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in FinanceZelle crossed $1 trillion in total volumes last year, which it said was the most ever for a peer-to-peer platform.
The payments network said its user base jumped 12% to 151 million accounts in 2024, and that the total dollars sent on the platform jumped 27% from the year earlier.
Zelle was launched in 2017 in response to the rise of platforms like Venmo, PayPal and CashApp.
Zelle icon displayed on a phone screen and Zelle logo displayed on a screen in the background are seen in this illustration photo taken in Krakow, Poland.
Jakub Porzycki | Nurphoto | Getty Images
Zelle, the payments network run by bank-owned Early Warning Services, crossed $1 trillion in total volumes last year, which it said was the most ever for a peer-to-peer platform.
The firm said Wednesday that its user base jumped 12% to 151 million accounts in 2024, and that the total dollars sent on the platform jumped 27% from the year earlier.
Last year’s payment volumes were “by far the most money ever moved by a P2P payments service in a single year,” Denise Leonhard, general manager of Zelle, told CNBC.
Zelle, which was launched in 2017 in response to fintech platforms like Venmo, PayPal and CashApp, has some key advantages over those players. EWS is owned by seven of the biggest U.S. banks, including JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Wells Fargo, and Zelle allows for instant money transfers made within the apps of thousands of member institutions.
Its growth rate last year exceeded that of PayPal, which reported that total P2P payments volumes reached more than $400 billion.
Zelle’s meteoric rise comes amid accusations that the network and the three biggest U.S. banks on it failed to properly investigate fraud complaints or give victims reimbursement. The company has introduced measures to reduce fraud and has said that 99.95% of transactions are free of fraud and scams.
Growth is being driven as bank customers increasingly use Zelle instead of cash or checks, and as small businesses adopt the payment option, said Leonhard.
“People are using Zelle in order to do things like pay their rent or paying their nanny,” Leonhard said. “We want to continue to be top of mind for those consumers to be able to use this every day.” More
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in FinanceLondon-based fintech Zepz is laying off around 200 IT workers as part of a major redundancy plan, two employees impacted by the move told CNBC.
Zepz confirmed to CNBC it is eliminating roles to “sustainably support the next phase of long-term strategic goals and continued growth.”
As part of the cost-cutting exercise, Zepz also proposed the closure of business units in Kenya and Poland.
Mark Lenhard, CEO of U.K.-based remittances platform Zepz.
Lukas Schulze | Sportsfile for Web Summit via Getty Images
LONDON — British digital remittances company Zepz is laying off dozens of IT workers and is in the process of closing down business units in Poland and Kenya.
Roughly 200 staff members will be impacted by the redundancy measures, two employees who were made redundant told CNBC, asking to remain anonymous due to the sensitivity of the matter.
As of January, London-headquartered Zepz — formerly known as WorldRemit — had a global headcount of 1,000 people, meaning the redundancies affect around 20% of its total workforce.
The layoffs affect several IT functions at the company, including database administration, development operations and software engineering, the former employees said.
Zepz confirmed to CNBC that it was reducing headcount in order to “sustainably support the next phase of long-term strategic goals and continued growth.” The company declined to comment on the number of employees impacted by the layoffs, with a spokesperson explaining that the redundancy process was ongoing.
“Following the successful completion of its replatforming efforts, bolstered by advanced automation and AI, Zepz has embarked on a strategic initiative to optimise operations across the organisation,” a Zepz spokesperson told CNBC by email.
“This transformation has reinforced the technology foundation and reduced the need for certain operational and technical capacities, prompting a proposed reduction in roles as part of the overall plan,” the spokesperson added.
Zepz has been touted as one of Britain’s fintech darlings. The company was founded by Ismail Ahmed, a Somalia-born British entrepreneur who fled the country during the Somali Civil War. Ahmed today serves as the company’s non-executive chairman.
The group was renamed Zepz following the acquisition of money transfer platform Sendwave in 2020, with the brand and WorldRemit coming under one parent company.
‘Difficult choice’
CNBC obtained a company memo announcing the cost-cutting measures shared by Zepz CEO Mark Lenhard internally in January.
“Today we are announcing a very difficult decision — proposed reductions in our team across all HQ functions, and most regions. And specifically we are proposing the closure of our Kenya and Poland employing entities,” Lenhard said in the memo.
Zepz touts itself as a “remote-first employer,” with regional offices in Kenya and Poland.
“This is a difficult choice, which impacts the lives of our colleagues and friends. This is also a choice which is critical to the success of our mission to serve immigrants everywhere. Both facts are true, at the same time,” Lenhard said.
