InMarketing Today

eToro is working with investment bankers to buy two wealth-technology businesses 'soon' — one in the US, another elsewhere — and is considering a banking licence application to expand into payments, according to chief executive Yoni Assia (Source: Financial Times, 15 Jun 2026). The Nasdaq-listed platform made $216mn in net income last year, up 12% on the year before, and spent $70mn acquiring crypto firm Zengo in April.

eToro's share price has fallen by nearly 40% since its Nasdaq listing, and Assia says the move into banking and payments is designed to hedge the business against swings in crypto and asset prices. He expects a broader wave of fintech consolidation, telling the Money2020 conference that 'not all businesses will be able to exist as independent public businesses' (Source: Financial Times, 15 Jun 2026).

For brand and communications teams, this is the moment to draft the integration story before the deal does. A trading platform becoming a bank needs a clear account for existing customers of what stays the same, what's new, and why broader is safer rather than riskier — and firms expecting to be acquirers or targets in the coming consolidation wave should have that narrative ready now.

mBridge — the multi-currency wholesale central bank digital currency platform backed by the People's Bank of China, the Bank of Thailand, the Hong Kong Monetary Authority, and the UAE and Saudi central banks — is moving into its commercialisation phase and considering incorporating in Hong Kong (Source: Ledger Insights, 15 Jun 2026). Transaction volumes have grown from RMB 387bn ($57bn) at the start of the year to RMB 470bn ($69bn), with more than 95% still denominated in RMB.

The platform promises faster, cheaper cross-border payments and less reliance on Swift — benefits likely to appeal most to smaller businesses. The Financial Times frames it as drawing 'Beijing closer to its Belt and Road trading partners', and two more regions have joined the platform in the past fortnight (Source: Ledger Insights, 15 Jun 2026). For financial services leaders, a payment rail with this much state backing is no longer a research-paper curiosity.

Firms with cross-border payments propositions should settle their position now, not when a client asks first. Comms teams need two distinct narratives ready — one on the commercial case for speed, cost and resilience, and one addressing the geopolitical framing, because clients in regulated markets will ask about both.

As AI tools spread across every department, CMOs are shifting from data scarcity to what Gartner calls an 'AI everywhere' environment — and a new kind of enterprise noise. Gartner's Chief Marketing Officer Journal found that just 34% of CEOs and CFOs align with their CMO on how marketing supports growth, while companies led by what Gartner terms 'market-shaper' CMOs consistently outperform on revenue and profit (Source: MarTech, 15 Jun 2026).

AI can draft, segment and optimise at scale, but a weak message just becomes, in MarTech's words, '50 weak variations' faster. Marketing sees the gaps before anyone else — between what a company believes it offers and what the market understands, and between what product, sales and brand each tell the same buyer (Source: MarTech, 15 Jun 2026). In an AI-saturated enterprise, those gaps surface faster and cost more.

Gartner's advice, condensed: build a 'signal taxonomy' — agree which data and AI outputs deserve executive attention, who owns them, and what decisions they should drive. Treat AI governance (Gartner's 'AI TRiSM' framework: trust, risk and security management) as a brand and trust issue, not just an IT one, and judge AI activity by outcomes — sharper positioning, shorter sales cycles, clearer brand — not by volume.