Investment

The federal banking regulators should create a working group that, rather than propose new rules and regulations, would clarify the application of existing rules to blockchain technology.

Look who's co-chairing the notoriously male-dominated World Economic Forum. A female automotive enthusiast eloquently calls out an industry where bias is ingrained in the everyday language, and women in prison cook up a better future. Plus, State Street, Goldman Sachs and Bank of Montreal.

Consumers are increasingly concerned about payment card fraud, but it remains to be seen how much work they’re willing to do to protect themselves when they’re not directly liable for monetary losses from stolen cards.

PayStand, a blockchain business-to-business payments platform, has completed a $6 million funding round through BlueRun Ventures.

Brian Behlendorf, leader of the Linux Foundation's effort to establish standards for blockchain, likens the invention of cryptocurrencies to the moon launch and says banks, open-source developers and others are working to make the underlying technology commercially viable.

Canada's payments modernization initiative is using a distributed ledger to expedite processing across a nationwide network, providing scale that could open the technology to wider use elsewhere if successful.

The advent of blockchain technology may prove to be disruptive to traditional credit reporting agencies by decentralizing data aggregation and allowing consumers to take ownership of their data through a personalized wallet they could share with prospective lenders, writes Alexander Koles, CEO, founder and managing director of Evolve Capital Partners.

Bank of America Merrill Lynch is centralizing information and updates for global commercial card administrators within an online tool called Card Assistant.

Beyond the initial coin offerings — a fundraising process, similar to an IPO, in which blockchain companies sell crypto tokens instead of shares — and myriad science projects, is there anything substantive occurring with blockchain?

Fintech startup Payrailz is positioning itself firmly in the "invisible" payments market that's taking shape in the e-commerce and mobile app business. Only in Payrailz's case, it's making a direct appeal to smaller banks that may have the greatest need to update their tech.