Snippings

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But the heart of Trump’s newfound wealth is a rapidly growing cryptocurrency empire built by the president and his family. According to a Financial Times investigation, this business has already reaped more than $1bn in pre-tax profits over the past year, in part thanks to a crypto boom fuelled by the administration’s own industry-friendly policies.

From: How the Trump companies made $1bn from crypto.

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Walmart has announced AI tools, including generative AI-powered ‘Sparky,’ which is available on its app to assist customers with product suggestions or summarizing product reviews, among other options.
The company’s growing investment in AI is also aimed at closing the gap with online behemoth Amazon, which had a head start with its chatbot, Rufus, a Gen AI-powered shopping assistant that answers various shopping queries.
Walmart’s tie-up with the ChatGPT-maker follows a similar partnership OpenAI announced last month with Etsy and Shopify (SHOP.TO), opens new tab.
About 15% of total referral traffic for Walmart in September was from ChatGPT, up from 9.5% in August, data from SimilarWeb showed.

From: Walmart partners with OpenAI for ChatGPT shopping feature | Reuters.

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Commercial banks will then have an important, useful and distinct function in society as the vaults that look after identity, not money. I wasn’t the first person to say that identity is the new money, although I may have been the most persistent and annoying, but as time passes it seems to be a more and more accurate description of the future. I imagine that most forward-looking banks already have a digital identity strategy in place and are already developing new products and services to take advantage of this new era, but for those who don’t I’ll post a few ideas on the topic here.

From: Digital != crypto != virtual – by David G.W. Birch.

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Romance scams drained £108 million from unsuspecting Brits in 2024, according to the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), which is now urging banks and payment firms to step up their efforts to protect customers. These scams, which rose 9% last year, see fraudsters weaving false romantic or friendly connections—often through dating apps and social media—to manipulate victims into sending money. In one shocking case, a victim lost more than £428,000; another made over 400 payments to a scammer, parting with £72,000 before the deceit was uncovered.

From: Love’s Costly Con – Payments:Unpacked.

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German researchers have discovered unknown persons are using bitcoin’s blockchain to store and link to child abuse imagery, potentially putting the cryptocurrency in jeopardy.

From: Child abuse imagery found within bitcoin’s blockchain | Bitcoin | The Guardian.

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In another example, OpenAI has pitched companies on allowing visitors to sign into their websites using their ChatGPT credentials, just as how people can sign in to websites using their Google or Facebook accounts, said a person involved in conversations. The offering may be of particular interest to startups offering AI-powered features built on OpenAI’s models.

From: OpenAI’s Growing Ecosystem Play — The Information.

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Extra patrols in car parks are taking place daily amid a rise of people falling victim to QR code scams, a council has said.

Cheltenham Borough Council (CBC) officers are inspecting the town’s payment machines to remove the QR code stickers, following multiple reports of scammers attempting to trick residents into making payments.

From: ‘Huge increase’ in QR scams across England spark urgent warning – BBC News.

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Action Fraud reports that fake QR codes have cost UK victims nearly £3.5 million in just one year, with numbers rising as criminals continue to target pubs, restaurants, and even car parks.

From: Fake QR codes in bars and restaurants cost patrons £3.5 million – Watch Your Pocket.

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It’s no surprise that agentic commerce (enabling AI to act on behalf of shoppers) was much discussed. Checkout announced a pilot with a major UK retailer to place orders via Microsoft Co-Pilot but I suspect the bigger question isn’t technology, it’s business: who pays whom, and how value is shared between merchant, agent (Microsoft), and Checkout. Guillaume Pousaz was clear: Checkout’s interest is not in charging higher fees, but in enabling increased volume.

Merchants are cautious. With vendor announcements coming thick and fast, one very large global marketplace said: “If we have to integrate to 20 different platforms, adoption will stall.” But with 500M+ ChatGPT users globally, the pressure is mounting: AI recommendations (and how product feeds are exposed) may become as critical as SEO.

From: 9 Key Insights from the Checkout.com Conference in Venice.

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Amidst a 4,700% surge in AI-driven traffic to US retail sites, Visa says its Trusted Agent Protocol aims to address the unique challenges facing agent-driven commerce, ushering in a new era where AI can search, compare and pay on behalf of consumers, while ensuring trust between merchants and AI agents.

Developed with Cloudfare, the protocol enables approved agents to securely pass critical information to merchants. This provides a framework for recognising trusted agents with commerce intent and distinguishes them from malicious automation and rogue bots.

Visa says it has received “insightful feedback” from other early partners including Adyen, Ant International, Checkout.com, Coinbase, CyberSource, Elavon, Fiserv, Microsoft, Nuvei, Shopify, Stripe and Worldpay.

With agentic commerce widely predicted to soon become big business, Stripe has been working with OpenAI on its own Agentic Commerce Protocol while Google has lined up more than 60 partners – including Adyen, Coinbase, Mastercard and PayPal – behind its Agent Payments Protocol.

From: Visa launches Trusted Agent Protocol for AI commerce.

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Policy tools could be used to create a two-tiered financial system, which preserves existing human autonomy over their financial affairs, while ringfencing prospective AI agents’ financial autonomy. Drawing on existing frameworks for governance infrastructure (eg Chan et al (2025)), possible regulations might include: (i) mandatory registration of agent-controlled wallets; (ii) enhanced API management; (iii) purpose-restrictions or volume/value caps on agent-controlled wallets; (iv) transaction flagging and escalation mechanisms for unusual agent-initiated activity; or (v) pre-positioned denial of service powers against agents in high-risk situations.

This approach represents a form of ‘reversible unhobbling’: a governance strategy where AI systems are granted access to tools in a controllable, revocable way. If fears about agentic AI prove overstated, such policies may be scaled back.

From: Could financial infrastructure be used to govern AI agents? – Bank Underground.

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