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Cloudy skies: The payment services app Venmo was reportedly among the sites that suffered delays and other problems when Amazon Web Services experienced intermittent outages on Tuesday. CNN reports Venmo and other web services such as Slack, Trello and Sprinklr were slow or down at times for most of Tuesday afternoon, as were image and content delivery sites that rely on AWS to support their content. Even sites that detect web outages, such as Down Detector, were at times down themselves. The problem was with Amazon Web Services' S3 service, which is a storage site that houses data, web applications and software that users access through the internet. S3 serves primarily the eastern U.S., though the outage had a downstream impact on sites in other areas. To consumers, AWS is a less well-known part of Amazon's business, but more than 150,000 websites use it, including giant sites like ESPN.com, aol.com, and financial institutions such as BBVA's Simple, FINRA and Pacific Life. Not all of these sites reported problems on Tuesday, though numerous wire services also reported the SEC's website suffered periodic slowdowns because of the AWS glitch.
The silhouette of Jeff Bezos, chief executive officer of Amazon.com Inc., is seen as he unveils the Fire Phone during an event at Fremont Studios in Seattle, Washington, U.S., on Wednesday, June 18, 2014 Amazon.com Inc. jumped into the crowded smartphone market with its own handset called Fire Phone, ramping up competition with Apple Inc. and Samsung Electronics Co. Photographer: Mike Kane/Bloomberg *** Local Caption *** Jeff Bezos
Mike Kane/Bloomberg
Setl lands in Paris: Fresh off an investment from Deloitte, London-based blockchain company Setl is opening an office in Paris to drive growth in the Eurozone, according to Finance Magnates. Pierre Davoust, the former deputy head of the Financial Markets Unit at the French Treasury, will lead the Paris office as Setl's CEO of France. The two year old Setl's specialty is supporting payments and settlements for multi-asset and multi-currency institutional payments. It hopes the Parisian office will provide access to the expertise it will need to comply with future regulations or changes in the local financial markets.
Dash's Wall of Coins: The cryptocurrency Dash is expanding quickly, fast enough to spark an alliance with an online marketplace to enable quick buying and selling. Dash, which in the past two months has grown from a market cap of $78 million to $233 million, is collaborating with Wall of Coins, which will allow people to buy Dash with "traditional" cash at banks and financial services companies such as JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Wells Fargo. Dash's investors currently have to use a digital exchange using other cryptocurrencies to buy and sell Dash, a method that makes the new collaboration timely given Dash's growth, which now makes it the market's third largest cryptocurrency. Wall of Coins enables users to buy virtual currency with cash in a P-to-P model. Users are instructed to deposit cash at a local financial institution, then receive Dash or Bitcoin in the digital wallet of their choice.
Mobile money's big time: Starting with MPesa's effort to use mobile phone accounts to build a financial services market in Kenya a decade ago, mobile money has expanded exponentially, the GSMA reports. The association says there are now more than half a billion registered mobile money accounts across 92 countries, and in December alone, mobile money operators processed 1.3 billion transactions, an average of 30,000 per minute. There are also 35 mobile money services that have more than one million accounts. One of the early efforts, MPesa, has also grown recently, collaborating with Walmart and expanding into Europe.
Atlantic Pacific Processing Systems Partners with CT-Payment BusinessWire U.S.-based Atlantic Pacific Processing Systems (APPS) strikes partnership with Canadian firm CT-Payment, broadening payment processing products and services to merchants in both countries.
Open tech and faster pay are a lure for quick hit fraudsters Fraud will always follow the path of least resistance; this is a principal that can be counted on. Another is that when we release new payments pathways and channels for consumer adoption, they will be tested, gaps will be identified and eventually exploited.
Cloud-based ClearBank to launch in U.K. to challenge legacy payments Financial services providers and fintech startups in the U.K. will soon have another bank to work with to gain access to the country's payment systems and core banking technology — and potentially save money in doing so.
The retail giants are kicking the tires on their own currencies. The potential prize is a way to reimagine prepaid cards and gain a key position as new forms of artificial intelligence-powered payments take off.
Primis Bank plans to sell an undisclosed amount of its 19% ownership stake in Panacea Financial, a digital-only lender focusing on medical professionals and veterinarians. The deal should yield $22 million.
The impact of President Trump's tariffs is the top concern for most middle-market American businesses, a new KeyBank survey found. But these firms also view the scrambled landscape as a chance to innovate and restructure.
The Federal Reserve Board banned a former relationship banker in Arkansas after he was caught stealing customer funds; Benchmark Federal Credit Union plans to merge with Franklin Mint Federal Credit Union to form a $2.1 billion-asset institution; Robin Vince, CEO of Bank of New York Mellon since 2022, has been elected chairman of the board; and more in this week's banking news roundup.
