Monzo has started rolling out a new feature that allows users to cancel a bank transfer shortly after initiating it. The tool, known as ‘Undo Payments,’ offers a configurable delay, ranging from 10 to 60 seconds, before a payment is finalised, during which the sender can halt the transaction. The launch follows internal research by the bank showing that around 30% of UK adults have sent money to the wrong person or entered the incorrect amount in the past year. More than three-quarters of those who made a payment error reportedly realised the mistake within one minute. The Undo Payments feature acts as a brief holding window after a transfer is authorised. During this time, users can reverse the transaction directly from the payment confirmation screen, the home screen, or the specific transaction detail page. If the undo option is selected within the chosen time frame, the funds remain in the user’s account and the intended recipient is not notified of the attempted transfer. The default setting gives a 15-second window, though users can adjust this to 10, 30, or 60 seconds, or disable it entirely. According to Monzo’s data, simple mistakes such as typing errors, often involving an extra zero, were responsible for 68% of misdirected payments.
Albertsons is rolling out the TreviPay Pay by Invoice solution to enable business buyers to receive a dedicated 30-day line of credit
Albertsons is rolling out the TreviPay Pay by Invoice solution to enable business buyers, including small offices, K-12 schools, local government and community organizations and residential programs, to receive a dedicated line of credit for online grocery purchases with 30-day net terms. The Albertsons pay by invoice program includes a self-serve portal to assign spending limits to approved purchasers and real-time tracking of invoices, payments and credit lines. TreviPay’s invoicing program offers the control to customize purchasing hierarchies and the convenience of paying using credit lines, which we know are important to this buyer segment. Through the partnership, stores across Albertsons Cos. banners can automate their acounts receivable processes for business purchases with real-time credit decisioning, electronic invoice generation and payment tracking, with the goals of reducing billing errors and eliminating back-office resources. TreviPay settles funds right away and owns any buyer credit risk. Enabling Albertsons Cos.’ business customers to pay by invoice allows their corporate buyers to make large, repeat orders using their preferred payment method, while retailers eliminate the complexities of accounts receivables and fuel growth.
Mastercard and MoonPay team to promote stablecoin payments in an API-driven implementation letting businesses, neobanks, and other payment participants manage payouts and disbursements more efficiently
Mastercard has launched a stablecoin-focused partnership with cryptocurrency payments FinTech MoonPay. The collaboration will allow consumers and businesses to send and receive stablecoin payments across global markets. Companies and FinTechs will be able to employ Mastercard-branded cards linked to users’ stablecoin balances, allowing cardholders to spend their stablecoins, which will simultaneously be converted to fiat currency, at more than 150 million locations where Mastercard is accepted around the world. “By providing solutions that unlock stablecoin utility and ubiquity, we are redefining how money moves globally and driving a shift in payments as we know it,” Scott Abrahams, executive vice president, Global Partnerships at Mastercard, said. T he partnership will leverage the API-driven stablecoin infrastructure from Iron, acquired by MoonPay in March, to facilitate stablecoin transactions, turning “crypto wallets into new digital bank accounts for seamless global transactions.” This will let businesses, neobanks, and other payment participants manage payouts and disbursements more efficiently, improving cross-border money transfers, and help businesses offer stablecoin-based payouts to gig workers, contractors and creators.
BIS and NY Fed study says central banks could deploy smart contracts when commercial banks have widely adopted tokenisation for wholesale payments and securities settlement
The Federal Reserve Bank of New York and the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) have published a joint research study that explored how central banks could continue to implement monetary policy operations in tokenised wholesale financial markets. Dubbed Project Pine, the study found that central banks could deploy policy implementation tools using programmable smart contracts in a potential future state where commercial banks have widely adopted tokenisation for wholesale payments and securities settlement. The project generated the prototype of a generic monetary policy implementation tokenised toolkit for potential further research and development by central banks across jurisdictions and currencies. The BIS and the Fed say the prototype can fulfil a common set of central bank implementation requirements, including paying interest on reserves, open market operations, and collateral management. The toolkit was tested against ten hypothetical scenarios that applied historical data inputs on past market events, such as interest rate tightening and easing cycles, quantitative easing and tightening cycles, and periods of strained market liquidity or broader market disruptions. “The prototype successfully responded and instantaneously carried out the intended operation under the varying market conditions,” states the BIS. “Project Pine’s findings highlighted areas for further research and analysis related to interoperability and data standardisation.”
