Longtime friends and business partners Alex Charfen and Price Givens have formally launched BitcoinWallet.com, which they plan to market as a social, consumer-friendly and transparent digital currency wallet.

While Jamie Dimon and Warren Buffett express doubts about bitcoin, executives running the financial industry's back offices are looking at mimicking the virtual currency's methods of moving money quickly and cheaply.

Online apparel retailer Cory Vines positions itself as an alternative to much larger chains, so deciding to accept Bitcoin was a logical step. It also helps that its customers want to pay with the digital currency.

Fidor Bank AG is the first bank to integrate the real-time global settlement protocol provided by Ripple Labs.

Bitcoin ATM provider Robocoin is touting its ATMs as bank branches after launching an online banking platform, Robocoin Bank.

When MasterCard Inc. paid a team of lobbyists about $70,000 earlier this year to promote the bank- card network's views, a new topic made their list: bitcoin.

BTC China halted local-currency deposits to clients' China Merchants Bank Co. accounts, as lenders close accounts with Bitcoin exchanges amid government measures to check surging trading in the virtual currency.

As state regulators take more interest in Bitcoin, third-party vendors are looking to apply the expertise they built in other markets to digital currency. One such vendor, Strevus, has a background in securitization, which is another volatile and risky market.

Mt. Gox Co., the bitcoin exchange that collapsed in February, gave up on a plan to revive itself, dealing a setback to creditors seeking the recovery of hundreds of millions of dollars in the virtual currency.

Bitcoin companies are looking to win business from large corporations by offering more of the security features that traditional payments providers have long used.

Charlie Shrem, a prominent Bitcoin evangelist, was indicted for allegedly trying to launder more than $1 million in the virtual currency in a case tied to the illicit online bazaar Silk Road.

Mobile wallets and mobile point of sale systems have tried many tactics to win over merchants by cutting costs. Some vendors have been extremely inventive in how they push cheaper payment options.

More companies are accepting "altcoins" such as Litecoin and Dogecoin in addition to the more common Bitcoin, showing that even silly currencies based on Internet memes can open merchants to new markets of consumers.

BitGo, a San Francisco-based a digital currency payments processor, has launched a new suite of services for financial institutions that engage in Bitcoin-based commercial transactions.

Gyft, a provider of virtual gift cards, plans to launch Gyft Cloud, a marketplace for merchants to sell their own digital gift cards with Clover Station, a tablet-based point of sale system developed by First Data Corp.

BloomNation, a marketplace for connecting customers with local florists, finds Bitcoin users spend on average 50% more per transaction than credit card users.

Last year, IdentityMind Global's banking partners began asking the anti-fraud and risk management provider to build an anti-money laundering system for the Bitcoin startups among the bank's clients. IdentityMind Global has now completed development on this AML technology.

EBay Inc. now allows marketplace users in the U.S. to sell virtual currency, such as the popular decentralized cryptocurrency, Bitcoin.

The Royal Canadian Mint is halting development of its MintChip digital currency project, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal.

Bitcoin ATM providers and virtual currency exchanges may be subject to Texas licensing requirements, according to regulatory guidelines issued by the Texas Banking Commissioner on April 3.