Crypto World
Mastercard, Central Bank of Syria Launch Payments Knowledge Exchange Program
Editor’s note: Mastercard and the Central Bank of Syria have launched a series of structured knowledge-sharing exchanges and technical workshops focused on payments, regulation, and financial infrastructure. The initiative follows a memorandum of understanding signed in September 2025 and aims to strengthen institutional capacity within Syria’s financial sector. Through tailored sessions led by Mastercard experts, the program targets regulatory frameworks, compliance practices, and global trends in digital payments. The collaboration reflects broader efforts by the Central Bank to modernize financial systems, align with international standards, and support a more resilient and future-ready payments ecosystem.
Key points
- Mastercard and the Central Bank of Syria are running technical workshops under a 2025 cooperation framework.
- The program focuses on regulatory capacity, compliance, and modern payments infrastructure.
- Knowledge transfer is delivered by Mastercard’s global subject matter experts.
- The initiative supports financial sector modernization and institutional resilience.
Why this matters
Strengthening regulatory and institutional capabilities is a foundational step in rebuilding trust and functionality within a national financial system. For Syria, exposure to international best practices in payments and compliance can support safer, more efficient financial services and help lay the groundwork for broader digital finance adoption. For the market, this type of capacity-building initiative signals a focus on long-term infrastructure, governance, and alignment with global standards, all of which are essential for sustainable financial development.
What to watch next
- Additional workshops or technical sessions delivered under the cooperation framework.
- Policy or regulatory updates informed by the knowledge exchanges.
- Further collaboration between the Central Bank and international technology providers.
Disclosure: The content below is a press release provided by the company/PR representative. It is published for informational purposes.
Damascus, Syria; 11 February 2026: Mastercard and the Central Bank of Syria have launched a series of structured knowledge sharing exchanges and technical workshops aimed at strengthening institutional capabilities and advancing best practices in payments and financial services.
The initiative builds on the strategic cooperation framework established through a memorandum of understanding (MoU) signed in September 2025, and reflects the Central Bank’s broader efforts to modernize the financial sector and create an enabling regulatory framework that is aligned with international standards.
Under the program, Mastercard’s global subject matter experts will deliver tailored technical sessions and knowledge transfer aligned with the Central Bank of Syria’s policy priorities. The exchanges focus on regulatory capacity, compliance frameworks, and emerging global trends in payments and financial infrastructure, supporting a more resilient and future-ready financial ecosystem.
“These workshops represent a pivotal step in strengthening institutional capacity and aligning our regulatory and market practices with international standards. By drawing on Mastercard’s global expertise, we are equipping policymakers, regulators, and market participants with the tools needed to modernize Syria’s financial infrastructure. This next phase of collaboration reflects our shared commitment to rebuilding trust, enhancing resilience, and advancing Syria’s reintegration into the international financial system.” said His Excellency Dr. Abdulkader Husrieh, governor, Central Bank of Syria.
“At Mastercard, we are dedicated to working with the Central Bank of Syria and local financial sector players to strengthen the country’s digital payments infrastructure and expand access to financial services for consumers and businesses. In line with our belief that capacity building is a foundational element of sustainable and inclusive financial development, we are keen to share our knowledge to support institutional learning and raise awareness about global best practices in financial systems,” said Adam Jones, division president, West Arabia, Mastercard.
Building on its extensive experience, gained from operating payment networks in more than 200 countries and territories, Mastercard serves as a trusted partner, technology provider and policy advisor to governments worldwide. The company’s collaboration with the Central Bank of Syria stands to benefit millions of potential financial services users across the country.
About Mastercard
Mastercard (NYSE: MA) powers economies and empowers people in 200+ countries and territories worldwide. Together with our customers, we’re building a resilient economy where everyone can prosper. We support a wide range of digital payments choices, making transactions secure, simple, smart and accessible. Our technology and innovation, partnerships and networks combine to deliver a unique set of products and services that help people, businesses and governments realize their greatest potential.
Ethereum Foundation AI lead Davide Crapis and Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin have proposed a way to use zero-knowledge proofs and other methods to ensure that a user’s interactions with large language models are private, while preventing spam and abuse.
API calls occur every time a user sends a message to a software application, such as an AI chatbot. Crapis and Buterin said in a blog post on Wednesday that a core challenge for both users and providers is privacy, security, and efficiency.
“We need a system where a user can deposit funds once and make thousands of API calls anonymously, securely, and efficiently,” they said.
“The provider must be guaranteed payment and protection against spam, while the user must be guaranteed that their requests cannot be linked to their identity or to each other,” they added.
With the use of AI chatbots rising, data leaks from LLMs have become a growing concern. Chatbots often handle highly sensitive data, and linking usage to identities can create significant privacy, legal, and security risks. Usage logs can even be used in court proceedings.
Crapis and Buterin’s solution for users and providers
Crapis and Buterin said providers currently are forced to choose between two “suboptimal paths,” identity-based access with users forced to hand over sensitive information like an email or credit card, which creates privacy risks, or per-request on-chain payments, which are slow, costly, and traceable.
