August 17, 2020
- Mitsubishi Digitizes Metal Trades with Blockchain
- Facebook Launches New Fintech Payment Product
- California Said Yes to Digital Asset Bill
- Walmart Launches Crypto Cashback
Mitsubishi Digitizes Metal Trades with Blockchain
Subsidiary of Mitsubishi Corporation, Mitsubishi Corporation RtM Japan Ltd, has recently launched a blockchain based platform just for precious metals trading, named ECO.
In partnership with Skuchain, an American blockchain company, ECO is built on top of Skuchain’s EC3 platform for blockchain-based supply chain management and finance. The ECO platform by the strategic partnership aims to ease metal trades by generating, managing and executing invoices and trade confirmations between counterparties.
Trading parties will be able to sign trade documents and upload them onto ECO platform with blockchain technology. Documents will be signed in real time, and corporate sensitive data are able to be concealed with the transparency feature that blockchain technology offers.
It was recently reported that the Mitsubishi Group’s financial subsidiary, Mitsubishi UFJ Group, or MUFG is going to promote digitization for companies and government agencies in collaboration with LayerX, a blockchain technology firm. In addition, MUFG plans to launch its own stablecoin, and the firm was also included in the Singapore government’s 16-company alliance to drive trade digitization through the use of blockchain technology, further demonstrating its advocacy for digital currencies and blockchain.
Source | Cointelegraph
Facebook Launches New Fintech Payment Product
Facebook is not giving up on Fintech just yet with the launch of a new product group, Facebook Financial, or F2, to promote payment opportunities, including a possible Facebook Pay, with David Marcus, Facebook Libra’s co-creater, as head of the division.
Marcus states:
“We have a lot of commerce stuff going on across Facebook. It felt like it was the right thing to do to rationalize the strategy at a company level around all things payments.”
Despite strong regulatory challenges, the Fintech division of Facebook’s will be introducing Whatsapp payments in developing countries such as Brazil and India.
This Fintech leg of Facebook will be incorporating its previous attempt at Fintech to bring payments to Whatsapp messenger, suggesting its full commitment to the payment industry, in continuation to its years of payments feature integration into its apps.
Source | Cointelegraph
California Said Yes to Digital Asset Bill
California is moving forward with a Digital Asset Bill, Assembly Bill 2150, to define digital assets and measure its impact on the state and consumer protections
Despite potential influence on federal regulators’ take on digital assets, Assembly Bill 2150 was unanimously passed by the Senate’s Banking and Financial Institutions committee.
Initially sought to presume digital assets are not securities and first proposed by Ian Calderon, California Assembly Majority Leader, Assembly Bill 2150 will be refrained from amendments by the Senate to further define digital assets and tokens. To analyse how digital assets as securities can affect consumer protections and state benefits, the Department of Business Oversight will be conducting a study to evaluate the viability of California enacting similar policies to that of Security and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) Proposed Securities Act Rule 195- Time Limited Exemption for Tokens.
The Department of Business Oversight is also obligated to provide suggestions for regulatory frameworks and define key terms and to bee presented to the California Legislature by January 1, 2022.
Source | Cointelegraph
Walmart Launches Crypto Cashback
In partnership with gamified shopping loyalty platform, StormX, Walmart now allows customers to earn cryptocurrency cashback when shopping at its platform.
StormX users are able to earn up to 14% crypto cashback for purchases made at Walmart, with the cashback percentage depending on user loyalty ranks.
Simon Yu, CEO of StormX believes that its partnership with Walmart will acquire new users to its service, stating:
“As the only crypto cashback program for Walmart worldwide, we are confident that users will take advantage of the rewards program to earn their favorite cryptocurrency while shopping at their favorite retailer.”
In accordance with the announcement shared with Cointelegraph on August 14, 2020, Walmart is the latest addition to StormX’s pool of more than 650 partners, including commercial giants like Microsoft, eBay, Nike, Adidas, Target, Dell and Samsung.
Prior to this partnership, Walmart’s Chinese subsidiary has partnered with a blockchain-based supply chain management platform, Vechain, to create a food products tracing system in June. Early this year in March, Walmart has also reported to have joined the Hyperledger blockchain initiative.
Source | Cointelegraph
