On June 10, one of the top cryptocurrency media sites, CCN, initially announced that it would shut down, citing a June 3 Google Core Update for stifling its traffic. Writing on the website, the director and founder of CCN Markets and Hawkfish AS, Jonas Borchgrevink, blamed the update for an overnight fall of 71% of the site’s mobile traffic. While Borchgrevink noted that ups and downs are part of the business, such a vertiginous fall is unprecedented in its history. At the time of the post, the founder said that it could not support new additions to its team or …

Facebook has allegedly sealed backing from over a dozen firms that include Visa, Mastercard, PayPal and Uber for its soon-to-be-unveiled cryptocurrency project. The news was reported by the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) on June 13. Source ostensibly familiar with the matter told the WSJ that the firms — extending across the finance, e-commerce, venture capital and telecoms industries — have each invested around $10 million in a consortium that will govern Facebook’s forthcoming digital token, dubbed Libra. The WSJ’s sources reiterated details that had previously surfaced in regard to the highly secretive project, notably that the social media giant’s forthcoming …

Social media giant Facebook is seeking investments worth $1 billion for its rumored cryptocurrency stablecoin, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported on May 3. Citing people familiar with the plans, the publication revealed Facebook was currently talking to major payment networks Visa and MasterCard about potential support, along with payment processor First Data Corp. The cryptocurrency project, dubbed “FB Coin,” has fuelled rumors for around a year that Facebook wants to provide in-house payments to users. As more information trickles down to the outside, it appears various options are under consideration by executives, including payments via a user’s Facebook profile. …

Bitcoin (BTC) should usurp current global payment systems within the decade, a new report from software startup DataLight concluded on April 2. In a report on transactions on the Bitcoin network versus those with Visa, MasterCard and PayPal, the company made the prediction that if Bitcoin’s current rate of network growth continues, it will beat out competition from market incumbents. “In just 10 years, Bitcoin has managed to compete with the leaders of the payment system industry. Bitcoin’s development is occurring exponentially,” the report’s conclusion reads. It continues: “If it maintains this pace, in another 10 years, it will surpass …

Top execs at Mastercard and Wells Fargo agreed that blockchain technology has long-term potential, but it has not been realized to date, CNBC reports on March 28. Wells Fargo CEO Tim Sloan and Mastercard CEO Ajaypal Banga concurred that the potential of distributed ledger technology (DLT) is yet to pay off, but that there are still no clear business use-cases as of now. The executives made their comments to CNBC at the Fintech Ideas Festival on Wednesday. Wells Fargo’s CEO emphasized that the technology has been very slow to roll out, pointing at a blockchain pilot carried out between the …

Global professional services firm Accenture is working with major global firms including Mastercard to introduce a blockchain-based circular supply chain, according to a press release published on Feb. 25. An active user of blockchain and digital ledger technology, Accenture now intends to employ the tech as a key component to boost the circular supply chain. The term circular supply chain encompasses all stages on the supply chain, from the beginning to the end, in order to eliminate waste and improve sustainability for the environment. Within the announced initiative, Accenture is collaborating with major global companies including cloud computing firm Amazon …

Remittance company SendFriend has received investments from Ripple (XRP), the Mastercard Foundation, MIT Media Lab and Barclays in a funding round, according to a press release published on Feb. 11. In the round, the firm raised $1.7 million from investors — also including Techstars, Mahindra Finance, 2020 Ventures and 8 Decimal Capital — to develop its remittance service, which lets users send money to the Philippines using blockchain. SendFriend uses Ripple’s xRapid product for cross-border payments, converting between USD, XRP and Philippine pesos and circumventing the longer process of traditional banking systems. The press release claims that SendFriend will feature …

Mastercard has filed a patent for a method of anonymizing transactions on a blockchain, according to an application published by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) Dec. 9. The filing outlines that “the use of one or more intermediary addresses to obscure the source and destination of funds in a blockchain transaction” can be used in order to “increase anonymity of entities associated with blockchain addresses.” The proposed technical solution would entail a series of “anonymization request[s]” designed to anonymize the transactions themselves, rather than just the user behind any individual wallet. This would “result in showing the …

A company that enables visitors to buy Bitcoin using more than 300 payment methods has reported growth in the number of transactions being completed using US dollars – and says it is determined to dismantle the issues people have in earning and transferring their money freely. Paxful was launched in 2015, and has the goal of making it simple to buy cryptocurrency – a boon for people who haven’t done so before. Cash deposits and bank transfers can be used on its platform – with the company promising to deliver Bitcoin in less than an hour at an “awesome price.” …

CEO of global payment giant Visa Al Kelly stated that cryptocurrency does not pose a challenge to the company’s dominance in the payment sphere in the “short to medium-term,” in an interview on CNBC's Mad Money Oct. 25. When asked if “crypto [is] a real challenge to Visa’s hegemony in this business,” Kelly told Mad Money host Jim Cramer that it was “certainly not in the short to medium-term in any way.” According to Kelly, crypto needs to “move from being a commodity to really being a payment instrument” before it can become a real competitor to the conventional financial …

U.S. multinational financial services corporation Mastercard wants to apply principles of fractional reserve banking to cryptocurrency, a new patent application published Thursday, Oct. 25 reveals. According to the document, published by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office (USPTO), the payment processor has plans to allow merchants to interact with what it calls “blockchain currencies” via a new method of simultaneous crypto and fiat storage. Specifically, reference is made to “methods for managing fractional reserves of blockchain currency.” Mastercard has offered a mixed public stance on cryptocurrency in recent years, this month winning a further blockchain-related patent, while signalling along with …

On October 12, Finance Magnates reported that payment giants Mastercard and VISA will both soon group cryptocurrency and Initial Coin Offering (ICO) jurisdictions in a new “high risk” category. What are the consequences for those ‘high risk’ merchants? According to the publication’s undisclosed sources, the ban will be applied to brokers who operate “from unregulated or loosely regulated environments,” and therefore have no license that would show that proper due diligence has been applied to their business. The action reportedly deals with forex, binary, cryptos, and ICOs. More specifically, the alleged move seems to target non-EU countries “in the Balkans, …