Venezuela is reportedly expected to increase its use of cryptocurrency when the United States reimposes oil sanctions on the country beginning June 1. A Venezuelan opposition politician, Leopoldo Lopez, and a national security leader at New York-based blockchain data firm Chainalysis, Kristofer Doucette, released a report Monday (April 29) saying that democratic governments should set up structures to
Crypto payments have traditionally suffered from a pervasive “cold start” problem. Among other issues hamstringing the integration of blockchain-based digital assets as a payments mechanism, many potential customers simply don’t own any crypto and therefore can’t use it to carry out transactions. And that doesn’t really incentivize merchants to embrace crypto payments as an offering.
Lending marketplace Upstart has debuted a tool to help lenders offer customized loan offers. That tool, dubbed Recognized Customer Personalization (RCP), lets banks and credit unions (CUs) identify when a customer is actively seeking a loan and make them an offer of credit, Upstart said in a Thursday (April 25) news release. “In the current economic environment, lenders are
Investors reportedly expect increased competition in the grocery sector after Amazon’s announcement Tuesday (April 23) of a new grocery delivery subscription benefit. Walmart and Kroger shares declined 1.8% and 2.3%, respectively, Tuesday, in moves that UBS analyst Michael Lasser said showed that investors interpret Amazon’s announcement as a sign of greater competition, Seeking Alpha reported Wednesday (April 24). The new Amazon program offers a delivery
Block ecosystems Square and Cash App have begun rolling out a feature that will allow eligible Square sellers to automatically convert a portion of their daily sales to bitcoin with Cash App. The rollout of this new Bitcoin Conversions feature began Wednesday (April 24), Block said in an email to PYMNTS. “Block believes that bitcoin is an instrument of economic
Equipment finance company Odessa has entered the auto industry. The company has launched an originations platform called Odessa Auto and plans to grow it into a full-service end-to-end auto finance suite, Odessa said in a Wednesday (April 24) press release. “Odessa’s deep asset finance experience enables the company to offer state-of-the-art auto origination technology on Day 1,” Robert Johnson, executive vice
French FinTech Payflows has raised $26 million for its all-in-one platform for finance teams. The company announced the funding on LinkedIn as it emerged from stealth Monday (April 22), saying that its platform would “set finance teams free from boring manual work.” In less than 18 months, Payflows said, “we built a suite of procurement, payments, cash management and
Like the Summer Olympics and the presidential election, bitcoin’s “halving” comes every four years. The latest halving — a preprogrammed event that cuts the amount of available coins to be mined in half — happened Friday (April 19) evening, according to multiple published reports. As noted here late last week, the halving is built in
A group of FTX investors has agreed to drop legal claims against Sam Bankman-Fried. In exchange, the disgraced former crypto exchange CEO will cooperate in the investors’ suits against other defendants stemming from FTX’s collapse, including various celebrities paid to promote the exchange, according to court documents filed Friday (April 19). The settlement, first reported by Bloomberg News, comes weeks
Cryptocurrency exchange Kraken is buying TradeStation Crypto, the digital assets unit of TradeStation Group. With this acquisition, Kraken aims to expand its regulatory licensing in the United States, Seeking Alpha reported Thursday (April 18). “The transaction is part of our efforts to accelerate our U.S. presence and will unlock further growth and new product opportunities for Kraken in the U.S.,”