Payment processing

The internet democratized access to information, and now cryptocurrencies are democratizing access to financial services. The next wave of the digital revolution has the potential to democratize access to justice, Kleros co-founder Federico Ast writes.

When it comes to the pizza industry, online and mobile ordering has generally been the province of chains like Domino’s, Pizza Hut and California Pizza Kitchen. But smaller shops are looking to get a slice of this market.

Since launching in the U.S. a year ago, CashShield gained traction in the marketplace by adding Yamibuy and Scalefast, among others, to its global portfolio.

Every transaction is traceable on the blockchain — though only to the addresses that initiated it. Compare this to Fedwire Funds Service and ACH payments, which don’t have this transaction history available, writes Bob Rutherford is the CEO and founder of Hedge.

Two collaborations in the past week show how office vendors are using automation to free health care patients and office staff from an overwhelmingly paper-heavy process of invoicing and payments.

Almost two-thirds of financial institutions have yet to form threat hunting teams — a growing necessity as the number of high-profile attacks rises.

While Europe is still making sense of an international Visa outage in early June, fintech disruptor TransferWise experienced its own outage that lasted up to 11 hours on Thursday, with website, app and card payments unavailable to the company’s 1 million-plus users.

The quest for fast payments is advancing on the consumer side, but most banks are said to be undecided about a host of issues tied to speeding up transactions between businesses.

From regulations such as GDPR and PSD2 to conversations at major conferences, financial services and payment companies are coming to grips with how vital it is to step up ID protection, according to Lina Andolf-Orup, global product marketing manager at Fingerprints.

Founded in 1971, First Data may not have the glow of being a trendy startup. Green Dot, founded in 1999, is in the same boat. But under the hood both companies have done much to keep up with the innovators.