Industry

SEC Regulation: CLARITY Act Stalls in Senate Without Final Vote

Icobench

"In SEC regulation news today, the Senate adjourned on Aug. 8 without holding a final vote on the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act of 2025, also known as the CLARITY Act. The Senate is in recess until Sept. 14, according to the ABA Banking Journal."

Industry

Digital Assets 101: A Credit Union's Guide to Cryptocurrency, Stablecoins, Tokenized Deposits and Central Bank Digital Currency

Velera

"Digital assets are no longer just a conversation about cryptocurrency. Stablecoins, tokenized deposits and central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) are beginning to reshape how money moves, how payments settle and how financial institutions think about the future of banking. For credit unions, the question is no longer whether digital assets matter — it's how to prepare for what comes next."

Industry

From MiCA to GENIUS: Why Crypto's Next Regulatory Test Is Cross-Border Coordination

Finance Magnates

"The central debate in digital asset policy used to be whether to regulate. That question is settled. MiCA's transitional period ended July 1st, 2026; the UK finalized its cryptoasset rulebook on June 30th; the US celebrated the one-year anniversary of the GENIUS Act becoming law; and the SEC and CFTC issued joint guidance in mid-March that classified digital assets as digital commodities. What now keeps industry participants up at night is whether rules written in Washington, London, and Brussels can interoperate with one another."

Industry

Education: Account 2 Account Payments

Opinium

"For more than a decade, Account-to-Account (A2A) payments have been portrayed as the next major evolution in payments. A2A payments are, at their simplest, the movement of money directly from one bank account to another. They encompass a range of payment mechanisms including traditional bank transfers, Faster Payments in the UK, SEPA Credit Transfers and SEPA Instant across Europe, ACH transfers in the United States, and increasingly, Pay by Bank experiences enabled through Open Banking in the UK."

Industry

Banks Rush to Tokenize Deposits as Stablecoin Networks Beat Them to Shared Payment Rails

Tech Times

"America's biggest banks are building tokenized deposit infrastructure faster than at any point in the technology's history — and they are still a year behind the stablecoin consortia racing to control the same rails. New data published Wednesday by American Banker shows 24 of the 50 largest U.S. banks now have tokenized deposits on their radar as of Q2 2026, up from 19 the previous quarter with four institutions running live products and seven more in active pilot. The Clearing House shared network targets a first-half 2027 launch"

Industry

AI Agents Are About to Become Customers: Is the Payments Industry Ready?

The AI Journal

"Most people still think about AI as an assistant. You ask a question. It provides an answer. But the emerging generation of AI agents is designed to take action. The agent doesn’t simply provide information. It completes the task. Once that happens, AI moves from being part of the research process to becoming part of the transaction itself. And payments become critical infrastructure. See list of questions to consider with AI Agents."

Industry

Samsung, Hyundai Motor, Coupang Race to Pilot Stablecoins for Payments, Remittances, and Trade Finance

BigGo Finance

"Major South Korean conglomerates are shifting their view of stablecoins from a topic of interest to core business infrastructure, each finding applications in payments, settlement, and trade finance. Coupang, POSCO International, Hyundai Motor, and Samsung Electronics are each pursuing proof-of-concept (PoC) projects with distinct strategies, and industry observers say digital assets are beginning to be integrated into real business operations as institutional frameworks take shape."

Industry

Digital Euro and European Payment Independence: A Strategic Shift

Indexbox

The European Payments Alliance (EuroPA) and the European Payments Initiative (EPI) have signed an agreement to link their instant payment systems, creating potential reach of 380 million users in 15 European countries. EuroPA includes MB WAY (Portugal), Bizum (Spain and Andorra)... EPI's Wero covers Germany, Belgium, France, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg. PagBrasil, is working on a system called RoamingPay that allows consumers to pay abroad in real time using their banking apps or digital wallets. PagBrasil aims to cover 10 countries by the end of 2026 and expand into Europe.

Industry

Support Builds for FedNow Cross Border Payments Extension

East & Partners

"Wise, Visa, Stripe and major industry trade groups have thrown their support behind the Federal Reserve’s plan to expand the FedNow instant payments system for cross border payments interoperability. Currently FedNow transactions can only be executed domestically between two US banks or credit unions. The FedNow service amendment would enable US banks to utilize FedNow to transfer funds through an intermediary or non-US correspondent bank with an aim toward speeding cross border payments."

Industry

JPMorgan, Citi, UBS and Central Banks Wrap Up Real-Value Trials of Tokenized Cross-Border Payments in Project Agorá

Crowdfund Insider

"A coalition of global financial institutions and central banks has successfully finished real-value testing under Project Agorá, examining how tokenization can streamline wholesale cross-border payments. The trials, coordinated by the Bank for International Settlements, involved processing monetary transfers using digital representations of commercial bank deposits and central bank reserves. They executed roughly 30 transactions spanning 17 different scenarios, moving a total of approximately around $1 million across six currencies."

