GoKawiil
Tech News
Waymo introduced a transit rewards program in the San Francisco Bay Area that gives riders Waymo Cash when they link a Visa card and combine Waymo rides with public transit trips. The program starts with employees before a public rollout in coming weeks, and covers all 27 Bay Area transit agencies that accept contactless Visa tap-to-pay.
Waymo has launched a new incentive program with Visa that credits riders $2.85 toward future robotaxi trips when they use a Visa card to pay for both a Waymo ride and public transit within a two-hour window. The pilot starts in the San Francisco-Bay Area and builds on earlier standalone tests Waymo ran in San Francisco and Los Angeles, but this version relies on Visa's payment data to verify qualifying trips automatically.
Economists Michael A. Clemens and Ethan G. Lewis used the random letter-based processing of H-2B seasonal worker visa petitions by the Department of Labor to measure the impact of denying low-skill foreign labor to U.S. employers. They found that firms unlucky enough to be shut out of visas due to the annual 66,000-visa cap did not hire more American workers to fill the gap; instead, these businesses simply shrank in size.
Mastercard has signed a new deal aimed at letting AI-driven shopping agents complete purchases using customer payment credentials. The move comes as rivals Visa and American Express are also preparing their own systems to support autonomous, AI-powered shopping bots.
New federal rules, including a proposed $100,000 fee on H-1B visa applications introduced in September 2025, are adding to a string of immigration restrictions on skilled foreign workers. IEEE Spectrum found that U.S. tech companies are responding by expanding hiring and opening offices abroad rather than sponsoring visas domestically, though none of the 25 firms contacted would discuss the shift publicly.
An explainer breaks down what Visa and Mastercard actually do, noting they are card networks rather than banks, card issuers, payment processors, or merchant acquirers. The piece maps out the two-sided market linking cardholders and issuers on one side with merchants and acquirers on the other, with the network connecting both.
Circular unveiled its Series 3 smart ring at IFA, adding NFC payments compatible with Visa and MasterCard alongside a returning vibration motor for silent alerts. The lineup splits into the fully-featured Ring 3 Pro, with ECG and haptics, and the slimmer, lighter Ring 3 Slim that drops those features. Battery life nearly doubles to 12 days, and both models ship with a 700mAh charging case.
Far-right commentator Milo Yiannopoulos, a British national, has been taken into custody by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Louisiana, according to the agency's own records. The facility holding him hasn't been confirmed, but ICE's directory points inquiries to an enforcement office in Alexandria, Louisiana. Neither ICE nor the Department of Homeland Security has commented on the reasons for his detention or whether deportation proceedings are underway.
Visa has open-sourced the Vulnerability Agentic Harness, an 11-stage AI pipeline that detects security flaws, writes fixes, and adversarially tests its own patches in production code, with autonomous patching enabled by default unless an operator restricts it to detection only. The release comes alongside an expanded Visa Consulting & Analytics advisory practice and follows Visa's earlier work with Anthropic's Claude models under Project Glasswing.
The Department of Homeland Security has proposed a rule that would permanently establish a $103,265 fee on certain new H-1B visas, replacing the temporary fee Trump imposed last year that is set to expire in September. Previously such visas cost between $2,000 and $5,000, and the new fee would not apply to renewals or to foreign students already in the U.S. transitioning to H-1B status. The proposal comes even as courts are still weighing legal challenges, including a June ruling that found the original fee illegal.