Increasing numbers of offshore cryptocurrency exchanges are embracing Brazil’s instant payments infrastructure, PIX. On May 28, OKEx announced a strategic partnership with local payments firm CuboPay, allowing it to facilitate Tether ($USDT) purchases in exchange for Brazilian real via PIX. The news follows similar moves from rival exchanges, including Crypto.com peer-to-peer platform Localbitcoins. The integrations come as the Central Bank of Brazil, or BCB, published preliminary guidelines for a central bank digital currency, or CBDC, on May 25. The announcement emphasizes that the CBDC will operate “as an extension of the physical currency,” and is intended to improve the retail …
Global money transfer service MoneyGram says it has changed its relationship with blockchain payments firm Ripple amid the latter's litigation with the Securities and Exchange Commission. According to MoneyGram's quarterly outlook, the company is "not planning for any benefit from Ripple market development fees" for the first quarter of 2021. MoneyGram said it had a more than $12 million net expense benefit from Ripple in the same quarter last year. "Due to the uncertainty concerning their ongoing litigation with the SEC, the Company has suspended trading on Ripple's platform," said MoneyGram. The collaboration between the two firms largely began three …
The secret to fast-track cryptocurrency’s mainstream adoption lies within addressing a contradicted consumer demand for crypto payments across business verticals, reveals a new survey. In a study participated by crypto exchange Crypto.com’s 110,000 customers and over 1.5 million Worldpay merchants, roughly 60% of both merchants and customers shared their interest in crypto payments. However, the consumer demand does not reciprocate the business verticals that accept cryptocurrencies. As evidenced above, the consumer demand for crypto payments exceeds merchant availability across four major industries — travel, automotive, digital media and hospitality. The gap in merchant availability poses a massive opportunity to capitalize …
On Wednesday, Warner Music Group announced it had entered into a partnership with fantasy-themed collectible card game developer Splinterlands. The two companies will collaborate and enable opportunities for WMG artists to create and develop play-to-earn, arcade-style blockchain games. Last month, WMG made its first entry into the nonfungible token, or NFT, metaverse realm in a partnership with The Sandbox with the goal of providing WMG artists another outlet with which to engage their fans. In a statement, Oana Ruxandra, chief digital officer and executive vice president of business development at WMG, said: “By partnering with Splinterlands to build custom tokenized …
U.S.-based fintech giant Stripe has significantly ramped up its crypto initiatives after it launched a service that enables payments for NFTs and digital assets via fiat currency. Businesses can use Stripe’s new application programming interfaces (APIs) to accept fiat payments for crypto, provide digital wallets, payout users in fiat, leverage identity and know-your-customer (KYC) solutions, and utilize data to detect and block fraudulent transactions. Stripe co-founder John Collinson shared an announcement via Twitter on March 11, and the firm also partnered with FTX, FTX US, Blockchain.com, Nifty Gateway, and Just Mining to launch the crypto business suite. Stripe now supports …