The European Commission has fined Alibaba €550 million under the Digital Services Act, the largest penalty issued under the law so far.
The post EU Hits Alibaba With Record $629 Million Fine Over AliExpress Counterfeit Goods appeared first on TechRepublic.
The European Commission has fined Alibaba €550 million under the Digital Services Act, the largest penalty issued under the law so far.
The post EU Hits Alibaba With Record $629 Million Fine Over AliExpress Counterfeit Goods appeared first on TechRepublic.
Uber’s $14.8 billion Delivery Hero acquisition would expand its global delivery business and intensify consolidation across Europe and Asia.
The post Uber’s $14.8B Delivery Hero Deal Expands Its Reach Across Europe, Asia appeared first on TechRepublic.
Uber’s $14.8 billion Delivery Hero acquisition would expand its global delivery business and intensify consolidation across Europe and Asia.
The post Uber’s $14.8B Delivery Hero Deal Expands Its Reach Across Europe, Asia appeared first on TechRepublic.
By Bob Ejodame, VP Growth at PYMSTR
Every iGaming operator knows the sequence. You find a processor willing to take gambling volume. You survive weeks of KYB. You go live. Then, somewhere between month three and month eighteen, one of three things happens: your chargeback ratio drifts past a threshold you were never really in control of, your acquirer gets nervous about the vertical and offboards you with 30 days’ notice, or your funds simply stop arriving on time while “compliance reviews” your account.
None of this is bad luck. It is the predictable output of running a high-risk business on payment rails that often punish high-risk businesses.
In 2026, a growing number of operators have stopped trying to fix this and started asking a better question: why is all of our deposit volume sitting on one fragile rail? The answer isn’t ripping out cards — it’s adding a second rail the card-side risks can’t touch.
For gambling, prediction markets, peptides, nutraceuticals, and adjacent verticals, traditional processing carries four structural costs that no amount of vendor-shopping removes:
1. Chargebacks. Card networks give the cardholder 120+ days to dispute a transaction. In iGaming, “friendly fraud”, a player loses, then disputes the deposit — is endemic. Every chargeback costs the disputed amount, a fee of $15–$40, and a tick against the ratio that determines whether you keep your account. You are, in effect, extending unsecured credit to every player.
2. Rolling reserves. High-risk merchant accounts routinely hold 5–10% of your gross volume for 90–180 days as insurance against those chargebacks. On $500K of monthly volume, that is $25K–$100K of your working capital permanently trapped inside someone else’s balance sheet.
3. Acquirer fragility. Your processor’s willingness to serve you depends on their acquiring bank’s risk appetite, which depends on card scheme pressure, which changes without notice. When the acquirer exits the vertical, every merchant on that pipe loses checkout overnight — regardless of individual conduct.
4. Custody. Between the player’s payment and your payout sits a period where the money is not yours. It is in the processor’s account, subject to their freezes, their reviews, their insolvency.
Fees are the least of it. The real cost is that your revenue infrastructure can be switched off by parties you have never met.
The first wave of “crypto” solutions for high-risk merchants didn’t actually leave card rails. A number of gateways now let customers pay by Visa or Mastercard while the merchant receives stablecoins. It’s a genuinely clever bridge — customers keep their familiar checkout, merchants get crypto settlement.
But look underneath: the card transaction still happens. Somewhere in that stack, an acquiring bank is processing gambling or grey-market card volume, often with minimal merchant verification. That has two consequences.
First, chargebacks still exist. The cardholder’s dispute rights don’t disappear because the merchant settled in USDT. Someone absorbs those disputes, prices them in, or passes them back.
Second, the acquirer risk moves; it doesn’t vanish. Card-scheme rules around high-risk coding and merchant verification are unforgiving. Aggregated high-risk card volume flowing through an acquirer with light KYC is exactly the kind of arrangement that gets shut down abruptly — and when it does, it takes every merchant’s checkout with it. The single point of failure has been relocated from your merchant account to your gateway’s acquiring relationship. That is not resilience. That is someone else holding the detonator.