DarkBench is the first benchmark designed specifically to detect and categorize LLM dark patterns, AI sycophancy, brand bias or emotional mirroring
Esben Kran, founder of AI safety research firm Apart Research, and his team approach large language models (LLMs) much like psychologists studying human behavior. Their early “black box psychology” projects analyzed models as if they were human subjects, identifying recurring traits and tendencies in their interactions with users. “We saw that there were very clear indications that models could be analyzed in this frame, and it was very valuable to do so, because you end up getting a lot of valid feedback from how they behave towards users,” said Kran. Among the most alarming: sycophancy and what the researchers now call LLM dark patterns. Kran describes the ChatGPT-4o incident as an early warning. As AI developers chase profit and user engagement, they may be incentivized to introduce or tolerate behaviors like sycophancy, brand bias or emotional mirroring—features that make chatbots more persuasive and more manipulative. To combat the threat of manipulative AIs, Kran and a collective of AI safety researchers have developed DarkBench, the first benchmark designed specifically to detect and categorize LLM dark patterns. Their research uncovered a range of manipulative and untruthful behaviors across the following six categories: Brand Bias, User Retention, Sycophancy, Anthropomorphism, Harmful Content Generation, and Sneaking. On average, the researchers found the Claude 3 family the safest for users to interact with. And interestingly—despite its recent disastrous update—GPT-4o exhibited the lowest rate of sycophancy. This underscores how model behavior can shift dramatically even between minor updates, a reminder that each deployment must be assessed individually. A crucial DarkBench contribution is its precise categorization of LLM dark patterns, enabling clear distinctions between hallucinations and strategic manipulation. Labeling everything as a hallucination lets AI developers off the hook. Now, with a framework in place, stakeholders can demand transparency and accountability when models behave in ways that benefit their creators, intentionally or not.
Au10tix’s API for real-time AML risk monitoring dynamically adjusts the intensity of screening processes through proactive scanning of over 100 global sanctions lists, PEP databases, and adverse media
AU10TIX has launched continuous risk monitoring as part of its advanced AML solution. Driven by customer demand, this powerful capability delivers real-time risk insights across the full customer lifecycle—empowering businesses to detect behavioral anomalies and emerging threats as they arise. AU10TIX’s continuous monitoring capability proactively scans top data sources including global sanctions lists, politically exposed person (PEP) databases, and adverse media in real time to detect anomalies as they emerge. The system dynamically adjusts screening intensity based on customer risk profiles and business requirements—supporting KYC and KYB processes while ensuring adherence to evolving global regulations. AU10TIX’s AML solution features a proprietary decision-making mechanism, customizable workflows, and a user-friendly dashboard to streamline risk management and due diligence processes. The new capability provides: Real-time fraud and money laundering alerts; Adaptive risk scoring, continuously recalibrated based on real-time data and changing user behavior; Flexible thresholding tailored to customer risk levels; Coverage across 240+ countries and 1,600 government sites; A unified dashboard for identity verification and AML results; and Seamless KYC + KYB support in a single compliance flow
Equifax’s new cloud SMB data platform to enable B2B marketers to query more than 67 million U.S.-based business records online with user-friendly filtering and list-building features
Equifax has launched its B2bConnect SMB data on the Equifax Cloud, making commercial marketing data available in minutes to help B2B marketers be more efficient and increase campaign success. The platform unifies differentiated data to create more effective commercial sales and marketing insights that enable Equifax customers to target the right small businesses quickly and achieve their goals. Using B2bConnect, B2B marketers can query more than 67 million U.S.-based business records online to help identify, segment and target top prospects. The platform enables user-friendly filtering and list-building features so that B2B marketers can reach target customers. B2bConnect offers everything marketing teams need within the platform, including demographics, business contacts, firmographics, marketability and industry codes, to give SMB marketers confidence that they are identifying and targeting the right business prospects. Equifax customers can also sort and filter companies and contacts based on the wide array of data points, quickly select the fields for export, and save templates for later use. This allows other team members to customize the file so that the data can be ingested into an existing CRM or marketing automation platform. From there, customers receive a flat file with their data that can come in Excel, CSV, Pipe Delimited or Tab Delimited formats.
