Mastercard pushes coronavirus travel app in Africa; Green Dot's moving HQ to Texas

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Safe travels

Mastercard is partnering with Cassava Fintech on an array of digital inclusion initiatives, including expanding the Africa CDC TravelPass, which is designed to enable travel between African nations while mitigating coronavirus spread.

The digital health pass is accessible through Cassava's Sasai SuperApp, which includes a range of financial services, payment rails and access to health services and records. The card network and fintech are positioning this as a way to promote travel as economies reopen while adding new financial services. Mastercard and Cassava plan to expand programs, such as adding a physical and virtual card to Sasai.

Mastercard did not return requests for comment by deadline as to whether the health pass is a vaccine passport, though the companies' promotional materials mentioned mitigating coronavirus documentation fraud as a goal. Mastercard has expressed an interest in lending its scale to international vaccine passport projects.

Bloomberg

Greener pastures

Green Dot is moving its headquarters from the Los Angeles area to Austin, contributing to the California-to-Texas migration among technology firms, mostly citing California's expense relative to Texas.

The prepaid card company is also pushing geographic flexibility, reports CNBC, adding Green Dot will have WeWork-style office sharing locations in Florida, Ohio and a remaining presence in Los Angeles. Green Dot CEO Dan Henry told CNBC he's "not Jamie Dimon, forcing you to take the train three hours per day," a direct reference to JPMorgan's ordering workers back to the office this summer and an indirect reference to the utility of rail transit.

Henry last week also indirectly tossed shade at Chime, the fintech that stopped calling itself a "bank" at the behest of California regulators. Henry said it's "powerful" to use the word bank because it's a "legitimate financial institution."

Cleaning up

Turkish regulators plan to require cryptocurrency exchanges to report all payments of more than $1,200 as part of the country's pending anti-money laundering regulations.

Turkey has already added cryptocurrency platforms to the government's AML program, reports Coindesk, adding there probably won't be a full ban on cryptocurrency.

The crackdown follows a tumultuous period for cryptocurrency in Turkey as the Thodex and Vebitcoin exchanges collapsed, dozens of arrests were made and Faruk Fatih Ozer, the former CEO of Thodex, fled the country.

Linked in

International payment automation firm Tipalti has established integrations with most enterprise resource planning systems, a step that enhances connections between payment processing and the back office and allows the company to pursue larger-volume B2B clients.

The firm's integrations include ERP systems from Microsoft, Quickbooks and SAP, which will tie to Tipalti products that synchronize invoices and payment data, enabling automation for business transactions, a trend that has gained steam over the past year.

Tipalti in late 2020 raised $150 million to expand its accounts payable technology and target new markets.

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