HONG KONG, July 9, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — AEON, the settlement layer built for the agentic economy, has expanded its payment infrastructure into Bolivia with support for the country’s national QR payment standard, OpenBCB.

The integration enables users to scan merchant-displayed QR codes and complete purchases using crypto assets, while merchants receive seamless settlement in Bolivian Bolivianos (BOB). By connecting crypto-native payments to Bolivia’s interoperable QR payment ecosystem, AEON continues expanding the localized settlement rails that bridge digital assets, local commerce, and AI-powered economic activity.

Connecting Crypto to Bolivia’s Fast-Growing QR Payment Economy

Bolivia has emerged as one of Latin America’s fastest-growing digital payment markets, driven largely by the adoption of interoperable QR payments under the OpenBCB framework.

Launched by the Banco Central de Bolivia (BCB), OpenBCB was designed to unify the country’s financial ecosystem through a single interoperable QR payment standard, allowing users to pay merchants using any participating banking application or digital wallet.

According to data released by the Central Bank of Bolivia, QR transactions have grown by more than 4,700% in less than three years from 2021 to 2024, making QR payments one of the country’s most rapidly adopted payment methods. Meanwhile, industry data shows that QR-based payments account for the vast majority of electronic transfer activity across the banking system.

By integrating OpenBCB into AEON’s settlement network, crypto-powered transactions can now interact directly with these established local payment habits. When users make a payment, AEON automatically handles crypto conversion and local settlement, allowing merchants to receive BOB while preserving a familiar checkout experience.

Multi-Wallet and Multi-Asset Support

To drive maximum retail adoption, the updated AEON Pay platform incorporates comprehensive multi-channel compatibility:

Scan-to-Pay Simplicity: Users can scan any standard terminal displaying the OpenBCB layout at local points of sale, checking out using direct non-custodial crypto transfers or the asset balance securely maintained in their AEON wallet.

Top-Tier Ecosystem Integrations: Immediate cross-network processing is natively supported via partner integrations, including Binance Wallet, OKX Wallet, Solana Pay, Bitget Wallet, TokenPocket, KuCoin, and Bybit.

Zero Merchant Friction: While the shopper utilizes digital currencies, AEON’s backend protocol coordinates the underlying liquidity path, liquidating the asset and automatically crediting the merchant’s account in Bolivian Bolivianos (BOB) in real time.

Accessible via Telegram MiniApps, wallet dApps, and direct exchange integrations, AEON Pay currently bridges consumer access to over 50 million merchants and 10,000+ global brands, powering operational payments for multinational franchises like McDonald’s, Pizza Hut, and UNIQLO. Alongside this South American expansion, AEON has kept pace with a strategic growth trajectory aimed at deploying deeply integrated localized rails across Africa, LATAM, and Southeast Asia.

Expanding the Real-World Reach of Agentic Commerce

Bolivia represents the latest anchor point in AEON’s aggressive territorial expansion across emerging economies. While empowering human consumers remains critical, the primary long-term architectural mandate of AEON’s network expansion is to supply the structural plumbing for the agentic commerce economy.

To interact with the real world, AI agents require access to localized payment infrastructure that merchants already use and trust. Through its settlement network, AEON enables crypto-native payments to be converted into local merchant settlements across different countries and payment ecosystems. As new local payment rails are integrated, AI agents gain access to broader real-world economic environments without requiring merchants to change their existing payment behavior.

The addition of Bolivia strengthens AEON’s settlement coverage across Latin America and expands the localized infrastructure available to wallets, exchanges, AI applications, and autonomous agents. By connecting crypto assets, local payment systems, merchants, and autonomous agents through a unified settlement layer, AEON is building the infrastructure that enables the agentic economy to operate in the real world.

About AEON

AEON is building a native settlement infrastructure for the agentic economy, specifically designed to eliminate three major friction points traditional finance networks pose for agent collaboration: fee overhead, programmability gap, and settlement lag.

