Warsh Confirmed; Fazeshift Raises $17Mn; Augustus Gets OCC Conditional Approval

Kevin Warsh is confirmed as Fed chair. Inflation re-accelerates. Fazeshift announces $17Mn Series A. Augustus gets OCC conditional approval. Kraken applies for trust bank charter. Wise shifts primary listing to Nasdaq.

The entire architecture of a stablecoin-linked card program hinges on a single decision: when, or whether, stablecoins are converted to fiat. In her new Insights piece, our VP of Crypto Product, Cecilia Rogers, is breaking down the five distinct stablecoin card models we see in the market today and what to consider when choosing a model.

New here? Subscribe here to get our newsletter each Sunday. For even more updates, follow us on LinkedIn.

Inflation Reaccelerates

Kevin Warsh was confirmed by the Senate as the new Chairman of the Federal Reserve last week. Warsh’s nomination cleared the Senate in a 54-45 vote. Warsh succeeds Jerome Powell, who spent eight years guiding the Fed. In an unusual move, though Powell is longer Chairman, he will retain his seat as a governor for now. For his part, Warsh certainly has his work cut out for him. Recent votes on the Federal Open Market Committee, which sets the Fed’s key short-term rate, have been increasingly divided, with more dissenting votes in recent rate decisions than at any time since the 1990s. President Trump has repeatedly made clear his preference for lower interest rates.

But the impacts of the war in Iran and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz are starting to show up in the economic data. Consumer prices in April jumped 3.8% year-over-year, with higher gas prices being a major driver of the jump in inflation. Energy prices accounted for approximately 40% of the month-to-month increase in the inflation rate. So-called core inflation, which excludes more volatile food and energy prices, was up 2.8% in April year-over-year. The jump prices in April is an acceleration compared to the 3.3% increase seen in March. Net net, real household earnings, taking into account inflation, declined by 0.3% in April vs. the year prior. That may help explain why consumer sentiment hit a low in April. Meanwhile, wholesale inflation is also up. The producers price index jumped 6% in April vs. 2025, per Bureau of Labor Statistics data. The increase is the sharpest since 2022 and exceeded all forecasts for the metric.

Fazeshift Announces Series A

AI-powered accounts receivable platform Fazeshift announced it has raised a $17Mn Series A. The round was led by F-Prime Capital, with participation from Y Combinator, Pioneer Fund, Phoenix Fund, Wayfinder, Ritual Capital, Gradient, Vulcan Partners, and 2048 Ventures. The new funding brings Fazeshift’s total raised to date to $22Mn since its launch in 2024. Fazeshift develops AI agents to help automate and streamline the accounts receivable process. Specifically, the company’s agents can handle invoice creation and enhance collections processes, eliminating manual processing. Fazeshift’s agents can integrate with clients’ accounting systems and ERPs, ensuring accurate reconciliation with systems of record. CEO and cofounder Caitlin Leksana commented on the raise, telling Crunchbase, “Our long-term vision is to expand into a broader CFO suite.” Leksana added that the company is “building toward a future of autonomous finance where core operational work is executed by AI and human teams can focus on agent management, strategic work, and governance.”

Augustus Gets OCC Conditional Approval

Augustus, a stablecoin infrastructure company, has secured conditional approval of its OCC bank charter application. Unlike many other players in crypto and stablecoins, Augustus applied for a full-service deposit-taking national bank charter, rather than the trust bank charter others are pursuing. Augustus, helmed by 25-year-old German cofounder and CEO Ferdinand Dabitz, is designing its payment architecture around stablecoins and AI, not humans. The company already holds a payment institution license in Europe, which allows it to clear cross-border transactions in Euros. Augustus is aiming to serve large institutional customers and already works with crypto exchange Kraken. Augustus is already processing “billions” of Euros, CEO Dabitz has said, while growing “10x” year over year.

Kraken Applies for Trust Bank Charter

The parent company of crypto exchange Kraken, known as Payward, has applied to the OCC to charter a national trust bank, the company’s co-CEO Arjun Sethi shared in a blog post last week. Kraken joins numerous other crypto- and stablecoin-related firms that are seeking to form and operationalize national trust banks, including Paxos, Ripple, Crypto.com, and Coinbase. “Kraken Financial and what we are building with the OCC are complementary pillars of Payward’s regulated banking strategy aimed at advancing an efficient and accessible digitally native financial system,” Kraken co-CEO Sethi wrote in his post. The company intends to use the charter, if approved, to serve institutional clients and individual customers.

Wise Shifts Primary Listing to Nasdaq

Wise, once known as TransferWise, made its debut on the Nasdaq last week. The company has been public since 2021, but, until last week, was listed on the London Stock Exchange. The U.K.-based company best known for cross-border payments moved its primary listing to the Nasdaq, while continuing to maintain a secondary listing on the LSE. The process to move its primary listing to the U.S. took nearly a year. Wise board chair David Wells commented on the move, saying, “A listing in the U.S. not only gives us better access to the world's deepest and most liquid capital market, it also more closely aligns Wise with the major growth potential for us in the U.S. 一 the biggest market opportunity for our products in the world today.”