Investment

Fidelity Digital Assets will allow its institutional customers to pledge bitcoin as collateral against cash loans in a partnership with blockchain startup BlockFi.

Fintech success stories have encouraged investors to back more startups, but newcomers will be hard-pressed to attract enough customers to compete while keeping expenses down.

E-commerce and digital finance are expanding quickly due to the pandemic, economic downturn and plans for recovery — providing opportunities for VCs that back technology that powers faster, more digital payments.

AI can add an extra layer that's hard for fraudsters to beat, says Nuance Communications' Simon Marchand.

By allowing access to public chains, CBDCs could render much greater, and even revolutionary, functionality, says Cypherium's Sky Guo.

London-based crypto payments app Ziglu, launched by Starling Bank co-founder Mark Hipperson, has raised £6 million (about $8 million) on the Seedrs equity crowdfunding platform.

Whenever a technology moves into the payments or financial data ecosystem, it alerts fraudsters to probe it more intensely — and ultimately, figure out a way to use it as an attack vector.

Marketplace payments technology provider ConnexPay has secured additional funding from investors to reach $15 million, and it will use its funding to increase product offerings in the travel industry and expand in other e-commerce sectors.

Using AI can manage both privacy and security as part of AML reform, says Giant Oak's Gary Shiffman.

High profile companies like Facebook, Square and PayPal have brought attention to using cryptocurrency for payments — but speed is more important than buzz in getting stores to view crypto as tender, according to a group of developers who are building connections to merchants.