Digital Currency

Cryptocurrency marketplace and services provider Coinbase Global Inc. says it’s ready to fight the Securities and Exchange Commission if the commission takes an enforcement action against it. But the SEC’s possible action comes as no surprise to some observers of the crypto market. The SEC last week issued a so-called …

Buy now, pay later provider Affirm Inc. announced its users can deploy the service at VersaClimber, a vendor of exercise machines. Cybersecurity firm McAfee Corp. will offer savings on online protection via a new agreement with Mastercard Inc.’s Easy Savings program, a service through which business cardholders receive rebates on common business expenses. Strike, …

A global survey on cross-border payments found 29% of mid-size and large U.S. businesses cite high transaction cost as a challenge, with 28% naming foreign exchange and regulations as the top challenge and 24% naming risk management. The results stem from the “2023 State of B2B Cross Border Payments” report …

Tassat Group Inc., a provider of real-time business-to-business payments based on blockchain technology, said its client-facing application programming interface enables an “on-ramp” to FedNow, the Federal Reserve’s real-time payments service, which is expected to begin commercial service in July. Liquidity Financial launched CauseCard, a Visa-branded debit card with a connected app …

Cybercriminals showed no signs of slowing down in 2022 as they employed a variety of schemes to defraud consumers, acquirers, card issuers, and merchants, according to Visa Inc.’s Spring 2023 Biannual Threats Report. Cryptocurrency was a prime target for cybercriminals. More than $3 billion in cryptocurrency was stolen through November …

Lux Vending LLC, which does business as Bitcoin ATM operator Bitcoin Depot Inc., has agreed to deploy its machines in 125 locations owned by convenience-store chain GetGo Cafe + Market. Overall, Bitcoin Depot operates approximately 7,000 machines in 48 states and 10 Canadian provinces. Digital-currency provider Circle Internet Financial LLC said it has …

E-commerce wasn’t the only market that ballooned after the pandemic set in. Fraud took off, too, and attracted novice practitioners in the bargain. Of more than 1,000 consumers surveyed by Sift Science Inc. for a report it released Thursday, some 16% admitted they had committed payment fraud, or knew someone …

Merchant Machine, a United Kingdom-based payments information and comparison site, issued a report on contactless transaction limits around the world. Only two nations, Ecuador and the United States have no limit, though banks or merchants may set their own limits, Merchant Machine said. Payments-technology provider BHMI announced an entity-relationship component for its …

As if cryptocurrency didn’t have enough problems with the financial failure of the major FTX exchange, plummeting values, and, most recently, links to two of the biggest bank failures in U.S. history, now criminals are running scams built around crypto trading to defraud consumers. The scams, known as “pig butchering,” …

The stunning bank failures of recent days, all of them involving institutions with wide exposure to cryptocurrency, are likely to have a deep impact not only on blockchain products but on payments more broadly, experts say. A stronger case for a digital dollar, stricter regulation of digital currencies in general, …