If ride-hailing companies Uber and Lyft hope to ever partner with agencies that use federal dollars, “they are going to have to clean up their acts,” the chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee said Wednesday.

Noting reports of explosive growth of those companies as well as low-paid and unvetted drivers, the panel’s subcommittee on highways and transit is wrestling with how best to regulate a burgeoning industry that has recently advocated for federal dollars as it grapples with massive losses.

What is Uber? It's not just a ride share company and definitely more than a technology company. Increasingly, it's a fintech company, too. We speak to the CEO of Uber Payments LLC and Uber's associate counsel to explore the company's identity. 

Uncertainty is the bane of the crypto industry, with limited predictability about the scope of securities laws. That's because there is little agreement on when a cryptocurrency is considered a security. Block.one found out the hard way. Fintech Beat explores what the company's settlement with the SEC means.

A legal battle brewing in upstate New York over the use of municipal utility poles could have nationwide repercussions as private telecom companies seeking to build fifth-generation wireless networks contend with city governments that say they aren’t being fairly compensated.

A lawsuit filed by Verizon against the city of Rochester last month marks the latest in a string of cases pitting telecom giants against cities that want more autonomy over fees charged for the deployment of small cells on poles controlled by local governments.

Blockchain, a technology most closely associated with cryptocurrency, is being explored as the solution to better corporate board elections and shareholder votes, which have been plagued by cases of low participation and high-profile miscounts.

The decentralized, distributed ledger technology gained prominence as the backbone of cryptocurrencies like bitcoin because it allows tracking ownership as the tokens change hands. It also provides access and enables verification of pseudonymous information by multiple users in real time. Once entered in the ledger, encrypted “blocks” of information can’t be changed or falsified because the entire network can view the ledger. 

The Federal Reserve’s announcement last month that it would compete with private industry to launch a 24-hour-a-day real-time payment service has fintech experts raising an alarm: How will it handle fraud, which they say is inevitable with any financial system.

The Fed’s real-time gross settlement service, to be known as “FedNow,” is not scheduled to be available for at least four more years. Yet some financial services attorneys are already pondering who should bear the loss if it processes unauthorized payments.

Faced with hyperinflation and borders closed to humanitarian aid, Venezuelans are turning to cryptocurrency as a workaround of government control of money. Aid providers say digital currencies are becoming an important route to bypassing corruption or repressive regimes.

Digital currencies have no shortage of critics, who point to their use in scams, theft and money laundering. U.S. lawmakers blasted Facebook’s plans for a cryptocurrency, and regulators routinely warn of wild volatility.