Blockchain

Finance that relies on smartphones and smart contracts can lower costs for banking services and promote financial inclusion, proponents say. But a look at who is using the technology tells a different story.

CEO Thomas Cangemi is pushing to modernize a bank that for decades was focused largely on multifamily lending. The company has already agreed to buy the mortgage lender Flagstar Bancorp and its partnership with Figure Technologies, a blockchain-focused fintech, has the potential to make that acquisition more productive.

New York Community Bancorp says it will invest in Figure Technologies, which has developed an open source distributed ledger. The bank plans to use the technology to cut costs in mortgages and payments and promote financial inclusion.

CoinFund, a blockchain-focused investment firm, hired Christopher Perkins from Citigroup as managing partner and president to help bridge the gap to the traditional finance sector.

The blockchain company's new lead on the Continent, Sendi Young, discusses its plans to foster real-time and cross-border transactions between banks and fintechs in ways that aren't possible on legacy networks.

A posting for a digital currency job at Amazon stirred speculation that the e-commerce giant might begin accepting bitcoin at checkout. The company denies that — and experts say it has many other ways to make the most of its intended hire.

State Street is set to offer cryptocurrency reporting, reconciliation and processing services to its private-fund clients in the latest sign that digital assets are gaining acceptance on Wall Street.

Amazon.com’s payments team is exploring letting customers use cryptocurrencies to pay for their orders, a development that’s roiling digital currency markets.

The card issuer, which is offering its customers a chance to purchase non-fungible tokens created from a recent performance by the singer SZA, is betting that the digital art-trading phenomenon will become more mainstream.

Roxe says the distributed ledger technology that removes costly middlemen from international transactions can also lower expenses for currency conversions.

Distributed ledger projects in banking are few and far between — many have stalled and others remain experiments. Robert Townsend, who has worked with banks around the world and written a book about blockchain technology, explains some of the ways financial institutions could be using it, for instance in small-business lending and supply chain finance.

The Series B round, also led by Blockchain Capital, marks the first investment in the blockchain industry by Morgan Stanley's opportunistic investment arm.

Blockdaemon has seen rapid growth in the past year, and has won customers including JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup.

The e-commerce giant is looking for someone whose skills pertain to distributed ledgers and digital currency.

The bank and card brand will combine digital connections for supply chain finance and corporate disbursements.

Figure Technologies, the blockchain-based startup co-founded by Mike Cagney, is closing its latest funding round that values the company at $3.2 billion.

Silvergate Bank CEO Alan Lane, former HSBC executive Stuart Levey and experts at Anchorage Bank are helping Facebook make its digital currency more palatable to regulators and potential bank partners.

Government digital currency projects have the potential to displace banks and fintechs from the payment process. But three major participants — Accenture, Ant Group and Swift — argue that incumbents have a role to play.

The fintech already sells loans on its distributed-ledger-based trading platform but needed the Securities and Exchange Commission's blessing to bundle its mortgage and student loans into securities and sell them to investors.

The visibility of automated transactions provides a clear view of the flow of transactions, says Hummingbird's Joe Robinson.