Goodbye, Bitcoin? There currently are at least 32 crypto kiosks, according to St. Paul police, where users can deposit cash and see it converted into a digital alternative.

Soon, there may be none.

Alarmed by fraud cases that have cost victims millions of dollars nationally, the St. Paul City Council is poised to ban virtual currency kiosks that have proliferated citywide.

The ATM-like kiosks are placed in high-traffic areas such as convenience stores and allow users to make cash deposits, which are then converted into Bitcoin or other digital currencies and transferred into an account or virtual wallet. Digital currency is money that exists only in an electronic form and can be exchanged online. It often operates independently of central banks.

City ordinance

An ordinance before the city council calls for prohibiting any person from operating a virtual currency kiosk within city limits. It would not affect online virtual transactions conducted by businesses and residents.

Michael Carter, an enforcement audit director with the Minnesota Department of Commerce, told the council Wednesday that there have been 51 law enforcement reports statewide involving $700,000 lost to various kiosk scams. The real numbers likely are larger as many victims are too embarrassed to come forward.

Gordon Wrobel, a resident of St. Paul and an AARP volunteer, said the crypto kiosks need more regulations and oversight.

“The impact of fraud on victims and their families is wide reaching and can have an impact financially and emotionally,” said Wrobel, during a public hearing Wednesday. “Criminals are becoming more sophisticated in their approach which authorities struggle to keep up.”

However, Ethan McClelland, the director of government relations for Bitcoin Depot – a leading Bitcoin machine operator – called the proposed ordinance an overreaction. The company sued the city of Stillwater after it banned cryptocurrency machines earlier this year.

“We share the council’s goal of protecting consumers from fraud,” McClelland said. “However, placing a reactionary ban on the industry that is already licensed and regulated by the state, which serves a legitimate purpose for St. Paul residents, is unnecessary and will deprive many customers their only way of participating in the digital economy.”

Crypto scams

Law enforcement investigators have called crypto scams especially dangerous because there is no centralized authority to flag suspicious behavior, and they are often untraceable.

In 2023, Americans reported losing $5.6 billion in cryptocurrency scams, according to the FBI, which found that the frauds were more likely to target older people.

Often, residents unfamiliar with cryptocurrency are warned by fraudsters that they owe the Internal Revenue Service or another federal agency back payments, and they’re pressured to use a kiosk to deposit cash to a serial number within a matter of hours, or they’ll be prosecuted, they’re told.

The Minnesota Legislature implemented a degree of cryptocurrency fraud protection in 2024. A new law required all kiosks to disclose terms and conditions, issue refunds for new customers, and set a maximum transaction limit of $2,000 for new customers.

Tim Greenfield, the city council’s chief policy officer, said the state’s measures haven’t been effective in stopping scams, and fraudsters have quickly found ways around the regulations.

“These kiosks serve as a very specific flashpoint for which criminal activity defrauds citizens and no amount of disclosure or tapping of a screen or a receipt can be as effective as  simply removing them from operation,” Greenfield said.

Tim Plunkett, a St. Paul resident, said he fell victim to a scam in February. Scammers impersonated Xfinity technicians and told him abnormally high activity on his desktop had led them to find evidence of money laundering and other illegal acts. The scammers told Plunkett that they would report the activity to the Federal Trade Commission unless he transferred them money through a cryptocurrency kiosk.

Plunkett went to different kiosks four times. When he received an email from Rocket Coin, a cryptocurrency ATM company, he realized he had been scammed. It turned out that the scammers had locked him out of his computer and his bank account.

“The first thing they want you to do is to get you in a state of confusion,” he told the council.​

Raising public awareness

Council President Rebecca Noecker said the proposed kiosk ban is a way to protect the vulnerable.

“Part of this is we want to raise public awareness of the level of these scams for older members, low-income folks and the incarcerated and their families in our community,” Noecker said.​

Crypto scams have become lucrative crimes in recent years. In September, two men stole $8 million in cryptocurrency after kidnapping a father and his nine-year-old son in Washington County.

