Coin News

After a year and a half of debate with no compromise reached, supporters of on-chain scaling, have, seemingly, decided to unilaterally hardfork. A new subreddit, r/btcfork, was announced earlier today, quickly gaining attention and momentum with numerous threads published in just hours after the announcement was made and many bitcoiners joining in the lively debate. […]

The post Bitcoin to Hardfork? Proposal Sees Grassroots Beginnings appeared first on CCN: Financial Bitcoin & Cryptocurrency News.

Digital currency exchange Bitfinex has taken its trading platform offline following a reported hack that resulted in the theft of customer funds.

25 bitcoin companies plan to launch smart contract federation to support new applications of the blockchain technology previously dominated by ethereum.

By Jemima Kelly

LONDON (Reuters) - A company that provides banks with anti-money-laundering controls has teamed up with a bitcoin security firm to try to curb nefarious uses of the digital currency, such as drug trafficking and terrorism financing.

LexisNexis said the new service it has created with London-based startup Elliptic would bring bank-grade AML controls to bitcoin transactions, making the virtual currency more attractive to those who might want to use it for legitimate transactions

LexisNexis, part of multinational analytics firm RELX Group , helps banks comply with AML regulation, using a database of 2.7 million global entities that could be involved in illicit transactions, such as those on sanctions and other watch-lists.

It has shared that database with Elliptic, which monitors bitcoin transactions and can alert its clients - ranging from bitcoin exchanges to U.S. and European intelligence agencies - when money moves from bitcoin addresses that have been identified as bad actors.

"This is a step towards making it (bitcoin) more mainstream and more acceptable," said Thomas Brown, of LexisNexis Risk Solutions.

Bitcoin is a web-based digital currency that relies on complex algorithms to move money around quickly and anonymously with no need for a central authority to process transactions.

That has made it attractive to a variety of users, including those who want to get around capital controls and those who support a currency that is free from government control for ideological reasons. But it has also attracted criminals, such as drug dealers and arms traffickers.

"Today, if you see bitcoins transacting, you almost assume they're from someone who wants to be off the grid, or they're proceeds from illicit transactions," said Brown.

Last month Elliptic said it was working with the Internet Watch Foundation to clamp down on the use of bitcoin for online child pornography.

"The single biggest thing keeping mainstream financial services out of the (bitcoin) ecosystem is the inability to do bank-grade anti-money laundering controls," said Elliptic's head of business development, Kevin Beardsley.

"The hope is that this will unlock a whole wave of companies being able to enter financial services with bitcoin."

(Editing by Robin Pomeroy)

Join the conversation about this story »

Bitwage has announced that they are launching their global payroll processing and invoicing services in Brazil after the positive progress the bitcoin payments service made over the last year, according to a recent blog post. In January 2015, Bitwage started processing international wage payments for workers in the Philippines, which has since grown to other […]

The post Bitcoin Payments Service Bitwage Opens Shop in Brazil appeared first on CCN: Financial Bitcoin & Cryptocurrency News.

In February, Bitcoin Magazine reported that Alipay, an online payment platform of the Chinese e-commerce corporation Alibaba Group Holding...

The post Alibaba's Ant Financial Joins Quest for Transparency in Charitable Transactions appeared first on Bitcoin Magazine.

What was thought by some to be a secret meeting of Bitcoin miners and Bitcoin Core developers turned out to look more like a company retreat...

The post Bitcoin Miners and Developers Meet in California to "Improve Communications" appeared first on Bitcoin Magazine.

By Jemima Kelly and Gertrude Chavez-Dreyfuss

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Thomson Reuters has joined a consortium of the world's biggest financial institutions that is working on how to use blockchain technology in global financial markets, the company said on Tuesday.

Blockchain technology powers the digital currency bitcoin, enabling data sharing across a network of individual computers. It has gained worldwide popularity due to its perceived usefulness in recording and keeping track of assets across practically all industries.

Thomson Reuters will be the first major data and technology provider to join R3, the consortium of more than 55 banks and other financial institutions. New York-based fintech firm R3 formed the consortium last year.

Thomson Reuters is the parent company of Reuters News.

"There are 50 financial institutions that are already members of R3 and they are all clients of ours," said Mark Rodrigues, managing director, strategic customers & solutions, at Thomson Reuters in New York.

