David Heun

On the surface, Ant Financial's reported discussions to acquire U.K.-based WorldFirst demonstrate a savvy business move to establish itself beyond the substantial market it controls in China. It also shows how far the Chinese payments giant is willing to go to resist the headwinds of U.S. policy.

China's Ant Financial, the Alibaba payments affiliate that operates Alipay, is reportedly in the advanced stages of talks to buy WorldFirst, an international payments provider based in London.

Online payments technology provider PayFort says its gateway is now accepting payments from Egypt's new national Meeza debit card scheme through the Central Bank of Egypt.

Former McKinsey & Company associate partner Liz Oakes has been named Mastercard's executive vice president of market development for the New Payments Platforms division.

Established as a transit-fare and small-value payment card in Hong Kong nearly 20 years ago, the Octopus Card is making a transition to a virtual prepaid card for online shopping.

Underwriters Laboratories is partnering with Google to release a testing tool designed to ensure a merchant can accept Google Pay at the point of sale.

The Global Payments Innovation service now moves 55 percent of Swift's cross-border transactions as it nears its second anniversary.

The video game industry serves a decidedly digital, tech-savvy audience with a propensity toward digital payments, but has been plagued by inconsistencies in payments to developers and a lack of a consistent rewards program for loyal players.

TransferGo will use the funding to fuel international expansion and increase market share particularly across Turkey, India, Ukraine and Russia.

Digital funds transfer provider Ingo Money is launching a new software integration with Visa Direct to allow customers to initiate push-to-card payments.