Visa has partnered with crypto infrastructure company Aquanow to expand stablecoin settlement across the CEMEA region, cutting cross-border costs and friction. Visa is expanding its use of stablecoins for settlement in Central and Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa (CEMEA) through a new partnership with crypto infrastructure company Aquanow. In an announcement Thursday, Visa said it partnered with Aquanow “to settle transactions using approved stablecoins such as USDC, reducing costs, operational friction, and settlement times.” The company said the move came amid strong demand from banks and payment companies for faster, cheaper cross-border payments. The move aims to leverage stablecoins to digitize the back end of money movement and to enable 24/7 settlement. Godfrey Sullivan, Visa’s head of product and solutions for the CEMEA region, said the integration will allow institutions in the region “to experience faster and simpler settlements.” Read more
BIPA, the drugstore brand of German REWE Group, will start its expansion in Romania at the beginning of 2026 by officially launching its first store in Mega Mall Bucharest.
BlackRock Bitcoin ETF investors are back in profit, in a promising sign of a December market recovery from the cohort that drove much of Bitcoin’s rise to all-time highs in 2025. BlackRock’s spot Bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) holders are back in profit after Bitcoin’s recovery above $90,000, an early sign that sentiment may be turning among one of the key investor groups driving the market this year. The holders of the largest spot Bitcoin (BTC) fund, BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF (IBIT), bounced back to a cumulative profit of $3.2 billion on Wednesday, according to blockchain data platform Arkham. “BlackRock IBIT and ETHA holders went from being up almost a combined $40 billion at their PnL peak on 7th October, down to $630 million 4 days ago,” wrote Arkham in a Wednesday X post. “This means the average of all BlackRock ETF buys is at just about break-even.” Read more