The U.K. government plans to impose anti-money laundering (AML) regulations on bitcoin exchanges, beef up law-enforcement capabilities for spotting criminal use of digital currencies, and work with the digital currency industry on consumer protection standards, according to a British Treasury report issued this month. The...
Successful small businesses want loans faster, and that means they’re turning to big banks and marketplace lending platforms instead of small banks, according to a monthly report from Biz2Credit. As a result, the loan approval rates for large banks (those with more than $10 billion...
Just about a year ago Square pulled its consumer facing digital wallet – Square Wallet – in favor of a new app called Order. Order allowed consumers to place their coffee order (and purchase it) from their smart phone. “We’ve spoken with our sellers, and...
Alibaba has made a move into the U.K. through an alternative lending partnership aimed at enabling small businesses’ financing options for those buying from Chinese suppliers. To help achieve this, the Chinese e-commerce giant has tapped two U.K. startups — iwoca Ltd and ezbob —...
The price of bitcoin may have declined dramatically from its $1,800 per unit price in late 2013, but Silicon Valley’s most respected investors are still feeling the love for the virtual currency. San Francisco-based 21 Inc. has raised, over a series of rounds, $116 million...
Square has evolved far past the the mobile POS systems that made it possible for small businesses to accept credit card payments with technology no more complicated than an iPad or iPhone. Since the service that “launched 1,ooo mPos systems,” Square has launched P2P payments...
Now that lending marketplaces are a proven financial business model, startups are beginning to push it out to serve very specific lending niches, in what is expected to be a trillion-dollar marketplace lending industry, TechCrunch reported. The spark for the expansion appears to be the...
Not only do women move half of global remittances, they send a greater percentage of their wages than men. In a press release related to this year’s International Women’s Day on March 8, Western Union has shared statistics revealing the economic impact that international migrant...
Telecoms beware, a new player with almost unimaginably deep pockets is stepping onto the field and potentially changing its pitch entirely. Google has announced that it intends to roll out its own mobile network in the U.S. marketplace, because as it turns out, the current...