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‘Smart’ Nanoparticles Deliver mRNA Directly to Tumors in New Cancer Therapy

The treatment can reprogram immune cells that have been corrupted by the cancer, strengthening the body’s ability to attack.

Wadworth Joins Asset Match PISCES venue in Private-Market First

The move to the PISCES venue widens the eligible investor pool beyond the previous restricted market, supported by independent research from Hardman & Co that will remain accessible throughout the auction window.Ben Weaver, business development director at Asset Match, said the auction “represents the first opportunity for a broader pool of eligible investors to acquire shares in Wadworth, supported by independent research that will provide additional transparency and valuable insight

Money20/20 Middle East day two: mada meets HIMYAN live on stage

<h2>The Saudi and Qatari central bank governors put the first HIMYAN card payment through the mada network in front of the room. barq closed a $329.5m round at a $1.85bn valuation, Visa was certified for SAMA’s e-commerce interface and two Saudi payment firms went live on domestic financial crime tooling. Tuesday was about capability switching on rather than being promised.</h2>The second day of Money20/20 Middle East produced the most consequential item of the show so far, and it was not a memorandum of understanding. The Saudi Central Bank and Qatar Central Bank announced an agreement enabling the cross-border use of the two countries’ national payment cards, mada in Qatar and HIMYAN in Saudi Arabia. The two governors then put the first HIMYAN card payment through the mada network in Saudi Arabia themselves.H.E. Ayman M. Al-Sayari, Governor of SAMA, and H.E. Sheikh Bandar bin Mohammed bin Saoud Al-Thani, Governor of the Qatar Central Bank, made the transaction on Tuesday afternoon. Acceptance will be introduced gradually, once the technical and operational integration between the two schemes is complete.This is a switch-on with a runway attached rather than an overnight change. What makes it significant is what a domestic card scheme is: the most sovereign piece of retail payments infrastructure a country builds, tied to its own settlement rails, fee structures and supervisory reach. Agreeing reciprocal acceptance between two of them is a harder negotiation than opening a QR corridor, because each central bank has to accept the other’s rules inside its own acceptance network. Doing it live shows how far the technical work has already gone.<h3>The regulator’s count</h3>Al-Sayari had opened the Executive Summit earlier in the day with the numbers behind the sector. Saudi Arabia had 371 fintech companies by the end of August, up from 301 in May and against a National Fintech Strategy target of 525 by 2030. Electronic payments made up more than 85 per cent of retail transactions by the end of 2025, and investment in the sector passed SAR 30bn in the first half of this year.Open banking shows the pace most clearly. SAMA began licensing open banking providers on 26 March, with Lean Technologies the first to receive a licence, moving the activity out of the regulatory sandbox and into a supervised regime less than six months before the show.<h3>barq, and the order things happened in</h3>barq closed a $329.5m Series A at a $1.85bn valuation, with Noon Investments, Sohar International Bank and the M20 Fund among its investors. The company was founded in 2023 by Ahmed Alenazi, licensed by SAMA in January 2024, and says it now has more than 15 million users across more than 210 nationalities and has processed SAR 440bn. During the show it also deepened its partnership with Mastercard, which dates back to 2024, and collected three Visa awards, including fastest-growing fintech across Central and Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa.A Series A of that size three years after founding would look aggressive in most markets. Here the sequence explains it. The licence came first, the users followed and the capital came last, into a business already operating under supervision. It is the same pattern Tabby‘s licence stack showed on Monday.