"We believe strongly in collaboration with clients, specifically client-led innovation," Rodrigues told Reuters News.

He noted that Thomson Reuters is particularly interested in exploring blockchain in its trade finance business, which lacks data standards, as well as in foreign exchange clearing and settlement.

Thomson Reuters runs currency trading platforms FXall and Thomson Reuters Matching. The total average daily volume of foreign exchange trading across Thomson Reuters platforms totaled $394 billion in June.

"There's linkage between cash and FX swaps and futures, but it's very imprecise right now," said Rodrigues. "If we have data standards and distributed ledgers, you could eliminate a tremendous amount of capital reserves and risk capital that get used up in this process right now."

He added that Thomson Reuters blockchain work is not confined to the financial sector. The company is looking at blockchain applications for its legal and tax business.

Thomson Reuters has been working on blockchain initiatives for more than a year. It has blockhain labs in both London and New York.

(Reporting by Gertrude Chavez-Dreyfuss in New York and Jemima Kelly in London; editing by Clive McKeef)

Join the conversation about this story »

Blockchain technology has emerged as a tool for addressing an important global issue: the growing complexity of the food supply chain and the increasing amount of wasted food, according to a senior research fellow at the University of Surrey. Writing in The Conversation, an online source of information from the academic and research community, senior […]

The post Blockchain Joins Efforts to Improve Food Traceability amid Rising Waste and Safety Fears appeared first on CCN: Financial Bitcoin & Cryptocurrency News.

This story was delivered to BI Intelligence "Payments Briefing" subscribers. To learn more and subscribe, please click here.

While First Data posted better-than-expected results in its third quarter as a public company, revenue in the largest US-based payments processor's Global Business Solutions (GBS) unit was flat year over year (YoY) on a constant-currency basis.

That's a worrying sign because GBS is First Data's biggest segment and challenges in North America, its largest market, were to blame for the lackluster performance. 

North American revenue isn’t improving despite transaction growth.

• The segment is declining. In both Q1 and Q2 2016, First Data's transactions in the North American segment grew by 7%, but revenue declined by 2% constant currency YoY as a result of lower implied revenue per transaction. This reflects underperformance in the company's direct small and mid-size business (SMB) portfolio relative to other parts of GBS. It’s problematic that despite increased card usage and growing transaction totals, the firm’s revenue in its largest segment isn’t improving. 
• That could indicate that ongoing issues are broader than they were in the past. In Q1, First Data CEO Frank Bisignano noted that the firm’s North America declines were largely due to attrition within its small-business portfolio, which pushed First Data to focus on US small business initiatives to grow. But the firm’s consistent mediocre results in the segment might point to broader issues in the way First Data works with its merchant partners in the US.

But First Data continues to focus on an SMB turnaround plan, which should improve North American merchant business in the second half. Bisignano identified a few of the firm’s plans:  

• Lower attrition: First Data invested in better contact center technology in order to improve its customer service offerings and better serve the merchants with which it works.
• Merchant activation: First Data has seen “high single-digit” growth in newly activated merchants in the first half of 2016, as a result of increased sales productivity, lower attrition, improved activation rates, and new partnerships, according to Bisignano. The firm also appears to be moving into new merchant segments — for example First Data recently launched a mobile point-of-sale (mPOS) and software program targeted at sports and entertainment vendors, which could help them try to dominate market share in that segment.  
• New partnerships:  First Data added four acquiring partners — BBVA, First Tennessee, Zions Bank, and Silicon Valley Bank (SVB). The SVB partnership in particular, which expands First Data’s relationship with SVB clients to include e-commerce and cross-border processing, could give the bank access to key clients in the fast-growing tech space. And in addition to offering potential volume increases, it also gives First Data a behind-the-scenes look at trends in the tech space, which could help the firm build unique products that serve merchants in new ways.

First Data is one player in a much larger payments ecosystem, which includes acquirers and processors, issuers, card networks, gateways, and more.

Evan Bakker and John Heggestuen, analysts at BI Intelligence, have compiled a detailed report on the payments ecosystem that drills into the industry to explain how a broad range of transactions are processed, including prepaid and store cards, as well as revealing which types of companies are in the best and worst position to capitalize on the latest industry trends.