Related Articles

St. Paul offering $2,500 for those facing eviction. Here’s how it works.

Lawsuit filed after St. Paul City Council unanimously approves firearms regulation ordinance

Process over $250,000 reparations study splits St. Paul’s Black leaders

St. Paul mayor’s race: What voters say about Kaohly Her’s victory

St. Paul: Why do some streetlights remain out on Shepard Road, elsewhere?

​In June, an Eagan couple was almost scammed out of $125,000. The couple was able to avoid losing all of their money when Gabby Conklin, an office assistant in the city attorney’s office who had stopped at a convenience store for gas, intervened, Noecker said.

A scammer was trying to get the couple to deposit money into a kiosk by pretending to be an FTC agent.

“The elderly couple were literally one press of a button away from losing their life savings irreversibly, but through Gabby’s work that was averted,” Noecker said.

The council will host a final vote on the proposed ordinance on Nov. 19.

Police were looking Thursday for a hit-and-run driver who fatally struck a pedestrian in St. Paul.

Officers responded to St. Anthony Avenue and Aldine Street, near Interstate 94 and University Avenue, about 5:15 p.m. on reports of a crash.

The pedestrian was found with head trauma, and officers began rendering aid until St. Paul Fire Department medics took over, said Nikki Muehlhausen, a St. Paul police spokesperson. Medics took the woman to Regions Hospital, where she was pronounced dead a short time later.

Witnesses reported the vehicle that struck the woman was a dark-colored sport-utility vehicle. Additional information wasn’t immediately available.

“There is an active search underway for the driver/vehicle, which fled the scene before officers arrived,” Muehlhausen said Thursday night.

Related Articles

Maplewood man, 56, admits in court to 2014 kidnapping and rape attempt

Man fatally shot after Clearwater County authorities say he discharged flare at officers

A judge said Luigi Mangione could have a laptop to view evidence in jail. He still hasn’t gotten it

What’s next in Congress on the push to release the Epstein files

Takeaways from the newly released Epstein documents

By KEN SWEET

NEW YORK (AP) — Imagine if your bank could move money for you with only the slightest of digital nods for your approval. Or that could tell you that you’re overspending but more importantly know how to address that overspending and put you on better financial footing.

Related Articles

Google accused in suit of using Gemini AI tool to snoop on users

IRS boosts contribution limits for 401(k) retirement plan savers

Doritos and Cheetos dial back the bright orange in new versions without artificial ingredients

AT&T reached a $177M data breach settlement. What consumers should know about claiming their money

Airlines are optimistic about a quick recovery ahead of Thanksgiving once FAA ends flight cuts

That’s what you’ll get with Moneybot, a new financial services chatbot shown off this week by Cash App that will be slowly introduced into its banking app this winter. Unlike existing bank chatbots, which can handle routine tasks like changing an address, Moneybot can take advanced actions for a customer like creating a savings plan, buying or selling stock, or even evaluating a customer’s spending habits.

Moneybot is part of the next generation of chatbots using what the tech industry calls “agentic” AI, which turns tools like ChatGPT into an “AI agent” that can take action online on a person’s behalf. That means, instead of just writing text, answering questions or recommending products found online, an “agentic” chatbot could also buy a product.

Amazon now has Rufus to go with Alexa, which both either provide information on products or can buy things on customers’ behalf. Walmart is rolling out “Chat & Buy” and Microsoft has Copilot Shopping.

Agentic AI, for being so new, is already causing some controversy. Amazon is suing an AI chatbot company, Perplexity, for alleged computer fraud over AI shopping agents that Amazon says are disguising themselves as human buyers to access customer accounts without Amazon’s permission. Perplexity has denied the claims.

Traditional banks have had chatbots for a while, notably Bank of America’s “Erica” or “Ask Amex” from American Express, but have hesitated to roll out agentic AI. They worry about possible liability if a chatbot buys a product by mistake for a customer or is maliciously used to buy things it is not supposed to.