Industry

Algorithmic Shopping Is Here. Is Your Company Ready?

Harvard Business Review

"Executives have spent years preparing their organizations to use AI internally. The next challenge is preparing for AI as the customer. As intelligent shopping agents evaluate, compare, and purchase products on behalf of consumers, companies must rethink how they compete. Success will depend on structured data, technical infrastructure, organizational capabilities, and executive alignment. Leaders should assess their organizations across five critical areas: strategy, data readiness, commercial capabilities, talent, and governance."

Industry

ABA Viewpoint: The Genius Act Rules Are (Almost) Here. Here’s What Banks Should Do

ABA Banking Journal

"Congress gave federal regulators until July 18, 2026, to finalize the Genius Act’s implementing rules. That deadline came and went without a coordinated final package, but don’t mistake the delay in establishing final rules of the road for stablecoin for a reprieve. Here’s the short version of what’s expected in the final rules, and what banks should consider."

Industry

The Global Payments System Is Breaking, and Stablecoins Are Stepping In

Newsweek

"Global commerce runs on payment rails that most businesses rarely question. Yet behind every tap, transfer and settlement lies a complex system that introduces friction at scale. According to the World Bank, cross-border payments continue to face challenges around speed, cost and complexity, with transactions often involving multiple intermediaries that can increase friction and delay settlement. This lag is not simply an inconvenience. It constrains liquidity, ties up working capital and limits the efficiency of international trade."

Industry

Merchants Welcome New Senate Cosponsors of Credit Card Competition Act

Merchants Payments Coalition

"The Merchants Payments Coalition welcomed the addition of three new Senate cosponsors of the Credit Card Competition Act. As the Senate prepared to leave Washington Friday night for its summer recess, Sens. Bernie Moreno, R-Ohio; Cynthia Lummis, R-Wyo., and Angus King, I-Maine, signed on as cosponsors of the CCCA."

Industry

How Dr. Martens Laces Up for Agentic Commerce

Tech Informed

"At Tech Show London in March, Theo Botha, global CISO at Dr. Martens, acknowledged that Dr. Martens is battling impersonators, bots and increasingly sophisticated fraudsters. Meanwhile, his team is preparing for a future in which some of its most valuable “customers” are software. What is yet to be delivered is a universal, interoperable standard for authenticated delegation and fraud handling across merchants, platforms and agents."

Industry

New Jersey Law Limits Credit Card Surcharges, Requires Clear Disclosure

Parsippany Focus

"New Jersey merchants who charge customers extra for paying with a credit card must now disclose that surcharge clearly before the transaction and cannot charge more than what it actually costs them to process the payment, under a state law highlighted in new guidance from the Division of Consumer Affairs. Governor Phil Murphy signed the law, which prohibits sellers from imposing a credit card surcharge greater than the actual cost of processing the payment."

Industry

Tokenized deposits: Old Wine in New Bottles?

The European Money and Financial Forum

This paper examines the use of ‘tokenized’ bank deposits for achieving automated, real-time processing of financial transactions. Two possibilities for tokenization are compared: representation on decentralized ‘programmable’ ledgers; and on conventional account-based centralized ledgers.

Industry

Education: Your Bank’s AI Just Blocked Your Payment – What Can You Do?

Insight News

"Imagine you’re at the supermarket checkout. Your cart is full. The line behind you is long. You tap your card. Declined. You try again. Declined. What just happened? And why does it keep happening to people who haven’t done anything wrong? This isn’t a rare glitch, but something that happens to millions of people every day. And most of us have no idea why it happens or what we can do about it. The answer lies inside a fraud detection system powered by AI."

Industry

KuCoin Pay Expands Stablecoin Utility With an Enterprise Gift Card Solution

PR Newswire

"KuCoin Pay, the cryptocurrency payment solution enabled by KuCoin, announced the launch of KuCoin Gift Card, a digital asset distribution solution that enables businesses to distribute USDT and USDC globally through digital gift cards, with support for bulk issuance and API integration. Designed for customer rewards, promotional campaigns, employee incentives and community engagement, the solution makes stablecoin distribution more accessible and operationally efficient."

Industry

From Routing to Revenue: Why Payment Orchestration Has Become a Boardroom Issue

IT Brief Australia

"Three forces are converging to raise payment orchestration to boardroom-level conversations: merchants are deliberately diversifying away from single-processor setups, payment failure is now recognized as a direct and measurable drag on revenue, and finance teams are demanding the same visibility into payments that they already have over the rest of the balance sheet. Each of these forces alone would justify investment in orchestration."

Industry

BPI and The Clearing House Association Comment on FDIC’s Proposal for BSA and Sanctions Compliance Standards for FDIC-Supervised Permitted Payment Stablecoin Issuers

Bank Policy Institute

"...As we have noted in prior comment letters responding to different regulatory proposals under the GENIUS Act, the Associations remain concerned that commenters have not been given a meaningful opportunity to evaluate the numerous interdependent proposals implementing the GENIUS Act either individually or comprehensively. We have previously requested extensions of the comment periods for various proposals to implement the GENIUS Act, which generally have had insufficient 60-day comment periods and overlapping comment deadlines."