Fiat-to-crypto bridges are a reasonable tool for merchants whose customers will never touch crypto. But for iGaming specifically — where the player base is already the most crypto-native consumer segment on earth — they solve a problem that is shrinking while retaining the risks that aren’t.
The clean version of the model has three properties, and all three have to be present:
Crypto-native deposits. The player pays in stablecoins directly. No card is involved, therefore no chargeback mechanism exists. A confirmed on-chain transaction is final. For a vertical where disputed deposits are a core loss category, this isn’t an incremental improvement — it deletes the category.
Non-custodial settlement. Funds move from the player’s wallet to the operator’s own wallet, on-chain, without an intermediary balance. No custody means no rolling reserve (there is nothing to hold), no frozen funds (there is no account to freeze), and no counterparty insolvency risk. These protections are structural, not contractual — the gateway couldn’t hold your money even if it wanted to.
Stablecoins only. USDC and USDT settlement removes the volatility objection that made BTC acceptance impractical for operators running tight margins. A dollar in is a dollar on the books. No conversion step, no spread, no overnight repricing of your float.
An operator running this model has no chargeback exposure, no reserve, no acquirer dependency, and no custodian. The remaining dependencies are the blockchain itself and their own wallet security — real responsibilities, but ones under the operator’s control, which is the entire point.
Full disclosure, as the byline says: I run growth at PYMSTR, and we built the company around exactly this model.
PYMSTR is a non-custodial stablecoin payment gateway for iGaming and other high-risk verticals, incorporated at the DIFC Innovation Hub in Dubai. The mechanics:
No model is free, and pretending otherwise is how payment vendors lose credibility. Three things you give up going crypto-native:
Only crypto-holding players use this rail. A stablecoin rail serves the share of your player base that holds USDT/USDC — it doesn’t replace cards for the rest. In practice, iGaming skews more crypto-native than almost any other consumer vertical and that share grows every quarter, but audit your own deposit mix to know what this rail captures on day one.
You manage your own off-ramp. Settlement is in stablecoins to your wallet. Converting to fiat for opex is your workflow, via your exchange or OTC relationships. Many operators now run treasury largely in stablecoins and off-ramp only what payroll and vendors require, but it is a real operational step.
You own your wallet security. Non-custodial cuts both ways: nobody can freeze your funds, and nobody can recover them for you either. Multisig and wallet management policy stop being optional.
For operators who deposit-mix toward crypto anyway, these trade-offs are cheap relative to what’s eliminated. For those who don’t, they’re not — and you should know which one you are.
The 2026 pattern is hard to miss: stablecoin settlement volumes keep setting records, card schemes keep tightening high-risk rules, and every few months another acquirer quietly exits the gambling vertical. Operators adding a stablecoin rail aren’t doing it because it’s fashionable. They’re doing it because their entire deposit flow currently depends on parties who price them as a liability — and a second rail with no acquirer, no chargebacks, and no reserve is the cheapest insurance available against the day the first one fails.
If you run an iGaming brand doing meaningful monthly volume and you’re still posting a rolling reserve, the question isn’t whether the model above saves you money. It’s why you’re still lending your processor five figures a month, interest-free, for the privilege of being their risk.
PYMSTR — non-custodial stablecoin payments for high-risk merchants. Flat 1%, direct-to-wallet settlement, live in hours. pymstr.com
Bob Ejodame is VP Growth at PYMSTR. This article reflects the vendor’s perspective, disclosed accordingly — evaluate all payment infrastructure against your own deposit mix, licensing, and treasury requirements.
Why iGaming Operators Are Adding Non-Custodial Stablecoin Rails in 2026 was originally published in Coinmonks on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
Gov. Bob Ferguson last week recruited top executives from Microsoft, Amazon, T-Mobile, Boeing and other major employers to help shape Washington state’s economic strategy, launching a new advisory council as concerns mount that the state is becoming less competitive for business.
