Opening Up Financial Services
PassmateTM enables digital credentials for identity, access, and qualifications to be verified at point-of-sale payment terminals using the same platform as financial, debit and credit card transactions.
Karsten Wenzlaff, Advisor
August 26th, 2025
Karsten Wenzlaff is a Crowdfunding and Fintech Expert from Germany. He is Secretary-General of Digit[...]
Category Archives: Payments, Transfers, Rewards
Financial Consumer Agency of Canada publishes BNPL pilot study
FCAC | Nov 19, 2021
The Financial Consumer Agency of Canada (FCAC) has published a pilot study on the use and understanding of Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) services in Canada as part of the Agency’s research on emerging consumers trends.
Similar to instalment loans, BNPL services allow consumers to purchase goods and services and pay for them over time, either by spreading their payments out into equal, smaller instalments, or by delaying their payments.
Among those surveyed, 34% indicated that they were familiar with these services, and 8% indicated that they had used at least one such service between September 2019 to March 2021. The most common items purchased this way included furniture or appliances (39%), electronics (32%), and clothing and fashion (23%); however, some consumers used the services for household essentials (8%) and groceries (5%). As these findings are based on a small sample, additional research is needed to establish a more comprehensive picture of how Canadians use and understand BNPL services.
FCAC supports Canadians in making informed financial decisions by providing unbiased and fact-based information, including information about Buy Now, Pay Later services.
For more information visit Canada.ca:
The National Crowdfunding & Fintech Association (NCFA Canada) is a financial innovation ecosystem that provides education, market intelligence, industry stewardship, networking and funding opportunities and services to thousands of community members and works closely with industry, government, partners and affiliates to create a vibrant and innovative fintech and funding industry in Canada. Decentralized and distributed, NCFA is engaged with global stakeholders and helps incubate projects and investment in fintech, alternative finance, crowdfunding, peer-to-peer finance, payments, digital assets and tokens, blockchain, cryptocurrency, regtech, and insurtech sectors. Join Canada's Fintech & Funding Community today FREE! Or become a contributing member and get perks. For more information, please visit: www.ncfacanada.org
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Half of Multinational Firms Use Digital Currency for Cross-Border Payments (or Plan to)
PYMNTS | Nov 10, 2021
Cryptocurrencies are quickly finding favor as digital assets with diverse applications. B2B companies, financial institutions (FIs) and FinTechs alike are eyeing their potential as a rising number of companies tap virtual currencies.
More and more companies are seeking solutions that can help them make easy, swift payments no matter the market. Using digital assets can simplify certain facets of these transactions, such as enabling companies to consolidate and track their payments in one place.
See: 2021 McKinsey Global Payments Report
In fact, 50% of multinational firms use digital currency for cross-border payments or plan to do so, according to The Cryptocurrency Payments Opportunity, a PYMNTS and i2c Inc. collaborative report you can access here: The Cryptocurrency Payments Opportunity
“That’s the big use case,” Jim McCarthy, president of i2c Inc., told PYMNTS. “If you ever needed to move money around the world, you learned quickly that it wasn’t easy. And so, cryptocurrencies present several cross-border benefits to businesses — and, I’d argue, consumers — with international interests [in terms of] money transmission.”
Eliminating Friction Is Key to Growth
Supporting smooth, speedy cryptocurrency payments can still be a challenge, however. This is especially true for cross-border payments, which are notoriously complex — even using fiat currencies. Changing regulations, the availability of key digital infrastructure and trust all can hamper crypto's adoption.
See: The Most Efficient Payment System In The World: Bitcoin And The Lightning Network
As a result, international firms that wish to make cross-border B2B payments via cryptocurrencies could face significant hurdles, meaning banks must carefully examine trends surrounding virtual currencies worldwide. Eliminating friction points is key to the growth and adoption of cryptocurrencies on a global scale.
B2B companies, FIs and FinTechs are all taking rapid steps to move toward making virtual currencies part of the mainstream payments ecosystem. This is creating greater competition between legacy FIs and nimbler FinTechs looking to play a dominant role within the space, especially as cryptocurrencies’ potential applications capture more attention.
