BARCELONA, SPAIN – MARCH 01: A view of the MasterCard company logo on their stand during the Mobile World Congress on March 1, 2017 in Barcelona, Spain. (Photo by Joan Cros Garcia/Corbis via Getty Images)
Mastercard is doubling down on its efforts to detect and prevent fraud that’s routed through cryptocurrency exchanges.
The company told CNBC exclusively that it’s partnered with Feedzai, a regulatory technology platform that aims to combat money laundering and financial scams online using artificial intelligence.
Through the partnership, Feedzai will integrate directly with Mastercard’s CipherTrace Armada platform, which is used to help banks monitor transactions from over 6,000 crypto exchanges for fraud, money laundering and other suspicious activity.
CipherTrace Armada will be embedded directly in Feedzai’s technology, rather than accessed through an API, or application programming interface, with Feedzai “inhaling” the data to enable real-time alerts about suspicious crypto transactions.
“This will increase fraud detection by protecting unwary consumers, but will also detect potential money laundering activity and mule accounts,” Feedzai CEO and co-founder Nuno Sebastio told CNBC. Mule accounts are accounts of users that fraudsters exploit to launder their ill-gotten funds.
An estimated 40% of scam transactions exit directly from a bank account to a crypto exchange today, according to Feedzai data.
The tie-up will also give Mastercard access to Feedzai’s artificial intelligence smarts. Feedzai says its software can identify and block suspicious transactions in a matter of nanoseconds — but also recognize transactions that are legitimate.
Feedzai’s RiskOps platform analyzes transactions worth over $1.7 trillion annually. Co-headquartered in Coimbra, in Portugal, and San Mateo, California, in Silicon Valley, the firm holds close to 100 patents and secures an average of 10 patents per year to safeguard its technology.
“Numerous banks that believe they are preventing illegitimate cryptocurrency transactions are, in fact, only blocking transactions involving the widely recognised and regulated entities within the crypto space and omitting the rest,” Sebastio said.
Crypto entering the mainstream?
The move marks a push from Mastercard into the market for legitimizing crypto as a mainstream financial asset that can be subjected to the same rules and compliance frameworks as traditional assets.
Banks and other large financial institutions have shown increased interest in experimenting with crypto in their products and services. But the next step, deploying commercially available crypto products as part of their core offerings, has proven more elusive.
Banks have been wary of digital assets’ lack of comprehensive regulations and applications in fraud and scams.
Last year, the amount of theft and scams led to a global increase of 79% in crypto-related losses from the previous year, according to data from blockchain analysis firm Chainalysis. Illicit addresses received $14 billion in 2022 year-over-year, almost twice what they received in 2020.
Mastercard’s vast network is used by banking institutions worldwide to process and monetize payments.
The company competes with fellow payments giant Visa, which is also in the business of supporting card payments, among other fintech services.
In the U.K., banks have shown hesitation when it comes to being associated with crypto. Several larger lenders have halted transactions with crypto exchanges on their networks, citing the risk of fraud.
Top banks including JPMorgan, NatWest, and HSBC have restricted or blocked crypto transactions. This led to criticisms from Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong, who said the development jarred with the U.K.’s ambition to become a global “Web3” hub.
Ajay Bhalla, president of cyber and intelligence solutions for Mastercard, told CNBC that the “interconnectedness of life today and increasing digital penetration of finance has brought risk as well as opportunity.”
“Our latest data shows fraud on transactions where people are buying crypto is 5 times higher than regular fiat transactions,” Bhalla said via email, adding that, with Mastercard’s new tie-up with Feedzai, financial institutions will “be able to tell good transactions from bad.”
The partnership builds on Mastercard’s deal to acquire U.S. blockchain sleutching firm CipherTrace. Mastercard bought CipherTrace in 2021, and the following year launched its first product using the firm’s technology, called CryptoSecure, to analyze and block transactions from fraud-prone crypto exchanges.
The company rolled out the Meta AI app in April, putting it in direct competition with OpenAI’s ChatGPT. But the tool has recently garnered some negative publicity and sparked privacy concerns over some of the wacky — and personal — prompts being shared publicly from user accounts.
Besides the mud wrestlers and Trump eating poop, some of the examples CNBC found include a user prompting Meta’s AI tool to generate photos of the character Hello Kitty “tying a rope in a loop hanging from a barn rafter, standing on a stool.” Another user whose prompt was posted publicly asked Meta AI to send what appears to be a veterinarian bill to another person.
“sir, your home address is listed on there,” a user commented on the photo of the veterinarian bill.
Prompts put into the Meta AI tool appear to show up publicly on the app by default, but users can adjust settings on the app to protect their privacy.
Here’s how to do it:
To start, click on your profile photo on the top right corner of the screen and scroll down to data and privacy. Then head to the “suggesting your prompts on other apps” tab. This should include Facebook and Instagram. Once there, click the toggle feature for the apps that you want to keep your prompts from being shared on.
After, go back to the main data and privacy page and click “manage your information.” Select “make all your public prompts visible only to you” and click the “apply to all” function. You can also delete your prompt history there.
Meta has beefed up its recent bets on AI to improve its offerings to compete against megacap peers and leading AI contenders, such as Google and OpenAI. This week the company invested $14 billion in startup Scale AI and tapped its CEO Alexandr Wang to help lead the company’s AI strategy.
The company did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
A One Medical clinic location is pictured in Emeryville, California on February 16, 2024.
Loren Elliott | The Washington Post | Getty Images
For the better part of a decade, Amazon has been trying to carve it’s way into the U.S. health-care market, through billions of dollars worth of acquisitions, big-name hires and high-profile partnerships. It’s been a slog at times, and the company’s long-term strategy hasn’t always been clear.
