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The Treasury Department is moving to rein in a new class of cryptocurrencies whose popularity as a payment method is skyrocketing, citing a need to head off potential risks to consumers and to the financial system. So-called stablecoins - payment tokens that differ from other cryptocurrencies because their value is often pegged to the U.S. dollar - are drawing scrutiny because they have already been used in trillions of dollars' worth of lightning-fast transactions and could transform the way Americans pay for things. Treasury and other regulators want to ensure that they're reliable, even during financial panics.

"The administration's multitrillion-dollar social spending package, widely considered the most comprehensive climate legislation ever put forward in the US, must survive razor-thin Democratic majorities in Congress...The bill includes a program of payments and penalties to ensure utilities phase out fossil fuels from America's electricity supply, a huge expansion in tax credits for clean energy and new restrictions on methane, a potent greenhouse gas that is emitted from oil and gas drilling."

"This book tells a tale of innovation, disruption, and transformation. Mobile money, e-money, e-float, e-wallets, mobile banking, however you characterise it, is not just a cool app. It s a killer app, the first for mobile phones in the developing world. It s also a disruptive innovation that threatens incumbent businesses and is sparking new business formation and entrepreneurship. Nowhere is this mobile money phenomenon more prevalent and successful than in Kenya. In five years, 19 million Kenyans, more than 70% of the adult population, have signed up for mobile money services. Fifteen million are customers of M-PESA ( M for Mobile and pesa means money in Swahili). Now, one out of every two people in the world who sends money over a mobile phone is a Kenyan. Mobile money is the rare case in which an African country is the global market leader and an exporter of innovation." The author says, "It has been so successful in these markets because it leapfrogged the payment card industry," he said, "which requires expensive ATM and Point of Sale (POS) networks to function. ATMs and POS Terminals require regular maintenance and, with ATMs, regular liquidity balancing. By leveraging third party retail outlets and making the phone the primary means of exchange, mobile money bypassed the need to distribute ATMs and POS Terminals. The reverse is true in the US: mobile money isn't leapfrogging the payment card industry, it's augmenting it."

Grocery delivery service Instacart will soon begin accepting food stamps as a form of payment within its app. The company announced that "in the coming weeks," it's beginning a pilot with grocery chain Aldi to accept food stamps for its same-day delivery and pickup service.

This looks like a press release to generate buzz inasmuch as there are not talks in place; however, worth watching. Nexi (NEXII.MI) is interested in working on a digital version of the euro, but there are no formal talks with the European Central Bank (ECB), the Italian payment group's corporate and external affairs director Saverio Tridico said on Friday.