Global firms such as Amazon, IKEA, Mercedes-Benz and Walmart are cutting out traditional financial institutions in favor of financial technology, or “fintech” — startups offering everything from banking and credit to insurance. Embedded finance, a term for companies integrating software to offer services like “buy now pay later” at check out, are poised to disrupt the status quo, according to Reuters, which reports that while “banks are still behind most of the transactions,” analysts are warning that as they “get pushed further away from the front end of the finance chain” they’ll be frozen out of lucrative consumer data mining. Continue reading Embedded Finance Becomes More Popular Across Industries

The Justice Department charged Huawei and its chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou with the theft of trade secrets, obstructing a criminal investigation and evading economic sanctions on Iran. The charges are part of an aggressive move by the U.S. to block the Chinese telecom firm suspected of undermining national interests. The charges are based on Huawei’s internal emails describing a plan to steal T-Mobile testing equipment. Internal memos also link Meng to bank fraud to evade sanctions against Iran. Continue reading Justice Department Levies Multiple Charges Against Huawei

An international team of law enforcement agencies and security firms just took down “Avalanche,” a botnet that has been engaged in phishing attacks and at least 17 different malware families since at least late 2009. The team took offline more than 221 servers and more than 800,000 domain names used by Avalanche, and conducted searches and arrests in five countries, according to a statement released by the FBI and U.S. Department of Justice. Avalanche malware impacted victims in over 180 countries. Continue reading International Law Enforcement Takes Down Avalanche Botnet