“To be clear, this is not a change of strategy. We’re doubling down on our mission in an effort to expand our impact faster,” he added. “In some places, this will mean we’ll need to continue to ruthlessly prioritize. In others, we’re going to get more efficient. In many cases it will involve rethinking how we do things today.”
Zepz’s spokesperson insisted that the IT worker layoffs “will not impact customers in any region or market,” and added that the firm “remains committed to its mission of serving migrants worldwide, driving innovation, and delivering meaningful financial solutions to millions globally.”
This isn’t the first time Zepz has cut a spate of roles to save on costs. In 2023, Zepz laid off 420 employees, which accounted for about 26% of its global headcount at the time. Later that year, Zepz slashed a further 30 roles across its people and marketing functions.
Zepz has long been touted as a potential IPO candidate, but a timeline for this is unclear. Counting the likes of Accel, TCV and Leapfrog as investors, the startup was valued at $5 billion in 2021. The company announced a $267 million funding round last year.
Zepz faces competition from several notable digital payments players including PayPal, Wise, Revolut and Remitly.
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in FinanceChina’s Baidu plans to release the next generation of its artificial intelligence model in the second half of this year, according to a source familiar with the matter.
The planned update comes as Chinese companies race to develop innovative AI models to compete with OpenAI and other U.S.-based companies.
Baidu was the first major Chinese tech company to roll out a ChatGPT-like chatbot called Ernie in March 2023. But despite initial momentum, the product has since been eclipsed by other Chinese AI chatbots from large tech companies such as Alibaba and ByteDance as well as startups.
Men interact with a Baidu AI robot near the company logo at its headquarters in Beijing, China April 23, 2021.
Florence Lo | Reuters
BEIJING — China’s Baidu plans to release the next generation of its artificial intelligence model in the second half of this year, according to a source familiar with the matter, as newer players such as DeepSeek disrupt the segment.
Ernie 5.0, called a “foundation model,” is set to have “big enhancements in multimodal capabilities,” the source said, without specifying its functions. “Multimodal” AI can process texts, videos, images and audio to combine them as well as convert them across categories — text to video and vice-versa, for instance.
Foundation models can understand language and perform a wide array of tasks including generating text and images, and communicating in natural language.
Baidu’s planned update comes as Chinese companies race to develop innovative AI models to compete with OpenAI and other U.S.-based companies. In late January, Hangzhou-based startup DeepSeek prompted a global tech stock sell-off with the release of its open-source AI model that impressed users with its reasoning capabilities and claims of undercutting OpenAI’s ChatGPT drastically on cost.
“We are living in an exciting time … The inference cost [of foundation models] basically can be reduced by more than 90% over 12 months,” Baidu CEO Robin Li said at the World Governments Summit in Dubai this week. That’s according to a press release of his fireside chat with Omar Sultan Al Olama, UAE’s minister of state for artificial intelligence, digital economy, and remote work applications.
“If you can reduce the cost by a certain percentage, then that means your productivity increases by that kind of percentage. I think that’s pretty much the nature of innovation,” Li noted.
Baidu was the first major Chinese tech company to roll out a ChatGPT-like chatbot called Ernie in March 2023. But despite initial momentum, the product has since been eclipsed by other Chinese AI chatbots from startups as well as large-tech companies such as Alibaba and ByteDance.
While Alibaba shares have soared 33% for the year so far, Baidu shares are up 6%. Tencent has notched gains of about 4% for the year so far. ByteDance is not listed.
Baidu’s Ernie model already supports the integration of generative AI across a range of the company’s consumer and business-facing products, including cloud storage and content creation.
Last month, Baidu said its Wenku platform for creating presentations and other documents had reached 40 million paying users as of the end of 2024, up 60% from the end of 2023. Updated features, such as using AI to generate a presentation based on a company’s financial filing, started being rolled out to users in January.
The current version of the Ernie model is Generation 4, released in Oct. 2023. An upgraded “turbo” version Ernie 4.0 was released in August 2024. Baidu has not officially announced plans to release the next generation update.
The latest version of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, GPT-4o, was released in May 2024. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said in a Reddit “ask me anything” session earlier this month that there wasn’t a public timeline for GPT-5’s release.
Baidu did not respond to a request for comment. More
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in FinanceKen Griffin, founder and CEO of Citadel, speaks during The New York Times’ annual DealBook Summit in New York City, Dec. 4, 2024.
Michael M. Santiago | Getty Images
Citadel CEO Ken Griffin sent a stern warning against the negative impact from President Donald Trump’s combative approach to U.S. trade policy.
“From my vantage point, the bombastic rhetoric, the damage has already been done,” Griffin said Tuesday at the UBS Financial Services Conference in Key Biscayne, Florida. “It’s a huge mistake to resort to this form of rhetoric when you’re trying to drive a bargain because … it tears into the minds of CEOs, policymakers that we can’t depend upon America, as our trading partner.”
