payments

U.S. Senator Steve Daines (Republican from Montana, member of the Senate Finance Committee) has officially introduced a 56-page digital asset tax bill, named the "Aligning Digital Assets with Tax Principles Act" (ADAPT Act). The bill aims to establish clearer tax rules for scenarios such as stablecoin payments, network fees, staking, and lending, and plans to extend existing tax rules like wash sales and constructive sales to apply to digital assets.The core provisions of the bill state that taxpayers generally do not need to recognize gains or losses when using compliant U.S. dollar stablecoins to purchase goods and services, while exempting brokers from information reporting obligations for qualifying consumer transactions; however, this exemption does not apply to traders and market makers. The bill also extends wash sale rules and constructive sale rules to digital assets, with compliant stablecoins excluded from the constructive sale provisions to limit loss harvesting behavior in crypto assets.Additionally, the bill proposes to exempt digital assets used to pay for network, transaction, or gas fees of $10 or less from gain or loss recognition and allows qualifying digital asset traders and dealers to choose to account for them at fair market value. The bill also stipulates rules for income sources from staking and mining, a non-recognition framework for digital asset lending, a safe harbor for foreign investors' transactions, and definitions for digital asset classifications; most provisions will apply to tax years or transactions after December 31, 2026. Previously, the U.S. House Ways and Means Committee passed its own "Digital Asset Tax Certainty Act" on September 16 by a vote of 38 to 5.

Aztec Network developer Aztec Labs has relaunched the self-custody wallet zk.money, which can hide payment amounts, balances, and recipient information through the Aztec Network, and supports transfers via readable names or links. Users can deposit DAI, USDC, or USDT from Ethereum, where USDC and USDT will be converted to DAI.Deposit records can still be publicly tracked, while subsequent transaction activities remain private. The early Alpha version stipulates that single deposits, payments, and withdrawals are all below $2,500 and screens addresses according to sanction policies. The software has not yet completed a comprehensive audit and carries security risks.

According to Cointelegraph, the European Central Bank (ECB) has announced the launch of a new round of applications for the digital euro innovation platform, inviting fintech companies, payment institutions, and other organizations to explore AI agents participating in digital euro payments.The project will be divided into two parts: practical testing and future application seminars. The practical testing will take place from January to June 2027, where participants will develop prototypes for electronic receipts, multi-party transactions, conditional payments, and more.The seminars will explore AI payments, micropayments, machine-to-machine transactions, and the application of the digital euro in public services. In addition, the ECB has selected 36 banks and payment institutions, including Revolut, Stripe, and Deutsche Bank, to participate in another 12-month digital euro pilot, which is scheduled to launch in the second half of 2027. The final issuance of the digital euro still requires EU legislation and subsequent decisions from the ECB.

HashKey, a digital asset financial services group, is evaluating more acquisition targets, strategic investment opportunities, and potential collaborations in Asia and the Middle East.Eric Zhu, Chief Financial Officer of HashKey, stated in an interview with Mergermarket that capital deployment over the next 12 to 24 months will focus on transactions and liquidity, custody, clearing and settlement, payments, and tokenization, with priority markets including Singapore and Southeast Asia, Japan, and the Middle East. HashKey is evolving from a single trading platform into a comprehensive provider of digital asset and financial services infrastructure.

The fee-sharing platform Paid announced that its web application portal is now online. Users can claim eligible new fees, and the related assets will be distributed according to the quoted assets corresponding to the fees, which are mostly SOL.Paid stated that other claiming methods will be introduced later, including through private messages or tagging the official account in posts. X Money payments are still suspended, and the recovery time will be notified separately; users' historical balances will be retained independently, and the team is developing a separate claiming plan for this portion of the balance, hoping to restore X Money payments in the future.

The Circle Foundation announced two grants to the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the World Food Programme (WFP) to explore the application of digital payments and digital financial infrastructure in humanitarian aid and development projects.The Circle Foundation stated that the relevant programs will study how to utilize digital payments and regulated payment-type stablecoins to disburse funds to aid recipients more quickly, transparently, and at a lower cost.For the UNDP, the grant will be used to establish and operate a "Digital Asset Innovation Pool," helping country offices expand previous digital payment pilot projects conducted in Syria, Haiti, Guatemala, and Gambia from single projects to regular project execution, and provide support such as regulation, operations, and beneficiary protection; this mechanism will not replace traditional banking channels but will serve as a complementary option outside the existing payment system.For the WFP, the grant will support the establishment of governance, risk management, funding, reconciliation systems, and compliance tools necessary for stablecoin payments, and integrate local fintech and mobile payment services. Over the next three years, the WFP plans to test 2 to 3 payment channels connecting its payment system with local financial service providers and markets to assess the performance of stablecoin payments in terms of efficiency, transparency, and resilience.

Bitcoin News posted on the X platform that Block has joined the x402 Foundation and is providing Bitcoin Lightning Network support for the AI agent-oriented open payment standard x402.x402 embeds payments directly into HTTP, allowing AI agents to autonomously pay for goods, services, and other agent tool fees. Block stated that the Lightning Network is suitable for the billions of instant, low-cost micropayments expected to be generated by the agent economy.

