Europe

Global policymakers are all over the map when it comes to regulating cryptocurrencies. But industry participants are eager to have some direction — and soon.

U.K.-based companies WorldRemit and Lebara have formed a strategic partnership that will give Lebara’s 3 million mobile telecom customers direct access to WorldRemit’s digital money transfer service.

Digital money transfer provider SimbaPay has added an artificial-intelligence-powered chatbot that will enable banks and other companies to offer international money transfer to customers across Africa and Europe through text messaging.

PSD2's open banking wave is attracting lots of attention from payments technology firms, and Zafin is making moves to cement its place in the market.

The IATA said it's investigating how to apply faster payments to passengers, whether directly from the airline or indirectly via travel agents. Globally, airlines absorb more than $8 billion in costs for merchant fees and fraud.

Retailers and payment service providers will need to report on at least a quarterly basis on performance against the reference fraud rates, writes Matthew Attwell, Risk & Client Services director at The ai Corporation.

Limited data on fraud is a widely recognized issue and it was decided that incorporation into PSD2 was the most appropriate way to enforce a requirement, writes Matthew Attwell of The ai Corporation.

Timothy Bowler, president of the ICE Benchmark Administration, which has been responsible for calculating the index since mid-2013, argues that there is a strong case for keeping it going.

If they haven't already, card-issuing banks will soon receive a shock when the speed of PSD2's requirements becomes clear. Payments will have to happen faster, and the deadline to make that happen is fast approaching.

Wirecard has gained a foothold in using virtual prepaid cards to streamline corporate payments across business units, platforms and borders for companies with sprawling operations. Now the German company wants to do the same for more U.S. companies going global.