<h3>Processing and compliance, inside the Kingdom</h3>Visa announced that merchants and payment service providers in Saudi Arabia can now process e-commerce transactions locally through the Visa Acceptance Platform, following its certification for SAMA’s new e-commerce payments interface. The platform runs on local cloud infrastructure and brings processing, fraud management, tokenisation and authentication together, with support for mada, card-on-file payments, digital wallets and recurring billing. A global network is fitting itself to a domestic scheme’s requirements and keeping the processing in the country, rather than asking the market to fit around it.Two Saudi payment firms went live on the same domestic financial crime platform. HyperPay has switched on Mozn‘s financial crime prevention suite, which screens names with an Arabic-first matching engine and maps its monitoring rules to SAMA’s anti-money laundering typologies for payments. Mobily Pay, the SAMA-licensed wallet, has deployed Mozn’s customer risk scoring alongside its fraud management tools.For a payments company, compliance capacity sets the pace of merchant onboarding and product launches. A local market forming around a local compliance stack is infrastructure in the least visible sense of the word.<h3>Money for small businesses</h3>Fina, the B2B embedded finance arm of SILQ, launched the Fina Fund with Riyadh-based Joa Capital, a direct financing fund with a target size of SAR 500m for Saudi small businesses. The gap it is aimed at is far larger. SILQ puts the Kingdom’s SME financing shortfall at around SAR 400bn, with SME lending at 11.3 per cent of total bank loans in 2025 against a 2030 target of 20 per cent.On the Capital Stage, Walter Gontarek, chief executive of Channel Capital, argued that lenders outside the banks are turning alternative data into a real advantage over incumbents, and that stronger risk governance in the Kingdom is starting to show up in portfolio returns and cheaper funding for borrowers. SiFi and IDEMIA Secure Transactions added a smaller practical step for business cardholders, launching Tap to Activate, which switches on a new card with a tap against a phone. Geidea and The Saudi Investment Bank signed a memorandum of understanding to develop payment and point-of-sale services for the bank’s customers.<h3>On stage: trust, and who decides</h3>Trust ran through the day’s sessions. Opening The Bridge stage, Fahad Al Guthami, chief executive of American Express Saudi Arabia, said: “The more the world becomes digital, the more the world will require trust. You can build the best accessibility, but if the trust and security are not there, it will not go far.”Jeff Parker, chief executive of Paymentology, made the point from the other side on a panel about banking the next billion customers with Reem Bank, Revolut and VEON. Regulation gives an institution a baseline of trust, he argued, but a place in someone’s everyday life is earned through the experience and tested when something goes wrong. Wassim Skaff of Visa told the Next-Gen Money stage that the best payment journeys are the ones customers barely notice, provided they still feel informed and in control.On the Capital Stage the question was who should be making investment decisions as AI moves into the process. “There is a big difference between capability and accountability,” said Fariha Ansari Javed, partner at Stride Ventures. “AI can help us analyse data, identify what we may be missing, but it never takes away human judgement.” Hussain Almarhoon, founding and managing partner of HALA Capital, said his firm treats AI as a challenger rather than a decision-maker, because sophisticated analysis built on incomplete data can create false confidence.Mohamed Alaadin, general partner at Development Partners International, put the investor case more directly. “Saudi Arabia has shifted from being an interesting market to being an investable market,” he said.Money20/20 Middle East closes today at the Riyadh Exhibition and Convention Centre in Malham, with the MoneySurge finalists pitching on the Executive Summit stage at 4pm.Sources:<ul dir="ltr"><li><a href="https://www.sama.gov.sa/en-US/MediaCenter/News/pages/news-1135.aspx">SAMA: Commences Licensing of Fintech Companies to Provide Open Banking Services</a></li><li><a href="https://www.pinsentmasons.com/out-law/news/saudi-central-bank-fintechs-licensed-offer-open-banking-services">Pinsent Masons: Saudi Central Bank announces first fintechs licensed</a></li><li><a href="https://www.clydeco.com/en/insights/2026/03/sama-new-licensing-framework-for-open-banking">Clyde & Co: SAMA licensing framework for open banking</a></li><li><a href="https://www.arabnews.com/business/saudi-fintech-sector-grows-to-371-companies-as-digital-payments-expand-3001781">Arab News: Saudi fintech sector grows to 371 companies</a></li><li><a href="https://openbanking.sama.gov.sa/index-en.html">SAMA Open Banking portal</a></li></ul> The post <a href="https://thefintechtimes.com/money20-20-middle-east-day-two-mada-meets-himyan-live-on-stage/">Money20/20 Middle East day two: mada meets HIMYAN live on stage</a> appeared first on <a href="https://thefintechtimes.com">The Fintech Times</a>.