The billionaire hedge fund founder’s comments came after Trump on Monday evening signed an order that would impose 25% tariffs on steel and aluminum imports. The president has already enacted a 10% duty on all Chinese imports, while pausing his 25% tariffs on goods from Mexico and Canada temporarily.
Griffin, who voted for Trump and was a megadonor to Republican politicians, believes the hostile dynamics caused by punitive tariffs could make long-term investments challenging for multinational companies and investors.
“It makes it difficult for multinationals, in particular, to think about how to plan for the next five, 10, 15, 20 years, particularly when it comes to long lead time capital investments that could be adversely impacted by a degradation of the current terms of engagement as amongst the leading Western countries when it comes to terms and trade,” he said.
Griffin previously cautioned that crony capitalism could be a consequence of tariffs. Crony capitalism is an economic system marked by close, mutually advantageous relationships between business leaders and government officials.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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in FinanceFed Chair Jerome Powell asserted Tuesday that the central bank will not develop its own digital currency as long as he is in charge, ending several years of speculation.
Over the years, multiple officials have raised concerns, with most saying there was no obvious need for a CBDC and citing concerns over privacy and other issues.
U.S. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell testifies before a Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee hearing on “The Semiannual Monetary Policy Report to the Congress,” at Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., February 11, 2025.
Craig Hudson | Reuters
Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell asserted Tuesday that the central bank will not develop its own digital currency as long as he is in charge.
Ending several years of speculation whether the Fed would join some of its global counterparts, including China, in developing a formal cryptocurrency like bitcoin or its many peers, Powell said during a Senate hearing that the project would not go forward.
“Can I have your commitment that as long as you’re the chairman of the Federal Reserve system that we will never have a central bank digital currency?” Sen. Bernie Moreno, R-Ohio, asked Powell during the chair’s semiannual testimony on monetary policy and regulation.
“Yes,” Powell responded.
“Thank you for that, I think that’s extremely important,” Moreno said. “It makes me very happy to hear you say that.”
Powell’s term as Fed chief ends in May 2026.
The Fed has been examining the issue for at least four years, releasing an extensive study in 2022 that detailed the advantages and disadvantages without drawing a conclusion.
Over the years, multiple officials have raised concerns, with most saying there was no obvious need for a CBDC and citing concerns over privacy and other issues. Powell also has stressed that creating a CBDC would have required a legislative act from Congress, something less likely with a Republican majority controlling both chambers in Washington, D.C.
In the meantime, the central bank has launched its FedNow payments system that essentially addresses a number of issues that a Fed-backed cryptocurrency also would take on.
Moreno asked Powell to continue work on FedNow to make 24-hour money transfers more widely available.
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in FinanceFed Chair Jerome Powell reiterated the central bank’s commitment to bringing inflation down and signaled that policymakers aren’t in a rush to get interest rates lower.
Powell’s comments came in the first of two appearances this week on Capitol Hill.
Federal Reserve Bank Chairman Jerome Powell testifies before the House Financial Services Committee in the Rayburn House Office Building on Capitol Hill on March 06, 2024 in Washington, DC.
Chip Somodevilla | Getty Images
Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell on Tuesday reiterated the central bank’s commitment to bringing inflation down and signaled that policymakers aren’t in a rush to push interest rates lower.
In remarks before the Senate Banking Committee, Powell called the economy “strong overall” with a “solid” labor market and inflation that is easing but still above the Fed’s 2% goal.
With those conditions prevailing, he said the Fed doesn’t need to move quickly to ease monetary policy.
“With our policy stance now significantly less restrictive than it had been and the economy remaining strong, we do not need to be in a hurry to adjust our policy stance,” Powell said. “We know that reducing policy restraint too fast or too much could hinder progress on inflation. At the same time, reducing policy restraint too slowly or too little could unduly weaken economic activity and employment.”
Powell’s comments came in the first of two appearances this week on Capitol Hill. He speaks to the Senate Banking Committee on Tuesday then the House Financial Services Committee on Wednesday.
Stocks briefly dipped following his opening statement but were little changed after two hours of trading.
Much of the proceeding focused on bank supervision rather than monetary policy.
Ranking Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts charged that President Donald Trump’s move to halt the work of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau left consumers without a watchdog of the nation’s largest banks.
Warren asked Powell who is administering consumer compliance outside of the CFPB, to which he responded, “I can say no other federal regulator.” Powell nonetheless said the broader banking system is safe. He also noted that the Fed is “determined to take a fresh look at” issues that Trump has raised regarding de-banking.