Salesforce new pricing model gives companies a more attractive way to pay for non-conversational and internal uses of the AI agents by charging them about 10 cents per “action”
Salesforce is unveiling a new pricing model for its AI products and letting customers reallocate spending from traditional software subscriptions to the artificial intelligence tools. Clients will pay about 10 cents per “action” when using some Salesforce AI agents, which are tools designed to complete work without the need for supervision from an employee, Salesforce plans to announce Thursday. The new pricing structure is meant to give companies a more attractive way to pay for non-conversational and internal uses of the AI agents such as scanning through old emails to find potential sales targets, according to Bill Patterson, an executive vice president at the company. Salesforce will also begin to let customers shift contracted spending from per-user application subscriptions to its AI agent offerings. This will help give the companies greater flexibility to shift spending between workers and AI agents, Patterson said. “For companies who are looking at the future of their workforce — whether it scales up or scales down — what the flex agreement gives us is this ability to move spending between human labor and digital labor,” Patterson said.
HomeLight’s new ‘Buy Before You Sell’ financing taps into high levels of home equity and apply it for a down payment through a 0% interest loan
Rising mortgage rates have created a bottleneck in deal flow, with 47% of surveyed loan officers citing high interest rates as the biggest obstacle to closing transactions. Many buyers — particularly those who already own a home — find themselves trapped by high debt-to-income ratios and immobile equity. “It’s very unlikely that you can afford both mortgage payments at once,” Nick Friedman, president of homes at HomeLight said. “And so, with [HomeLight’s] Buy Before You Sell, we allow you to remove that existing mortgage payment… [and] offer a 0% interest loan where we basically allow [clients] to take the money out of their existing house and go use it for a down payment on their new home.” HomeLight’s Buy Before You Sell offering is one product in the marketplace designed for unlocking liquidity and eliminating friction in a process that has traditionally been rigid and risk-averse. At its core, the tool helps clients sidestep the chicken-and-egg problem of needing to sell their home before they can afford their next one. It’s particularly relevant now, as home equity remains at all-time highs even while transaction volume has stalled. Beyond HomeLight’s proprietary products, Friedman pointed to broader trends in creative financing that are helping to prop up demand in a cooling market.
Fifth Third Bank plans deeper push into stablecoins-based international transactions and payment networks that support consumers’ crypto purchases and digital asset trading
Fifth Third is weighing a deeper push into crypto-related services, including stablecoin-based cross-border transfers and integration with trading and payment networks. The lender has already established a niche client base that uses its banking infrastructure for functions like payroll and revenue collection, Ben Hoffman, the company’s chief strategy officer, told. Other areas of exploration include using stablecoins to facilitate international transactions to reduce costs and boost overall efficiency, he added, noting the company is also looking to link into payment networks that support consumers’ crypto purchases and digital asset trading. The move comes after five years of Fifth Third waiting for crypto regulation to become clearer, Hoffman said. Now, with pro-crypto U.S. President Donald Trump implementing friendly crypto rules, ‘it became clear that this was the right time to engage and fortunately we’ve had a team of folks actively studying and tinkering in this space,” he said.