The U.S. government has begun using blockchains to disseminate key economic data, starting with the U.S. Department of Commerce’s release of gross-domestic product (GDP) numbers, which was described as a “proof of concept” for doing more of this in the future. “We are making America’s economic truth immutable and globally accessible like never before, cementing our role as the blockchain capital of the world,” said Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick, in a statement that announced the new approach to spinning out government data. In a deliberate effort not to pick blockchain favorites, the department put out Thursday’s data via Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, TRON, Stellar, Avalanche, Arbitrum One. Polygon PoS and Optimism, identifying the transaction hashes for each in its announcement. The agency said that it also sent the data through Chainlink and Pyth and noted that exchanges Coinbase, Gemini and Kraken helped out. Lutnick’s department credited President Donald Trump’s fostering of crypto and blockchain technology with what it described as a “landmark effort.” The U.S. government issues a number of economic reports on a routine basis that have tremendous weight with the financial markets, including the Department of Labor’s jobs report and the consumer price index. According to its statement, the Commerce Department “will continue to innovate and broaden the scope of publishing future datasets like GDP to include the use of other blockchains, oracles, and exchanges.”
Omaha bank FNBO modernizes digital onboarding leveraging device possession, reputation checks and ownership confirmation to provide persistent authentication, slashing fraud by 75% and reducing abandonment by 35%
Prove, a leader in digital identity, has partnered with First National Bank of Omaha (FNBO) to modernize customer onboarding. The bank is using Prove Pre-Fill identity verification solution to revolutionize its co-branded card onboarding process. The partnership demonstrates FNBO’s commitment to innovation and customer experience, as well as Prove’s leadership in providing modern onboarding solutions for large financial institutions. The Prove Pre-Fill solution has seen onboarding speed increase by up to 79%, abandonment drop by 35%, and fraud reduction by over 75%. The partnership aims to provide a seamless, VIP-like experience for customers, giving banks a competitive edge. Prove’s unique approach to digital identity verification focuses on verifying device possession, checking for suspicious activity or reputation flags, and confirming device ownership. This method maintains persistent identity authentication even when users switch devices, eliminating the need for re-enrollment.
RentRedi’s Stripe Capital–powered revenue‑based financing lets prequalified RentRedi landlords access funds in 1–2 days, pay a single flat fee, and repay automatically as a percentage of rent collections
RentRedi, the fastest-growing property management software for smart real estate investors, has launched a new financing solution powered by Stripe Capital that provides fast, flexible funding to help landlords and rental property investors grow their businesses. This latest offering builds upon RentRedi’s long-standing relationship with Stripe, adding capital access to its suite of intelligent rental management tools designed for smart landlords who want to improve operations, increase revenue, and scale their rental portfolios. Access to capital is one of the most common challenges landlords face when looking to expand or improve their rental business. With RentRedi financing, eligible customers can apply in just a few clicks, without affecting their personal credit score, and receive funds in as little as two business days after approval. RentRedi financing offers: Streamlined applications: Eligible landlords are prequalified based on payment volume and history with RentRedi, without additional lengthy paperwork; Quick funding: Approved funds can arrive in as little as 1–2 business days; Clear terms: Customers see all terms upfront and pay a single flat fee—no additional interest, fees, hidden costs, or other surprises; Pay-as-you-earn payment: Borrowers automatically pay the loan or merchant cash advance through a percentage of sales until the total amount financed is paid. Additional payments or early payment towards the financing may be made without penalty. The program is designed to integrate seamlessly with the way landlords already operate within RentRedi. By using the platform’s built-in rent collection and accounting features, payments toward this financing happen automatically, making it easier to manage cash flow and stay focused on property operations.
Cash Atlas’ real time cash‑flow analytics integrates into Socure’s RiskOS decisioning to help banks assess true repayment ability and expand approvals for thin‑file and unscored consumers.
Socure and Nova Credit have announced an integration partnership to integrate Nova Credit’s FCRA-compliant cash flow underwriting solution, Cash Atlas™, into Socure’s RiskOS platform. The platform uses integrated local and global identity graphs to detect synthetic, manipulated, deepfakes, or stolen data with precision. By combining real-time cash flow insights with Socure’s suite of identity verification and fraud prevention solutions, lenders can expand credit access to qualified borrowers previously overlooked by legacy models without increasing fraud or risk. This partnership marks a fundamental shift towards more inclusive, data-driven financial services, enabling lenders to access cash flow insights that reveal the millions of creditworthy consumers invisible to traditional models.
