Spend management service provider Extend has expanded its relationship with payments giant Visa to grow its consumer base.

“We already had a technological relationship with Visa for years,” Extend Chief Executive Andrew Jamison told Bank Automation News. “Now we have entered a referral relationship with them where they can refer us to their banking clients.” 

Extend embeds its services between a business and its bank to provide spend management for digital cards, eliminating the need to hire a third-party fintech like Brex or Ramp, Jamison told BAN.  

The New York-based fintech is also working to provide spend management for physical cards and expense management for accounting and reconciliation of expenses, Jamison said. 

Extend has more than a dozen major FIs as clients, including American Express, HSBC and Silicon Valley Bank he said.  

Since its inception in 2017, Extend has raised $57 million and is well capitalized to break even for the first time in 2026, Jamison said. 

Santander, Verizon team up on savings account offering 

Telecom giant Verizon is teaming up with Santander Bank to launch digital high-yield savings accounts for its mobile and 5G home internet customers. 

Verizon will use $1.9 trillion Santander’s direct digital bank arm, Openbank, which uses an open finance infrastructure to provide financial services to businesses, according to Santander’s March 18 release. 

Qualified Verizon customers can save up to $180 a year and maximize savings with an interest rate 10 times the national average, according to the release. 

Working with Verizon “enhances our national scale and reach to millions of customers,” driving deposits, a Santander spokesperson told BAN. 

NatWest taps OpenAI for expanded AI capabilities 

London-based bank NatWest has teamed up with AI giant OpenAI to use the tech provider’s services to enhance customer experience. 

As part of a “wide-ranging, large-scale” collaboration, the group is set to deploy OpenAI’s generative AI technology, according to NatWest’s March 21 release. Its digital assistant services are “a key area of focus,” the release stated. 

NatWest’s services include consumer-facing chatbot Cora+, which was developed with IBM’s Watsonx platform and launched in July last year, as well as AskArchie+, a chatbot service used in-house, the release stated. 

The $886 billion bank teamed up with Amazon Web Services in September 2023 for similar services, according to a previous NatWest release. 

NatWest did not respond to BAN’s request for comment on why it brought on OpenAI when it was already working with AWS for the same chatbot services. 

Lloyds deepens relationship with Oracle for AI 

British bank Lloyds announced that it has signed a multiyear agreement with IT service provider Oracle for cloud and AI services, according to a March 22 release from Oracle. 

The $1.1 trillion bank will migrate specific databases to Oracle Database@Azure, enabling Lloyds to use Oracle Cloud Infrastructure via Microsoft Azure data centers in the United Kingdome, the release stated. 

Oracle will also help Lloyds build an on-premises cloud infrastructure, providing flexibility as the bank deploys a hybrid and multicloud approach, Joe Soule, chief information officer for Enabling Services at Lloyds Banking Group, said in the release. 

Lloyds did not respond to a request for comment. 

Discover joins forces with Skipify to enhance digital payments 

Payments giant Discover is working with Skipify to optimize tokenization and streamline secure digital payments, according to the digital payment company’s March 5 release. 

“We are focused on building network tokenization services that can be made available to merchants and consumers in a meaningful way,” Judith McGuire, head of global products at Discover Global Network, told BAN. “Key industry players like Skipify help us do this in real-time at online checkout, providing a more secure, optimized checkout experience.” 

Tokenization will reduce fraud and increase approval rates of payments, protecting merchants and consumers, McGuire said. 

Adyen, Everyware and Fiserv are among vendors that help Discover tokenize payments, according to the company.