BNP Paribas USA has become the sixth major bank to plead guilty in a US court to participating in a price-fixing conspiracy in the foreign currency exchange market. The conspiracy involved manipulation of prices on an electronic FX trading platform through the creation of non-bona fide trades, coordination of bids and offers on that platform and agreements on currency prices to quote specific customers, among other conduct. As part of its sentence, BNPP USA has agreed to pay a criminal fine of US$90 million, and to report relevant information to the government. BNPP USA's guilty plea follows last month's guilty pleas from Jason Katz, its former Central and Eastern European, Middle Eastern and African currencies trader, and Christopher Cummins, a former CEEMEA trader from Citigroup. In addition, on January 10, Richard Usher, formerly of JPMorgan; Rohan Ramchandani, formerly of Citigroup; and Christopher Ashton, formerly of Barclays, have been indicted for conspiring to fix prices and rig bids for US dollars and euros.  (NOTE: the indictment is merely an allegation, and the defendants are presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty.) Japanese technology giant SoftBank is working on "an audacious plan" to create a global digital payments system to take on PayPal, Apple Pay and China's Alipay, the Times reports. Such a core banking platform could be deployed by multiple financial institutions - cutting costs, and making it easier to launch products and services, while simultaneously serving as a mobile-phone-based payments network. Softbank's strategy would require the backing of several large banks to hoover up relevant financial tech firms. Temenos, a Swiss tech firm that provides software to 41 of the world's top 50 financial institutions, was named as a possible takeover candidate - a rumour denied by the firm. Likewise, SoftBank declined to comment on its interest in payments processing or in creating a new internet-based digital wallet system. Coincheck, one of Japan's largest digital currency exchanges, said it would repay more than A$500 million dollars' worth of virtual money after hackers broke into its network, reports the ABC and other newswire services. The theft of a cryptocurrency called NEM was reported last Friday. The loss tops the 48 billion yen that Japan-based Mt Gox Bitcoin exchange lost in 2014. Chief operating officer Yusuke Otsuka said stolen funds were kept in a "hot wallet" - one connected to the internet instead of being secured offline, a situation company president Koichiro Wada said was due to "technical difficulties" and a shortage of staff capable of dealing with them.