Jobs Data Beats Expectations; Interchange Law Paused; Stablecoin Momentum

The U.S. economy added 122,000 private sector jobs. Illinois interchange law on hold (for now). Daloopa raises $47Mn. OpenPayd inks SPAC deal. Stablecoin roundup.

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Economy Adds 122,000 Private Sector Jobs, Per ADP Data

ADP released its private sector employment data last Wednesday. The report showed private employment increased by 122,000 jobs in May, up 4.4% year over year. The report slightly exceeded consensus expectations of 110,000 hires in May. Services drove the bulk of the increase, accounting for 114,000 of new hires. Within services, education and healthcare drove 57,000 new hires. Meanwhile, trade, transport, and utilities added 36,000 roles.

Illinois Swipe Fee Law On Ice – For Now

A judge in the Illinois “swipe fee” case has changed her position, following the OCC’s move to preempt the law by issuing two interim final rules last month. The Illinois Interchange Fee Prohibition Act was signed into law two years ago and had been scheduled to go into effect this July, but has been delayed, again, and wouldn’t take effect until July 2027. The law would prohibit charging interchange fees on taxes and tips. Previously, a federal judge ruling upheld the Illinois law. Following that ruling, the OCC introduced two interim final rules, reiterating banks’ authority to charge interchange fees set by third parties, like Visa and Mastercard, and thereby attempting to explicitly preempt Illinois’ law. But the matter is not settled. While the OCC argues that the preemption determination should be the final word, said that the matter remains in dispute.

Daloopa Raises $47Mn

Daloopa, a data infrastructure startup, announced it has raised a $47Mn Series C. The new funding follows a $13Mn Series B the company raised last year. The new round was led by Brighton Park Capital, with participation from Touring Capital, Squarepoint Capital, and Nexus Ventures. Daloopa aims to tackle an increasingly common challenge as companies look to leverage AI and agentic systems: siloed, unreliable data. Many off-the-shelf AI models are trained on public data scraped from the internet, which can contribute to accuracy problems commonly known as AI “hallucinations.” While annoying and problematic enough in day-to-day use, for enterprise use cases, like due diligence or earnings and valuation analysis, such risks are unacceptable. Daloopa aims to solve this challenge by provisioning source-linked, structured data on more than 5,000 global public companies. The company said the new funding will be used to grow the team across product, engineering, and go-to-market. Daloopa CEO Thomas Li commented on the fundraise, saying, “We’re seeing firms move from early experimentation toward deploying AI in real investment workflows, and that changes the requirements entirely. It’s no longer enough for models to simply generate answers; they must be accurate and fully traceable. Our focus is on building the data infrastructure that makes that possible, so firms can trust what AI is producing.”

OpenPayd Inks SPAC Deal

Are SPACs back? OpenPayd, a financial infrastructure provider, has entered into a definitive agreement to go public via a SPAC deal. By combining with the “blank check” vehicle, Titan Acquisition Corp, OpenPayd will get up to $276Mn in capital from the deal. OpenPayd builds and operates money movement infrastructure across fiat currency and blockchain rails, including stablecoins. The company says that it serves more than 1,100 customers across 180 countries. OpenPayd processes over $240Bn in annual payment volume for clients that include crypto exchange Kraken and brokerage startup eToro. OpenPayd founder Ozan Ozerk commented on the SPAC news, saying, “We believe the next decade of finance will not be defined by faster cards or cheaper wires — it will be defined by money that moves on its own. Autonomous agents are already making decisions; the infrastructure beneath them must keep pace.”

Stablecoin Roundup

Stablecoin activity and announcements seem to be reaching a fever pitch. Perhaps the biggest stablecoin-related news last week is that Stripe, Visa, and Mastercard are “close” to introducing a new stablecoin platform, outlets are reporting, citing “people familiar with the plans.” It’s not clear exactly what the “platform” would entail, and how, if it all, it would overlap with the companies’ various existing stablecoin initiatives. For example, Stripe made a high-profile, $1.1Bn acquisition of stablecoin infrastructure platform Bridge, closing on the deal in February 2025. And Mastercard announced this March that it would pay as much as $1.8Bn to acquire Bridge-competitor BVNK. Visa also has a number of stablecoin- and blockchain-related initiatives, including partnerships with Bridge, Baanx, and stablecoin card issuer Rain.

Meanwhile, SoFi has officially rolled out its stablecoin, SoFiUSD, to all of its 15Mn members. SoFi customers can now buy, sell, and hold SoFiUSD in the bank’s app. SoFi CEO Anthony Noto commented on the launch, saying, “At SoFi, we believe we can combine the speed and versatility of the blockchain with the trust of a bank to improve how money moves around the world. People no longer have to choose between blockchain technology and regulated banking products. With SoFiUSD we're giving our members a single place to buy, hold and pay with digital assets in the same app they already use to save, spend, borrow and invest.”

Not to be left out, MoneyGram launched its own stablecoin, MGUSD. The company positioned it not as serving “crypto natives,” but rather targeting people who need to send money but may not have access to traditional financial services, the company said in a news release last week. MoneyGram is partnering with Stripe-owned Bridge as the issuer of its stablecoin and leverages M0’s “smart contract” infrastructure on the Stellar blockchain. MoneyGram tapped Fireblocks to provide the wallet infrastructure enabling MoneyGram users to hold the stablecoins. MoneyGram CEO Anthony Soohoo commented on the launch, saying, “The stablecoin market has largely focused on the asset itself. MoneyGram is taking a fundamentally different approach. Starting with our distribution platform, we’re using stablecoin as a foundation to build future applications on our global network. MGUSD is the stablecoin we built for our customers, for the families sending money home and for the billions of people around the world with limited financial access.”