Love life of the woman who 'married' the Eiffel Tower - but was swept off her feet by a crane

She recalled as a teenager while her friends started dating their peers, she harboured feelings for the Golden Gate Bridge.Which objects first captured Erika's heart?Her previous relationships include a Japanese training sword, which she said saved her from being sexually assaulted by another cadet in 1993 while she was in the US Air Force Academy.Later, she became obsessed with archery and fell in love with her bow, Lance, who was such an excellent companion, together they ‘shot’ to stardom whe

British mum kidnapped in broad daylight in Malawi as family make desperate plea

“She is a devoted mother and a loving wife, and her family and friends miss her more than words can express.Police have appealed for information about her kidnap (Handout)“Her family, friends and loved ones are desperately praying for her safety and for her to be brought home soon.“Please help us by sharing this poster and spreading the word about Nusrat’s kidnapping as far and as widely as possible.”United Democratic Front president Atupele Muluzi, said kidnappings are becoming more common in M

Mintoak Acquires ICC Loyalty to Build Payments and Engagement OS

By bringing together merchant engagement, customer loyalty and data-driven intelligence, we are building a payments and engagement OS that enables banks to create greater value for merchants, consumers and banks,” he said.Amit Narang, co-founder and chief executive of ICC Loyalty, said the combination would allow his company to incorporate Mintoak’s AI and platform capabilities to deliver what he described as hyper-personalisation for existing and new clients.Following the acquisitio

Hundreds join desperate search for partially deaf three-year-old boy missing from playground

We've got most of the village covered."What I am saying now is feet on the ground."Walk around the village and hope he pops out in front of you."Talk to as many people as you can and find out what they know."I am imagining he is very scared."A helicopter was also spotted flying overhead near the estuary of the River Stour and close to the Essex border.Earlier this evening, volunteers who had offered to help with the search were told to go home for the evening as emergency services continued look

SuperAPI Moves $3.8bn a Week in Australian Super Contributions

SuperAPI, an Australian payroll-to-superannuation payments infrastructure provider, has disclosed that it processes roughly $3.8 billion in mandatory retirement contributions every week on behalf of 16 million workers. The company said it now onboards approximately 34,000 new employees per month and counts seven of the top ten Australian superannuation funds among its partners.Ben Styles, co-founder and chief commercial officer at SuperAPIThe figures, shared by Ben Styles, SuperAPI’s chief

Expert says Sussex decision to yank kids from school after 48 hours 'beggars belief'

It's one of the worst places to drive in the UK.”Another said: “This was obviously going to happen.”Sources close to Harry and Meghan were at pains to emphasise the decision to pull out Archie, 7, and Lilibet, 5, from the prep-school after just 48 hours was made ‘reluctantly’ – and had nothing to do with the school itself.Archie and Lilibet were shown enjoying their new British life in Meghan's Instagram feed (IG)The decision by Harry, who celebrated his 42nd birthday on Tuesday, left parents at

Travellers rank the world’s rudest destinations for tourists

In an interview with the Daily Mail, she dished the dirt on the least friendly places you might find.Paris, France Hayes told the publication that Paris, France, is ‘top of the list’ when it comes to being rude and unfriendly to tourists. Paris was 'top of the list' according to the expert (Getty stock image)She pointed out that many locals will be particularly unimpressed if you don’t speak French and claimed that although most Parisians have a solid grasp of English they ‘many refuse to speak

Amanda Knox weighs into Patrick Clancy conspiracy theory - claims he 'can't win'

Amanda Knox has shared her thoughts on the conspiracy theories surrounding Patrick Clancy and claims he ‘can’t win’. The Lindsay Clancy trial ended in a mistrial earlier this month, after the jury of nine women and three men failed to reach a unanimous verdict. During the weeks-long trial, Clancy’s defence team didn’t dispute that she killed her three children, Cora, five, Dawson, three, and eight-month-old Callan, but argued that she should not be held criminally responsible as she was sufferin

Christian Bale has only just realised he turned into Bruce Wayne

Let’s focus on this.’”The project was entirely funded through donations, including nearly $9 million raised by the Austrian American Council West.Bale and his wife Sibi attended the opening of the village (Jesse Grant/Getty Images for Together California)According to News Nation, Bale and his wife donated a staggering $22 million into the project, which has been more than a decade in the making, and they weren’t the only ones to chip in with fellow actor Leonardo DiCaprio also reportedly making

Ed Sheeran tour's loses another support act as Finneas quits after Macklemore dropped from lineup

Macklemore revealed he’d been dropped from the remaining US dates of Sheeran’s Loop Tour on Monday (14 September) following his on-stage comments about Palestine. During an appearance at New Jersey’s MetLife Stadium on 4 September the US rapper, whose real name is Benjamin Hammond Haggerty, gave a speech calling to 'free Palestine'.His comments were met with a backlash and yesterday, the rapper confirmed he’d been dropped from the remainder of the tour. In a lengthy post on social media, Macklem