Here are some key takeaways from the report:

• 2016 will be a watershed year for the payments industry. Payments companies are improving security, expanding their mobile offerings, and building commerce capabilities that will give consumers a more compelling reason to make purchases using digital devices.
• Payments is an extremely complex industry. To understand the next big digital opportunity lies, it's critical to understand how the traditional credit- and debit-processing chain works and what roles acquirers, processors, issuing banks, card networks, independent sales organizations, gateways, and software and hardware providers play.
• Alternative technologies could disrupt the processing ecosystem. Devices ranging from refrigerators to smartwatches now feature payment capabilities, which will spur changes in consumer payment behaviors. Likewise, blockchain technology, the protocol that underlies Bitcoin, could one day change how consumer card payments are verified.

In full, the report:

• Uncovers the key themes and trends affecting the payments industry in 2016 and beyond.
• Gives a detailed description of the stakeholders involved in a payment transaction, along with hardware and software providers.
• Offers diagrams and infographics explaining how card transactions are processed and which players are involved in each step.
• Provides charts on our latest forecasts, key company growth, survey results, and more.
• Analyzes the alternative technologies, including blockchain, which could further disrupt the ecosystem.

To get your copy of this invaluable guide, choose one of these options:

1. Subscribe to an ALL-ACCESS Membership with BI Intelligence and gain immediate access to this report AND over 100 other expertly researched deep-dive reports, subscriptions to all of our daily newsletters, and much more. >> START A MEMBERSHIP
2. Purchase the report and download it immediately from our research store. >> BUY THE REPORT

The choice is yours. But however you decide to acquire this report, you’ve given yourself a powerful advantage in your understanding of the payments ecosystem.

Join the conversation about this story »

Thomson Reuters, the parent company of prominent international news agency Reuters is the newest member joining the R3 blockchain consortium. The private blockchain consortium led by New York-based R3 will now include mass media company Thomson Reuters. The data and technology provider will contribute insights from its engagement with customers in the financial sector to […]

The post R3 Blockchain Consortium Adds Thomson Reuters appeared first on CCN: Financial Bitcoin & Cryptocurrency News.

The first ever Bitcoin geocaching iOS app, Takara, has added support for Counterparty assets, allowing users to hunt and plant bitcoin treasures around the world, using IndieSquare’s API. Developed by Christian Moss of MandelDuck, users will have the ability to not only find Counterparty tokens, but also bitcoins when they get close enough to them. […]

The post Bitcoin Geocaching Game Takara Adds Support for Counterparty Tokens appeared first on CCN: Financial Bitcoin & Cryptocurrency News.

CHBTC, China’s largest ETH exchange, announced Monday it will list Ethereum Classic in response to rising demand. The move reverses the exchange’s previous statement last week that it would not support ETC. The announcement on Monday noted the exchange is neutral and does not judge the values and ethics of the currency. CHBTC has stated […]

The post Major ETH Exchange CHBTC U-Turns, Will List Ethereum Classic In Response To Demand appeared first on CCN: Financial Bitcoin & Cryptocurrency News.

This story was delivered to BI Intelligence "Fintech Briefing" subscribers. To learn more and subscribe, please click here.

French insurance giant AXA has formed a global strategic partnership with Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba and its affiliated payment platform Ant Financial.

The three parties will work together to develop innovative new products that can be offered to customers globally, support each other in international expansion, and target new market segments.

The first phase of the partnership will focus on three areas: AXA will develop insurance products like online payment protection for AliExpress, Alibaba's global retail online marketplace; it will provide insurance products for small- and mid-size businesses that use Alibaba's wholesale marketplaces; and it will offer travel insurance products through Ant Financial to Chinese travelers going abroad. 

The partnership provides AXA with new opportunities to help it compete with insurtechs. 

• Cementing its position in China. AXA has a significant presence in Asia, with around 10% market share in Hong Kong, Indonesia, and Thailand. In China, its share is much smaller, at around 1%, and AXA likely hopes it will be able to leverage Alibaba's knowledge of the Chinese market to expand that share. 
• Access to new market segments. Partnering with Alibaba gives AXA access to a new distribution channel and Alibaba's massive base of online shoppers. Alibaba has over 367 million active customers, excluding its small business customers. 
• Data. AXA will likely be able to leverage Alibaba's customer data to better target prospects. This could be invaluable when it comes to creating the "bespoke" products that it hopes to create for Alibaba's customers. 