The duo proposes a system where users deposit funds into a smart contract and then make API calls without revealing their identity or linking requests, leveraging zero-knowledge proofs and rate-limit nullifiers for payments and anti-spam enforcement.
“A user deposits 100 USDC into a smart contract and makes 500 queries to a hosted LLM. The provider receives 500 valid, paid requests but cannot link them to the same depositor, or to each other, while the user’s prompts remain unlinkable to the user identity,” Crapis and Buterin said.
“The model enforces solvency by requiring the user to prove that their cumulative spending—represented by their current ticket index—remains strictly within the bounds of their initial deposit and their verified refund history.”
Cheating the system could slash your deposit
To deter scammers, illegal content generation, jailbreaking attempts, and other terms-of-service violations, Crapis and Buterin propose a dual-staking system.
Related: Vitalik draws line between ‘real DeFi’ and centralized yield stablecoins
If a user is caught trying to double-spend, their deposit can be claimed by anyone, including the server. However, users violating the terms of service will have their deposit sent to a burn address and the slashing event is recorded on-chain.
“For example, a user might submit a prompt asking the model to generate instructions for building a weapon or to help them bypass security controls – requests that would violate many providers’ usage policies,” Crapis and Buterin said.
“While the user’s identity remains hidden, the community can audit the rate at which the Server burns stakes and the posted evidence for these burns.”
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The Stellar Development Foundation (SDF) announced at Consensus Hong Kong that TopNod, a non-custodial wallet, will integrate with the Stellar network. The move is part of SDF’s broader push into Asia — a region where it faces stiff competition from Solana, TON, and XRP in the payments and tokenization markets.
TopNod’s wallet uses key sharding and Trusted Execution Environment (TEE) technology to eliminate the need for seed phrases. The platform focuses on tokenized real-world assets (RWAs) and stablecoins rather than speculative tokens, though it remains a relatively young project with limited brand recognition outside Web3 circles.
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SDF Bets on Emerging Markets
In an exclusive interview with BeInCrypto, Stellar CBO Raja Chakravorti called Asia Pacific “a critical growth driver” and said SDF plans to build out anchor networks in Indonesia, the Philippines, and Vietnam over the coming year.
“We brought employees in the region focused on Singapore first, but we’ve really been focusing on expanding rapidly,” Chakravorti said, adding that more APAC financial institution partnerships would be announced over the next two quarters — though he declined to share specifics.
SDF has also partnered with MarketNode, a Singapore-based tokenization platform, and said it is in discussions with financial institutions about tokenizing money market funds in the region.
The ambition is clear, but execution remains the question. Stellar’s on-chain RWA value crossed $1 billion over the past year, and its DeFi TVL tripled. Yet XLM has fallen roughly 71% from its 2025 high of $0.52, underperforming both Bitcoin and Ethereum. Daily transaction volumes have held steady, but average transaction values have dropped, suggesting that core payment use cases persist while speculative and high-value capital flows have dried up.
2026: The Distribution Problem
Chakravorti acknowledged that tokenization alone is no longer the differentiator.
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“Last year was really about proving that tokenized products can be built at scale. This next year is really going to be about focusing on finding the right distribution outcomes for these assets,” he told BeInCrypto.
This is arguably Stellar’s biggest challenge. Franklin Templeton’s tokenized money market fund remains the network’s flagship RWA product, and US Bank recently announced a stablecoin partnership. But competing chains are moving fast — Solana and Polygon are both founding members of the same Blockchain Payments Consortium (BPC) as Stellar, and networks like Ethereum and Avalanche continue to attract institutional tokenization projects.
Privacy vs. Compliance
Stellar’s recent X-Ray upgrade (Protocol 25) introduced native zero-knowledge cryptography. Chakravorti framed this as an institutional necessity rather than a privacy-maximalist play.
“Privacy elements may encompass send, receive, who is the holder — but importantly, these have to be auditable,” he said. “The privacy may look slightly different depending on who you’re talking to.”
Whether this configurable approach satisfies both regulators and privacy-conscious users in Asia’s diverse regulatory landscape remains to be seen.
What’s Next
SDF confirmed its annual Meridian conference will move to Abu Dhabi in October 2026. The TopNod integration is expected to go live across the Philippines, Singapore, Japan, and other Asian markets, though no specific timeline has been provided.
For Stellar, the formula is familiar: strong infrastructure, growing institutional interest, and a clear narrative. The missing piece — as Chakravorti himself admitted — is distribution at scale.
In a high‑profile enforcement action, Paxful, the peer‑to‑peer crypto exchange, was ordered to pay $4 million after admitting it knowingly profited from criminals who used its platform due to lax anti‑money laundering controls. The Department of Justice outlined that Paxful pleaded guilty in December to conspiring to promote illegal prostitution and knowingly transmitting funds derived from crime, in violation of federal AML requirements. The government also detailed that, between January 2017 and September 2019, Paxful facilitated more than 26 million trades valued at nearly $3 billion, earning about $29.7 million in revenue while turning a blind eye to illicit activity. The case centers on how a platform marketed itself as a lenient, low‑information exchange while neglecting core safeguards. The DOJ’s filing underscores that Paxful’s business model depended on attracting criminal users by downplaying compliance obligations.