Leveraging leading agentic protocols such as x402, ERC-8004, Google A2A, and MCP, AEON enables autonomous, verifiable AI agent transactions at scale and bridges Agent-to-Agent (A2A) interactions with real-world settlement and continuous value flows.

Serving more than 2 million users and processing 30M monthly transactions, AEON is backed by YZi Labs and IDG Capital, with participation from investors including HashKey Capital, Stanford Blockchain Builders Fund, etc.

Website | X | Telegram | Medium | AEON Pay

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SOURCE AEON

BANGKOK, July 9, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — DigiTech ASEAN Thailand & AI Connect 2026, the premier international exhibition and business networking platform for digital business solutions, is making a grand return. The event will take place from 25-27 November 2026 at Hall 7-8, IMPACT Exhibition & Convention Center, Bangkok, Thailand.

With a focus on helping businesses navigate today’s economic challenges and rapid technological shifts, this year’s event has expanded its exhibition space. It will showcase a comprehensive range of digital and AI solutions aimed at driving business growth and promoting sustainability across various industries. Attendees will discover how to leverage tech to reduce costs, boost efficiency, and keep pace with the fast-evolving business landscape.

This year’s event is expected to attract over 400 leading global tech brands and companies—catering to enterprises, mid-sized businesses, and SMEs alike—and welcome more than 12,000 tech buyers and visitors.

The event serves as a direct bridge connecting tech providers with high-potential buyers. The exhibition will cover six key technology sectors which are Business Software, Cybersecurity, E-commerce & Digital Marketing, Data & Cloud, Smart Solutions & IoT, and Artificial Intelligence (AI).

Visitors can stay ahead of the curve with technology trend updates and practical business workshops led by industry experts at the Global Tech Stage and The Future of AI Stage. The event will also feature face-to-face product demonstrations, allowing attendees to experience solutions firsthand and see how they work in real-world business scenarios. In addition, a pre-arranged Business Matching Program will be available to help drive digital transformation and create opportunities for targeted strategic partnerships.

Ms. Peerayaphan Pongasanam, Assistant Director of Exhibition Project Department at IMPACT Exhibition Management Co., Ltd., shared: “DigiTech ASEAN Thailand & AI Connect reflects the continuously rising demand for digital and AI solutions as businesses look to stay competitive in a volatile economy. IMPACT is dedicated to making this event a powerful regional business and knowledge hub. It offers tech providers of all sizes the chance to connect face-to-face and strengthens Thailand’s position as a vital digital and AI hub for ASEAN.”

This landmark event is proudly supported by its Silver Sponsors, whose innovation drives the region’s digital transformation forward: 9 Dots Consulting Co., Ltd., Adobe, Axons, DCSS (Thailand) Co., Ltd., SambaNova Systems Inc, Socket 9, Wholix, and Zoho Corporation.

Kelly Chong, Sales Executive, Southeast Asia at Adobe, added: “At Adobe, we believe creativity and productivity are the heart of success in the modern business era. We are thrilled to support DigiTech ASEAN Thailand & AI Connect 2026 as a Silver Sponsor. As the ASEAN market rapidly adopts advanced digital marketing strategies and tech-driven frameworks, this event is the perfect opportunity to showcase Adobe’s AI-powered smart solutions to businesses in Thailand and across the region.”

Join us at DigiTech ASEAN Thailand & AI Connect 2026, taking place 25-27 November 2026 at Hall 7-8, IMPACT Exhibition & Convention Center, Bangkok, Thailand, where leading technology providers, AI innovators, business leaders, and industry professionals will come together to explore the future of digital business. 

For more information, please visit www.digitechasean.com

Free visitor registration https://digitechasean.com/visitor-registration/?campaign=Intmedia  

For inquiries, call +66 (0) 2-833-5370 or email info@digitechasean.com

NOTES TO EDITORS: Download the high-resolution images at this link:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/14ebLRczeFqJvK7hcx5yO5FgmZ8zsXBjg?usp=sharing

IMPACT EXHIBITION MANAGEMENT CO., LTD.

