🗞 Key News of the Week: main developments covered from August 10–14

🗞 Key News of the Week: main developments covered from August 10–14

🇲🇾 Wise connected directly to Malaysia’s PayNet infrastructure, enabling DuitNow transfers and QR payments from its app. Users can send money using a phone number or national ID, while real-time beneficiary verification reduces errors and fraud. Direct access to national payment rails also lowers dependence on intermediaries.

🇨🇱 Chile granted “highest urgency” status to its online-betting bill. Foreign platforms already face a 19% digital VAT, including retroactive liabilities, while the proposed framework could bring the nominal GGR tax burden to 23%. Separately, an appeals court established permanent blocking of online casinos, beginning with DNS filtering and continuous monitoring for mirror domains.

🇪🇺 The EU’s AMLA is preparing to supervise approximately 40 high-risk financial institutions directly from 2028. The perimeter may include banks, payment institutions, EMIs and crypto companies. From July 2027, businesses will also find it harder to rely on more flexible national interpretations of KYC and customer due diligence.

🇧🇷 Brazil collected $1.4 billion in gambling-related taxes during the first half of 2026—83% more than a year earlier. At the same time, financial institutions closed 323 accounts suspected of supporting illegal betting during Q1. Detection relied on transaction behaviour, including frequent Pix transfers and payment flows inconsistent with a company’s declared activity.

🇺🇸 Visa failed to have a lawsuit concerning payment processing for Pornhub dismissed. The company is also a defendant in 14 related cases. The decision does not establish Visa’s liability, but it demonstrates how payment providers can face legal exposure not only for moving funds, but also for the activities and content of the merchants they serve.

💳 Visa agreed to acquire BioCatch for $2.4 billion. Its technology analyses up to 3,000 behavioural indicators during a transaction—from how a device is held to whether the user is speaking with a suspicious phone number. Traditional authentication can confirm who is paying; behavioural analytics attempts to determine whether they are acting voluntarily.

🇮🇳 India is considering merchant fees for UPI, potentially charging 0.3–0.5% on transactions above ₹2,000 while exempting smaller merchants and payments. UPI processed 23.6 billion transactions worth $313.5 billion in July. After scaling a free network, India now faces the question of who should finance its infrastructure and anti-fraud investment.

🇯🇵🇧🇷 Crypto withdrawals are becoming slower in exchange for greater control. Japan’s FSA recommended risk-based limits and waiting periods, including restrictions on newly added addresses. Brazil will introduce a 24-hour delay for cross-border and personal-wallet transfers after account funding from January 2027. Transactions totalling $10,000 or more will trigger an automatic hold.

🇰🇷 South Korean police dismantled a third-party bank-account network involving 211 accounts and more than 200 suspects. The accounts were rented to criminal groups and used to receive proceeds from phishing, investment fraud and illegal betting. Recruiters primarily targeted students, unemployed people and homemakers.

🇵🇱 BLIK will begin rejecting payments to illegal online casinos on September 1. Direct integration with the Finance Ministry’s prohibited-domain register will allow transactions to be declined at the authorization stage. The measure will also cover payments routed through foreign settlement agents.

#news #digest
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