The Justice Department highlighted that Paxful had agreed the appropriate criminal penalty would be $112.5 million, but prosecutors determined the company could not pay more than $4 million. The settlement reflects a broader push by federal authorities to curb crypto platforms that fail to implement or enforce anti‑money laundering measures, particularly when they facilitate illegal activities such as fraud, extortion, prostitution, and trafficking. The department said Paxful profited from moving money for criminals it attracted with the promise of minimal compliance, a dynamic prosecutors described as corrosive to legitimate finance and to users seeking lawful services.
The case traces to Paxful’s ambitious growth period from 2017 through 2019, when the platform reportedly handled tens of millions of trades and generated substantial revenue despite warnings from investigators about AML gaps. Prosecutors maintained that Paxful’s marketing messaging, which emphasized a lack of required customer information, paired with policies it knew were not implemented or enforced, created a permissive environment for illicit actors. The backers of the case say this approach allowed criminal actors to route funds through Paxful more readily than through regulated channels.
The Justice Department’s description of Paxful’s operational ethos is complemented by a notable cross‑industry connection: the crypto platform had ties to Backpage and a similar site during a period spanning 2015 to 2022, a relationship the government says contributed to Paxful’s profits, estimated at about $2.7 million. While Backpage’s platform was shut down due to illegal activities, the Paxful alliance is cited as a concrete example of how illicit networks exploited crypto rails to monetize wrongdoing. The department noted that Paxful’s founders publicly boasted about the “Backpage Effect,” portraying the collaboration as a catalyst for growth, a claim the government used to illustrate a deliberate strategy of enabling criminal transactions.
The case also sheds light on Paxful’s eventual exit from the market. The exchange halted operations in November, and its October closure‑announcement post—later archived—depicted the decision as a response to “the lasting impact of historic misconduct by former co‑founders Ray Youssef and Artur Schaback prior to 2023, combined with unsustainable operational costs from extensive compliance remediation efforts.” Youssef publicly countered the timing of the closure, suggesting the firm should have closed when he left the company. Meanwhile, Schaback, Paxful’s former chief technology officer, pleaded guilty in July 2024 to conspiring to fail to maintain an effective AML program and awaits sentencing, with a California judge moving his hearing from January to May to accommodate ongoing cooperation with authorities. The DOJ’s account makes clear that a broader reckoning—beyond Paxful’s leadership—extends into the company’s users, employees, and the broader crypto ecosystem.
As authorities pursued the case, officials emphasized that the Paxful matter is not an isolated incident but part of a wider effort to tighten regulatory expectations on crypto marketplaces. The department pointed to the need for robust know‑your‑customer checks, comprehensive AML compliance programs, and proactive monitoring of suspicious activity to deter illicit uses of digital assets. The implications extend to other platforms that operate in the same space, signaling that permissive, low‑oversight models will attract intensified scrutiny from federal law enforcement and regulators.
Key takeaways
- Paxful received a $4 million criminal penalty after pleading guilty to conspiracy related to illegal activities and AML violations, with prosecutors noting a potential maximum penalty of $112.5 million.
- From 2017 through 2019, Paxful facilitated more than 26 million trades valued at nearly $3 billion and amassed around $29.7 million in revenue, according to DOJ filings.
- The DOJ characterizes Paxful as profiting from enabling criminals by downplaying AML controls and failing to comply with applicable money‑laundering laws.
- Prosecutors linked Paxful to illicit revenue streams via partnerships with Backpage and similar platforms, describing profits of about $2.7 million tied to those connections.
- The company shut down operations in November, citing historic misconduct by former co‑founders and the costs of compliance remediation, with ongoing legal actions surrounding Schaback’s case and the broader investigation.
- The case illustrates how enforcement agencies are escalating scrutiny of crypto marketplaces that permit lax due‑diligence and high‑risk activity, reinforcing expectations for AML programs across the sector.
Sentiment: Bearish
Market context: The Paxful action aligns with a broader tightening of crypto‑AML standards as regulators seek to normalize compliance expectations across peer‑to‑peer platforms, exchanges, and other digital asset services, influencing liquidity, risk sentiment, and enforcement tempo across the industry.
Why it matters
The DOJ’s settlement with Paxful underscores a pivotal moment for the crypto‑platform landscape. For users, it signals that providers must demonstrate verifiable diligence in their AML programs or face tangible penalties and reputational damage. For operators, the case reinforces the need to align platform design, user onboarding, and transaction monitoring with established legal requirements rather than relying on marketing narratives about anonymity or minimal information. The development also matters for builders and policymakers. It highlights the costs of lax controls and the potential for illicit activity to undermine trust in decentralized finance ecosystems, prompting crypto firms to invest more heavily in compliance technology, real‑time surveillance, and robust governance frameworks.