In the cross-border B2B payments space, for instance, utilizing cryptocurrencies and the blockchain technologies that support them could give companies a competitive edge over the next few years as business becomes more global.
Continue to the full article --> here
The National Crowdfunding & Fintech Association (NCFA Canada) is a financial innovation ecosystem that provides education, market intelligence, industry stewardship, networking and funding opportunities and services to thousands of community members and works closely with industry, government, partners and affiliates to create a vibrant and innovative fintech and funding industry in Canada. Decentralized and distributed, NCFA is engaged with global stakeholders and helps incubate projects and investment in fintech, alternative finance, crowdfunding, peer-to-peer finance, payments, digital assets and tokens, blockchain, cryptocurrency, regtech, and insurtech sectors. Join Canada's Fintech & Funding Community today FREE! Or become a contributing member and get perks. For more information, please visit: www.ncfacanada.org
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The Most Efficient Payment System In The World: Bitcoin And The Lightning Network
Nasdaq |
The Lightning Network makes Bitcoin the most efficient payment system in the world. But, in basic terms, how does it work?
The Lightning Network is a second layer that operates on top of the Bitcoin blockchain, and anchors directly into it. And it can handle millions of transactions per second cheaply and efficiently.
We’re going to illustrate the Lightning Networking by comparing it to opening a tab at your local bar.
Instead of swiping your card and settling the balance each time you order a beer...
Settling for each transaction
… it makes sense to save time, energy and fees by tallying all of your drinks together at the end of the night and making the final settlement in one payment.
See: Paying for coffee with crypto? Get ready, the future of payments is already here
This is similar to how the Lightning Network operates. Now, let’s say that your bar was operating on the Lightning Network.
When you want to start a transaction, you would open a payment channel with the bar. This payment channel is similar to a running tab. So, when you start buying drinks, those transactions would get recorded on the payment channel, the same way that they would get tallied on a bar tab. Now, it’s important to remember that it’s not just IOUs that are being transferred on the payment channel as they would be on a bar tab. Bitcoin is being transferred, so you are paying the bar in real time for your drinks. Those transactions are just not being recorded on the blockchain. Rather, Bitcoin is just bouncing between you and your bar via the payment channel.
This is similar to how the Lightning Network operates.
See: Twitter to allow Bitcoin tipping to their favourite creators
But by conducting those potentially infinite transactions on the Lightning Network rather than on the blockchain, we lessen the burden on the blockchain, improve transaction rates for everyday purchases and keep transaction fees low.
Now, you may be thinking that setting up a payment channel with the hundreds of businesses that you patronize could be tedious. But this is where the Lightning Network really shines. You don’t need a direct payment channel with someone in order to pay them. You can pay people and businesses through intermediary channels on the network.
Continue to the full article --> here
The National Crowdfunding & Fintech Association (NCFA Canada) is a financial innovation ecosystem that provides education, market intelligence, industry stewardship, networking and funding opportunities and services to thousands of community members and works closely with industry, government, partners and affiliates to create a vibrant and innovative fintech and funding industry in Canada. Decentralized and distributed, NCFA is engaged with global stakeholders and helps incubate projects and investment in fintech, alternative finance, crowdfunding, peer-to-peer finance, payments, digital assets and tokens, blockchain, cryptocurrency, regtech, and insurtech sectors. Join Canada's Fintech & Funding Community today FREE! Or become a contributing member and get perks. For more information, please visit: www.ncfacanada.org
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The Retail Payments Advisory Committee is gathering expertise on a preliminary approach to fees
Bank of Canada | Nov 9, 2021
The Retail Payments Advisory Committee (RPAC) will meet in November to discuss preliminary approaches to fees. Under the Retail Payment Activities Act (RPAA), the Bank is required to recoup costs incurred to carry out its mandate of supervising payment service providers. Stakeholders are encouraged to read the discussion material and send us your feedback directly by email. A summary of what we heard will be published to the Bank’s website once our analysis is completed.
