Digital Currency

Some 33 consumer and public-policy groups sent a letter Tuesday to five Congressional committees and federal regulators asking for a moratorium on the Facebook Inc.-backed Libra cryptocurrency. “We call on Congress and regulators to impose a moratorium on Facebook’s Libra and related plans until the profound questions raised by the …

Point-of-sale middleware vendor Datacap Systems Inc. announced it has acquired the NETePay Hosted payment gateway from Octopi (formerly Monetary.co). Terms were not released. NCR Corp. acquired privately held D3 Technology Inc., a provider of online and mobile-banking applications for large financial institutions. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. A …

Paysafe Group said its Rapid Transfer online-banking payments service available in 18 European countries will be coming to the U.S. through a new partnership with Skrill USA Inc. With Rapid Transfer, consumers can make ACH or wire-transfer payments at Skrill-accepting merchants without leaving the merchant’s Web site. Via Transportation Inc., …

Facebook Inc. has said it will turn over control of its Libra cryptocurrency initiative to a consortium of companies that will constitute the Libra Association. But one related property the massive social network will retain, albeit as an arm’s-length subsidiary, is its new Calibra unit, which will run Facebook’s own …

Point-of-sale installment-loan provider Sezzle Inc. said its service is now available at “thousands” of online stores in Canada. SSI Group, a provider of payments-related software for the health-care industry, announced a capability that relies on machine learning to predict when providers will receive payments from payers. In related news, U.S. …

American Cash Exchange Inc. said its Poni operation struck a deal with Euronet Worldwide Inc.’s Ria money-transfer unit that enables consumers in Mexico to withdraw cash from U.S.-originated remittances at nearly 50,000 Mexican ATMs without paying fees after they buy and register a Poni Cash Card, which costs 10 pesos …

A new analysis of 10 years’ worth of figures on data breaches reveals that California by far holds the dubious distinction of suffering the most breaches as well as leaking the most records. Meanwhile, a Florida city has agreed to pay hackers about $600,000 in Bitcoin to be released from …

The Facebook-led announcement of the Libra cryptocurrency is evoking blowback both in the United States and overseas. House Financial Services Committee chairwoman Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) called for Facebook to halt the planned launch of Libra until Congress has had a chance to hold hearings on the cryptocurrency. Elsewhere, the governor …

An association of major payments and technology companies will launch a blockchain-based digital currency called Libra some time in the first half of next year, according to an official announcement on Tuesday. The new initiative, some details about which have leaked in recent days, has the backing of Facebook Inc. …

Its long-term prospects for success are unclear, but the investment and cross-border payments partnership struggling wire-transfer provider MoneyGram International Inc. announced late Monday with blockchain-services developer Ripple Labs Inc. certainly produced a short-term bang by doubling the value of MoneyGram’s beaten-down stock. As part of the deal, Ripple invested $30 …