Paris Saint-Germain Becomes First Soccer Team to Validate a Blockchain

Hi NoRamp Community,

Daily News:

1) Mastercard & Swoo Pay Partnering to Offer Loyalty Rewards in Crypto

2) Paris Saint-Germain - First Soccer Team to Validate a Blockchain

3) Wormhole Continues Zero-Knowledge Push With AMD Collab

4) Green Dot Partners With Dayforce For On-Demand Wage Access

5) BankiFi & Praetura Partner to Expand Small Business Funding Access

Mastercard & Swoo Pay Partnering to Offer Loyalty Rewards in Crypto:

• Mastercard is collaborating with Swoo Pay, a mobile payments app focused on emerging markets, to offer loyalty rewards in cryptocurrency, aiming to fill the gaps in the global payments landscape left by services like Google Pay.

• The partnership targets regions such as Africa and Southeast Asia, especially areas with a high concentration of affordable Huawei smartphones, which lack access to Google services due to US sanctions.

• The rewards program allows users to earn cryptocurrency as cashback on purchases, which can be immediately converted to other cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin or USDC, with a pilot in January involving 17,000 participants and offering a 5% crypto cashback scheme.

Paris Saint-Germain - First Soccer Team to Validate a Blockchain:

• Paris Saint-Germain (PSG), a French soccer giant, will become a network validator for the Chiliz Chain blockchain, which hosts its PSG fan tokens, and use the generated revenue to buy back the tokens regularly.

• This is the first time a sports club is getting involved as a blockchain validator, with validators being entities that manage blockchain nodes, securing the network through functions like transaction verification and smart-contract authorization.

• PSG's fan token, introduced in September 2018, has a market cap of $28 million, and the buy-back program aims to regularly refresh the club's fan token reserves and build a sustainable digital economy around them. The Chiliz native token (CHZ) rose by 10% to $0.133 on the news, with its market cap rising to $1.15 billion.

Wormhole Continues Zero-Knowledge Push With AMD Collab:

• AMD, a leading semiconductor maker, is partnering with Wormhole, an interoperability app, to provide hardware and advice for expanding its zero-knowledge infrastructure, aiming to support Wormhole's growth in securely moving assets across over 30 different blockchains.

• Wormhole plans to use AMD hardware accelerators for "light-client" integrations that run zero-knowledge proofs with fewer resources, enhancing the protocol's ability to verify transactions without revealing their contents, a process that is currently energy-intensive.

• AMD's FPGA semiconductors are expected to help Wormhole scale its infrastructure through parallelization, enabling more efficient processing of zero-knowledge proofs, with the U55C and U250 accelerator cards being particularly well-suited for scaling these applications cost-effectively.

Green Dot Partners With Dayforce For On-Demand Wage Access:

• Digital bank and FinTech firm Green Dot has partnered with Dayforce to power its on-demand pay solution, Dayforce Wallet, serving as the U.S. banking provider and offering a range of services to employers and employees.

• Dayforce Wallet allows employees to access their earned wages instantly through a mobile app, using linked prepaid cards for purchases and fee-free cash withdrawals at a growing network of ATMs.

• The collaboration aims to provide greater financial empowerment and accessibility to employees, with Green Dot facilitating banking services for Dayforce Wallet users in the U.S., and both companies committed to making on-demand pay a norm across industries.

BankiFi & Praetura Partner to Expand Small Business Funding Access:

• FinTech BankiFi has partnered with financier Praetura to develop a lending-as-a-service solution for small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the U.K., aimed at providing growth funding to SMEs that do not meet traditional bank requirements.

• The platform, powered by BankiFi's technology, allows Praetura to offer asset and invoice finance to SMEs on behalf of banks, with Praetura taking on the initial investment risk and banks positioned as the primary finance providers.

• The partnership is an evolution of BankiFi's existing SME payment solutions and marks a new era for SME lending, focusing on innovation, collaboration, and meeting diverse business needs, with BankiFi continuing its commitment to revitalizing banks' relationships with SMEs.

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