The information you need to start your day, from PaymentsSource and around the web:
Venmo adds crypto
PayPal's Venmo P2P app now allows users to buy, hold and sell bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin and Bitcoin Cash.
The feature works through Paxos Trust Co., which provides crypto products and services, Venmo said in a
Olympic trials
China plans to test its digital yuan during the Beijing Winter Olympics in 2022, opening the currency to foreign athletes and visitors.
It would be the first test of the digital currency with international users, reports
The Chinese government plans to add more use cases and cities to current tests, and does not have a timeline for a formal launch of the digital currency, which has been in development for seven years.
No SPAC
London fintech Revolut is pursuing a fundraising effort that it hopes will place its valuation between $10 billion and $15 billion, an amount that would reportedly place it shy of its $20 billion goal before going public.
Revolut has hired FT Partners as an advisor, reports
AML
ABN Amro has reached a $578 million settlement with the Dutch Public Prosecution Service following a regulatory investigation into the bank's anti-money-laundering practices between 2014 and 2020.
Investigators found the bank did not adequately monitor client acceptance, transaction monitoring and client exits, or the "client lifecycle." This led to some clients abusing the accounts. The bank says it has improved payment monitoring and has invested in AML technology and staff.
Teachable moment
U.K. fintech Strive, which specializes in financial education and a youth-focused account, has developed a crypto piggy bank that integrates with virtual wallets.
The piggy bank, called Penny the Pig, costs $149, and the accompanying app and hardware display crypto wallet balances and provide parental controls over cryptocurrency payments, transfers and other digital transactions, reports
Strive in November acquired digital piggy bank startup GoSave, and plans to introduce a piggy bank mining feature to mine bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.
From the web
CNBC | Tuesday, April 20, 2021
The Diem Association is aiming to launch a pilot with a single stablecoin pegged to the U.S. dollar in 2021, according to a person familiar with the matter.
TECHCRUNCH | Monday, April 19, 2021
Geico, the second-largest auto insurer in the U.S., has fixed a security bug that let fraudsters steal customers’ driver’s license numbers from its website.
TECHCRUNCH | Tuesday, April 20, 2021
“Challenger” startups in banking and insurance have upended their industries, and picked up significant business, by building more customer-friendly tools and services — more personalized, easier to access, and usually competitively priced — than those typically provided their bigger, incumbent rivals. Now, a startup out of Romania that is building tools to help the incumbents respond with better services of their own is announcing a significant round of funding as its business grows.
More from PaymentsSource
As more electric-powered commercial vehicles enter the market, fuel card operators like FleetCor must confront a future where gas stations become less relevant.
Modern payment processors using AI to interpret and analyze trends and point-of-spend data can detect fraud across ecommerce in real time and provide that knowledge onwards to the bank just as quickly, says Paymentology's Abe Smith.
Dozens of banks are gearing up for the Federal Reserve’s real-time payments system, which is expected to go live as early as 2023.
Stripe's growth has made the fintech a popular distribution partner for a fast-growing range of financial services, with the latest move extending a card-issuing portal to Europe.
Mastercard is buying Ekata, a startup that has been rapidly developing AI-powered digital identity tools that weed out online fraud during the recent surge in e-commerce during the pandemic.
Private businesses are beginning to embrace the Reserve Bank of India's plan to create competition in the country's retail digital payment space, seeking new licenses to develop alternatives to the state-owned National Payments Corp. of India system.
Britain’s Treasury and the Bank of England are weighing the potential creation of a central bank digital currency, joining authorities from China to Sweden exploring the next big step in the future of money.
We’ve seen many companies embrace faster and easier payments systems, says Citizens Commercial Banking's Matt Richardson.
By using a direct listing instead of an IPO, Coinbase can quickly draw mainstream investors to fuel a payments franchise.
The surge in digital and cloud-based payments technology hasn’t killed off point-of-sale terminals; their role is simply changing, as cloud-based payment providers like Podium roll out their first hardware.
Earned wage access provider Even has surpassed $2.5 billion in lifetime payment volume for instant, on-demand wages to employees of hundreds of companies, including Walmart and PayPal.
Citigroup, the world’s largest credit card issuer, is looking to jump-start efforts to acquire new cardholders after the pandemic caused it to curtail such activities last year.
Financial crime in the U.S. alone tops $300 billion every year – and the vast majority of it goes undetected.
While accounts payable systems are adjusting to decentralized work, it's unrealistic to expect a complete migration overnight, says Proactis' Michael Ereli.
Amid success stories like Apple Pay, Google Pay and the Starbucks app, there are many wallet apps that failed to gain traction — or squandered it when they did. But there is a lot to learn from their experiences.
Top executives from the 49 companies that earned a spot in this year's ranking of the Best Fintechs to Work For cite the need for nimble shifts in business strategy, leadership style and recruiting tactics among the lessons they took away from the challenges of the coronavirus crisis.
