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April 16, 2026
On the web
American Express Offers Customers Protection From Agentic Purchase Errors
MSN
"American Express extended its card member purchase protections to agentic purchases as it also introduced its agentic commerce developer kit on Tuesday. Under the protection commitment, if an American Express card member authorizes an AI agent to make a purchase and that agent sends American Express the customer's authenticated purchase intent, the credit card company will protect eligible customers from charges related to AI agent error."
Venmo Continues Its Evolution from a Peer-to-Peer App into a Money Movement App for the Next Generation
PayPal Newsroom
"Venmo today announced the expansion of Stash¹, its rewards program, giving customers a new way to earn cash back on everyday purchases from some of their favorite lifestyle brands. In addition to Venmo Debit Mastercard² purchases, customers can now earn up to 5% cash back when they pay with Venmo at select merchants in their chosen bundle¹. The expansion makes it easier than ever to turn the purchases customers are already making into tangible value each month."
April 15, 2026
On the web
The Moment Is Now: What PayPal Beyond Revealed About the Future of Commerce
PayPal Newsroom
"At PayPal Beyond 2026, the mood was clear: move with speed and intention. As leaders gathered in San Francisco, conversations centered on a simple but pressing reality – consumer behavior is shifting fast, powered by AI, and shaped by economic pressure and geopolitical uncertainty. For enterprises and partners gathered in San Francisco this week, the real question isn’t whether to adapt, it's how fast."
Harnessing the Power of ISO® 20022: Why the Global Payment Standard Matters for Fraud Mitigation
FRB Services
"The increased adoption of ISO 20022 represents a milestone for the financial services industry. The messaging standard has changed how financial data is exchanged, interpreted and used across the entire ecosystem. ISO 20022 provides more structured, richer data about financial transactions, which can enable better decisioning and analytics and operational efficiency for financial institutions. By shifting to more structured, standardized data, ISO 20022 may create opportunities to detect fraud faster, earlier, more accurately and more efficiently."
Airwallex Is About to Take On Stripe and the Rest of the Payments Industry — in the Physical World
TechCrunch
Airwallex is moving into in-person payments. The move deepens its rivalry with Stripe across the payments stack, and enables the startup to directly aim at Square and Adyen on one of the last major battlegrounds in financial technology. The startup currently boasts close to 90 regulatory licenses across 70 to 80 regions, direct connections to local payment networks in over 120 countries, and the ability to settle transactions in more than 90 currencies.
Adyen Expands Its Partnership With Lastminute By Introducing Virtual Card Issuing For Supplier Payments
Adyen
"Adyen is expanding its collaboration with lastminute.com, a European leader in dynamic holiday packages, thanks to its issuing solution. Through the use of Visa-branded prepaid virtual cards, lastminute has optimized payouts to airlines, hotels, and other suppliers, accelerating access to funds and significantly optimizing currency exchange costs."
NYC Mayor and DCWP Commissioner Announce First-In-The-Nation Municipal “Click to Cancel” Rule
The National Law Review
"NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani and NY City Department of Consumer and Worker Protection (DCWP) Commissioner Samuel Levine have announced a proposed rule designed to strengthen New Yorkers’ “Click to Cancel” consumer rights, cracking down on subscription traps and ensuring consumers can easily cancel automatic renewals. Following the proposed rule’s publication on April 8, 2026, and opens a 30-day public comment period. NYC would become the first municipality in the nation to enforce this level of consumer protection."
Nacha: Rising to the Challenge of First-Party Fraud
Nacha
"Nacha’s Risk Management Advisory Group (RMAG), Rules and Operations Committee, and the First-Party Fraud Workgroup are looking at ways to better identify and mitigate first-party fraud. The first steps are education and raising awareness of the problem. We have issued a series of articles describing first-party fraud and addressing actions for both ODFIs and RDFIs."
Buenos Aires Mandates Electronic Payments in Land-Based Gaming to Boost Transparency
iGamingToday.com - News, insights and Slots review
"The regulatory body that oversees gambling activities in the province of Buenos Aires has recently announced mandatory electronic betting payments. Specifically, it has been decided that interoperable QR Codes should be used when placing bets at agencies, racetracks, and gaming halls. Clearly, this initiative will have far-reaching implications since it means abandoning cash in favor of digital transactions linked to bank accounts and debit cards."
dLocal, NEC to Power Remittance Payouts Across Africa
Techeconomy
"dLocal, a cross-border payment platform connecting global merchants to emerging markets, and National Exchange Company, an Italy-based international money transfer operator serving over 5 million customers across 90+ countries worldwide, have announced a partnership to power cross-border remittance payouts across markets in Africa, APAC, and Latin America."
Gr4vy Supports Agentic Payments Through Orchestration and Launches Development Kit to Prepare Merchants for AI Commerce
Gr4vy
"Gr4vy, announced it is fully ready to support agentic payment transactions through its orchestration layer, allowing merchants to manage and process transactions within AI-driven environments. In addition, Gr4vy is launching its Agentic Development Kit (ADK), designed to equip and guide merchants in building and launching AI-native storefronts within platforms such as ChatGPT."