See: Canada’s Library of Parliament Report: A Comparison of Open Banking Recommendations
RPAC is a forum set up by the Bank to gather industry expertise about the retail payment services landscape. RPAC provides advice and expertise on specific topics as the Bank designs and operationalizes its Retail Payments Supervisory Framework. The Bank also solicits information from industry and stakeholders that are not members of RPAC.
Continue to the full article --> here
Download the RAC Approach to Fees (31 page PDF) discussion document --> here
The National Crowdfunding & Fintech Association (NCFA Canada) is a financial innovation ecosystem that provides education, market intelligence, industry stewardship, networking and funding opportunities and services to thousands of community members and works closely with industry, government, partners and affiliates to create a vibrant and innovative fintech and funding industry in Canada. Decentralized and distributed, NCFA is engaged with global stakeholders and helps incubate projects and investment in fintech, alternative finance, crowdfunding, peer-to-peer finance, payments, digital assets and tokens, blockchain, cryptocurrency, regtech, and insurtech sectors. Join Canada's Fintech & Funding Community today FREE! Or become a contributing member and get perks. For more information, please visit: www.ncfacanada.org
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Open banking continues to evolve — what’s next?
Sifted | Steph Bailey | Nov 3, 2021
Opening Up Financial Services
Investors are still betting big on open banking: in the past three months, TrueLayer announced a $130m funding round led by Tiger Global, Visa bought rival Tink for $2bn, Yapily announced its $51m Series B raise and Mastercard doubled down by acquiring Aiia — a Danish startup that will allow Mastercard to do credit scoring.
So why are investors flashing the cash when open banking is still in its nascency? Back in April, Yapily founder Stefano Vaccino told Sifted that VCs are less concerned with monetisation and more with the market’s raw opportunity.
See: Digital Banking / Analytics / Infrastructure companies in Canada
“Investors aren’t looking at revenue multipliers, but the size of the market… This is a space that for the next 10 to 15 years will continue to grow, and there’s an opportunity to build a company that is $100bn,” Vaccino said.
One of the opportunities in open banking is the payments market, where fintechs are using the vast network of bank connectivity to fuel a new era of account to account (A2A) transactions. That’s allowing consumers to pay directly into merchants’ bank accounts rather than using a card.
Early open banking players like Tink, Plaid, Bankin’ and TrueLayer — who all began by offering data connectivity — have now started branching into the payments space. They’ve recently been joined by new players including Vyne, BOPP, Trilo and Banked.
“There’s an amazing thing in fintech generally called coopetition, where there’s an acceptance that you can’t be good at everything,” he says. “Most fintechs and people in the industry now consider the competition as part of what is needed to deliver the solutions you need.”
See: Privacy Implications of an Open Banking System in Canada
A key piece of European payments legislation called PSD2 came into effect in 2018 and boosted the open banking sector by forcing UK banks to open up their data (albeit to varying quality levels). McDougall now says similar legislation is needed in other countries.
“What we’re going to need over the years ahead is the availability of equivalent regulatory frameworks in these other jurisdictions,” he says. “So that European open banking works seamlessly with North American open banking etc.”
The UK is now nearing four million open banking customers, which is behind predictions, but with the right regulation and products, 40m people could have accessed open banking services by 2025. However, surveys suggest some customers still have concerns over protecting their data.
But Greenwood says there are 58 countries currently rolling out their own version of open banking. While the UK was among the first to adopt it, he says other countries can learn from it.
Continue to the full article --> here
The National Crowdfunding & Fintech Association (NCFA Canada) is a financial innovation ecosystem that provides education, market intelligence, industry stewardship, networking and funding opportunities and services to thousands of community members and works closely with industry, government, partners and affiliates to create a vibrant and innovative fintech and funding industry in Canada. Decentralized and distributed, NCFA is engaged with global stakeholders and helps incubate projects and investment in fintech, alternative finance, crowdfunding, peer-to-peer finance, payments, digital assets and tokens, blockchain, cryptocurrency, regtech, and insurtech sectors. Join Canada's Fintech & Funding Community today FREE! Or become a contributing member and get perks. For more information, please visit: www.ncfacanada.org
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10% of China has already opened digital yuan wallets –> 20 million new retail wallets since June
The Block | Wolfie Zhao | Nov 3, 2021
The number of users of China's digital yuan, also known as the e-CNY, has increased by more than six times over the past four months.
