GoKawiil
Tech News
Binance, the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange, has disclosed a security breach estimated at $6.3bn, which would make it the largest crypto hack on record. Co-CEO Richard Teng said the company is cooperating with authorities to investigate the incident and has committed to covering all customer losses.
Digital wallets fall into four categories: closed wallets tied to a single merchant, semi-closed wallets usable across a limited network of merchants, open wallets such as Apple Wallet and PayPal that offer broader flexibility, and crypto wallets for digital currencies. Each type serves different purposes, from budgeting within one retailer's ecosystem to making payments across many locations.
The UK's Competition and Markets Authority has launched a consultation proposing that Apple widen third-party access to its contactless payment technology and substantially lower the fees it charges firms to use it. The regulator says current restrictions block fintechs and other developers from building competing payment, ticket and travel apps. Apple disputes this, saying its system already enables secure innovation and that lowering restrictions could weaken security.
A PYMNTS Intelligence study found that 36% of Gen Z shoppers abandoned an online purchase in the past 30 days because their preferred payment method wasn't offered at checkout, compared with 31% of millennials, 15% of Gen X and 8.3% of boomers and seniors. The study estimates 40 million Gen Z and millennial consumers abandoned carts for this reason in a single month.
Google's payment app has gone through several rebrands since launching as Google Wallet in 2011, becoming Android Pay in 2015, then Google Pay in 2018, before reverting to the Google Wallet name in 2022. The two names now refer to distinct but related products, which has caused confusion among users about which app does what.
Samsung phone owners have access to both Samsung Wallet and Google Wallet, which overlap heavily in basic functions like storing cards, tickets, passes, keys and IDs, as well as scanning physical cards via camera. Despite this overlap, each app has distinct strengths, with Samsung and Google diverging in areas such as ID support and cryptocurrency handling.
Digital wallets like Apple Pay require device authentication—Face ID, Touch ID, or a passcode—before any purchase can be confirmed, unlike many physical cards that skip verification for small transactions. They also use tokenization, replacing your actual card number with a unique, single-use code so merchants never see real card details, and they sidestep skimming devices since no card is physically inserted.