions in stablecoins reached approximately $7 billion, and in the Central and Eastern Europe, Middle East, and Africa (CEE) region, the volume of such transactions increased nearly 60-fold over the year. The company is already developing more than 160 card programs linked to stablecoins.
In July, Visa launched a dedicated platform, the Visa Stablecoin Platform, through which banks, fintech companies, and payment providers will be able to work with stablecoins within a unified infrastructure. In August, the company also expanded Visa Direct to include the ability to make payments and provide pre-funding using stablecoins.
At the same time, the use of stablecoins directly by consumers is growing rapidly.
According to an estimate by the payment company RedotPay, cited by Reuters, spending via cards linked to stablecoins could rise to approximately $50 billion per year by 2028. As early as July 2026, the monthly volume of such card payments exceeded $1 billion for the first time.
The most important factor driving changes in the market is regulation in the U.S.
On August 17, the U.S. Department of the Treasury published a new draft rule for implementing the GENIUS Act. Starting January 18, 2027, the issuance of payment stablecoins in the U.S. will generally be permitted only to licensed issuers. Starting in July 2028, U.S. service providers will also face restrictions on offering users stablecoins issued without the appropriate license.
As a result, the market is entering a completely new phase.
Just a few years ago, the question went something like this: Will cryptocurrencies replace banks?
Now the question has changed: Who will control the digital dollar—crypto companies, banks, or payment systems?
This is precisely where one of the major financial competitive battles of the next few years may unfold.
Circle and Tether have created a model of dollar-backed money that can be transferred around the clock and almost instantly. Banks have realized that customers truly want this functionality, but they are unwilling to hand over the deposits—on which the traditional banking model is based—to tech companies.
As a result, the market is gradually moving toward the coexistence of three forms of the digital dollar.
The first is traditional bank money.
The second is tokenized bank deposits, which Wells Fargo and other banks are transferring to the blockchain.
The third is stablecoins, which exist outside the traditional deposit account system but are becoming increasingly integrated into the financial system under new regulatory conditions.
The winner here has not yet been determined. But one conclusion is already clear: the blockchain infrastructure itself is no longer just an experiment in the cryptocurrency sector.
If the largest banks and Visa begin to process payments 24/7 via blockchain, the major technological debate of the past decade will effectively come to an end.
Blockchain hasn’t destroyed banks—banks have begun to embrace blockchain.
Sources: U.S. Treasury, Wells Fargo, Visa, Reuters, publications from August 4–26, 2026.
According to Fixygen, the British fintech startup Revolut has launched the EURR, a stablecoin pegged to the euro, Bloomberg reports, citing a company statement. The issuer of the EURR is Bridge, a company owned by the American firm Stripe. Bridge will also own and manage the assets backing this stablecoin.
Initially, it will be available to a limited number of Revolut customers in Denmark, Poland, and Portugal, and later this year, the startup plans to expand access to other markets in the European Economic Area (EEA).
EURR will be integrated into the Revolut app and will allow users to exchange euros for cryptocurrency—and vice versa—directly on the blockchain.
The company calls this launch the first step in its stablecoin strategy, which includes the launch of tokens pegged to other currencies as well.
“Revolut started by eliminating hidden fees and barriers to currency exchange,” the company said in a statement. “Now we’re doing the same with cryptocurrency.”
The financial news and analysis platform Finance Magnates, citing official documents, reports that EURR was launched on August 20 and is marketed as Revolut Euro. According to the report, the stablecoin is available in the Revolut retail app and on the Revolut X cryptocurrency exchange. As of Tuesday, only 374 EURR were in circulation, backed by reserves of 374 euros.
Revolut was founded in 2015 in London by Mykola Storonskyi (a graduate of the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology and the Russian Economic School) and Vladislav Yatsenko. The company serves over 80 million retail and 800,000 business customers worldwide. It operates as a bank in more than 30 countries.
In 2024, Revolut became Europe’s most valuable private tech company, with a valuation of $45 billion, and last year it reaffirmed this status by increasing its valuation to $75 billion.