From an investor perspective, enforcement actions like this can influence risk pricing and funding cycles for crypto platforms, particularly those with international user bases or complex payment rails. The Paxful narrative—centered on public statements by founders, internal policy gaps, and late‑stage remediation—serves as a cautionary tale about the fragility of business models that rely on permissive compliance postures. In a market where users increasingly demand transparency and regulatory alignment, the case emphasizes why credible AML programs are not merely a legal checkbox but a core driver of platform reliability and long‑term viability.
What to watch next
- Schaback’s sentencing timing remains fluid, with a May hearing continuing to unfold as prosecutors incorporate ongoing cooperation into the government’s recommendation.
- Any additional actions or disclosures related to Paxful’s former leadership could emerge as part of related investigations and settlements.
- Regulators may intensify scrutiny of other P2P exchanges and non‑custodial marketplaces to assess AML controls, monitoring capabilities, and enforcement readiness.
- Broader market reactions might reflect shifting risk sentiment as platforms adjust compliance investments and governance standards in response to high‑profile enforcement cases.
Sources & verification
- U.S. Department of Justice press release: Virtual Asset Trading Platform sentenced for violating Travel Act and other federal crimes (link provided in the DOJ filing).
- DOJ Criminal Division official X/Twitter post confirming the case details and sentencing status.
- Paxful closure announcement (archived): Paxful closure announcement, noting misconduct and remediation costs.
- Statements and coverage surrounding Ray Youssef’s response to Paxful’s closure and Artur Schaback’s guilty plea.
- Related reporting on Paxful’s alleged “Backpage Effect” and the platform’s historical collaborations cited by prosecutors.
What the story changes
The Paxful case illustrates how enforcement actions tied to AML controls can reshape the operations and viability of crypto platforms that rely on rapid growth and minimal compliance. By tying significant penalties to proven misconduct and highlighting explicit links to illicit activities, authorities are sending a clear signal: robust, transparent AML programs are foundational, not optional. As the industry evolves, platforms may need to reassess their onboarding, transaction screening, and governance practices to withstand heightened regulatory scrutiny and to restore or preserve user trust in a landscape that continues to balance innovation with accountability.
Institution-focused crypto lending platform BlockFills announced it halted customer deposits and withdrawals last week as Bitcoin and the broader crypto market continued to tumble.
The suspension, which remains in effect, was intended to protect clients and restore liquidity on the platform, BlockFills said in an X post on Wednesday.
Last week’s market tumble saw Bitcoin fall another 24% from $78,995 to $60,000.
Blockfills said the withdrawal and deposit halt came “in light of recent market and financial conditions.”
“Management has been working hand in hand with investors and clients to bring this issue to a swift resolution and to restore liquidity to the platform,” BlockFills said.
“Clients have been able to continue trading with BlockFills for the purpose of opening and closing positions in spot and derivatives* trading and select other circumstances,” BlockFills added.
The halt potentially impacts about 2,000 institutional clients, including asset managers and hedge funds, which contributed to more than $60 billion in trading volume on the platform in 2025.
The crypto liquidity and lending platform serves only investors with crypto holdings of $10 million or more.
BlockFills was founded by CEO Nick Hammer and President Gordon Wallace in 2017 and is backed by the likes of Susquehanna Private Equity Investments and CME Group.
Bitcoin is down 46% from its October high
Bitcoin’s price began to fall on Oct. 10 after a social media post on tariffs by US President Donald Trump sent shockwaves through the crypto markets, contributing to nearly $20 billion worth of positions being liquidated.
It fell further in the months following, hitting a year-to-date low of $60,008 on Feb. 5.
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Bitcoin has since rebounded to $67,575, but is still 46.6% off its all-time high of $126,080 set on Oct. 6.
BlockFills’ withdrawal halt marks the first suspension among major crypto platforms as a result of market conditions.
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X Money, an upcoming payments system that forms part of Elon Musk’s “everything app” plans, is scheduled to come out as a “limited beta” in the next two months before launching to X users worldwide.
Musk gave the new timeline at his AI company’s “All Hands” presentation on Wednesday, during which he said that X Money was already live “in closed beta within the company.”
“This is intended to be the place where all money is. The central source of all monetary transactions,” he said, calling it a “game changer.”
Payments part of X’s “everything app”
The move is framed as a key upcoming feature to make X more essential, tied with its “everything app” vision, with payments a core driver of daily engagement.
Musk noted that the platform has 1 billion installed users but said its average monthly users were around 600 million.
X Money, rumored to be launched last year, is expected to integrate directly into the X platform, which aims to become a single place for social networking, messaging, content, and financial services, similar to WeChat in China.
“As we give people more reasons to use the X app, whether it’s for communications, or for Grok, or for X Money […] we want it to be such that if you wanted to, you could live your life on the X app,” said Musk.