X Is Finally Building the Crypto Plumbing That Could Turn Its Payments Ambitions Into Something Real
Startup Fortune
"For years, the “Everything App” vision Elon Musk attached to his $44 billion Twitter acquisition read more like a pitch deck than a plan. That changed today. X CEO Linda Yaccarino confirmed the platform is in the final stages of building out crypto infrastructure for X Money, the payments ecosystem the company has been telegraphing since at least 2023. The regulatory groundwork is already laid, the licenses are in hand, and the engineering focus has narrowed to one stubborn problem: making volatile digital assets usable at the point of sale."
April 14, 2026
Top Post
American Express Debuts Agentic Commerce Experiences (ACE)™ Developer Kit and Announces Industry-First Protection for Registered Agent Purchases
Business Wire
"American Express is building for the next era of commerce. As AI agents reshape how Card Members make everyday transactions, the company is bringing its longstanding tradition of trust, security, and service into AI-powered commerce. Today, American Express is introducing an agentic commerce developer kit and announcing Amex Agent Purchase Protection™, an industry-first commitment to extend its backing to Card Member purchases made by registered AI agents across its network."
On the web
Visa Launches Validator Node on Tempo Blockchain
Visa
"Visa announced it launched its validator node on the Tempo network, marking a milestone in Visa’s advancement of blockchain infrastructure leadership and shaping stablecoin payments. The launch underscores Visa’s commitment to running blockchain operations in-house. Tempo, a blockchain built for agentic commerce and real-time payments, has expanded its validator ecosystem to include financial and commerce partners. Visa, Stripe, and Zodia Custody by Standard Chartered will be the first external validators to join the Tempo network."
Trust, Privacy Concerns Holding Back Consumers From AI Shopping Tool Adoption
Chain Store Age
"Consumer interest in artificial intelligence is strong, but trust still remains a barrier to full adoption. Only 39% of Americans trust AI agents to make everyday purchases on their behalf, and only 34% are comfortable with AI-driven purchasing for larger items, according to marketing experience company Quad’s "The New Rules of Retail Trust in the Age of AI" survey."
OpenAI Has Bought AI Personal Finance Startup Hiro
TechCrunch
"OpenAI has acquired personal finance startup Hiro Finance, founder Ethan Bloch announced and OpenAI confirmed to TechCrunch. The startup was backed by A-list fintech VC firm Ribbit, as well as General Catalyst and Restive. The company was founded in 2023 and launched its AI tool about five months ago. Hiro offered AI-powered financial planning for consumers. Users entered financial information like salary, debts, and monthly costs, and the app modeled different what-if scenarios to help them make financial decisions."
The Fed Is Building Competition for XRP’s Core Payments Use Case Into the Fednow Banking System
CryptoSlate
"Over the past several days, the most consequential development around XRP has come from outside crypto. On April 8, the Federal Reserve proposed allowing U.S. banks and credit unions to use intermediaries through the FedNow Service, a change the central bank said could support private-sector cross-border payment solutions. In the Fed’s own proposal details, the logic is explicit. Banks could use an intermediary, such as a correspondent bank, for the international portion of a transaction and use FedNow for the domestic U.S. leg."
April 13, 2026
Top Post
India’s Central Bank Mulls Delay for Some Digital Payments to Curb Fraud
MSN
"India's central bank is suggesting the introduction of a delay for certain digital payments above a threshold as part of measures to curb rising fraud, and sought stakeholder feedback on the proposals in a discussion paper. The Reserve Bank of India outlined four possible safeguards, including a lag for certain authorised push-payment transactions above 10,000 rupees ($107.92), additional authentication for high-value transfers by vulnerable users, limits on credits into some bank accounts without enhanced checks, and customer-controlled safeguards such as disabling digital payment channels."
Anthropic: Project Glasswing Securing Critical Software for the AI Era
Anthropic
"Today we’re announcing Project Glasswing, an initiative that brings together Amazon Web Services, Anthropic, Apple, Broadcom, Cisco, CrowdStrike, Google, JPMorganChase, the Linux Foundation, Microsoft, NVIDIA, and Palo Alto Networks in an effort to secure the world’s most critical software. We formed Project Glasswing because of capabilities we’ve observed in a new frontier model trained by Anthropic that we believe could reshape cybersecurity. Claude Mythos Preview reveals a stark fact: AI models have reached a level of coding capability where they can surpass all but the most skilled humans at finding and exploiting software vulnerabilities."
On the web
Galileo Enables SoFi to Send and Receive FedNow® Service Payments
Yahoo-Business Wire
"Galileo Financial Technologies, SoFi’s technology platform announced that SoFi, N.A. is offering instant bank transfers via the FedNow® Service powered by Galileo’s payment technology. The new capability lets SoFi members move money in seconds between their SoFi accounts and their accounts at other U.S. banks, at any time of day, including weekends and holidays. Most banks that use FedNow® Service only support receive capabilities. SoFi is going further by allowing members to both send and receive FedNow® Service payments."
