John Adams

Muse, one of American Banker's Most Influential Women in Payments for 2022, has put the wireless carrier ahead of many banks in its adoption of real-time payments technology for billing.

This year's Most Influential Women in Payments honorees span the globe, demonstrating the universal importance of personal connections and career mobility, as well as the ways technology can connect a hybrid workforce and propel commerce.

Russia's invasion has disrupted life at Lithuanian startup Paysera, which has a dozen employees in Ukraine, including Yevhen Matasar, who fled from Kyiv to a nearby town where he still does some programming when he can. "This is a very difficult situation … it's helpful to be able to continue to work," Matasar said.

Best known as a maker of ATMs and point-of-sale devices, Diebold Nixdorf is launching a new cloud platform to support merchants and their customers as transactions become more hardware-agnostic.

The bank's ongoing partnership with DailyPay complements services such as real-time billing and payments. This combination could help employers attract and retain employees amid the Great Resignation.

U.S. payment giants like Visa, Mastercard, American Express and PayPal — along with smaller companies like Paysera in Lithuania — have blocked transactions or pulled out of Russia and Belarus in response to the invasion of Ukraine.

The companies' moves came a day after Visa and Mastercard said they were halting business in Russia because of its attack on Ukraine.

Sendi Young, the blockchain company's European managing director, discussed how a partnership with fintech Modulr supports its ongoing efforts to streamline money movement in a world where many payment rails predate the modern internet.

The card brands have blocked Russia's large banks from their networks in response to the Ukraine invasion, a move that may dramatically limit retail transactions and cash availability at ATMs.

With tensions high between Russia and the West, Synechron is looking to develop a real-time kill switch that can shut down a malware threat. The company’s PayTech Accelerator is also focusing on the opportunity for banks in buy now/pay later lending.