The six major banks in Canada announced a joint exploration of a tokenized Canadian dollar deposit system, aimed at accelerating the transfer of funds between financial institutions and ultimately connecting with other digital asset programs. TD Bank announced on Tuesday that the Bank of Montreal, Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, National Bank of Canada, Royal Bank of Canada, Scotiabank, and Toronto-Dominion Bank Group have jointly formed this joint venture project, with the possibility of more banks joining in the future.The first phase of the project will focus on promoting the transfer of tokenized deposits among participating banks. The parties stated in a joint statement that the first phase aims to enable efficient circulation of tokenized deposits among Canadian financial institutions, with the long-term goal of connecting with other emerging digital asset programs. Tokenized deposits are digital representations of funds and assets already held by banks, differing from independent stablecoins issued by crypto companies; this system allows for 24/7 programmable payments within a regulated banking system.Canada's move comes as global banks compete to put deposits on the blockchain. In the United States, regional banks are building a shared tokenized deposit network, while JPMorgan, Citigroup, and Wells Fargo have also launched their own institutional products. Recently, Swift has begun testing cross-border payments for tokenized deposits. Additionally, the Bank of Canada, Royal Bank of Canada, and Toronto-Dominion Bank completed the Project Samara test in March this year, issuing, trading, and settling CAD 100 million (approximately USD 71 million) bonds on a distributed ledger; in May, Shopify and National Bank of Canada also supported the launch of a regulated digital Canadian dollar.

Cardano has joined the official x402 software development kit, allowing developers to enable applications or AI agents to use ADA or Cardano network tokens to pay for online services. x402 transforms the basic idle "402 Payment Required" response in web pages into a checkout process built into internet requests: the service provider returns the price and payment instructions, the agent signs the payment, and after transaction verification, the required data or computing power can be obtained.This means that AI agents can purchase individual datasets on demand when preparing reports, without the need for manual account registration, entering credit card information, or subscribing to monthly fees. x402 was created by Coinbase in 2025 and subsequently contributed to an organization under the Linux Foundation, with members including Visa, Mastercard, Stripe, Google, and Amazon Web Services. Solana, XRP Ledger, and several Ethereum-compatible networks have previously supported this standard.Engineers from the Cardano Foundation have built client and server software for payment requests based on the specifications passed in June, as well as a facilitator responsible for verifying and submitting transactions. The first version supports TypeScript, with Python support planned for later release. Facilitator documentation shows that it has completed a real transaction on the Cardano pre-production network, but it has not yet run on the mainnet, nor has it demonstrated scenarios where agents use ADA to pay for commercial services on a large scale.

Circle's public chain Arc has officially announced that it has launched proxy payments.Its Facilitator Service provides a hosted access path for x402 developers, allowing the acceptance of USDC and supporting on-chain settlements on Arc, Base, and Polygon; this path does not require a Relayer key or a separate Gas fee wallet.

Payments industry publication PaymentsJournal has published a deep-dive article, Navigating Latin America’s Complex Payment Ecosystem, examining the region’s evolving payments landscape, including domestic payment rails, cross-border settlement, stablecoins and payment orchestration. The article draws on PhotonPay’s research report, The Next Payment Infrastructure in LATAM, as a reference for its analysis. The article highlights the highly fragmented nature of Latin America’s payments market, where countries such as Brazil, Argentina and Mexico have developed distinct payment systems, currencies, providers and regulatory frameworks. At the same time, stablecoins are gaining traction in cross-border payments, offering an additional layer for liquidity and settlement, while local payment rails remain essential for reaching businesses and consumers in individual markets. PaymentsJournal argues that the next phase of payment infrastructure in Latin America may not be about creating a single regional rail, but about connecting diverse local payment systems, currencies and global liquidity through a more unified infrastructure layer. In this model, stablecoins can facilitate cross-border movement and settlement of value, while payment orchestration connects and manages the local rails, providers and fund flows businesses need to navigate. PhotonPay’s research explores these infrastructure trends and the changing dynamics of payments across the region.

According to Cointelegraph, Juan Marchetti, the Director of the Trade in Services and Investment Division of the World Trade Organization (WTO), stated at the event in Geneva for the release of the WTO stablecoin trade research report that the key obstacle to the widespread adoption of stablecoins in international trade is not technology, but rather the lack of a regulatory framework and its fragmentation.He cited a report from the Financial Stability Board (FSB) in October 2025, which indicated that among the 28 jurisdictions surveyed, only 11 (about 39%) have completed the establishment of a regulatory framework for stablecoins.The WTO report shows that stablecoins currently account for only 3% of the total global international payments, but from 2020 to mid-2024, the scale of stablecoin cross-border payments has grown by 35 times. The report also points out that stablecoins are expected to improve five major pain points in international trade financing: high costs, low speed, limited access, lack of transparency, and foreign exchange conversion.