X402 Protocol Adds Usage-Based Pricing for AI Compute Requests
MSN
"Coinbase has announced an upgrade for the x402 protocol, enabling usage-based pricing for agentic AI compute requests, which replaces the former flat fee model. In a post on X on Thursday, Coinbase Developer Platform announced the "Upto" scheme has gone live, adding it will help open up "variable-cost services" for agentic AI such as large language model inference, compute and data queries."
Managing The Quantum Threat to Blockchains
Citigroup
"Quantum computing primarily threatens public-key cryptography especially digital signatures that secure authentication identity and blockchain ownership The most immediate risk to blockchains is exposed public keys and operational key infrastructure not the underlying blockchain protocol Even if cryptographically relevant quantum machines are years away companies must start preparing now because upgrading blockchains takes time."
Hong Kong’s Stablecoin Revolution Will Be Whitelisted
Blockhead
The HKMA handed its first approvals to the banks that already print the Hong Kong dollar. That tells you everything about what these tokens are meant to be. HSBC has been clear about its intended use cases: peer-to-peer payments through PayMe, merchant payments, and subscriptions to tokenised investment products.
Flutterwave Secures Nigerian Banking License to Accelerate Payment Efficiency
Intelligent CIO Africa
"Flutterwave, one of Africa’s leading payments companies, announced it has secured a Nigerian banking license. By securing this banking license, Flutterwave gains greater control over how funds move within its ecosystem, including the ability to hold deposits and manage financial flows across its platform."
April 10, 2026
On the web
What Are Stablecoins Used for Today? Estimating the Distribution of Stablecoins
Kansas City Federal Reserve
"In this Payments System Research Briefing, the distribution of stablecoins by function is depicted and three basic observations are made. First, payments are still a very small part of the stablecoin ecosystem. Second, a significant portion of stablecoins are held in bridging protocols that facilitate transfer of value between different blockchain networks; the need for this operation indicates that the stablecoin ecosystem still lacks interoperability. Third, a majority of stablecoins continue to be used in crypto finance rather than moving independently, suggesting that the stablecoin ecosystem is sensitive to the fortunes of this industry."
Treasury Proposes GENIUS Act Principles for Acceptable State Stablecoin Regimes
Consumer Financial Services Law Monitor
"The U.S. Department of the Treasury has issued a notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) to implement the broad-based principles set out in the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins (GENIUS) Act for determining when a state-level regulatory regime for “state qualified payment stablecoin issuers” is “substantially similar” to the federal regulatory framework. That determination is the gateway for state-chartered, nonbank stablecoin issuers with up to $10 billion in outstanding stablecoins to operate primarily under state oversight rather than as federally supervised “permitted payment stablecoin issuers.” Comments will be due 60 days after publication in the Federal Register."
Latam Insights: Global Pix, Mercado Libre Ends Token
Crypto News
"The Central Bank of Brazil has revealed its next steps to keep improving and growing Pix, the ubiquitous instant payment system used by almost all adults in the country. According to local media, the Central Bank plans to launch International Pix, a standard feature that would allow individuals and companies to complete cross-border payments and remittances using the Pix network. While Pix is already available internationally in Argentina, the U.S., and Portugal, this new initiative would make it permanent, interconnecting instant national payment systems and streamlining settlements."
APIs Are Leaking More Than Data as Security Gaps Surface in AI-Era Testing
IBS Intelligence
"A research from KushoAI analyses API test executions across 2,600+ organisations to surface where Enterprise API security fails and where tests fail to look Around 34% of all API test failures have a direct security implicationOver 91% of teams test that authentication exists; only 29% test that it is correctly enforced AI-generated test suites cover 2.7x more OWASP categories than manually authored ones Supply chain attacks now target AI API credentials; current testing has no coverage of them"
Bessent, Powell Warned Bank CEOs About Anthropic Model Risks, Sources Say [Video]
Yahoo Finance-Reuters
"U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell convened an urgent meeting with bank CEOs this week to warn of cyber risks posed by Anthropic's latest AI model, two sources familiar with the matter said on Thursday. Anthropic launched the powerful Mythos model earlier this week but stopped short of a broad release, citing concerns it could expose previously unknown cybersecurity vulnerabilities."
Velera Enhances Fintech Engagement Program to Deliver Exclusive Benefits
Velera
"Velera announced an evolution of its Fintech Engagement Program, introducing an inaugural cohort of six fintech partners offering exclusive benefits, such as discounted pricing or waived fees, to Velera credit unions. The new group includes six fintech companies: Coverbase: AI-native third-party risk & procurement platform InvestiFi: Integrated digital investing platform Larky: Proactive account holder engagement Spiral: Personalized savings and giving that grow deposits Swaystack: Gamified onboarding and engagement Union Credit: Embedded lending marketplace."