Elon Musk has been pushing for payments on X since shortly after acquiring Twitter in 2022. The idea ties back to his early career in 1999, when he co-founded X.com, an online bank that merged with Confinity to become PayPal, which was later acquired by eBay.
Crypto integration remains a mystery. Musk has previously shared enthusiasm for Dogecoin (DOGE), but the initial focus is likely to be fiat since the company has partnered with Visa. According to the Blockchain Council, it will support crypto in the future.
Related: Musk’s xAI seeks crypto expert to train AI on market analysis
xAI expands Macrohard data center
Musk also highlighted the company’s AI growth, stating that xAI can “deploy more AI compute faster than anyone else.”
The tech billionaire showcased the firm’s “Macroharder” AI data center in Memphis, Tennessee — an expansion of the existing plant that adds 220,000 more graphics processing units.
“All this will be training the [AI] models that you experience. It’s absolutely fundamental to have large-scale training compute in order to get the best models,” he said.
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Stretch (STRC), the perpetual preferred equity issued by Strategy (MSTR) the world’s largest corporate bitcoin holder reclaimed its $100 par value during Wednesday’s U.S. session for the first time since mid-January.
STRC trading at or above par enables the company to resume at-the-market (ATM) offerings to fund further bitcoin acquisitions. STRC last hit the $100 level on Jan. 16 when bitcoin hovered near $97,000; however, as the largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization retreated to as low as $60,000 by on Feb. 5, STRC dipped to a low of $93 before its recent rebound.
Positioned as a short-duration, high-yield credit instrument, STRC currently offers an 11.25% annual dividend distributed monthly. To mitigate volatility and incentivize trading near par, Strategy resets this rate monthly, recently hiking it to the current 11.25% yield.
MSTR common stock faced pressure, sliding 5% on Wednesday to close at $126, as bitcoin hovers around $67,500.
Editor’s note: Juspay has announced its expansion into the Middle East with the launch of its regional headquarters in Dubai International Financial Centre. The move is aimed at supporting enterprise merchants, banks, and financial institutions as digital commerce accelerates across the GCC. By establishing a local presence, the company plans to deepen partnerships and address growing payment complexity linked to multiple currencies, regulations, and local payment methods. The DIFC base signals a long-term commitment to building regulated, enterprise-grade payment infrastructure in the region, at a time when cross-border commerce and scalable financial rails are becoming critical for large businesses operating across global markets.
Key points
- Juspay opens its Middle East regional headquarters in DIFC to support enterprise payment demand.
- The expansion targets merchants and banks facing complex, multi-currency and multi-regulatory environments.
- The company will offer its payments orchestration and infrastructure solutions locally.
- Juspay plans to work closely with regional banks, acquirers, and ecosystem partners.
Why this matters
The Middle East is seeing rapid growth in digital commerce, putting pressure on payment systems to scale reliably across borders and regulatory frameworks. Juspay’s entry into DIFC reflects rising demand for enterprise-grade payment infrastructure that can handle volume, compliance, and localization at once. For large merchants and financial institutions, access to proven orchestration and real-time payments technology can improve authorization rates, reduce operational friction, and support expansion across GCC and global markets. For the region, it reinforces Dubai’s role as a hub for fintech infrastructure.
What to watch next
- Growth of Juspay’s regional team in business development, engineering, and partnerships.
- New collaborations with Middle East banks, acquirers, and payment networks.
- Adoption of Juspay’s platform by regional enterprise merchants.
Disclosure: The content below is a press release provided by the company/PR representative. It is published for informational purposes.
Dubai, February 10th, 2026 – Juspay a global leader in payment infrastructure solutions for enterprises and banks, today announced its expansion into the Middle East with the opening of its regional headquarters in Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC). This move marks an important step in Juspay’s international expansion, deepening its focus on serving enterprise merchants, banks, and financial institutions in the Middle East. The DIFC headquarters will support closer engagement with existing partners as enterprise payment demand continues to scale.
With digital commerce accelerating in the GCC region, rapidly scaling enterprises in sectors such as airlines, hospitality, e-commerce, and financial services face increasing complexity driven by multiple regional currencies, evolving regulations, and diverse local payment methods.
To address this complexity, Juspay’s payments orchestration platform provides a unified & reliable payments stack, helping organizations optimize authorisation rates and costs, simplify compliance and scale seamlessly across GCC and global markets with institutional-grade reliability.
Establishing operations in DIFC highlights Juspay’s long-term commitment to the Middle East, with a focus on building , regulated, and enterprise-grade payments infrastructure in the region. As a leading global financial hub, DIFC provides a strong regulatory environment, robust infrastructure, and access to high quality talent. Juspay plans to leverage this and work closely with regional banks, acquirers, networks, and ecosystem partners to deliver scalable and reliable payment solutions tailored for enterprises operating across global markets.
Commenting on the expansion, Sheetal Lalwani, Co-founder & COO of Juspay, said: “Juspay has been building foundational payments infrastructure for large-scale, mission-critical commerce globally for over a decade. We are excited to bring these learnings to the Middle East and partner with merchants, banks, networks, and the broader ecosystem to build secure, scalable payments infrastructure that supports the region’s rapidly evolving digital economy.”