The partnership highlights a growing trend across the insurance and tech industries — convergence. Technology is opening up new opportunities throughout the insurance value chain. Rapid advances in data collection and analysis mean better customer segmentation and more opportunities for cross-selling products, as well as improved digital distribution channels for those products. And there is growing demand from consumers — 23% of millennials globally would buy insurance from a technology provider. 

We’ve entered the most profound era of change for financial services companies since the 1970s brought us index mutual funds, discount brokers and ATMs.

No firm is immune from the coming disruption and every company must have a strategy to harness the powerful advantages of the new fintech revolution.

The battle already underway will create surprising winners and stunned losers among some of the most powerful names in the financial world: The most contentious conflicts (and partnerships) will be between startups that are completely reengineering decades-old practices, traditional power players who are furiously trying to adapt with their own innovations, and total disruption of established technology & processes:

• Traditional Retail Banks vs. Online-Only Banks: Traditional retail banks provide a valuable service, but online-only banks can offer many of the same services with higher rates and lower fees

• Traditional Lenders vs. Peer-to-Peer Marketplaces: P2P lending marketplaces are growing much faster than traditional lenders—only time will tell if the banks strategy of creating their own small loan networks will be successful

• Traditional Asset Managers vs. Robo-Advisors: Robo-advisors like Betterment offer lower fees, lower minimums and solid returns to investors, but the much larger traditional asset managers are creating their own robo-products while providing the kind of handholding that high net worth clients are willing to pay handsomely for.

As you can see, this very fluid environment is creating winners and losers before your eyes…and it’s also creating the potential for new cost savings or growth opportunities for both you and your company.

After months of researching and reporting this important trend, Evan Bakker, research analyst for BI Intelligence, Business Insider's premium research service, has put together an essential report on the fintech ecosystem that explains the new landscape, identifies the ripest areas for disruption, and highlights the some of the most exciting new companies. These new players have the potential to become the next Visa, Paypal or Charles Schwab because they have the potential to transform important areas of the financial services industry like:

• Retail banking

• Lending and Financing

• Payments and Transfers
• 
Wealth and Asset Management

• Markets and Exchanges

• Insurance

• Blockchain Transactions


If you work in any of these sectors, it’s important for you to understand how the fintech revolution will change your business and possibly even your career. And if you’re employed in any part of the digital economy, you’ll want to know how you can exploit these new technologies to make your employer more efficient, flexible and profitable.

Among the big picture insights you'll get from The Fintech Ecosystem Report: Measuring the effects of technology on the entire financial services industry:

• Why financial technology is so disruptive to financial services—it will soon change the nature of almost every financial activity, from banking to payments to wealth management.
• The basic conflict will be between old firms and new—startups are re-imagining financial services processes from top to bottom, while incumbent financial services firms are trying to keep up with new products of their own.
• Both sides face serious obstacles—traditional banks and financial services firms are investing heavily in innovation, but leveraging their investments is difficult with so much invested in legacy systems and profit centers.
• Meanwhile, startups are struggling to navigate a rapidly-changing regulatory landscape and must scale up quickly with limited resources.
• The blockchain is a wild card that could completely overhaul financial services. Both major banks and startups around the world are exploring the technology behind the blockchain, which stores and records Bitcoin transactions. This technology could lower the cost of many financial activities to near-zero and could wipe away many traditional banking activities completely.

This exclusive report also:

• Explains the main growth drivers of the exploding fintech ecosystem.
• Frames the challenges and opportunities faced by incumbents and startups.
• Breaks down global and regional fintech investments, including which regions are the most significant and which are poised for the highest growth.
• Reveals which two financial services are garnering the most investment, and are therefore likely to be transformed first and fastest by fintech
• Explains why blockchain technology is critically important to banks and startups, and assesses which players stand to gain the most from it.
• Explores the financial sectors facing disruption and breaks them down in terms of investments, vulnerabilities and growth opportunities.
• And much more.

The Fintech Ecosystem Report: Measuring the effects of technology on the entire financial services industry is how you get the full story on the fintech revolution.

