The information you need to start your day, from PaymentsSource and around the Web:
More heat for Libra
A new salvo comes from privacy commissioners in the Americas, Europe, Africa and Australasia, who have issued a joint statement criticizing Libra's privacy, which the group calls "fuzzy," reports
Calibra's "
Bulking up
Paytm is trying to raise its profile with small businesses by enabling bulk payments for merchants, with support for sending funds over different accounts.
The company's gateway includes an API that integrated with a merchant's existing payment system with options for bank transfers,
The target market is B2C and B2B payments for supply chains, payroll and other customers and partners as Paytm has set a goal of processing $1 billion in disbursements during 2019 and 2020.
The real deal
Mastercard is demoing blockchain collaborations designed to prevent counterfeit clothing in the fashion industry.
The card brand is partnering with Provenance, which develops digital tracing, to build a record of a product's path from design to the store. Mastercard will work with designers, Fred Segal Sunset and MADE, reports
Mastercard is also expanding its use of blockchain in other areas, including recruiting executives for a possible
Keeping clean
Singapore's regulators are introducing what it's calling "cyber hygiene" rules to govern the expanding fintech and payment technology firms that have flooded singapore in the past few years.
The rules, which go into effect in August 2020, mandate multi-factor authentication, firewalls and strong passwords, reports the
The
From the Web
CoinDesk | Tue August 6, 2019 - Crypto lending startup BlockFi received $18.3 million in a Series A funding round led by Valar Ventures. Valar, which was founded in part by PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel, was joined by Winklevoss Capital, Galaxy Digital, ConsenSys, Akuna Capital, Susquehanna, CMT Digital, Morgan Creek, Avon Ventures and PJC.
Forbes | Tue August 6, 2019 – Bitcoin payments use case is now making a comeback thanks to the development of the Lightning Network, which is a secondary protocol layer that enables cheaper, instant transfers for Bitcoin users. While the Lightning Network is improving the Bitcoin payments experience from a technical perspective, a serious regulatory hurdle remains for the cryptocurrency in terms of how it is taxed.
Chicago Tribune | Tue August 6, 2019 - The personal information of nearly 53,000 students and 3,100 educators in Naperville District 203 and Indian Prairie District 204 was exposed following a data breach at a company that handles the districts’ K-8 academic assessments.
More from PaymentsSource
As Apple Card’s public test begins this week with a limited number of consumers, details are emerging about how the tech giant is differentiating its product from other cards.
Mastercard has spent more than $4 billion on investments so far in 2019 to thread a needle between several must-haves in the digital payments market.
In his role as the head of Calibra, the digital wallet operation Facebook launched to support Libra, David Marcus has been pushed into the center of attention. And while he seems fine with it — having recently sat through more than four hours of questioning by U.S. lawmakers who vented their concerns about Libra — Marcus has also been very selective about when he steps into the limelight.
In a bid to help small businesses whose transaction volumes don’t warrant acquiring a dedicated POS terminal, National Australia Bank (NAB) is partnering with Visa and Quest Payment Systems to pilot a tap-on-phone solution that provides secure contactless card acceptance using the business owner’s smartphone.
