Connect with us

Published

on

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)

Joan Cros Garcia – Corbis | Corbis News | 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.

Continue Reading

Technology

Lambda, Microsoft agree to multibillion-dollar AI infrastructure deal with Nvidia chips

Published

on

By

Lambda, Microsoft agree to multibillion-dollar AI infrastructure deal with Nvidia chips

In this photo illustration, a person is holding a smartphone with the logo of US GPU hardware company Lambda Inc. (Lambda Labs) on screen in front of website.

Timon Schneider | SOPA Images | AP

Cloud computing startup Lambda announced on Monday a multibillion-dollar deal with Microsoft for artificial intelligence infrastructure powered by tens of thousands of Nvidia chips.

The agreement comes as Lambda benefits from surging consumer demand for AI-powered services, including AI chatbots and assistants, CEO Stephen Balaban told CNBC’s “Money Movers” on Monday.

“We’re in the middle of probably the largest technology buildout that we’ve ever seen,” Balaban said. “The industry is going really well right now, and there’s just a lot of people who are using ChatGPT and Claude and the different AI services that are out there.”

Balaban said the partnership will continue the two companies’ long-term relationship, which goes back to 2018.

A specific dollar amount was not disclosed in the deal announcement.

Read more CNBC tech news

Founded in 2012, Lambda provides cloud services and software for training and deploying AI models, servicing over 200 thousand developers, and also rents out servers powered by Nvidia’s graphics processing units.

The new infrastructure with Microsoft will include the NVIDIA GB300 NVL72 systems, which are also deployed by hyperscaler CoreWeave, according to a release.

“We love Nvidia’s product,” Balaban said. “They have the best accelerator product on the market.”

The company has dozens of data centers and is planning to continue not only leasing data centers but also constructing its own infrastructure as well, Balaban said.

Earlier in October, Lambda announced plans to open an AI factory in Kansas City in 2026. The site is expected to launch with 24 megawatts of capacity with the potential to scale up to over 100 MW.

OpenAI signs $38B deal with Amazon: Here's what to know

Continue Reading

Technology

Tesla faces widening federal probe into door handle safety issues

Published

on

By

Tesla faces widening federal probe into door handle safety issues

Tesla models Y and 3 are displayed at a Tesla showroom in Corte Madera, California, on Dec. 20, 2024.

Justin Sullivan | Getty Images

Tesla has been ordered to provide records to U.S. federal auto safety regulators to comply with a sweeping investigation into possible safety defects with the company’s flush-mounted, retractable door handles that can lead to people getting trapped.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said in a letter to Elon Musk‘s automaker that the agency continued to receive complaints from Tesla owners after the regulators initiated a probe in September.

Owners said they were unable to enter or exit their cars due to battery power loss and other situations impeding normal use of the doorhandles.

In some cases, owners’ children were trapped inside hot vehicles, requiring first responder interventions or breaking windows to open the doors.

NHTSA’s Office of Defects Investigations said they had “received 16 reports of exterior door handles becoming inoperative due to low 12VDC battery voltage in certain MY 2021 Tesla Model Y vehicles,” as of October 27, 2025.

Read more CNBC tech news

The agency began the electronic door handles investigation into Tesla following a Bloomberg report bringing incidents to light. The news agency reported that people were injured or died after becoming trapped in Tesla vehicles after collisions or battery power losses that prevented doors from opening normally.

Tesla design leader Franz Von Holzhausen has said in subsequent press interviews that the company would change the design of its door handles.

Tesla competitors, including Rivian, are also reconsidering flush-mounted, or retractable door handle designs.

Volkswagen CEO Thomas Schäfer recently said his company’s customers don’t even want the flush-mounted, electronic doorhandles and VW has no plans to adopt them.

Meanwhile, China is expected to implement new vehicle safety standards around door handles, including a requirement to have more clearly marked, accessible and easier-to-use emergency, interior door release mechanisms.

China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has released draft standards and comments are open through November 22.

The NHTSA Tesla probe seeks records concerning all model year, “2021 Tesla Model Y vehicles manufactured for sale or lease in the United States,” as well as “peer vehicles,” including Tesla Model 3 and Model Y vehicles from model years 2017 to 2022, and “systems related to opening doors including, door handles, door latches, 12VDC batteries, software,” and other components.

Tesla has until Dec. 10 to provide the records.

While Tesla can seek an extension on the deadline from NHTSA, it may face fines of “$27,874 per violation per day, with a maximum of $139,356,994” if the company either fails to or refuses to “respond completely, accurately, or in a timely manner” to NHTSA’s information requests, the agency cautioned in its letter.

Continue Reading

Technology

Cramer: Amazon-OpenAI cloud deal puts an exclamation point on a remarkable few days

Published

on

By

Cramer: Amazon-OpenAI cloud deal puts an exclamation point on a remarkable few days

Continue Reading

Trending