To get your copy of this invaluable guide to the fintech revolution, choose one of these options:

1. Subscribe to an ALL-ACCESS Membership with BI Intelligence and gain immediate access to this report AND over 100 other expertly researched deep-dive reports, subscriptions to all of our daily newsletters, and much more. >> START A MEMBERSHIP
2. Purchase the report and download it immediately from our research store. >> BUY THE REPORT

The choice is yours. But however you decide to acquire this report, you’ve given yourself a powerful advantage in your understanding of the fast-moving world of financial technology.

Join the conversation about this story »

This story was delivered to BI Intelligence "Payments Briefing" subscribers. To learn more and subscribe, please click here.

Square, which has recently been laser-focused on its software and services growth, announced an expansion of its Instant Deposit program in order to add further flexibility for its merchant clients.

Now, for a 1% fee, merchants can schedule their daily sales to deposit in their bank account in real-time at their convenience, regardless of day or time. 

This is an expansion of Square’s highly successful Instant Deposit program, which allows merchants to deposit their sales immediately into their accounts, also for a small fee. Since launching last August, the platform has counted over 2 million instant deposits, with the total number of enrolled merchants more than doubling since the beginning of 2016. That success was likely an impetus to add more robust deposit-based features in order to increase merchant convenience.

Investing in robust software and service offerings ultimately helps Square increase its bottom line. 

• As the mobile point-of-sale (mPOS) landscape becomes increasingly competitive, firms are moving into developing software and additional service offerings for their clients. Square’s software and data segment nearly tripled year-over-year (YoY) in Q1 2016, compared to 51% overall revenue growth.
• That’s because these services help Square sellers grow, which in turn helps Square’s performance. In addition to capturing the fee revenue from additional services, providing features that make business management simpler or more convenient can help small merchants focus on improving performance and growing sales, which in turn could bump Square’s fee revenue.

Evan Bakker and John Heggestuen, analysts at BI Intelligence, have compiled a detailed report on the payments ecosystem that drills into the industry to explain how a broad range of transactions are processed, including prepaid and store cards, as well as revealing which types of companies are in the best and worst position to capitalize on the latest industry trends.

Here are some key takeaways from the report:

• 2016 will be a watershed year for the payments industry. Payments companies are improving security, expanding their mobile offerings, and building commerce capabilities that will give consumers a more compelling reason to make purchases using digital devices.
• Payments is an extremely complex industry. To understand the next big digital opportunity lies, it's critical to understand how the traditional credit- and debit-processing chain works and what roles acquirers, processors, issuing banks, card networks, independent sales organizations, gateways, and software and hardware providers play.
• Alternative technologies could disrupt the processing ecosystem. Devices ranging from refrigerators to smartwatches now feature payment capabilities, which will spur changes in consumer payment behaviors. Likewise, blockchain technology, the protocol that underlies Bitcoin, could one day change how consumer card payments are verified.

In full, the report:

• Uncovers the key themes and trends affecting the payments industry in 2016 and beyond.
• Gives a detailed description of the stakeholders involved in a payment transaction, along with hardware and software providers.
• Offers diagrams and infographics explaining how card transactions are processed and which players are involved in each step.
• Provides charts on our latest forecasts, key company growth, survey results, and more.
• Analyzes the alternative technologies, including blockchain, which could further disrupt the ecosystem.

To get your copy of this invaluable guide, choose one of these options:

1. Subscribe to an ALL-ACCESS Membership with BI Intelligence and gain immediate access to this report AND over 100 other expertly researched deep-dive reports, subscriptions to all of our daily newsletters, and much more. >> START A MEMBERSHIP
2. Purchase the report and download it immediately from our research store. >> BUY THE REPORT

The choice is yours. But however you decide to acquire this report, you’ve given yourself a powerful advantage in your understanding of the payments ecosystem.

Join the conversation about this story »

Euro and bitcoin payment processor Cashila has hinted that Transferwise has decided to block deposits to its bank accounts. Transferwise is a traditional money transfer service which gained popularity promising cheaper money transfers. Cashila users often use it to deposit funds into their accounts and to ICONOMI, its ether-based service. As a result, it surprised […]

The post Transferwise Blocks Deposits to Bitcoin Processor Cashila appeared first on CCN: Financial Bitcoin & Cryptocurrency News.