🗞 Key News of the Week: main developments covered from September 28–October 3

🗞 Key News of the Week: main developments covered from September 28–October 3

🇧🇷 Brazil’s betting ban provides no licence-fee refunds or compensation for operators. Meanwhile, Pix transaction counts for September 26–28 fell 10% against the average for corresponding days in the previous four weeks. That does not establish that the ban caused the decline.

🏴‍☠️ Bitget’s wallet breach disrupted withdrawals. Its initial $351.6 million loss estimate was subsequently revised to approximately $388 million. The exchange said cold wallets were unaffected, its Protection Fund would cover losses, and withdrawals were being restored in stages.

🇺🇸 U.S. prosecutors froze $84 million in Capstone accounts, alleging unlicensed money transmission and conversion of stolen cash into stablecoins. FT linked some payment flows to Tether and Bitfinex through EQIBank. Capstone denies wrongdoing; Tether and Bitfinex deny knowledge of the alleged fraud.

🇺🇦 Binance ended UAH deposits and withdrawals through Fiat Trade UAH and delisted USDT/UAH on September 28. Eligible hryvnia balances were scheduled for automatic conversion into USDT by September 30 at UAH 46.5 per USDT. The announcement gave no reason for withdrawing these services.

🇪🇺 The European System of Central Banks proposed a MiCA overhaul: centralized CASP supervision under ESMA, revised stablecoin reserve requirements, and EU-wide rules for staking and crypto lending. These are recommendations to the European Commission—not new rules already in force.

🇧🇾 Belarus’s first two crypto banks obtained High-Tech Park resident status. This is not yet full authorization to operate: inclusion in the National Bank’s register is also required.

🇵🇱🇸🇰 BLIK expanded on both sides of the checkout. mBank rolled it out to its Slovak customers, while Stripe added it to dynamic payment methods for merchants in more than 30 countries. International merchants can offer BLIK to Polish shoppers without building a separate integration.

🇧🇷🇵🇰 EBANX is preparing its Pakistan entry with JazzCash and Easypaisa, followed by Raast. In LATAM, it is bringing Apple Pay token decryption into its own infrastructure. Company-reported early data showed 94.4% approval rates—11 percentage points above non-tokenized card transactions.

🇪🇺 A GCI study estimated unregulated online GGR in the EU at €91.6 billion in 2025, or 72% of the online segment. Commissioned by Campaign for Fairer Gambling, these are the study’s estimates—not figures for the entire gambling industry.

🌎 PhotonPay’s LATAM report highlights a multi-rail future: cards, A2A, wallets, cash and stablecoins coexisting. Faster national systems do not automatically solve cross-border interoperability. The opportunity lies in connecting local acceptance, liquidity, FX and settlement—not replacing everything with one rail.

📊 BCG highlights pressure on payment providers: operating costs grew 9% annually over the past three years, versus 7% for revenue. In its merchant survey, 79% reported higher payment costs over five years. Only 12% combined a dedicated team, a profit-center mandate, and dynamic orchestration or a deliberately chosen single-acquirer model.

#news #digest

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