MoneyGram has launched its Ramps cash-to-crypto and crypto-to-cash service on the Solana blockchain, with trading platform Rift as the first wallet integration. The move extends MoneyGram’s payments infrastructure beyond traditional remittances and into blockchain ecosystems where financial activity increasingly takes place.

Rift is the first wallet on Solana to integrate Ramps. Described as an AI-powered trading platform, Rift gives users continuous access to equities, commodities, crypto, and foreign exchange markets, alongside market intelligence and trading signals. Through the integration, Rift users can move funds between crypto and local currency using MoneyGram’s network.

Ramps infrastructure and coverage

MoneyGram Ramps is an API designed to allow cash-to-crypto and crypto-to-cash functionality through a single implementation, without requiring partners to build their own banking infrastructure or manage regulatory requirements separately.

Following the Solana launch, developers can access instant API credentials, sandbox environments, documentation, and software development kits, with onboarding available through MoneyGram’s partner registration portal. Moreover, Ramps has also been embedded into the Solana Developer Platform’s payments module, connecting Solana-based developers with payment flows for their applications.

Part of a wider multichain approach

MoneyGram operates a global payments network spanning hundreds of thousands of retail locations and billions of wallets, bank accounts, and cards. The company has positioned the Solana launch as part of a broader strategy to extend Ramps across multiple blockchain ecosystems, alongside exchanges and wallets, as digital assets take on a larger role in cross-border value transfer.

Anthony Soohoo, Chairman and CEO, MoneyGram, described the Solana integration as a step towards a more interoperable payments network in which value can move between chains, wallets, and currencies. Additionally, Lily Liu, President, Solana Foundation, noted that the integration connects the Solana ecosystem to MoneyGram’s payments network, allowing developers to build financial applications with access to fiat conversion at scale.

Apex Fintech Solutions has partnered with Kalshi to let firms run prediction markets via an API integration. The integration gives firms access to market flow from Kalshi, a US-based exchange for event contracts, through Apex’s existing infrastructure, without requiring them to build a Futures Commission Merchant (FCM) operation or establish direct exchange connectivity of their own.

Under the arrangement, Apex handles clearing, custody, money movement, statements, and account management, while Kalshi supplies the regulated marketplace and its range of event contracts. These cover outcomes tied to economic indicators, financial markets, weather, sports, and cultural events. Tastytrade has been named as the first firm to go live on the platform.

Travis McGhee, Global Head of Digital Markets at Apex Fintech Solutions, said that the aim of the collaboration is to let firms offer Kalshi’s event contracts without a separate FCM buildout or extended development timelines. Moreover, Max Crowley, VP of Business Development at Kalshi, said the integration is intended to remove technical barriers that have previously limited firms’ ability to offer prediction market access to their customers.

Platform capabilities

Apex has outlined several features of the integration, described as Apex Prediction Markets:

• FCM infrastructure: Apex manages FCM operations, clearing, segregated custody, and account administration on behalf of client firms.
• API connectivity: clients connect through Apex’s existing AscendOS APIs for order management, position tracking, and market data, which Apex states reduces development timelines from months to weeks.
• Combined portfolio view: event contract positions are displayed alongside traditional securities within a single account view.
• Continuous trading: Kalshi markets operate on a 24/7 basis, allowing activity outside the hours of traditional markets.
• Settlement: payouts are credited to investor accounts once contract outcomes are determined.

BitGo has launched a free public tool to assess Bitcoin wallets’ exposure to future quantum computing attacks. The checker, made available this week, lets anyone enter one or several Bitcoin addresses to see what proportion of their BTC sits in addresses with exposed public keys, as opposed to those where the public key remains unexposed.

The tool relies exclusively on publicly available onchain data. It does not require users to create an account, connect a wallet, or share private keys, and BitGo has stated that submitted addresses are not stored. For many Bitcoin address types, a public key becomes visible onchain once funds are spent from that address. This does not represent an immediate security risk under current computing capabilities, but it is relevant to longer-term discussions about cryptographic resilience, since a sufficiently powerful quantum computer could theoretically derive a private key from an exposed public key. In such a scenario, an attacker could potentially gain access to the associated funds.

Context: from institutional tools to public access

According to the announcement, the public checker builds on quantum-risk tools that BitGo introduced for institutional clients in July 2026. Those earlier tools included continuous wallet scoring and a workflow enabling clients to move funds from addresses with exposed public keys into newly generated addresses that do not carry the same exposure. Moreover, through the process of extending a simplified version of this scoring mechanism to the general public, BitGo is widening access to a form of risk assessment that was previously limited to institutional custody clients.

Industry relevance

Quantum computing’s potential impact on cryptographic systems, including those underpinning blockchain networks, has become a recurring topic of discussion within the digital asset industry. Bitcoin’s security model relies on cryptographic algorithms that were not designed with quantum resistance in mind, and migrating the network to post-quantum cryptography would require broader protocol-level changes rather than address-level adjustments alone. Tools such as BitGo’s Quantum Resistance Score fall into the category of hygiene measures: they allow users to identify and reduce their own exposure but do not alter the underlying cryptographic foundation of the Bitcoin network itself.