That's according to Mu Changchun, head of the Digital Currency Research Institute at the People's Bank of China, who said in the Hong Kong Fintech Week conference that 140 million individuals in China have activated their e-CNY wallets.
That number is about 10% of China's total population and has sharply increased since July when the PBoC said in its first-ever e-CNY white-paper that 20 million retail digital yuan wallets were opened as of June 30.
See: China’s new digital yuan users soar as transactions hit $10 billion
In addition, Mu said the number of corporate e-CNY wallets has nearly tripled to 10 million from 3.5 million four months ago. The volume of transactions made through the e-CNY has jumped to 150 million with the total worth amounting to 62 billion yuan, or $9.7 billion, he added during the conference.
Since late last year, China has been making a wider push to roll out the usage of the e-CNY in major cities through lucky draws initially and then more widely available giveaways.
Continue to the full article --> here
The National Crowdfunding & Fintech Association (NCFA Canada) is a financial innovation ecosystem that provides education, market intelligence, industry stewardship, networking and funding opportunities and services to thousands of community members and works closely with industry, government, partners and affiliates to create a vibrant and innovative fintech and funding industry in Canada. Decentralized and distributed, NCFA is engaged with global stakeholders and helps incubate projects and investment in fintech, alternative finance, crowdfunding, peer-to-peer finance, payments, digital assets and tokens, blockchain, cryptocurrency, regtech, and insurtech sectors. Join Canada's Fintech & Funding Community today FREE! Or become a contributing member and get perks. For more information, please visit: www.ncfacanada.org
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Liquid Avatar Technologies and Dynamics Inc. Tap Payment Infrastructure for Verification of Digital Credentials
Liquid Avatar Technologies | Cara Buckspan | Nov 8, 2021
PassmateTM enables digital credentials for identity, access, and qualifications to be verified at point-of-sale payment terminals using the same platform as financial, debit and credit card transactions.
Toronto, Canada - TheNewswire - November 8, 2021 -Liquid Avatar Technologies Inc. (CSE:LQID) / (OTC:LQAVF) / (FRA:4T51) / (CNSX:LQID.CN) (“Liquid Avatar Technologies” or the “Company”), a global blockchain, digital identity and fintech solutions company, through the Liquid Avatar Verifiable Credential Ecosystem (“LAVCE”), announces the introduction of its proprietary PassmateTM services program to expand identity verification and validation opportunities for business, industry, and government through the payment terminals and Point of Sale (POS) systems found in most commercial facilities around the globe.
PassmateTM is a Software as a Service (“SaaS”), subscription based transformative technology that makes secure data sharing and proof of identity easily available to consumers and businesses by using the payments infrastructure that merchants and businesses already use. Developed in conjunction with U.S.-based payments technology company Dynamics Inc. (“Dynamics”) and with Indicio Inc. (“Indicio”), a global leader in designing decentralized trusted data ecosystems, PassmateTM enables any business or facility currently using mainstream POS systems to deploy verifiable credentials to ensure that identity data and other high-value information can be authenticated in a secure, privacy-preserving way.
See: Liquid Avatar Technologies and Optimize Financial Technology Partner to Launch Fintech and Neobanking Solutions for US Markets
“Dynamics and Indicio both share in Liquid Avatar Technologies’ vision for quick and reliable digitally verifiable identity that can easily scale across businesses, trade shows, events, convenience stores, restaurants, or other retailers or venues using existing point of sale terminals.” said David Lucatch, CEO Liquid Avatar Technologies. “Passmate™ is a modern and cost-efficient tool that leverages current technologies, like point of sale or payment terminals to confirm that an individual is who they say they are and that they have the correct immunization, age, or other credential to receive a service, make a restricted purchase or gain access. Secure, private, digital verification reduces fraud and increases certainty between parties while no personally identifiable information is revealed without permission. This type of easy to use, trustworthy digital identity is more timely, relevant and is more powerful than ever before.”
