Australia

The bank technology is launching its signature payment platform in a country where rivals like Square and PayPal are also actively chasing business payments.

The bank's new Seattle hub will focus on artificial intelligence, generative models, and cloud innovation, close to partners like AWS and Anthropic.

The country's central bank cited geopolitical uncertainty and the increased reliance on digital payments as a reason to focus on offline payments as a backup. Also, a look at U.K. bank outages and other news in American Banker's global payments and fintech roundup.

The U.S. bank was unable to fully sell a block of shares in Australia's Goodman Group it had underwritten for China's sovereign wealth fund.

The $29 billion deal would enable Square to better compete with PayPal and Apple, and provide an opportunity to cross-sell other services to the Australian lender's global audience.

The Australian bank's stakes in technology firms Little Birdie and Amber add price shopping for point of sale credit and bill pay.

The country's banks and fintechs are still new to working together, giving Railsbank a chance to become a key player in open banking.

The decision comes after a decade in which several U.S.-based institutions elected to drop the words "credit union" from their branding.

Openpay, the latest firm to enter the U.S.’s booming buy now, pay later instant-credit market, has hired a team clearly braced for heavier competition and regulation ahead.

Two large deals happened this week in Australia to build scale against international financial services encroachment from card schemes and cross-border financial services — a concern that's cropping up in several nations.