Sourcing and methodology

Fintechbits monitors announcements every day from wire services, company newsrooms and regulators. A story is chosen for what it changes in financial services: a new product or payment rail, a funding round or deal, a licence, a rule or an enforcement action.

A story is not run when its only source is another outlet's report, when it repeats an event Fintechbits has already covered without adding anything new, or when it is about something other than financial services.

In rough order of authority:

First, documents from regulators, central banks, courts and standards bodies: filings, rule texts, consent orders, enforcement notices and supervisory publications. On what a regulator decided, the regulator's own document is the highest authority available.

Next, wire releases, which give the announcement as the company distributed it, with the terms and figures it chose to disclose.

Then the company's own account of itself: newsroom posts, investor materials, earnings releases and the documents attached to them.

Trade press and aggregators are not sources. A claim does not become established because another outlet wrote it up, and no article here cites one as the basis for a fact.

When another publication broke a story first, we credit it by name and treat the claim as theirs until a document confirms it.

An announcement tells you what a company wants you to know. Reporting it accurately does not mean endorsing it. Claims a company makes about itself, such as market leadership, customer numbers or growth rates, are attributed to the company rather than stated as fact, unless a filing or a regulator's document supports them.

A funding round, partnership or product launch is a claim about the future until there is a track record to judge it by, and articles describe it that way.

Every figure, date, company name and quotation in an article is checked against the source document before publication. Quotations are reproduced exactly. Where the source says "more than", "up to" or "approximately", so does the article.

Articles link to the documents they draw on at the point in the text where each claim is made, and list them under Primary sources at the end. Other outlets' reporting that an article links to for context is listed separately, under Supporting sources, and is never the basis for a fact.

Fintechbits does not estimate figures a company has not published. When an announcement leaves out something a reader would need, such as the size of a round, a valuation or a launch date, the article says it was not disclosed.

Articles report first and interpret second. The section of an article that says what the news means is labelled Fintechbits analysis, so readers can tell the publication's assessment apart from the facts it rests on.

Some articles open with a Key facts panel listing the companies, the event, the market, the status and the date. It contains only facts stated in the article and its sources.

When a story develops after publication, the article is updated and shows the date of the update beneath the headline, or a new article is published that links to the earlier one. Articles that state when their facts were last checked show a Last verified date. A date is shown only when the check or the update happened. Software also checks the source links in every article regularly, and links that stop working are flagged to an editor to replace. Explainers and other articles meant to stay useful are compared with our newer coverage, and statements that may have gone out of date are flagged to an editor. Software never changes an article by itself.

Errors are handled under the corrections policy, not as updates.

Fintechbits uses AI software to help monitor announcements and to prepare first drafts from the source documents. A person checks every draft against those documents, edits it and decides whether it is published. Nothing is published automatically.

AI output is never treated as a source. No figure, quotation or claim appears in an article because a model produced it; each one has to be found in the source document.

Some article pages show a Key facts box and links to related Fintechbits stories. Software builds the box from the published article, and it only repeats names, figures and dates the article already states. Each one is checked against the article's text. Editors can take the box off any article.

Some news articles also carry a short note headed Why this matters. AI writes it from the article and from earlier Fintechbits stories, which are listed under the note. Before it appears, software checks every sentence and figure against those stories, and if any of it cannot be confirmed the note is left off. Editors can remove it from any article.

Company pages list every Fintechbits article about a company. Some also open with a short Recent developments summary, which AI writes from the headlines and standfirsts of our recent articles about that company. Those articles are listed under it, and the summary goes through the same checks as Why this matters. Nothing on a company page rates or ranks the company. Topic pages such as Payments can carry a Latest developments summary, written and checked the same way from the past six weeks of our coverage of that topic. When we update an article with new facts or a correction a day or more after publishing it, a short What changed note lists the changes. AI writes it from the sentences that were added or removed, and it is checked against them the same way.

If we have misread a source, please tell us. The corrections policy explains how to report it. See also the editorial policy.