The 26-member Governor’s Economic Development Council is the first such governor-led economic advisory body in roughly two decades, reviving an approach last used under former Gov. Christine Gregoire in 2006. The group includes leaders from technology, aerospace, organized labor, higher education, tribal governments, ports and economic development organizations who will advise the governor on policies aimed at strengthening Washington’s economy. (See full list below).
One missing ingredient: No members from Washington’s venture capital or startup ecosystem are on the council, even though they are often considered the bench strength of a growing economy.
The announcement comes as executives, startup founders and business organizations have increasingly warned that higher taxes, rising costs, permitting delays and an uncertain regulatory environment are making Washington a more difficult place to build and grow companies. Ferguson recently signed the so-called “millionaires tax” — a proposed 9.9% tax applied to taxable, personal annual income that exceeds $1 million.
Some of the region’s wealthiest and most prominent entrepreneurs — including Zillow and Expedia co-founder Rich Barton; Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz — have publicly announced moves out of Washington state in recent years.
Starbucks also recently announced a major expansion in Nashville, and Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte of earlier this month announced that Sedro Wooley, Wash.-based Janicki Industries chose Great Falls for the site of an $800 million manufacturing center expected to create 1,000 jobs.
“Washington is our home, and that is not changing,” said John Janicki, president of Janicki Industries, in a press release. “Our footprint in Washington has continued to grow but is slowing due to ever-increasing regulations and lack of business understanding at an executive and legislative level.”
Meanwhile, a recent survey from the Association of Washington Business found that 24% of businesses are considering a relocation out of the state, up from 17 percent in the prior quarter.
Washington’s economic climate was also one of the reasons why GeekWire recently traveled to Cleveland, where we explored how the Midwestern city was positioning itself for a changing economy, and the lessons that Washington could learn from it.
“We cannot take our strength for granted,” Ferguson said in announcing the council. “I’m launching a historic convening of top leaders from around Washington state to help guide the next chapter of economic prosperity for our state.”
The council will help develop Washington’s long-term economic strategy, identify opportunities to create family-wage jobs, evaluate the state’s competitiveness against other states and global markets, recommend ways to attract new employers and review regulatory barriers that may be slowing economic growth. The group will meet quarterly and submit recommendations to the governor.
The council’s creation comes after months of growing unease within Washington’s technology and business community.
GeekWire has reported extensively on criticism surrounding this year’s tax package, which raised business taxes on many employers and expanded the sales tax to additional services, including advertising. Business groups warned the measures could discourage investment and expansion in Washington, while lawmakers argued the revenue was necessary to close a multibillion-dollar budget gap and preserve essential public services.
The broader economic backdrop remains mixed. Washington continues to rank among the nation’s strongest state economies and remains home to global leaders in artificial intelligence, cloud computing, aerospace and life sciences. At the same time, employers are navigating higher borrowing costs, federal policy uncertainty, trade tensions and intensifying competition from states aggressively courting new investment.
As one example, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine recently encouraged people and businesses from places like Washington to consider Ohio.
“Come work in Ohio,” DeWine noted after a question from GeekWire about advice he’d provide to Washington. “You will not find a better place, better people, quality of life. Cost of living is low compared to the two coasts.”
In the press release announcing Janicki Industries’ Montana expansion, Gianforte was a bit more blunt.
“The Treasure State is proud to attract job creators like Janicki that choose to expand from high-tax, high-regulation blue states to take advantage of our unmatched quality of life, lower taxes, and strong workforce,” he said. “I look forward to seeing the impact of this significant investment.”
Ferguson has sought to make economic development a central priority during his first year in office. His administration has highlighted efforts to speed permitting across state agencies, increase housing production and invest in sectors including quantum computing, advanced manufacturing and clean energy.
However, some have argued that the governor’s efforts come a bit too late, and are only be instituted in response to criticism. Gov. Ferguson shot back at that contention in the press conference last week, saying he doesn’t worry about critics and he’s interested in “solving problems.”