All the artists rumoured to be on GTA 6 soundtrack as slew of performers drop cryptic posts

We are two months and four days out from the long-awaited release of GTA 6 and a bunch of performers just dropped posts with the game's artwork in it.It doesn't mean they're definitely in it, but either they all know something we don't or they just happen to have posted something at just the right time by accident.It's sparked hope that these are the artists whose songs are going to feature on the game's radio, and if that's the case then it's a star-studded line up.Each of the artists shared an

Nick Reiner won't face death penalty after being charged with double murder of parents

It is there he is being held without bail on two first-degree murder charges.The Los Angeles County Medical Examiner previously announced the couple were the victims of a 'homicide' and each suffered 'multiple sharp force injuries' which led to their deaths.Officials in the US said the pair, who were married for 36 years and shared three children, died within 'minutes' after being attacked with a knife.Nick Reiner in court (Chris Torres-Pool/Getty Images)Nick has not yet entered a plea after two

Ms Rachel shares scathing statement slamming Ed Sheeran for decision to drop Macklemore from tour

Popular children's YouTuber Ms Rachel, real name Rachel Griffin Accurso, has called out Ed Sheeran over the decision to drop Macklemore from his supporting act role for the US dates on his tour.Macklemore had opened for Sheeran at New Jersey’s MetLife Stadium on 4 September when he voiced his support for Palestine on stage before the crowd.Since then he's been dropped from the tour as some venues said they wouldn't let the gigs go ahead if he was opening for them, and Sheeran released a statemen

Ed Sheeran support act Aaron Rowe quits tour after Macklemore dropped from lineup

A support act for part of Ed Sheeran's tour has spectacularly dropped out just a day after Macklemore announced he had been dropped from the lineup.Macklemore was booted from the remaining US dates of Sheeran's Loop Tour following his onstage comments about the war in Palestine.The rapper's speech calling to 'free Palestine' was also met with criticism.In a new statement, support act Aaron Rowe, who was featuring on the North American leg of the tour, announced he would be leaving the tour as he

Mount Etna ash blows into sky causing 'red alert' as flights are grounded

Dramatic pictures showed ash and smoke clouds billowing into the sky in Sicily, prompting a major 'red alert' with flights grounded.All flights were suspended from Catania International Airport, one of Italy's busiest, on Monday afternoon (14 September), which then continued into Tuesday.This was due to emissions from Etna, Europe's tallest active volcano which erupts frequently.The recent eruption caused experts at the Etna Volcano Observatory to issue a red VONA (Volcano Observatory Notice to