Gemini ushers in era of proactive assistants with its million‑token context, multimodal reasoning across text images and code and custom skills acquisition through a developer marketplace
The trajectory of Gemini points toward an ecosystem where proactive AI quietly coordinates tasks across devices, freeing you to focus on creativity instead of repetitive digital chores. Google reports a million-token context window in Gemini 1.5 Pro, giving the assistant enough memory to hold entire projects during a single conversation. This scale lets you share entire business plans, add supporting files, and receive nuanced guidance without losing conversational context. Gemini with its large context model unlocks richer human-machine interactions. It remembers recent screen activity through Chrome integration, summarising articles and flagging action items while you browse. A multimodal core interprets images, text, and code in one dialogue, enriching every AI recommendation with visual cues. The model links each suggestion to credible sources, fostering confidence and enabling immediate verification. These capabilities show how AI collaboration reduces context switching and sustains focus across complex, multi-step initiatives. Gemini can: Translate multilingual signage with instant overlays and spoken guidance; Diagnose mechanical issues as AI highlights misaligned components and recommends repair steps; Capture design inspiration when AI analyses colours, textures, and forms, storing them in organised mood boards; This immersive bridge between physical and digital spheres demonstrates the versatility of modern AI in augmenting human perception without additional hardware. Gemini tracks task completion rates, learns where delays occur, and refines subsequent suggestions, creating a feedback loop where AI continuously adapts to your evolving goals. An assistant grows more valuable when it adapts to niche workflows, so Google enables a skills marketplace where developers package domain expertise into easily installable conversational extensions. Finance teams may add plugins that analyse ledgers, highlight anomalies, and build executive dashboards through streamlined AI workflows. Health coaches can connect wearable sensors, enabling Gemini to recommend exercise routines aligned with biometric trends. Creative leads embed brand guidelines so the assistant drafts posts, scripts, and imagery consistent with approved styles. Strong partner enrolment through AI Studio and Vertex AI shows accelerating market momentum, keeping the core assistant lean while fostering limitless specialist capabilities.
A zero‑click exploit chain using WhatsApp and an Apple flaw enabled data theft from specific devices for about 90 days before patches went out
WhatsApp has fixed a security bug in its iOS and Mac apps that was being used to stealthily hack into the Apple devices of “specific targeted users.” The vulnerability, known officially as CVE-2025-55177, was used alongside a separate flaw found in iOS and Macs, which Apple fixed last week and tracks as CVE-2025-43300. Apple said at the time that the flaw was used in an “extremely sophisticated attack against specific targeted individuals.” Now we know that dozens of WhatsApp users were targeted with this pair of flaws. Donncha Ó Cearbhaill, who heads Amnesty International’s Security Lab, described the attack in a post on X as an “advanced spyware campaign” that targeted users over the past 90 days, or since the end of May. Ó Cearbhaill described the pair of bugs as a “zero-click” attack, meaning it does not require any interaction from the victim, such as clicking a link, to compromise their device. The two bugs chained together allow an attacker to deliver a malicious exploit through WhatsApp that’s capable of stealing data from the user’s Apple device. Per Ó Cearbhaill, who posted a copy of the threat notification that WhatsApp sent to affected users, the attack was able to “compromise your device and the data it contains, including messages.”
Apple’s first foldable reportedly adopts a book‑style form with less crease visibility, four cameras and replaces Face ID with Touch ID on the power button
A new report by Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman details some of the features of the upcoming Apple’s foldable iPhone, likely to launch in the fall of 2026. Apple’s first foldable phone will reportedly be a book-style foldable, opening vertically into a small tablet. It will have a total of four cameras – two on the back, one on the inside, and one on the front. It will not have Face ID; instead, it will have Touch ID built into the power button, similar to what we’ve seen on some of the company’s iPads. Other features of note include new screen tech that should make the crease in the unfolded display less visible. The foldable iPhone will come with Apple’s own C2 modem, which is the same chip that will be used by the iPhone 18 Pro line of products. And it won’t have a physical SIM-card slot, claims Gurman. The specs line up with Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo’s report earlier this year, which also said that the foldable iPhone will have a 7.8-inch inner display, a 5.5-inch outer display, and just 9 to 9.5mm of thickness when folded. It’s all a part of Apple’s big plan to shake up its lineup for three years straight; starting with the new iPhone 17 Air this September, followed by the foldable iPhone next year, and, in 2027, the “iPhone 20,” a sort of an anniversary model that will have curved glass edges all around.