10th Fl., Bangkok Land Building
47/569-576 Popular 3 Road, Banmai Sub-district,
Pakkred District, Nonthaburi 11120
GREATER BANGKOK, THAILAND

PR Newswire is the Official Press Release Distribution Partner of DigiTech ASEAN Thailand & AI Connect 2026.

About the organiser

IMPACT Exhibition Management Co. Ltd. 

IMPACT Exhibition Management Co., Ltd. is the leading exhibition organiser in Thailand. We organise and manage professional trade and public exhibitions, conferences, meetings and training, working in hand with international trade associations, organisers, and corporations across a broad spectrum of industries. For more information, please visit https://impactorganizer.com/

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SOURCE DigiTech ASEAN Thailand & AI Connect

Newly created senior leadership role blends commercial, technical and people leadership to embed an AI-native mindset across the business

MANCHESTER, England, July 9, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — ProofID, the pure-play identity security specialist delivering advisory, implementation and managed services, today announced the appointment of Neil Evans as its first Chief AI Officer. The newly created role will lead ProofID’s transformation into an AI-native business — building AI-native delivery capabilities internally, developing new AI-powered service offerings for customers, and positioning ProofID as the recognised leader in AI-enabled identity services across EMEA and the Americas.

The appointment comes at a critical time for enterprise technology. Organisations across every sector are racing to deploy AI, embedding autonomous agents, accelerating workflows and integrating AI tools across their operations. That shift is creating an entirely new identity challenge, as organisations look to secure, govern and monitor autonomous AI agents with the same rigour as their human workforce.

Evans brings more than 30 years of technology leadership spanning software engineering, product innovation and C-suite roles across enterprise software and professional audio. He most recently served as Cloud & Mobile Engineering Leader at Music Tribe’s Midas Division and previously spent five years as CTO (EMEA) at UNICOM Global, directing emerging technology strategy across natural language processing, AI, machine learning and blockchain. He holds a Master of Engineering in Microelectronics Systems Engineering from the University of Manchester.

“This is a people-first transformation as much as a technical one,” said Tom Eggleston, CEO of ProofID. “Technology is the enabler, but it’s the mindset, behaviours and capability of our people that will determine whether we succeed in becoming AI-native, while staying true to who we are — the identity security specialist our customers already trust. Neil has spent his career leading exactly that kind of change, and he’s the right person to drive it end-to-end.”

The Chief AI Officer role is a commercial, technical and people leadership position in equal measure. Evans joins ProofID’s senior leadership team and will lead the cultural and behavioural change needed to embed an AI-native mindset across the business, alongside building the new capabilities and offerings that will define ProofID’s proposition in the market. The role builds on ProofID’s existing Agentic AI Enablement advisory practice, which helps organisations secure autonomous AI agents using their identity investments.

“This is a rare opportunity to lead a transformation from the inside — not just advising clients on how to become AI-native, but building that capability into ProofID itself,” said Neil Evans, Chief AI Officer at ProofID. “The technology is the easy part. The real work is bringing our people with us, so we can deliver AI-powered identity services at the level our customers expect.”

About ProofID

ProofID is a pure-play identity security specialist delivering advisory, implementation and managed services. Founded in 2014 and 100% focused on identity since day one, ProofID serves enterprise and mid-market organisations across the US and EMEA, protecting more than 260 million identities and supporting over 100 million transactions daily. The company has delivered more than 2,000 identity projects and supports over 60 managed service clients globally, with strategic partnerships including Ping Identity, SailPoint and Palo Alto Networks. For more information, visit proofid.com.

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View original content:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/proofid-appoints-neil-evans-as-chief-ai-officer-to-lead-transformation-into-an-ai-native-identity-security-specialist-302821834.html

SOURCE ProofID