Venture funding

The funding round comes on the heels of what BitPay cited as a record year in 2017 in processing more than $1 billion in bitcoin payments.

Midigator, which markets software to help e-commerce merchants manage payment card chargebacks, has received $30 million in funding from private equity firm LLR Partners to further develop the product.

The team that founded marketplace lender Avant Inc. raised about $15 million to start a firm that will use blockchain technology and digital tokens to motivate companies to share data about customer identities and credit worthiness.

With 1.3 billion people who are mostly unbanked in an economy where 85% to 95% of all transactions are still conducted in cash, few other markets have such an opportunity to modernize payments.

China’s Ant Financial, which already has a large stake in India’s Paytm and operates its own Alipay wallet in China, is taking a 45% stake in Pakistan’s Telenor Microfinance Bank (TMB).

To detect and combat transaction laundering — the practice of hiding illegal activity behind a business that appears legitimate — American Express' investment group took a minority equity stake in EverCompliant.

Backbone Hosting Solutions Inc., a cryptocurrency mining company, said it plans to invest C$250 million ($193 million) in computing centers in Sherbrooke, Canada.

RecargaPay, an eight-year-old mobile payments platform targeting unbanked and underbanked consumers in Brazil, has secured $22 million in funding to reach more users and merchants.

Customer support may seem like it's innovating through the use of artificial intelligence and chatbots, but all of that is built on a foundation that's stuck in the stone age.

The goal of the competition is to increase diversity in the financial technology industry.