Forbes Daily: Justice Department Accuses Visa of A Debit Card Monopoly

Good morning,

We’ve all been tied up with monotonous tasks in the workplace, from submitting PTO requests to troubleshooting IT issues. But what if AI could do it for you?

That’s the premise behind conversational AI platform Moveworks, which CEO Bhavin Shah claims has helped enterprises save millions of dollars by freeing up teams for more important tasks. The company announced Tuesday that it had crossed $100 million in annual recurring revenue, a milestone many buzzy AI startups have yet to reach.

And while it’s a lesser-known name, Moveworks is used by some 5 million employees across companies like Toyota and Salesforce.

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The Justice Department accused Visa of monopolizing the debit card market in a lawsuit Tuesday, where Attorney General Merrick Garland said the financial services giant can collect fees that “far exceed what it could charge in a competitive market.” Visa charges $7 billion in debit card fees annually, per the DOJ, and its debit card business accounts for an estimated 60% of all debit transactions in the U.S.

Former crypto exec Caroline Ellison received a two-year prison sentence Tuesday for the financial crimes committed alongside her ex-boyfriend and former FTX head Sam Bankman-Fried, in spite of her extensive cooperation against Bankman-Fried. Ellison served as the chief executive of Alameda Research, the sister firm of FTX, and Alameda’s unraveling as it lost FTX customer funds led to the eventual bankruptcies of both firms and the arrests of Bankman-Fried, Ellison and other executives.

In a highly anticipated Congressional hearing Tuesday, U.S. Securities and Commission Chairman Gary Gensler and his fellow commissioners faced intense scrutiny over the agency’s handling of digital asset regulation. The hearing laid bare the growing tension surrounding the SEC’s oversight of cryptocurrencies, which critics argue has become overreaching and legally ambiguous.

Consumer confidence saw its biggest drop since August 2021, according to the monthly Conference Board survey, as voters identified the........

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