Your Customers Don’t See Your Technology, They Feel It

<h4 class="Intro">For years, banks across the Gulf Cooperation Council competed on products: better rates, better offers, better pricing. Those things still matter, but they are no longer what separates leaders from everyone else.</h4>Today, customers judge banks differently. They judge them by whether a payment goes through instantly, whether a loan is approved in minutes rather than days, and whether fraud is stopped before it becomes their problem. In other words, they judge banks by execution. That means your payments and lending infrastructure has become far more than a technology decision. It has become a brand decision.Chris Walters is chief executive of Finastra, a financial software provider to banks. The views that follow are his own.<figure id="attachment_136049" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-136049" style="width: 150px" class="wp-caption alignright"><a href="https://thefintechtimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/chris-walters.jpg"><img decoding="async" class="wp-image-136049" src="https://thefintechtimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/chris-walters-e1789118242930.jpg" alt="" width="150" height="188" srcset="https://thefintechtimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/chris-walters-e1789118242930.jpg 609w, https://thefintechtimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/chris-walters-e1789118242930-239x300.jpg 239w, https://thefintechtimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/chris-walters-e1789118242930-120x150.jpg 120w, https://thefintechtimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/chris-walters-e1789118242930-319x400.jpg 319w, https://thefintechtimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/chris-walters-e1789118242930-585x733.jpg 585w" sizes="(max-width: 150px) 100vw, 150px" /></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-136049" class="wp-caption-text">Chris Walters, chief executive of Finastra.</figcaption></figure>I do not think enough people fully appreciate how significant this shift is. Historically, payments and lending sat behind the scenes. Customers cared about the outcome, not the machinery that made it happen. That has changed. Every payment, every lending decision and every customer interaction now shapes perception in real time. Customers do not separate the experience from the institution delivering it. To them, they are one and the same.If a payment is delayed, they do not blame the payments system. They blame the bank. If a lending process feels slow or complicated, they do not blame legacy technology. They blame the bank. The technology may be invisible, but its impact is not.Our latest Financial Services State of the Nation 2026 research reflects this reality. Across the region, 38 per cent of institutions have deployed or enhanced AI in payments, while 36 per cent have done the same in lending. More than a third have strengthened fraud, know your customer and know your business capabilities. These are not experiments. They are strategic investments designed to improve how customers experience financial services.Customer expectations continue to rise, because everyone has become accustomed to digital experiences that are instant, intuitive and available whenever they need them. Customers do not lower those expectations when they interact with a bank. Often they raise them. A customer can order a ride, stream a film, book travel and manage a business from a mobile phone, and increasingly they expect payments, financing and banking services to feel just as seamless.The institutions that deliver on those expectations will deepen trust and loyalty. The institutions that do not will find themselves competing on price, which is rarely a winning long-term strategy.We are seeing the same trend play out in lending. Our research shows that service, personalisation and security now sit side by side among customers’ top priorities. They want banks to understand their needs, make better decisions and protect their data, all at the same time. That is where AI is beginning to make a meaningful difference. Used well, AI does not simply accelerate decisions. It improves them. It can help lenders assess risk more effectively, identify opportunities faster and create more relevant customer experiences, while strengthening controls and improving consistency. For small and medium-sized enterprises in particular, this matters enormously.<h5 class="SectionHeading">A region positioned to lead</h5>The GCC is uniquely positioned to lead this next phase of transformation. Across the region, governments have established ambitious digital agendas that are accelerating innovation and raising expectations. Saudi Vision 2030 and the UAE’s digital economy initiatives are helping create an environment where digital-first experiences increasingly become the norm rather than the exception. The result is a customer base that expects more and a banking sector that must move faster.The data tells a compelling story. In the UAE, more than a third of institutions are actively modernising core banking platforms, while over half are using AI to improve accuracy and reduce errors. In Saudi Arabia, 41 per cent of institutions view AI as a direct competitive advantage, the highest percentage globally, while 93 per cent plan to increase investment in customer experience and personalisation over the next year.These numbers point to something bigger than technology adoption. They reflect a shift in mindset. The most forward-looking institutions no longer see payments and lending as operational functions that need to be maintained. They see them as strategic capabilities that drive growth, trust and competitive advantage. That is an important distinction, because the biggest challenge facing banks today is not whether the technology exists. It does. The challenge is deciding how central these capabilities are to your future strategy.<h5 class="SectionHeading">Resilience is part of the brand promise</h5>Consider resilience. As real-time payments become standard, resilience is no longer just an IT metric buried in a dashboard. Customers experience it directly. If systems fail, trust erodes immediately. That is why I often say resilience is not just an operational priority. It is part of your brand promise. If your systems do not work, your brand does not work.The same is true for lending. Customers may never see the models, workflows or decision engines operating behind the scenes, but they experience the outcomes every day: fast or slow, simple or frustrating, confident or uncertain. Those experiences shape perception far more powerfully than any advertising campaign ever could. That is why customer experience is no longer a front-end conversation. It now lives deep inside the architecture of the bank.The GCC has many of the ingredients needed to lead globally: ambitious institutions, supportive regulation, strong digital infrastructure and customers who are eager to embrace innovation. The opportunity now is execution. Over the next five years, I do not believe the winners will necessarily be the banks with the most products or the biggest marketing budgets. They will be the institutions customers trust to deliver consistently, securely and seamlessly, every single time. That trust will be built payment by payment, decision by decision, interaction by interaction. Which is why your payments stack is no longer just infrastructure. It is your brand.The post <a href="https://thefintechtimes.com/your-customers-dont-see-your-technology-they-feel-it/">Your Customers Don’t See Your Technology, They Feel It</a> appeared first on <a href="https://thefintechtimes.com">The Fintech Times</a>.

AI ‘Actor’ Tilly Norwood Told Me That ‘All Lives Matter’

The virtual character, which is promoting its upcoming movie Misaligned, tries to evade politics by repetitively commenting on the clothes you’re wearing.