Industry

The x402 Foundation Activated a 27-Year-Old Internet Code. 200 Million Transactions Later, the Real Volume Is Still Tiny.

Forkast

The HTTP 402 status code, long allocated to “Payment Required” in the internet’s technical specifications without widespread deployment, has been repurposed as the foundational layer for machine-to-machine commerce. The gap between headline volume and present-day commercial reality is still wide. The network has recorded over 200 million transactions as of June 2026, according to Major Matters’ x402 Adoption Tracker. But Artemis Analytics found that more than 95% of that activity is protocol signaling not buyer-seller exchange.

Industry

Payment Fraud a ‘Fully Fledged’ Transnational Security Threat, Says Think Tank

Computer Weekly

"Over half the world’s population are targeted by payment scams each week as authorised payment fraud becomes a “fully fledged” global security threat, rather than a consumer protection issue, warns the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI). In its latest report, defence and security think tank RUSI said the scam often known as authorised push payments (APP) – which involves victims being tricked into making payments – has “far-reaching consequences for institutional trust, economic stability and the integrity of the global financial system”."

Industry

AI Agents Can Pay. Can They Prove They Had Permission?

Silicon UK

"Agentic commerce has moved quickly. A year ago, much of the discussion was theoretical. Now payment networks, banks, and technology platforms are building systems that allow AI agents to search, select, and pay for products on a customer’s behalf. Every agent-led payment needs to answer two questions: is the transaction financially valid, and was the agent allowed to make it? Payment systems are already good at answering the first. They can check credentials, balances, authentication signals, and risk. The second question has not yet been solved."

Industry

Interpol Leverages Global System to Curtail Fraud Payments

Dark Reading

"Earlier this month, Interpol revealed that authorities in Singapore and Oman used a worldwide network of law enforcement agencies and financial organizations to halt a $6.6 million payoff from a business email compromise (BEC) scam, part of Operation First Light 2026, which — among other milestones — blocked more than 31,000 bank accounts linked to fraud. Because cryptocurrency often does not pass through traditional financial institution or banking channels, halting such transactions becomes even more difficult."

Industry

The Real Fight in Agentic Commerce Isn’t Autonomy. It’s Authorization

TechRadar

"The conversation about AI and shopping is happening in the wrong place. The more consequential shift is happening somewhere far less visible: inside payment networks, authorization protocols and the systems that decide whether software is allowed to spend money on our behalf. The technical capability for an AI agent to complete a purchase has existed for some time. What has been missing is the infrastructure that allows businesses and consumers to trust those transactions..."

Industry

European Commission Publishes Final Guidelines on AI Transparency Obligations

Lexology

"On July 20, 2026, the European Commission published the final, non-legally binding guidelines on transparency obligations for providers and deployers of AI systems. Providers of AI systems designed to interact directly with natural persons, such as chatbots, must ensure individuals are informed they are interacting with an AI system, unless this is obvious from the circumstances and context of use. Providers of AI systems that generate synthetic audio, image, video, or text content must ensure that the outputs are marked in a machine-readable format and are detectable as artificially generated or manipulated...and more."

Industry

AI Shopping Agents Processed 120 Million Transactions In A Single Week As Agentic Commerce Moves From Theory To Checkout [Alipay’s AI Pay Platform]

SMB Tech

"AI-powered shopping agents completed more than 120 million transactions through Alipay’s AI Pay platform in a single week in February 2026, according to data cited in a new NielsenIQ report that charts the emergence of agentic commerce as a phenomenon rather than a theoretical projection. But NielsenIQ’s own data reveals a clear gap between AI capability and shopper willingness. Around 34 per cent of consumers use AI to research products and 23 per cent use it to summarise reviews, yet only about 8 per cent have let AI complete a purchase on their behalf."

Industry

Click-to-Cancel, Coast to Coast: The 2026 Subscription Crackdown Comes From Every Direction

InfoLawGroup LLP

"The Federal Trade Commission, state attorneys general, city regulators, and the plaintiffs' bar have set their sights set on the same target: recurring charges and hidden fees including autorenewal and negative-option programs. The good news is that the risk is manageable. Across nearly every action so far this year, the problem was not the subscription itself, but rather how the recurring charge was disclosed, how consent was obtained, and how hard it was to cancel."

Industry

Ever Noticed There’s No CVV Printed on Some of the Newest Cards? [Video]

Keyno

"That's not a mistake! it's the point.With Dynamic CVV, your security code lives in your banking app, not on the plastic. A fresh code for checkout, expiring after one hour. So even if your card details leak, they're useless to fraudsters. Here's how it works in 30 seconds."