“I didn’t wake up last week and think about forming this council,” he said. “To be clear, as I mentioned in my talking points, this was an effort we really started last year and was an outgrowth of having conversations with many of the folks behind me and many other people across the state.”
Whether the new council ultimately leads to meaningful policy changes remains to be seen. But its creation sends a signal that Ferguson intends to place economic competitiveness — and closer engagement with Washington’s business community — near the center of his administration.
Amazon Chief Global Affairs and Legal Officer David Zapolsky, a member of the newly created council, called the formation of the group an “important step.”
“When the public and private sectors align around shared goals, communities benefit,” he said.
Governor’s Economic Development Council members:
U.S. shoppers spent a record $26.4 billion across all retail sites during Amazon’s four-day Prime Day event, and for the first time, the people most likely to complete a purchase were those who arrived from AI chatbots.
It’s the latest twist in a high-stakes bet by Amazon. The AI assistants now sending retailers their best-converting customers are the same ones Amazon has worked to keep away from its own store, hoping to keep shoppers coming directly to Amazon.com and using its own on-site AI assistant instead.
Adobe reported over that weekend that visitors who clicked through to shopping sites from AI assistants were 40% more likely to make a purchase during the four-day event than those showing up through search, email or social media.
AI still accounts for a small fraction of total shopping traffic, but a trend is starting to emerge. In the past, shoppers sent by AI were the least likely to buy, according to Adobe’s data. The change suggests that ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and others are becoming more effective at giving shoppers the information they need to buy with confidence.
Those figures span all of U.S. retail — “Prime Day” has become much more than a day, and much bigger than Amazon alone. The distinction matters, because Amazon has taken a different path than many of its rivals. While Walmart, Target and others have opened their catalogs to outside AI assistants, Amazon has kept them out.
Agentic AI drives less than 1% of traffic across every major online store, but Amazon’s share is the lowest of the group, at about 0.4%, according to J.P. Morgan data.
That’s by design: Amazon sued Perplexity, for example, over its browser that shopped on customers’ behalf, and won a preliminary injunction barring the tool from the logged-in parts of its site, arguing that unauthorized shopping agents degrade a trusted experience. Perplexity is appealing.
Amazon has separately blocked ChatGPT’s crawlers from reading its listings — even as it has begun buying ads inside ChatGPT to bring shoppers back, a move first spotted by Marketplace Pulse founder Juozas Kaziukėnas and reported by Business Insider and Modern Retail.
On Amazon’s most recent earnings call, in April, CEO Andy Jassy said the company was in talks with the AI companies to come up with a better experience between Amazon and third-party agents to “find something that works for customers and all the companies.”
In the meantime, Amazon is focusing on its own AI assistant.
The tool — launched as Rufus and folded in May into a service called Alexa for Shopping — has drawn more than 250 million users, with monthly users up more than 115% over the past year, the company said. Customers who use it while shopping are more than 60% more likely to buy, and Amazon Web Services has said the tool drove nearly $12 billion in incremental sales last year.
Jassy said on the earnings call that third-party agents weren’t good enough yet — that they lacked a shopper’s history and often couldn’t get prices right — and that people would gravitate to whichever assistant knew them best. That’s the opening Amazon is going after with its own AI chatbot and related tools on Amazon.com.
“We are aiming to have it be the best shopping assistant anywhere,” Jassy said.
The strategy reflects one of the ways Amazon is increasingly making money. Advertising is now among its most profitable businesses. J.P. Morgan expects it to bring in about $83 billion in revenue this year and, because the margins are high, to account for roughly a third of the company’s operating income.
That advertising revenue depends on Amazon getting shoppers to browse its own site rather than handing the decision to an outside chatbot it doesn’t control.
The big question long-term is whether Amazon can maintain its own role as a primary destination for shoppers and avoid becoming just another selection on a chatbot’s shelf.
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