Salmaan Jaffery, Chief Business Development Officer at DIFC Authority said: “We are pleased to welcome Juspay to the Middle East, Africa and South Asia’s most significant fintech and financial services ecosystem. As a global leader in payment infrastructure, Juspay’s presence strengthens our growing digital economy, reinforces DIFC’s role as a catalyst for financial innovation and cements Dubai’s position as a top four global FinTech hub.”
With more than a decade of experience in scaling payment infrastructure, Juspay powers 500+ enterprise merchants and banks globally including Agoda, Amazon, Flipkart, Google, HSBC, IndiGo, Swiggy, Urban Company, Zepto & more. It offers a comprehensive suite of payment solutions that spans full-stack payment orchestration, authentication, tokenisation, reconciliation, fraud solutions and more. The company also provides end-to-end, white-label payment gateway and real-time payments infrastructure tailored for banks. Together these capabilities enable merchants and banks to deliver seamless, reliable and scalable payment experiences to the end-consumers.
Speaking about Juspay’s regional focus, Nakul Kothari, head of Middle East & APAC said, “By establishing our presence in the Middle East with DIFC, we continue our mission of building innovative payment solutions rooted in deep local market understanding. The region holds tremendous potential, and we are investing in long-term partnerships with merchants and banks to help them build future-ready payment stacks that can scale across markets.”
This expansion reflects Juspay’s long-term vision of enabling open, interoperable, and accessible payments worldwide. With a team of over 1,500 payment experts solving payment complexities across Asia-Pacific, Latin America, Europe, UK, and North America, Juspay is strategically positioned to reshape the Middle Eastern payments landscape. The company plans to grow its regional team, specifically targeting growth in business development, solution engineering, and partnerships.
About Juspay
Juspay is a leading multinational payments technology company, redefining payments for 500+ top global enterprises and banks. Founded in 2012, the company processes over 300 million daily transactions, exceeding an annualized total payment volume (TPV) of $1 trillion with 99.999% reliability. Headquartered in Bangalore, India, Juspay is powered by a global network of 1500+ payment experts operating across San Francisco, Dublin, São Paulo, Dubai, and Singapore.
Juspay offers a comprehensive product suite for merchants that includes open-source payment orchestration, global payouts, seamless authentication, payment tokenization, fraud & risk management, end-to-end reconciliation, unified payment analytics & more. The company’s offerings also include end-to-end white label payment gateway solutions & real-time payments infrastructure for banks.These products help businesses achieve superior conversion rates, reduce fraud, optimize costs, and deliver seamless customer experiences at scale.
To learn more about Juspay, visit: www.juspay.io
About Dubai International Financial Centre
Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC) is one of the world’s most advanced financial centres, and the leading financial hub for the Middle East, Africa, and South Asia (MEASA), which comprises 77 countries with an approximate population of 3.7bn and an estimated GDP of USD 10.5trn. With a 20-year track record of facilitating trade and investment flows across the MEASA region, the Centre connects these fast-growing markets with the economies of Asia, Europe, and the Americas through Dubai. DIFC is home to an internationally recognised, independent regulator and a proven judicial system with an English common law framework, as well as the region’s largest financial ecosystem of 46,000 professionals working across over 6,900 active registered companies – making up the largest and most diverse pool of industry talent in the region.Comprising a variety of world-renowned retail and dining venues, a dynamic art and culture scene, residential apartments, hotels, and public spaces, DIFC continues to be one of Dubai’s most sought-after business and lifestyle destinations.For further information, please visit our website: difc.ae
Input Output CEO and founder Charles Hoskinson announced a deal to get LayerZero ported over to the Cardano blockchain during a keynote speech at Consensus Hong Kong on Thursday.
LayerZero is a blockchain aimed at powering institutional-grade markets that received investment from Citadel Securities on Wednesday.
The announcement comes alongside the rollout of Midnight’s mainnet, which was also revealed on Thursday morning.
Hoskinson, who was comically wearing a McDonalds uniform in a nod to the recent market downturn said: “The industry is not healthy. S*** is getting real. Twitter is a nuclear dumpster fire. Sentiment is at an all time low.”
But he insisted it was a micro downturn, and “the macro remains bullish.”
“And to prove it, I’m excited to announce our partnership with LayerZero,” he said. “We’re bringing USDCx to Cardano with a launch date set, complete with broad wallet and exchange support. This means stablecoins with true privacy and immutability, powered by zero-knowledge tech. It’s institutional-grade, and it’s happening now — alongside Midnight’s mainnet rollout. Get ready, folks. This changes everything.”
UPDATE (Feb. 12, 2026, 02:21 UTC): Adds additional information and commentary from Charles Hoskinson.
Peer-to-peer crypto exchange Paxful has been ordered to pay $4 million after admitting it knowingly profited from criminals who used the crypto platform due to its lack of anti-money laundering checks.
