Multiple fintech product moves

Banks and payments firms are pushing the same idea from different angles: move money faster, keep it programmable, and make it work around the clock. On April 9 and April 13, SoFi and HSBC each rolled out new products built for instant or tokenised settlement. (galileo-ft.com) (businesswire.com) SoFi said its bank now lets members send and receive instant transfers through the Federal Reserve’s FedNow Service, with money moving in seconds between SoFi accounts and accounts at other United States banks, including on weekends and holidays. Galileo, SoFi’s technology arm, said most banks on FedNow still only support receiving payments, not sending them. (galileo-ft.com) (federalreserve.gov) Galileo also said its existing FedNow infrastructure can be used by partners without those firms becoming direct Federal Reserve participants, and said that creates a path to offer instant-payment products more broadly. The company said that model can also connect to stablecoin-based settlement for partners operating across different payment systems. (morningstar.com) (finance.yahoo.com) HSBC, meanwhile, launched its Tokenized Deposit Service in the United States on April 13 and said the product is also available in Hong Kong, Singapore, Luxembourg and the United Kingdom. The bank said institutions can use the service to move United States dollars between accounts in real time, 24 hours a day, in a regulated bank-deposit format rather than a stablecoin. (businesswire.com) (hsbc.com) The distinction matters because FedNow is a new real-time rail run by the Federal Reserve, while tokenised deposits are bank deposits represented on a blockchain-style ledger. FedNow went live on July 20, 2023, and HSBC has been building Orion as its digital-assets platform for bonds, gold and other tokenised financial products. (federalreserve.gov) (hsbc.com) The consumer version of the same push showed up in Japan. Reports published on April 13 said Rakuten Wallet will add XRP support starting April 15, letting users convert Rakuten Points into XRP and load that value into Rakuten Cash for spending through Rakuten Pay. (kucoin.com) (mexc.com) Those reports said Rakuten Pay has about 44 million active users and acceptance at roughly 5 million merchant locations, which would give XRP a route into everyday payments if the rollout works as described. Rakuten had not been located in primary-source search results announcing the feature, so the reported mechanics remain based on secondary crypto-industry coverage. (kucoin.com) (coinpedia.org) Wise’s latest update pointed in the same direction on volume. The company said quarterly cross-border volume rose 26% year over year to £49.4 billion in the quarter ended March 31, 2026, with 11.3 million active customers, and said it expects trading on Nasdaq to begin on May 11 while keeping its London listing. (londonstockexchange.com) (reuters.com) Taken together, the week’s moves show four parts of the same payments market moving at once: bank rails getting faster, bank money getting tokenised, crypto wallets reaching for merchant checkout, and cross-border platforms still adding volume. The products are different, but each one is aimed at shrinking the time between a payment instruction and usable money. (galileo-ft.com) (businesswire.com) (londonstockexchange.com)