“Our top priority is to keep our customers’ and clients’ data safe above all else,” said Mark Birkhead, chief data officer at JPMorgan Chase, in an interview with the consulting firm McKinsey back in June on the issue of why the bank hasn’t rolled out agentic AI yet to customers.

Cash App on the other hand is diving in head first.

One notable feature of Moneybot is its prompts and suggestions. When Moneybot launches, it does an analysis of the the customer’s transactions and spending and gives them independent recommendations on actions they could take. Unlike other bank chatbots, which take you to other parts of a banks’ website, Moneybot’s transactions and analysis happen inside a single screen. Cash App’s executives see Moneybot becoming the primary way people interact with CashApp in the future.

Want to know your biggest spending categories instantly and how to cut your spending? Moneybot gives several suggestions in a matter of seconds, showing you the merchants you spent with. Need to save $1,000 toward a vacation in six months? Moneybot creates an automated savings plan for you with only a couple of prompts.

Want to put money into the stock market? It takes only a request and confirmation in Moneybot, which will buy Tesla stock for you or even bitcoin. Moneybot will remind you, however, that it does not give investing advice.

Moneybot may even anticipate why the customer is opening up the app in the first place.

“We have such a deep understanding of who you are that it’s almost a failure if we have to rely on customers to ask right questions,” said Owen Jennings, executive officer and business lead at Block, in an interview.

Company officials pointed out that, despite having these agent abilities, Moneybot will still need active confirmation from the user to do its money-moving tasks. But that confirmation is often just a simple push of a button or a “yes” in a chat box.

Cash App executives say Moneybot uses three different AI models, choosing the most appropriate one for the customer’s question. Some are easier to recognize, including the eager-to-please tone that often comes with ChatGPT 5.

A Cash App employee demo’ing Moneybot, much to his chagrin, showed that he spent heavily at Nordstrom last month. Moneybot kindly suggested he might want to cut back on his clothing purchases if he needs to save money.

There are things Moneybot cannot do because of the legal and privacy questions that have yet to be answered. Moneybot won’t offer you a loan but feels like it could do so if the toggle were ever turned on.

Because of the way the prompts are written, Cash App employees acknowledged there could be privacy and legal implications with what Moneybot suggests if appropriate guardrails are not put into place.

Policymakers have raised concerns about how these chatbots could steer customers into one product or another, even if one product may not be in the best interest for the customer. For instance, what’s to stop a future version of Moneybot from favoring a buy now, pay later loan from AfterPay — also owned by Cash App’s parent company Block — for purchases instead of Affirm or Klarna?

“If firms cannot manage using a new technology in a lawful way, then they should not use the technology,” said Rohit Chopra in 2024, when he was director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Chopra spent much of his tenure at the bureau raising concerns about the adoption of AI in financial services.

In the meantime, asking for a loan inside Moneybot will transfer a customer to a human agent.

Not surprisingly, Moneybot has the usual disclosure found at the bottom of most chatbots these days: Artificial intelligence can make mistakes. Somehow, that feels a bit more important in banking than an AI chatbot accidentally providing the wrong amount of cumin in a fajita recipe or buying the wrong size of shirt.

An earlier version of this story misspelled Moneybot.

By JACK DENTON

ZANZIBAR, Tanzania (AP) — When darkness came, so did the smoke.

Related Articles

Diverse and resilient energy production is needed to meet future demand, global report says

Climate change is in the news during COP30. We’ve got tips to tackle your climate anxiety

Traditional acai berry dishes surprise visitors to Brazil climate summit, no sugar added

As US skips climate talks in Brazil, leaders plead for other nations to unite

Pets contribute to greenhouse gases like us. Here’s how to reduce their carbon pawprint

Hamna Silima Nyange, like half of the 2 million people in Tanzania’s semi-autonomous archipelago of Zanzibar, did not have a house connected to the electricity grid. After sunset, she would turn to smoky oil lamps that provided the only light for her eight children to study.