According to the Nikkei, SWIFT has launched a pilot project in collaboration with 17 banks including Citigroup, Mitsubishi UFJ, Wells Fargo, Bank of New York Mellon, UBS, and BNP Paribas to test tokenized deposit cross-border payments.The goal of this pilot is to achieve 24/7 instant transfers between different banks and reduce the cost of cross-border payments.

B.AI platform announces that its multi-chain ecosystem has completed an important expansion, and now officially supports login and payment functions via OKX Wallet on EVM chains (web plugin and app).Starting today, when users utilize the AI model services on the B.AI platform, they can directly switch to EVM chains for login and on-chain payments through OKX Wallet, in addition to the existing TRON network, seamlessly achieving intelligent dialogue, deep creation, and Web3 payment interactions.This integration further broadens the Web3 user entry points for B.AI, providing developers and AI enthusiasts with a more flexible and low-threshold on-chain experience path, facilitating the deep integration of AI and the Web3 ecosystem.

The report from the Cornell Brooks School Tech Policy Institute (BTPI) shows that if the United States implements a minimum exemption for Bitcoin and cryptocurrency payments under $300, the federal net revenue is expected to increase by $859 million over 10 years, with a range of $172 million to $2.58 billion, assuming the number of digital asset payment users remains at 5.4 million.The bill S. 2207 proposed by U.S. Senator Cynthia Lummis aims to exempt capital gains tax on related payments, with an annual tax-free capital gains limit of $5,000. Some other legislative initiatives propose to limit the scope of the exemption to regulated stablecoins, and discussions are still ongoing. BTPI states that the current capital gains tax and small transaction reporting requirements suppress daily Bitcoin payments. If the transaction-level tax and reporting burdens are removed, it could increase Bitcoin payments and demand; under the current adoption level, the recent impact on Bitcoin prices and taxes may be small, while the long-term impact depends on factors such as the scale of payments.

DBS and Citibank's New York office completed a cross-border payment in US dollars between Singapore and the United States on September 5 using tokenized deposits through the Swift Digital Ledger. The transaction was executed over the weekend and took only a few minutes, while traditional cross-border payments typically take up to two business days, allowing businesses to avoid losing time due to time zone differences and weekend gaps. This is the second confirmed real-time application of the ledger, following HSBC and Standard Chartered's completion of the first real-time tokenized deposit cross-border transaction in August. Swift announced the ledger's preliminary availability on July 9, with 17 banks ready to pilot it, and DBS is the only bank headquartered in Asia among the 12 core design group members. DBS Group Chief Operating Officer Rachel Chew stated that the Swift Digital Ledger is connecting traditional banking infrastructure with emerging digital networks to drive the practical application of tokenized currency from experimentation. Citibank's Head of South Asia Services Mridula Iyer noted that weekend real-time transactions prove that around-the-clock cross-border payments have become a reality. DBS will launch DBS Token Services in 2024, offering 24/7 programmable instant value transfer services.

Uzbekistan has launched a pilot project to test government securities-backed som-pegged stablecoin payments. The National Project Agency (NAPP) announced on Monday that it has registered Humo Digital as a special mechanism participant under joint regulation with the central bank. This pilot will test the issuance, circulation, and redemption of HUMO tokens, with each token pegged to 1 Uzbek som. According to NAPP, over 20 merchants are already prepared to accept HUMO payments, and the project will also integrate payment processing and blockchain infrastructure from participating banks, with licensed cryptocurrency exchange Asterium as a project partner. The Central Bank of Uzbekistan stated that the initial trial will last for 12 months, with a total project duration capped at 3 years. Regulators will assess the adequacy and security of the token collateral, cybersecurity, consumer protection, anti-money laundering controls, and financial and price stability risks. This pilot follows the framework approved in November 2025, when Uzbekistan indicated plans to allow stablecoin payment experiments under a sandbox mechanism while providing relevant terms for tokenized stocks and bonds.

According to Cointelegraph, DBS Bank has partnered with Citibank to utilize a blockchain-based ledger from Swift to achieve instant, round-the-clock cross-border dollar payments through tokenized deposits.

SWIFT service provider Bottomline announced a collaboration with the blockchain infrastructure project Chainlink to enable over 600 bank clients in its network to access blockchain-based cross-border settlements. Bottomline processes over $16 trillion in payments annually and serves 1,200 financial institutions and 10,000 enterprises.Through this integration, banks can continue to use the ISO 20022 standard to send payment instructions, with Chainlink's infrastructure connecting the instructions to blockchain settlements. Chainlink's Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol (CCIP) supports the transfer of tokenized value across different blockchain networks, while Chainlink's Runtime Environment (CRE) is responsible for payment processes, transaction routing, and operational change coordination.CCIP has been recording mainnet activity since July 2023 and is currently connected to over 60 blockchain networks. Chainlink's Project Pangea has covered more than 50 banking institutions in Europe and South Korea, with participants managing assets totaling over $10 trillion, and the project's goals include achieving T+0 settlement for foreign exchange transactions.