The hearing also took a number of political turns, with lawmakers
On monetary policy, Powell’s remarks were largely in keeping with his recent statements and those of his colleagues, who are digesting a number of fiscal and monetary dynamics that make for an uncertain environment.
Most prominently, Trump has launched an aggressive campaign to institute tariffs against the largest U.S. trading partners, in one sense to level the economic playing field and in another to enforce foreign policy goals against illegal immigration and drug smuggling, specifically fentanyl.
Powell did not mention any of that in his prepared remarks but was expected to face questioning on tariffs and other issues from panel members.
In one exchange, he again noted that it is not the Fed’s policy or responsibility to get involved in trade policy.
“I think the standard case for for free trade and all that logically still makes sense. It didn’t work that well when we have one very large country that doesn’t really play by the rules,” Powell said. “In any case, it’s not the Fed’s job to make or comment on tariff policy. … That’s for elected people and and it’s not for us to comment. Ours is to try to react to it in a thoughtful, sensible way and make monetary policy so that we can achieve our mandate.”
Markets have interpreted the recent messaging as indications that the Fed will be on hold with rates, probably into the summer, after cutting its benchmark borrowing level by a full percentage point in the latter part of 2024.
Powell said the current policy stance, with the benchmark fed funds rate in a range between 4.25%-4.5%, is providing flexibility. The Federal Open Market Committee held the rate in place at its late-January meeting.
“We are attentive to the risks to both sides of our dual mandate, and policy is well positioned to deal with the risks and uncertainties that we face,” he said.
Shortly after taking office, Trump said he would “demand” that interest rates come down “immediately.” However, in subsequent remarks he said he agreed with the January decision to keep rates in place, while Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the administration is more focused on seeing the 10-year Treasury yield move lower than on the Fed’s actions, which more strongly influence shorter-term rates.
Mortgage rates have held high even as the Fed has cut, and Powell said that could change ahead.
“It’s true that mortgage rates have gone or remained high, but that’s not so directly related to the Fed’s rate,” Powell said. “It’s really related more to long-term bond rates, particularly the Treasury, the 10-year Treasury, 30-year Treasury, for example. And those are high for reasons not particularly closely related to Fed policy.”
Powell said mortgage rates could come down as the Fed keeps rates low, though he’s unsure when that could happen.
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in FinanceTwo senior leaders at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau announced their resignations the day after acting Director Russell Vought instructed all staff to cease working.
In separate memos, Lorelei Salas, supervision director for the agency, and Eric Halperin, enforcement director, said they could no longer serve in their respective roles after Vought’s mandate, according to emails obtained by CNBC.
“I don’t believe in these conditions I can effectively serve in my role, which is protecting American consumers,” Halperin said.
Former Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Russell Vought takes his seat as he arrives to testify before a US Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee hearing on his second nomination to be OMB director, on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, on Jan. 15, 2025.
Jemal Countess | AFP | Getty Images
Two senior leaders at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau announced their resignations the day after acting Director Russell Vought instructed all staff to cease working.
In separate memos sent early Tuesday, Lorelei Salas, supervision director for the agency, and Eric Halperin, enforcement director, said they could no longer serve in their respective roles after Vought’s mandate, according to emails obtained by CNBC.
“The Bureau has been instructed to stand down,” Salas said. “I do not believe it is appropriate, nor lawful, to stop all supervisory activities and examinations, and I cannot longer serve as the Supervision Director.”
“I don’t believe in these conditions I can effectively serve in my role, which is protecting American consumers,” Halperin said. “Today I made the difficult decision to resign.”
A representative for the Office of Management and Budget, speaking on behalf of the CFPB, said in a statement to CNBC later Tuesday that Halperin and Salas had been placed on administrative leave prior to their announcements of resignation.
The departures add further to uncertainty at the CFPB, which has been targeted by trade groups and conservatives for years. The agency has aggressively policed financial firms and said in June that it has returned nearly $21 billion to consumers since its creation in 2011.
Halperin said that his office, charged with enforcing consumer protection mandates, secured $9.5 billion in fines or consumer redress since 2021.
Opponents of the agency have said that under former Director Rohit Chopra it reached beyond its legal authority in punishing banks and that his attempts to rein in industry fees would hurt consumers.
CFPB employees have been on edge since operatives of Elon Musk’s advisory group known as the Department of Government Efficiency arrived at the regulator late last week. Then Vought was named acting director, effective Friday, and he quickly said he would refuse fresh funding for the agency, shuttered its Washington, D.C., headquarters, and instructed staff to freeze all bureau work.
“I know you are concerned about your futures, the future of the bureau, and more importantly, the impact these sweeping changes will have on everyday consumers,” Salas wrote. “The ways in which you protect the American consumer cannot be captured in just a few sentences, and too many are unaware of the work you do behind the scenes.” More
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