Following a series of executive departures, Amazon is now restructuring its health business, telling CNBC that Amazon Health Services will be divided into six new units, with a goal of creating a simpler structure.
As part of the effort, the company has tapped a number of longtime Amazon leaders and elevated some One Medical executives to oversee the divisions. Neil Lindsay, senior vice president of Amazon Health Services told CNBC in an interview that the company has been working on the overhaul for the past several months.
“Our leadership team has been focused on simplifying our structure to move faster and continue to innovate effectively,” Lindsay said in a video chat. “One of the problems we’re trying to solve is the fragmented experience for patients and customers that’s common in healthcare.”
Amazon said it hasn’t conducted broad layoffs as part of the changes.
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The reorganization comes after Amazon lost several senior health leaders in recent months. Dr. Vin Gupta, who joined in 2020 and served as chief medical officer of Amazon Pharmacy, left in February, followed by Trent Green, whose last day as CEO of Amazon’s primary care chain One Medical was in April.
Aaron Martin, vice president of health care at Amazon, announced internally last month that he plans to leave his role. Dr. Sunita Mishra, Amazon’s chief medical officer, also departed in May.
Mishra and Martin’s departures have not been previously reported, and neither responded to requests for comment. Amazon doesn’t plan on naming a new CEO of One Medical following Green’s departure.
Martin, who lives in Nashville, Tennessee, said in a memo to staffers that he’ll remain at Amazon “for a while” to help with the transition.
“I then plan to take some time off this summer and hang out with my wife and my kids, finally get a cover band going in Nashville, and then possibly do something new,” Martin wrote in the memo, which was shared with CNBC.
Ambitious efforts
Amazon has for years been on a mission to crack the multitrillion-dollar U.S. health-care industry, which is notoriously complex and inefficient.
While it had long served providers and others in health care with its cloud-based technology, Amazon’s first big splash directly into the market came in 2018 with the the acquisition of online pharmacy PillPack for about $750 million. Two years later, it launched its own offering called Amazon Pharmacy.
The company then bought One Medical for $3.9 billion in 2023, among its largest acquisitions ever, giving Amazon access to a chain of brick-and-mortar primary care clinics and a robust membership base.
There have been some major setbacks. The company shuttered its telehealth service, Amazon Care, in 2022. That came a year after it disbanded Haven, the joint health-care venture between Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan Chase. The announcement of Haven in 2018 sent shockwaves through the medical world, pushing down shares of health-care companies on fears about how the combined muscle of leaders in technology and finance could wring costs out of the system.
In the areas where Amazon continues to operate, competition is fierce and, in the case of primary care, margins are very slim.
PillPack founders TJ Parker and Elliot Cohen, who left Amazon in 2022, recently launched a new health-care marketplace called General Medicine that will compete with Amazon. Mishra confirmed to STAT News that she advised the nascent startup. Amazon declined to comment on whether Mishra’s involvement with General Medicine was related to her departure.
Lindsay characterized the recent departures as part of the natural evolution of Amazon’s health business. He added that there’s “no shortage of depth of talent” within his organization.
“We’re a fast-evolving organization because the opportunity is so big,” Lindsay said.
Under its new structure, Amazon Health Services will be focused around the six groups, or what the company calls “pillars.”
One Medical Clinical Care Delivery, led by Dr. Andrew Diamond
One Medical Clinical Operations and Performance, led by Suzanne Hansen
AHS Strategic Growth and Network Development, led by John Singerling
AHS Store, Tech and Marketing, led by Prakash Bulusu
AHS Compliance, led by Kim Otte
AHS Pharmacy Services, led by John Love
Amazon declined to share financial figures for its health business, but Lindsay said it is seeing “very strong growth” across the offerings.
One Medical went public in 2020, and it was still losing money when it was bought by Amazon. At the end of 2022 in its last quarter as a standalone entity, it reported a net loss of $101.1 million on revenue of $272.4 million.
Since joining Amazon, One Medical has been working to open new offices in states including New Jersey, New York and Ohio.
Amazon said in January of 2024 that its pharmacy business “doubled the number of customers” it served in the past year, though it didn’t share specific figures. The company is opening pharmacies in 20 new cities this year, and about 45% of U.S. customers will be eligible for same-day medication delivery.
“If we can make one thing a little bit easier for a lot of people, we’ll save them a lot of time, a lot of money, and some lives,” Lindsay said. “And if we stack these changes up over time, it’ll feel like a reinvention.”
The electric vertical takeoff and landing vehicle, or eVTOL, company said Thursday it plans to use the financing to support new infrastructure and the rollout of an artificial intelligence-based aviation software platform. The money will also support its Launch Edition program, including an official partnership to provide air taxi services during the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles.
Archer said the funding round included the sale of 85 million shares at $10 apiece and gives the company a pro forma liquidity position of roughly $2 billion.
“We now have the strongest balance sheet in the sector and the resources we need to execute both here in the U.S. and abroad,” said founder and CEO Adam Goldstein in a release. “Archer’s future couldn’t be any brighter.”
The stock offering comes after President Donald Trump recently signed an executive order that created a pilot program to support developing and deploying more eVTOL vehicles in the U.S. Shares of both Archer and competitor Joby Aviation rallied this week on the heels of the news.
Demand for eVTOL companies has ballooned in recent years as developers tout the technology’s ability to reduce emissions and cut down traffic congestion. The technology faces numerous regulatory and safety hurdles in the process.
Archer has already partnered with United Airlines to roll out an airport air taxi service. Last month, competitor Joby Aviation said it received the first $250 million from a $500 million contract with carmaker Toyota to support certifying and producing eVTOLs.
Archer is slated to display its Midnight eVTOL aircraft at the Paris Air Show this month. The United Arab Emirates will be the company’s first launch market.