7.24.18 Your morning briefing

The information you need to start your day, from PaymentsSource and around the Web:

Faster pay's 'burden'
Instant payments in Europe will be hard, so Commerzbank chose to outsource all of its processing in the Single European Payments Area (SEPA) to equensWorldline.

SEPA is expected to be one of the world's largest faster payment zones, creating a regulatory and operational "burden" that required a specialist, according to Commerzbank.

The ten-year contract covers all SEPA instant, multi-currency and domestic payments, totalling about four billion transactions per year.

Alex Kraus/Bloomberg

China's crypto crackdown goes into overdrive
China has been tightening some cryptocurrency regulations and banning other activities outright over the past couple of years in an attempt to tighten control over its currency.

It's latest move is to end what it calls "illegal" mining in the Xinjiang Uyghur region by the end of August, reports Coindesk.

The ban includes demands that utility companies report mining activities and make moves to shut them down. Bitcoin and other cryptocurrency mining operations use substantial electricity, making it easy for utilities to detect.

Clash of crooks
Crooks are buying and selling in-game currency from Clash of Clans and other mobile games to launder stolen credit card funds.

Security firm Kromtech reports it found a strange database with card and personal information, and quickly became aware it was not a normal corporate database, partly because it did not require usernames and passwords, and had Vietnamese language instructions for a special high tech "tool."

This system was used to process 20,000 stolen cards from April to June.

Getting fit
FitPay, which supports payments in part through collaborations with companies such as Garmin, has entered into a marketing agreement with Wesley Eric Weston, a rapper whose stage name is Lil' Flip, or Flip Gate$.

Lil' Flip and FitPay will sell a contactless payment device that enables cryptocurrency payments at retail locations through an automatic value exchange at the point of sale.

Lil' Flip will design and brand the device, which will use the FitPay Bitcoin Exchange and Token Requestor platforms.

From the Web

Bank of England says payments system can serve blockchain users
The Business Times | Mon July 23, 2018 - A revamped Bank of England payments system should be able to hook up with fintech firms using distributed ledger technology (DLT), the central bank said on Monday in a boost to the development of blockchain in Britain. The BoE is aiming to revamp the system that underpins British banking and trading in the City of London by 2020 to strengthen defences against cyber-attacks and widen the number of businesses that can use it.

Crypto’s most popular wallet service is getting a mobile app for secure login
TechCrunch | Mon July 23, 2018 - MyEtherWallet, the most popular crypto wallet service on the internet, is finally getting a mobile app as it bids to increase security for its users. Today the company introduced MEW Connect, an iOS app that allows users to access their wallet through MyEtherWallet but without the need to type their private key.

Stellar platform set to revolutionize Islamic remittances
Asia Times | Tue July 24, 2018 - California-based blockchain developer says Islamic certification for its digital token will see the world's first Sharia-compliant crypto-currency. Stellar, an open-source platform for distributed payments, became something of an investor darling in recent weeks after an association with IBM that aims to produce a potentially game-changing USD-pegged ‘stable coin.'

More from PaymentsSource

Dynamics Wallet Card nears launch with U.S. pushed to the periphery
Dynamics has been in the high-tech payment card game long enough to see its market disrupted by two major shifts: the U.S. EMV migration and the launch of Apple Pay. Going forward, the company may find that the best way to deal with a fickle U.S. audience is to focus its attention elsewhere.

U.K. forecast to be world-class blockchain player by 2022
A new report predicts that the U.K. will be well placed to become a world-class blockchain and cryptocurrency hub by 2022.

Another day, another outage: Digital payments weigh on old infrastructure
Maybe it's coincidence, or maybe it's progress — in recent weeks, a number of large payment networks have suffered brief but widespread outages, particularly in Europe.

Snapcash shutdown: What it means to lose P2P payments
The news that Snap Inc. is shutting down Snapcash, a version of Square Cash offered on its Snapchat social media platform, may have less to do with P2P payments and more to do with the long-term future of the company itself.