The Justice Department said on Wednesday that Paxful was sentenced to pay the fine after pleading guilty in December to conspiring to promote illegal prostitution, knowingly transmitting funds derived from crime, and violating anti-money laundering requirements.
“Paxful profited from moving money for criminals that it attracted by touting its lack of anti-money laundering controls and failure to comply with applicable money-laundering laws, all while knowing that these criminals were engaged in fraud, extortion, prostitution and commercial sex trafficking,” said Andrew Tysen Duva, the assistant attorney general of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division.
Prosecutors said that from January 2017 to September 2019, Paxful facilitated over 26 million trades worth nearly $3 billion in value and collected more than $29.7 million in revenue.
The Justice Department said Paxful had agreed that the appropriate criminal penalty was $112.5 million, but prosecutors determined the company didn’t have the ability to pay more than $4 million.
Paxful made millions from illegal prostitution ads
The Justice Department said Paxful marketed itself as a platform that didn’t require customer information and presented fake anti-money laundering policies that it knew “were not implemented or enforced.”
According to prosecutors, one of Paxful’s customers was the classified advertising site Backpage, which authorities shut down due to hosting ads for illegal prostitution.
“Paxful’s founders boasted about the ‘Backpage Effect,’ which enabled the business to grow,” the Justice Department said, adding that Paxful’s collaboration with Backpage and a similar site between 2015 and 2022 saw the crypto platform earn $2.7 million in profits.
Related: Crypto scam mastermind gets 20 years for $73M pig butchering scheme
Paxful shut down its operations in November and, in a now-deleted blog post in October, said the decision was due to “the lasting impact of historic misconduct by former co-founders Ray Youssef and Artur Schaback prior to 2023, combined with unsustainable operational costs from extensive compliance remediation efforts.”
Youssef said in response to Paxful’s post that the company “should have closed down when I left the company two years ago.”
Schaback, who is also Paxful’s former chief technology officer, pleaded guilty in July 2024 to conspiring to fail to maintain an effective anti-money laundering program.
Schaback is awaiting sentencing, with a California judge agreeing in December to move a meeting on his sentencing from January to May as prosecutors said he is continuing to provide information for the government’s investigation into Paxful, “which may bear on the government’s sentencing recommendation.”
US authorities have not publicly named or charged Youssef in connection with Paxful.
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Coinbase has unveiled a wallet infrastructure designed to let AI agents spend, earn, and trade crypto autonomously. The feature, dubbed Agentic Wallets, builds on the AgentKit framework introduced in November 2024 and aims to push agents from answering questions to taking concrete actions in the market. The system enables developers to embed wallets into agents, enabling tasks such as monitoring DeFi positions, rebalancing portfolios, paying for compute and API access, and participating in creator economies. Core to this rollout is x402, Coinbase’s payments protocol built for autonomous AI use cases, which has reportedly processed 50 million transactions to date.
Agentic Wallets are designed to operate across networks, including the Ethereum layer-2 network Base, where agents can manage positions and execute strategies wherever opportunities exist. The approach envisions a future where agents autonomously optimize yields, rebalance liquidity, and deploy capital without requiring explicit, real-time approvals, provided permissions and controls are preconfigured by users. This marks a shift from AI assistants that merely advise to agents that act, according to Coinbase engineers Erik Reppel and Josh Nickerson in a Wednesday post announcing the development.
“The next generation of agents won’t just advise — they’ll act,” Reppel and Nickerson wrote, detailing plans for agents to perform a range of functions from monitoring yields across protocols to executing trades on Base and managing liquidity positions around the clock. They described a scenario in which an agent detects a more favorable opportunity at 3 a.m., rebalances automatically, and does so without explicit approval because user permissions and safety controls are already in place.
AI agents now operable on the Bitcoin Lightning Network
Beyond Ethereum’s Base, Lightning Labs—the team behind Bitcoin’s Layer-2 Lightning Network—rolled out a new toolset enabling AI agents to transact on Lightning through the L402 protocol standard. The update also allows AI agents to run a Lightning node and manage a Lightning wallet containing native Bitcoin (BTC) without accessing private keys. This development broadens the scope for autonomous financial activity on Bitcoin’s network, providing a parallel pathway for agents to engage with programmable money at the base layer’s second tier.
The push toward agent-enabled wallets comes alongside broader industry activity. Crypto.com CEO Kris Marszalek announced ai.com, a platform intended to let users create personal AI agents to perform everyday tasks on their behalf. The capability ranges from managing emails and scheduling meetings to canceling subscriptions, shopping tasks, and even trip planning. Marszalek described a spectrum of tasks that AI agents could handle, illustrating how these tools might eventually operate as your digital proxy across daily routines.
Why crypto leaders are embracing agentic AI
Industry executives have long warned that AI could redefine how value is exchanged online. In late January, Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire suggested billions of AI agents could transact with crypto and stablecoins for everyday payments within three to five years. Former Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao has echoed a similar sentiment, arguing that a native currency for AI agents is likely to be crypto, capable of supporting tasks from purchasing event tickets to paying restaurant bills. These public statements reflect a shared belief that programmable money and autonomous agents will converge to enable more fluid, real-time financial interactions.
