The information you need to start your day from PaymentsSource and around the Web Machine learning experts wanted To address Indias quickly automating payments industry PayPal is adding to its force on the ground EconomicTimes reports PayPal will hire 600 programmers in India by the end of the year including application developers data engineers data management experts and product managers The hires will also be charged with finding new uses for machine learning and artificial intelligence PayPals headcount in its two centers in Chennai and Bengaluru has already doubled to 1 700 in the past two years Bloomberg News Building up in Brussels Oracle is collaborating with local startup supporter B-Hive to build a fintech innovation program in Belgium The center which will be in Brussels will focus on solutions for banking payments and other financial technology While the move is not a direct result of Brexit the choice is a setback for the UK given concerns over the the UKs loss of technology status when it leaves the European Union reports Finextra which adds London would have been a logical choice in the pre-Brexit environment Former Amex exec joins Walmart Walmart has hired Janey Whiteside to be its executive vice president and chief customer officer for the US and e-commerce reports TalkBusiness Whiteside had been at American Express for about 20 years in roles such as international pricing relationship management and global products and services At Walmart she will focus on expanding Walmarts appeal with younger consumers and loyalty programs Concardis hires former Vodafone exec Peter Walz will become the chief sales officer for Concardis Payment Group as it merges with Nets to boost digital payments in cash-heavy Germany Walz was formerly managing director of retail sales for Vodafone Germany where he oversaw the companys digitization process and managed more than 2 000 employees At Concardis he will focus on automating sales and the companys outreach to small to medium sized businesses Militarizing blockchain Blockchains evolution as a financial security tool has reached Russia where the Ministry of Defense is forming a research unit to determine how blockchain can prevent cybersecurity attacks Coindesk reports the Russian military wants to find out how good blockchain is at preventing unauthorized users from hiding evidence of unauthorized access to account systems by erasing access logs From the Web Tencents WeChat widens service fee for users of card repay feature in digital wallet South China Morning Post Mon Jul 2 2018 - WeChat Chinas largest social platform with around 1 billion users will expand fees for users who pay their credit card bills via the card repay service within WeChat Wallet bringing the era of free-of-charge services for mobile payments closer to an end WeChat which is operated by Chinese internet giant Tencent will begin charging a fee of 01 percent on credit card repayment amounts from August 1 Russian payments provider Qiwi launches crypto investment bank Report EconoTimes Mon Jul 2 2018 - Qiwi Blockchain Technologies a subsidiary of Russian payment service provider Qiwi has launched a crypto investment project Kommersant reported Dubbed HASH the project marks the first crypto-investment bank in Russia It is built on a classic investment banking model and involves the search assessment market entry of quality projects aimed at attracting large investors BBPS set to unleash major changes across payments ecosystem LiveMint Tue Jul 3 2018 - The Bharat Bill Payment System BBPS has been designed as a system that can address such issues It functions as a central switch Once a biller connects into BBPS s he can accept bill payments from any BBPS customer touch point More from PaymentsSource Barclays new SMB perk offers cash flow not rewards Barclays has introduced an SMB credit card with a very targeted perk It extends the interest-free credit periods up to 116 days for payments made at popular trade retailers Travis Perkins and Toolstation UnionPay approves first overseas EMV testing lab China UnionPay has qualified FIMEs personalization validation tool PVT marking the Chinese payment brands first certification of an overseas lab for testing its secure chip products To set it apart from PayPal Chargebee uses data to tell a story Concentrating more on the data delivered through a customer database Chargebee began focusing on what was driving consumer success for a company and turning that into a revenue generation point Facebooks ad policy is the best publicity bitcoin can get The crypto market has been in bear territory recently and Facebooks removal of its bitcoin ad ban can help a resumption of cryptocurrency expansion according to Nigel Green founder and CEO of deVere Group