PassmateTM is expected to be piloted in early 2022 as part of the recently announced Smart Age program supported by the Ontario Convenience Stores Association (OCSA) as it looks to expand current age-restricted product sales. The Smart Age program for OCSA and potentially other hospitality businesses will consist of in-store and out-of-home awareness campaigns, digital verification review at the point of purchase and, where applicable, work with other transaction processing systems to support PassmateTM integration into existing point-of-sale and payment terminals that will be used to verify credentials in order to confirm that the customer is of legal age to purchase restricted products.
The PassmateTM SaaS subscription and micro-transaction program will first be introduced with the direct support of Dynamics and then be made available through Liquid Avatar Technologies and Dynamics to other transaction processors in Canada, the United States of America and globally. The Company is already in discussions with leading payment processing and solutions providers and is planning to launch PassmateTM with health credentials and age verification in early Q1 2022 as it looks to support industry and government issued credentials.
See: Liquid Avatar Technologies Partners with the Ontario Convenience Stores Association (OCSA) to Provide Digital Age-Verification Solutions to Over 8,000 Stores
“Liquid Avatar Technologies’ product line to make easy-to-use, verifiable digital identity is the type of ambitious innovation goal that aligns with Dynamic’s mission to change the world without changing the way the world works.” said Jeffrey Mullen, CEO of Dynamics Inc. “With Passmate™ integrated into the point of sale, businesses of all sizes will be part of an advanced capability for reducing fraud and uncertainty in the industry.”
The Future of Private Digital Communications
Liquid Avatar Technologies continues to roll out further enhancements to the LAVCE that go beyond conventional payment and communications technology solutions. As part of ongoing development and its commitment to Decentralized Finance (DeFi) and blockchain-based initiatives, the Company uses the combination of decentralized identifier technology (DIDs) and decentralized identifier communication called ‘DIDcomm’ to enable highly secure, peer-to-peer data sharing, including payment and secure communication between parties in Passmate™.
The advantage of using DIDcomm in Passmate™ is that it provides communication across multiple channels—the web, email, mobile push notifications, QR codes, Bluetooth, message queues, and more. Each peer-to-peer communication is unique, secure, and provides the parties communicating with complete control over their private data.
“It is hard to overstate the potential impact of DIDComm on the future of digital communications,” said Heather Dahl, CEO of Indicio.tech. “It’s a foundational protocol that will change how people connect to each other on the Internet. It will allow the development of much richer interaction while enabling consent, transforming security, and ensuring privacy. It enables merchants and businesses to create a new world of direct, personalized concierge-quality interaction with their customers and to offer them new services—all without having to go through a third party, and without the headache of data privacy regulation.”
See: Liquid Avatar Releases Major Update to their Digital Identity Mobile App
The Company believes that LAVCE’s implementation of DIDcomm to verifiable credentials and payment technologies will be one of the first commercial applications of its kind in in North America, and will create a plethora of use cases and opportunities for consumers, businesses, and the Company
“DIDComm has the same excitement and possibility around it as HTTP did when it was first launched.” Lucatch said “Liquid Avatar Technologies is fully committed to the advancements that Indicio is working on and is helping to facilitate in the Decentralized Identity Foundation and other standards bodies. This technology is crucial for the future transformation of online payments, making them more secure, more trustworthy, and closing the chapter on financial fraud and identity theft.”
For more information, or to book a demonstration of the technology and how the LAVCE can assist your organization to support your reopening and health care objectives, please contact Liquid Avatar Technologies.
View original release --> here
The National Crowdfunding & Fintech Association (NCFA Canada) is a financial innovation ecosystem that provides education, market intelligence, industry stewardship, networking and funding opportunities and services to thousands of community members and works closely with industry, government, partners and affiliates to create a vibrant and innovative fintech and funding industry in Canada. Decentralized and distributed, NCFA is engaged with global stakeholders and helps incubate projects and investment in fintech, alternative finance, crowdfunding, peer-to-peer finance, payments, digital assets and tokens, blockchain, cryptocurrency, regtech, and insurtech sectors. Join Canada's Fintech & Funding Community today FREE! Or become a contributing member and get perks. For more information, please visit: www.ncfacanada.org
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