Venture funding

Investors have poured $15 million into Nymi to help the Toronto startup commercialize its wearable authentication technology.

JPMorgan Chase, which already made a $10 million investment in mobile payments and loyalty provider LevelUp, renewed its interest in a just-completed $50 million round of funding.

The roughly $2 million investment comes as banks keep joining (and in some cases, leaving) various distributed ledger projects as they try to pick the winners in a young field.

Sweeping new data-sharing rules require a substantial IT revamp at large financial institutions.

Europe's Payment Services Directive, or PSD2, has almost everything a technology vendor would want. It affects an entire continent, and it involves both sweeping new data requirements and a substantial IT revamp for large financial institutions.

Payments and financial services technology are still stuck in yesteryear, chained to paper and dangerously prone to fraud, according to Matt Streisfeld, a principal at Oak HC/FT.

Blockchain Capital wants to raise $10 million by issuing its own digital token, a method the firm says is the future for startups, VCs and everybody else.

The 2012 Jobs Act let regular Americans invest in startups, spawning a glut of crowdfunding sites offering real ownership stakes in return for cash, rather than the new smartwatches or electric skateboards available on pioneering platform Kickstarter.

Wearable payment devices are cutting edge, fast and diverse. But they are not a steady, predictable or popular consumer trend. Even so, investors see a rich opportunity to get involved in the market for wearables.

Artificial intelligence is steadily making its way through the payments and financial services world. The technology's usefulness for fraud detection is clear, but there are other areas where AI can have an impact.

With scammers steadily improving their techniques, CO-OP Financial Services is starting to offer artificial intelligence to police transactions initiated by online, mobile and other connected devices.

Tencent Holdings Ltd.’s investment in Chinese video streaming service Kuaishou values the startup at about $3 billion, people with knowledge of the matter said.

Flipkart Online Services Pvt has completed a $1 billion fundraising and aims to raise as much as $1 billion more over the next few months, according to people familiar with the matter, giving India’s largest e-commerce company capital to battle back against rising competition.

The ICO fundraising model has already yielded more than $230 million for startups.

Seoul-based Viva Republica, which is seeing brisk growth with Toss, its person-to-person payments app, recently drew $48 million in venture capital funding. The series C funding round was led by Silicon Valley’s Goodwater Capital, along with PayPal, Bessemer Venture Partners, Altos Ventures and Partech Ventures.

Innovate Indiana is taking part in a $2.6 million investment in Rippleshot, a company that uses artificial intelligence to detect card fraud.

San Francisco-based Align Commerce, which leverages blockchain and other technologies to enable cross-border payments for small- to midsize businesses, has rebranded itself as Veem and landed $24 million in funding to expand its operations.

Chinese financial-technology investments this year may exceed 2016’s record $10 billion as companies continue to raise funds for expansion and big banks grow their digital services, according to Accenture Plc.

The Spanish bank said it will continue to be Atom’s main strategic investor and keep two seats on its board.

The San Carlos, Calif., firm is following a similar blueprint as other online lenders — launching with a particular loan product, refining its algorithms, and then seeking to expand into other corners of consumer finance.