The information you need to start your day, from PaymentsSource and around the Web:
Go at the Winter Garden
Amazon Go's first location in New York will be near the World Trade Center, at Westfield Place's Winter Garden.
The
It's also accessible via an underground passageway to the Oculus, a mall that's attached to the new World Trade Center's Path commuter train and other subways.
Blockchain calling
HTC has provided a peek at its long awaited blockchain phone, teasing it at a cryptocurrency event in Berlin.
Called the Exodus 1, it's expected to ship in December, and can be purchased with bitcoin or ethereum, reports
The phone, which looks similar to earlier HTC phones, runs on Android, and is designed to store keys and cryptocurrencies. There's also a way to access lost data on a distributed ledger.
IBM's PSD2 play
Called Open Banking by Big Blue, it enables banks to open their legacy systems and use APIs to integrate with cloud-hosted technology.
The PSD2 regulations encourage API connections between banks and fintechs to support easier information sharing
Citi's bullish on Ondot
Citi Ventures has made a strategic investment in Ondot, a Santa Clara-based mobile payment services company.
Ondot's clients are mostly banks, which use its technology to provide consumers visibility into their personal payment histories.
Ondot also allows consumers to manage fraud alerts, transaction limits and purchase location restrictions via a smartphone. It plans to use the investment to fund a international expansion.
From the Web
The Straits Times | Tue October 23, 2018 - PayPal Holdings has made a strategic investment in Tala, a financial technology start-up that lends to underserved consumers in emerging markets. Based in Santa Monica, California, Tala lends to individuals in Kenya, Tanzania, the Philippines and Mexico through its smartphone app. The firm has lent more than US$500 million (S$690 million) to customers and has over 300 employees around the world.
The Straits Times | Tue October 23, 2018 - Local retail group Dairy Farm Singapore and Nets announced that they have tied up with Chinese e-payment giant WeChat to offer consumers the option of paying with its digital wallet service at more than 600 retail outlets across Singapore. The service will be available from Nov 1 at Cold Storage, Giant, 7-Eleven and Guardian stores islandwide.
China Daily | Wed October 24, 2018 - China's mobile wallet Alipay continues to tap its business to increase its international acceptance network, as it finalizes an agreement to enable all local taxis in Seoul to accept its payment starting next year.
More from PaymentsSource
American Express has positioned itself as a small-business champion for decades, but its partnership with Amazon illustrates the paradox of supporting mom-and-pop shops by enabling them to buy supplies from their largest competitor.
Even consumers are fed up with passwords, which seem to do little to deter hackers, but Visa says there's still some life left in the dated authentication method.
The Zelle network processed 116 million transactions during the July-September 2018 timeframe with a total value of $32 billion in payments.
Emphasizing its work with various partners in the payments industry as its key to success, Pivotal Payments says it has changed its brand name to Nuvei.