Embedded lending experiences become seamless with a best-of-breed orchestration stack that unifies KYC, AML, open banking, and audit trails for real-time risk decisions
The global market for embedded lending is expected to reach $7.2 trillion by 2030, but traditional compliance systems are facing challenges due to false positives in AML alerts. This can lead to delays, frustrated customers, and extra operational strain. Research shows that 32% of lenders see manual income verification as their biggest bottleneck in risk decisioning, while a quarter say document validation is their single highest cost. A robust orchestration layer with a best-of-breed approach can help reduce false positives and connect all risk and compliance checks to improve the borrower experience. This results in faster decisions, fewer customer drop-offs, and an uninterrupted lending experience. False positives in the KYC process can cause delays while compliance teams review the loan application manually. A pause in this process or within the process of transaction monitoring is more likely to cause a customer to abandon their purchase, leading to missed interest, revenue, and potential new-to-bank customers. Quick KYC and AML decisioning is a key part of the embedded lending compliance process, and regulators are tightening their grip on this issue. An integrated orchestration layer can build smarter, faster compliance directly into the customer experience. Effective AML hinges on piecing together up-to-date data from a web of internal and external sources. Modern orchestration layers typically include money laundering risk scoring modules, API connectivity to multiple vendors, and complete audit trails for compliance. The flexibility of the orchestration layer comes down to the lender’s risk appetite, allowing them to balance effective fraud detection with minimising false positives. An effective orchestration layer not only streamlines AML checks but also stitches together all the critical services required to deliver a seamless, compliant lending and customer onboarding experience.
Agentic commerce goes live as Kite enables on chain purchases with traceability and programmable permissions letting PayPal and Shopify merchants become discoverable to AI shopping agents
Kite, a company building the foundational trust infrastructure for the agentic web, announced that it has raised $18 million in Series A funding, bringing total cumulative funding to $33 million. The round was led by PayPal Ventures and General Catalyst. Formerly known as Zettablock, Kite leverages years of experience in distributed infrastructure systems to bring forth a new architecture purpose-built for the agentic web. The company recently launched Kite Agent Identity Resolution, or “Kite AIR” – a pioneering solution that enables autonomous agents to authenticate, transact, and operate independently in real-world environments. The system delivers programmable identity, native stablecoin payment, and policy enforcement on a blockchain optimized for autonomous agents. Kite AIR includes two core components: Agent Passport, a verifiable identity with operational guardrails; and Agent App Store, where agents can discover and pay to access services such as APIs, data, and commerce tools. It is live now through open integrations with popular commerce platforms like Shopify and PayPal. Using publicly available APIs, any PayPal or Shopify merchant can opt in through the Kite Agent App Store and become discoverable to AI shopping agents. Purchases are settled on-chain with full traceability, using stablecoins and programmable permissions. Kite is also actively building additional integrations across commerce, finance, and data platforms. “Solutions like virtual cards provide only short-term workarounds. Latency, fees, and chargebacks further complicate things. Kite bridges this critical gap by providing stablecoin-based, millisecond-level settlement with low transaction fees and no chargeback fraud risks. This enables new economic models such as agent-to-agent metered billing, micro-subscription, and high frequency trading,” said Alan Du, Partner at PayPal Ventures.
Visa taps Ample Earth to embed merchant sustainability labels into banking apps and loyalty so issuers segment customers and reward greener spending at scale so that daily transactions can become climate touchpoints
Visa has launched a partnership with U.K.-based climate FinTech Ample Earth to incorporate sustainability data into digital banking apps and loyalty programs and help banks better segment customers and discover new ways to “engage, empower, and reward sustainability.” “Transactions are a touchpoint people interact with daily. By helping people understand the impact of their spending, we can empower millions of businesses and customers to use their purchasing power as a force for good,” Ample Earth Co-founder and CEO Raja Darbari said. “People don’t have time to fact-check sustainability claims, but they do want clarity and accessible information. We aim to bridge that gap and make sustainability data easy to digest and relatable.” Ample provides merchant-specific sustainability data across “key social and environmental themes,” turning unstructured data into actionable insights with eco-labels and social tags like “Zero-Waste,” “Living Wage Employer” and “B Corp.” The companies say the combination of Visa’s global reach and Ample’s sustainability intelligence can allow sustainability data to be integrated into everyday decision-making, “strengthening the role of financial institutions in shaping customer behavior and incentivizing sustainable business practices.”