rewrite this title Finovate Global Israel: Autonomous AI and Cross-Border Payments – Finovate

This week’s edition of Finovate Global features recent fintech headlines from companies headquartered in Israel.

Tangos AI raises $20 million in seed funding

Tangos AI, an Israeli fintech that specializes in providing autonomous AI solutions for financial crime, fraud, and compliance investigations, has raised $20 million in seed funding. The round was led by Red Dot Capital Partners, and featured participation from Leaders Fund, Clarim, Venture Israel, Signal Fire, Clutch Capital, Selah Ventures, and Bright Data.

Founded in 2025 by Eyal Azoulay, Tangos offers an advanced AI-powered investigation platform that enables financial institutions, fintechs, government agencies, and other organizations to conduct complex investigations into suspicious activity faster, more accurately, and at greater scale. Tangos is unique relative to other compliance solutions insofar as it is built to perform investigative operations automatically. The platform uses domain-specific AI models, structured investigative workflows, and expert-trained reasoning systems to evaluate evidence, test hypotheses, validate findings, and provide comprehensive case studies that can be reviewed, approved, and acted upon by human investigators.

“Financial crime has evolved into a network problem that increasingly exceeds the capacity of traditional investigative processes,” Eyal Azoulay, Founder and CEO of Tangos, said. “Organizations have made tremendous progress in detecting risk, but the investigation process remains one of the largest operational bottlenecks in financial crime prevention. We built Tangos to bring the speed, scale, and consistency of autonomous AI to a process that has historically depended on highly manual work.”

Importantly, Tangos enables firms to expand their investigative capabilities without proportional increases in headcount. This is especially helpful at a time when the growth in fraud and financial crime is resulting in rising alert volumes, increased regulatory expectations, and a worldwide shortage of experienced financial crime investigators. Tangos empowers compliance and risk management teams to work more efficiently while at the same time boosting investigative quality, capacity, consistency, and regulatory readiness.

Western Union to acquire Israeli startup GMT for $70 million

In a transaction valued at more than $66 million, Western Union will acquire Israel-based fintech GMT.

“This marks a brand-new chapter for GMT, unlocking global opportunities, expanding our capabilities, and accelerating our growth,” GMT noted on its LinkedIn page. “We are incredibly proud of our journey so far and thrilled to continue innovating, building, and leading together as part of the Western Union family.”

Founded in 2001, GMT offers international money transfers and advanced payment solutions for Israelis, migrant workers, and their employers. GMT operates under a license from the Israel Securities Authority and holds a banking identification code from the Bank of Israel. Following completion of the transaction, GMT will become a part of Western Union, but will maintain its popular, Israeli brand. Eran Sarouk, GMT CEO, will continue to lead operations after the acquisition.

“The fact that a global company of Western Union’s scale chose GMT from among many international and local players is a tremendous badge of honor for the entire Israeli fintech industry,” Sarouk said. “The transaction will allow us to improve service availability and offer more accessible and advanced solutions to customers in Israel. Beyond that, this is an extraordinary opportunity to integrate the advanced technologies we developed here in Israel into Western Union’s global network.”

Mastercard teams up with Neema

Mastercard has expanded its partnership with Israeli fintech Neema to include a commercial arrangement to leverage the company’s technological infrastructure to support its global money transfer platform, Mastercard Move. The service is expected to launch “within months.”

Mastercard Move is Mastercard’s international money transfer arm. Mastercard Move provides an alternative to traditional cross-border transfers via the SWIFT banking network. In contrast to SWIFT-based transfers, which typically move through a chain of intermediary banks in a process that can be both time-consuming and expensive, Mastercard will use its partnership with Neema to enable companies and individuals outside of Israel to transfer funds into Israel faster, relying on local payment infrastructure rather than the common correspondent banking approach.

“This is another step in our mission to make global payments as seamless as local ones,” Neema noted in a LinkedIn post announcing the partnership. “We’re excited about what’s ahead and look forward to continuing to expand our global payment infrastructure with leading financial institutions and fintechs worldwide.”

Headquartered in Tel Aviv, Israel, and founded in 2015, Neema offers a global cross-border payments platform for financial institutions. Available in more than 120 countries and transacting in 80+ currencies, Neema delivers 98% of its transactions in real-time and provides access to more than seven billion accounts.

Here is our look at fintech innovation around the world.

Sub-Saharan Africa

Central and Eastern Europe

Middle East and Northern Africa

Mastercard inked a commercial partnership with Israel-based payments platform Neema to enable real-time money transfers into Israel via Mastercard Move.

UK-based Taptap Send received three licenses from the Central Bank of the United Arab Emirates, enabling the firm to offer payments, digital wallets, and cards, and more in the country.

Western Union agreed to acquire Israel fintech GMT for $70 million.

Central and Southern Asia

Nepal-based commercial bank, Machhapuchchhre Bank Limited (MBL), partnered with ZIGRAM for its AML and financial crime risk management technology.

Digital financial services company Atome Philippines secured a $81 million credit facility with Asia United Bank (AUB) to support its continued expansion in the Philippines.

Indian payment infrastructure company TotalPay earned authorization from the Saudi Central Bank to operate as an e-commerce payment technical service provider.

Latin America and the Caribbean

Equifax announced plans to acquire Mexican credit bureau Círculo de Crédito.

Tether invested $20 million in a strategic growth financing round for Brazil’s largest crypto exchange, Mercado Bitcoin.

Seattle-based commercial payments firm Convera partnered with Uruguay’s dLocal to enhance cross-border payments infrastructure and streamline international payments.

Asia-Pacific

Thailand’s Siam Commercial Bank teamed up with Citi to become the first financial institution to to live with its token clearing solution.

Indonesia announced plans to build an International Financial Centre designed to attract between $16.7 billion and $27.8 billion in foreign investment.

Singapore-based fintech M-DAQ Global signed plans to integrate with Vietnamese fintech group METech.

Photo by Adam Jang on Unsplash

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