At a higher level, the convergence of AI with decentralized finance and payments ecosystems is driving experimentation around agent autonomy. Google’s recent Universal Commerce Protocol, announced in January, is designed to power agentic commerce by enabling agents to initiate transfers on a user’s behalf, with Google Pay acting as the default payment handler for USD-denominated transactions. The protocol signals a broader push in the tech sector to enable AI-driven commerce that can operate across apps, devices, and payment rails without constant human oversight.
“Build agents that monitor yields across protocols, execute trades on Base and manage liquidity positions 24/7. Your agent detects a better yield opportunity at 3am? It rebalances automatically, no approval needed because you’ve already set permissions and controls.”
As these capabilities mature, momentum in the space is likely to hinge on two dimensions: the robustness of autonomous decision-making and the security of permissioning and governance models. Agentic Wallets must balance the convenience of automated actions with safeguards to prevent unintended risk exposure. The ongoing conversations around risk controls and regulatory alignment will shape how broadly such wallets are adopted by retail and institutional users alike.
Market context
The emergence of autonomous wallets sits within a broader cycle of increased on-chain programmability and the maturation of smart contract-enabled finance. As liquidity provision, yield optimization, and creator economy participation become more automation-friendly, the appetite for self-operating agents grows among developers and institutions alike. The convergence of AI tooling with established networks like Base and the Lightning Network underscores a dual-track approach: one path leverages scalable, smart-contract-enabled ecosystems, while the other emphasizes fast, low-friction payments on Bitcoin’s secondary layer. Regulatory clarity and ETF-related flows in traditional markets are likely to influence how aggressively capital participates in these early-stage, automation-centric use cases.
Why it matters
Agentic Wallets represent a tangible step toward programmable money that can autonomously allocate capital, monitor risk, and adjust exposure across multiple protocols. If successful, the approach could reduce the overhead of manual trading and portfolio management, enabling more people to experiment with sophisticated strategies without in-depth technical know-how. The ability to manage DeFi positions and pay for compute or data access autonomously also has implications for developers building AI-powered financial tools, potentially accelerating product development cycles and new business models in the crypto space.
The integration with Bitcoin’s Lightning Network adds a separate layer of significance. By enabling AI agents to transact via L402 on Lightning and hold a Lightning-compatible wallet, the ecosystem expands the set of on-chain and off-chain rails that can be orchestrated by autonomous programs. This broadens practical use cases for AI agents—from micro-payments to cross-network arbitrage—while testing the limits of permissioned automation and the user controls that balance safety with convenience. Taken together, these developments suggest a future in which agents operate across multiple rails with varying latency, fees, and settlement characteristics.
For users and builders, the key takeaway is a shift in how wallets are used and who controls them. Agentic Wallets place agency in the hands of AI-enabled programs, but with computerized governance that requires explicit permissions ahead of time. The risk-management framework around such permissions will be critical to its sustainable adoption, particularly as public enthusiasm for automation intersects with concerns about security and misuse. The coming months are likely to reveal the first generation of real-world deployments and decision-making heuristics that will define the role of agents in everyday crypto activity.
What to watch next
- Expansion of Agentic Wallets beyond Base to other Ethereum layer-2s and compatible networks, including any developer updates from Coinbase.
- Tracking adoption and volume on the x402 payments protocol, including any reported milestones beyond the 50 million transactions already noted.
- Broader deployment of AI agents on Bitcoin via the Lightning Network using L402, and the integration of wallets with Lightning node operations.
- Progress and practical traction for ai.com by Crypto.com, including user adoption metrics and featured autonomous tasks.
- Further details on Google’s Universal Commerce Protocol and collaboration milestones that enable agent-initiated transfers and payments in real-world settings.
Sources & verification
- Coinbase: Introducing AgentKit — developer-facing overview and the roadmap for embedding wallets into autonomous agents.
- Coinbase Developer Platform status updates on AgentKit and Agentic Wallets deployment.
- Lightning Labs: L402 protocol standard enabling AI agents to transact on Lightning and manage Lightning-enabled wallets.
- Crypto.com: ai.com platform launch and its scope for personal AI agents performing daily tasks.
- Google: Universal Commerce Protocol and Agent Payment Protocol 2 for agent-enabled transfers in commerce.
Key figures and next steps
Coinbase’s public framing of Agentic Wallets as a step toward “agents that act” follows a broader wave of AI-powered automation across crypto layers. The combination of AgentKit, x402, and multi-network reach—spanning Base and the Lightning Network—provides a multi-faceted testbed for autonomous financial activity. Investors and builders will be watching for evidence of sustainable user authorization models, transparent risk controls, and clear metrics around automated yield optimization and liquidity management. As the ecosystem experiments with agent-based transactions, market participants will assess whether these autonomous wallets can reliably operate without compromising security or user intent.
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