CFOtech Australia

TerraPay and Alipay+ have partnered to link TerraPay's Xend wallet network with Alipay+ for cross-border QR payments, initially covering 15 digital wallets in Africa. Under the agreement, users of those wallets will be able to pay at more than 150 million merchants in the Alipay+ network. The deal expands TerraPay's cross-border offering beyond account-to-account transfers into in-store payments through QR code acceptance.

Crypto wallets used to answer a simple question: where are my assets? Increasingly, users expect them to answer a much broader one: what can I do with my money from here? Receive funds. Hold dollar-denominated value. Access investment products. Pay at checkout. Move money across borders. The shift is already visible in spending. By July 2026, card programs tracked by Paymentscan were processing $759 million a month across nearly 9 million purchases, according to an analysis by a16z crypto.

Bitget has launched H100USDT and B200USDT pre-market compute perpetuals, which track Nvidia H100 and B200 GPU rental prices. The move gives retail traders access to perpetual contracts linked to GPU rental-price indices, a market that until now has largely been confined to institutional and infrastructure circles. According to Bitget, the instruments track hourly rental costs for Nvidia's H100 and B200 graphics processing units, which are widely used in artificial intelligence workloads.

Infobip has published research showing that 57% of brands cannot prove the return on investment from sports fan engagement. The study also found that brands allocate 13% of annual marketing budgets to sports activations. Nearly 73% of respondents expect that share of spending to rise over the next year, signalling continued momentum in sports marketing even as measurement remains weak.

Feedstead has launched a browser-based supplier price review tool for Shopify catalogue operators. It is aimed at businesses and agencies that update existing product prices from supplier cost lists. The service compares a supplier cost file with a current Shopify product export and prepares a CSV containing only the updates the operator selects. It works with supplier CSV files and Excel workbooks, matching products through exact SKU references in both source files.

Mastercard and Backbase have agreed a strategic collaboration to make four Mastercard services available through Backbase's AI-native Banking OS. The move brings Mastercard's banking tools to a platform used by more than 120 banks in 50 countries. The services are Dynamic Yield, Test & Learn, SpendingPulse and Cyber Quant. Banks using Backbase will be able to access tools for personalisation, analytics, customer engagement and cyber risk assessment through the platform.

Women in AI has announced the winners of its 2026 awards for women working in artificial intelligence across the Asia-Pacific region, with Grace Chung named Grand Winner. Chung, Engineering Director and Head of Google Research APAC, also won the Foundational AI category. Associate Professor Dr Sharifah Sakinah Syed Ahmad was named First Runner-up, and Rita Arrigo, Founder of AI Native Futures, was named Second Runner-up.

Australian enterprises looking to scale artificial intelligence need to focus less on the capabilities of AI models and more on whether the data feeding those systems can be trusted, according to Confluent, an IBM Company. The data streaming company says trust is emerging as a major barrier to enterprise AI adoption as organisations move beyond experimentation and begin putting generative and agentic AI applications into production.

AXA has formed a strategic partnership with Publicis Sapient to expand its Global AI Hub, which is already in use across five AXA entities. The agreement focuses on further developing the hub as AXA rolls out artificial intelligence agents across its operations. The platform provides shared, standardised foundations for AI projects, allowing local businesses to focus on specific use cases rather than building common infrastructure separately.

Compare Club has appointed Benoit Garnaud as Chief Product & Technology Officer and Bobby Singh as Technology Executive - AI, & Technology Advisory, completing Chief Executive Officer Emma Fawcett's revised leadership team. The appointments come as the company develops an AI-led platform designed to monitor household bills, identify savings opportunities and alert customers when a better deal becomes available.