Digital Currency

Banner years are generally welcome, except when it comes to ransomware. New data from the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, known as FinCEN, finds that ransomware payments jumped 77%, or $1.1 billion, in 2023 year-over-year from 2022. The FinCEN Financial Trend Analysis report also found that …

Circle Internet Group Inc. said it will work with Bybit Fintech Ltd., a cryptocurrency exchange, to expand the availability of Circle’s USDC stablecoin within Bybit’s system. Payments provider Charge1 Gateway announced technology improvements in fraud prevention, gateway security layers, and onboarding processes for merchants. RentRedi launched a Spanish-language version of its RentRedi Tenant App, …

InFlow, a startup aimed at enabling payments via agentic commerce, announced its launch with technology that allows agents to complete payments as instructed without pausing for human intervention. Digital-identity platform Socure Inc. has acquired Qlarifi Ltd., a U.K.-based consumer credit database specializing in buy now, pay later activity. Terms were not disclosed. …

The Clearing House Payments Co. LLC said its RTP instant payments network topped $1.3 trillion in total payments in 2025 through November, up 428% from 2024. TCH said RTP transactions account for 98% of all bank-to-bank instant payments. PAR Technology Corp. announced Abelardo’s Mexican Fresh, a restaurant chain with more than 50 …

Fi911, a provider of chargeback prevention and risk management, launched ResolveLab, a service it says is aimed at resellers and payment facilitators looking to block chargebacks and control risk. Okta Inc., a provider of identity technology, reported third-quarter revenue of $742 million, up 12% from the same time last year. …

Black Friday through Cyber Monday shopping generated a 10% rise year-over-year for Block Inc.’s Square, Cash App, and Afterpay payments properties, to 124 million transactions, the company reported. Payments processor Nuvei Corp. announced it is expanding a partnership with Microsoft Corp. to enable its core payment processing APIs to run on Microsoft Axure and use Azure AI to …

Klarna AB said its U.S. processing volume across all product categories was up a record 45% for November through Black Friday. Absolute figures were not immediately available. Black Friday sales data from Accertify Inc. indicate consumers spent $115.46 per transaction on average, down 17% from last year, while initiating 52.5 million transactions, up …

Fraud and scams have grown into a “pressing concern” for users of digital payments in the Caribbean and Latin America, according to a regional survey report released by Mastercard Inc. The research effort queried 3,577 adults in 12 countries in October. Mastercard has launched Mastercard Access Pass, aimed at allowing card issuers to …

PayPal Holdings Inc. said PayPal merchants are now discoverable within the Perplexity AI service, which enables consumers to checkout in chat using their PayPal accounts. PayPal announced the partnership in May. SoundHound AI Inc. said its partnership with parking services provider Parkopedia now includes an in-vehicle voice AI parking agent. The agent can suggest …