”The light was too weak,” Nyange said. “And the smoke from the lamp hurt my eyes.”

Then one day a neighbor, Tatu Omary Hamad, installed solar panels and bulbs that lit her home with help from the strong sunlight along the Indian Ocean coast.

“Today we have enough light,” Nyange said.

Training women to be solar technicians

Hamad is one of dozens of “solar mamas” trained in Zanzibar by Barefoot College International, a global nonprofit, through a program that brings light to rural communities and provides jobs for local women. So far in Zanzibar, it has lit 1,845 homes.

The program selects middle-aged women, most with little or no formal education, from villages without electricity and trains them over six months to become solar power technicians. It is one of a small number of programs in Africa including Solar Sister.

“Solar Mama” technicians walk into a classroom on the campus of Barefoot College International in Kinyasini, Unguja, Zanzibar, July 23, 2025. (AP Photo/Jack Denton)

The women return to their communities with at least 50 sets of household solar panel kits as well as the skills and equipment to set them up and keep them running.

Barefoot College International focuses on middle-aged women because they tend to have the strongest links to their communities while not often involved in intensive child care.

“We want to train women who become change makers,” said Brenda Geofrey, the director of Barefoot College International Zanzibar.

The Zanzibar campus is in its 10th year of teaching local women. Before that, it sent women for training in India, where Barefoot College International was founded.

One was Khazija Gharib Issa, who had been an unemployed widow. Now she is a master trainer.

“I got a job. I got a place to stay. Before, I didn’t have one,” Issa said.

The importance of health

Improving health is at the heart of the program’s mission.

Alongside its flagship solar power course, Barefoot College International offers programs for women in tailoring, beekeeping and sustainable agriculture. Every woman who completes a program is trained in general health knowledge that they are expected to take back to their villages.

A “Solar Mama” technician wires up a solar charge controller at the campus of Barefoot College International in Kinyasini, Unguja, Zanzibar, July 23, 2025. (AP Photo/Jack Denton)

The “solar mamas” are health catalysts in another way, by replacing harmful light sources like kerosene.

“Using kerosene has many problems,” said Jacob Dianga, a health care worker at a local clinic who is familiar with the group’s work. The fuel can irritate the eyes, while inhaling its smoke can cause long-term lung damage. It’s also a fire hazard in cramped homes and shops, and can poison children who mistake it for a drink.

“Clean energy is very important,” Dianga said. “It helps protect our health.”

“Solar Mama” technicians walk on the campus of Barefoot College International in Kinyasini, Unguja, Zanzibar, July 23, 2025. (AP Photo/Jack Denton)

Challenges remain

Barefoot College International has scaled up across Africa, with other campuses in Madagascar and Senegal. In recent years, women have been brought to Zanzibar from Malawi and Somaliland, and this year some are being recruited from Central African Republic.

Funding remains a challenge as major donors, notably the United States and European ones, cut foreign aid and projects face more competition for money that remains.

Barefoot College International is run with public and private donations and revenue generated by its social enterprises.

A “Solar Mama” technician takes a training session on the campus of Barefoot College International in Kinyasini, Unguja, Zanzibar, July 23, 2025. (AP Photo/Jack Denton)

Another challenge is resistance in local communities, where some people find it hard to accept the women technicians in a radical new gender role.

While the solar training program recruits with the approval of village leadership, who put forward candidates, some husbands have stopped their wives from training.

“In most African communities, women are pictured as somebody who is just at home,” Geofrey said.

But the solar mamas say the results often speak for themselves.

“People used to say this work is for men. They were surprised and laughed at me,” Issa said. “But now they see how important my work is. I have become an example.”

For more on Africa and development: https://apnews.com/hub/africa-pulse

The Associated Press receives financial support for global health and development coverage in Africa from the Gates Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.