Verifone has introduced biometric-capable Victa payment devices in Australia, supporting facial and palm-vein verification at checkout. According to the company, Victa is the first payment device in Australia to include built-in biometric capabilities. The launch follows Verifone’s introduction of the same biometric technology in New Zealand in July 2026, positioning Australia among the first markets in the Asia-Pacific region to receive it.

Biometric payment and loyalty check-in are optional features that require consumer enrolment through a participating provider, such as a merchant, digital wallet, or bank, with consent obtained during that process. At checkout, an enrolled consumer can choose the biometric option and present their face or palm, as the device captures and verifies the biometric data against the consumer’s enrolled profile. The enrolled profile itself is managed by the service provider through which the consumer registered, rather than by the merchant or Verifone directly.

Card, phone, and PIN payments remain available on the same terminals, and consumers who do not enrol in biometric verification are not required to use it.

An open platform beyond payments

Verifone has described Victa as a platform capable of supporting applications beyond payment acceptance, including loyalty programmes, ordering, split payments, and donations. Moreover, the devices run on Verifone’s proprietary operating system, which the company says allows third-party developers to build additional services on top of the platform. It was also said that this approach is already in use in New Zealand across loyalty, alternative payment methods, and on-device applications.

Victa’s specifications include PCI PTS 7.x compliance, point-to-point encryption and tokenisation for security, along with tokenised loyalty support that does not require a physical loyalty card. The devices are built with 60% recycled plastics and field-replaceable batteries, and include haptic feedback and audio cues to support accessibility. Battery life is rated at a minimum of 12 hours per charge.

Under a pilot programme, users of the UnionPay app and of Chinese bank apps linked to its platform will be able to scan a merchant’s code in Brazil and pay directly from the account they use at home. Chinese state media have reported that access will later extend to other digital wallets within UnionPay’s global network. Neither UnionPay nor Brazil’s central bank has named a Brazilian partner for the pilot, and no start date has been set. Pix has not previously been connected directly to a foreign payment system.

Pix, launched by Brazil’s central bank in November 2020, has become the default method for moving money in the country. The system transfers funds between accounts within seconds, at any hour, at no cost to individual users. It now reaches approximately 15 million merchants, ranging from department stores to street vendors, and has pushed cash and cheques to the margins of the economy. Brazil’s central bank both regulates the country’s payment industry and operates Pix within it, a dual role that American card and payment companies have said puts them at a disadvantage.

US tariffs and the WTO dispute

The Office of the US Trade Representative closed a year-long investigation on 15 July 2025 and imposed a 25% tariff on Brazilian goods a week later, after finding that Brazilian policy favoured Pix over American card and payment companies. A separate US investigation covering 60 economies added a further 12.5% on Brazilian products from 24 July 2025. In around a quarter of affected product lines, the new duties stack on existing tariffs, taking the total to 50% and affecting steel, aluminium, machinery, footwear and wood products.

Brazil declined to change the system. A government statement issued the day of the announcement described 15 July as a regrettable milestone in relations with Washington and characterised Pix as public property and an international benchmark for digital infrastructure. Gabriel Galipolo, president of the Central Bank of Brazil, said the American case was ‘a pretext dressed up as a technical argument’, and noted that Brazil’s credit card market had grown by around 150% since Pix launched. Brazil filed a complaint with the World Trade Organisation on 27 July 2025, though the organisation’s Appellate Body has been unable to hear appeals since 2019.

Yuno has raised USD 45 million in a Series B funding round led by Global PayTech Ventures, with participation from Andreessen Horowitz, Tiger Global, QuantumLight Capital, Monashees, Kaszek, Endeavor Catalyst, Rasmal Ventures, Further Ventures, and GrowthX Capital. The Colombia-founded payments infrastructure company said the capital will support its path to profitability and fund continued expansion of its platform for enterprise merchants, banks, and digital wallets.

Bank partnerships and product expansion

According to the official press release, Yuno has increasingly partnered with banks and payment providers that white-label its technology, including dLocal, the Nasdaq-listed cross-border payments platform, and Prosa, a payments processing network in Mexico, allowing a single contract to serve an entire market. Part of the new funding is earmarked for product expansion, with Yuno extending its platform to in-person payments, developing its agentic commerce capabilities, and scaling its presence in the US.

The round’s regional backers point to Yuno’s growing activity in the Middle East. In April 2026, Yuno Payments Arabia received a Payment Technical Service Provider certification from the Saudi Central Bank. The company has also partnered with Tap Payments to open access to local rails, including Mada, KNET, and NAPS, across all six Gulf Cooperation Council countries, and with buy-now-pay-later provider Tabby, which serves more than 25 million shoppers in Saudi Arabia and the UAE. ACI Worldwide has identified the Middle East as the fastest-growing real-time payments market globally, a factor cited by regional investors Rasmal Ventures, based in Qatar, and Further Ventures, based in the UAE, alongside GrowthX Capital, in their decision to participate in the round.

According to Juan Pablo Ortega, Co-Founder and CEO of Yuno, the funding is intended to help the company keep pace with existing customers’ growth and extend its position in global payments infrastructure, with an expected path to profitability within the coming year. Moreover, Soumaya Ben Beya Dridje, Partner at Rasmal Ventures, which led the round and holds a board seat at Yuno, said the company’s combination of global reach and local payment coverage supported the firm’s investment decision.