SWIFT

After two years of helping banks connect globally to domestic faster payments rails, Swift is planning to expand on that concept.

Interoperability has become a top priority in the minds of those advancing faster payments.

JPMorgan is prototyping its own digital currency to be used for cross-border payments and, later, other purposes. Will banks find this a palatable alternative to today's most well-known options?

Wide coverage of the mega-deal between BB&T and SunTrust; GSE reform, CFPB underwriting rule are on collision course; Swift showing more swagger in its rivalry with Ripple; and more from this week's most-read stories.

Swift is showing more swagger in its rivalry with Ripple thanks to progress it has made with a multifaceted payments-tracking technology called GPI.

Ripple Labs Inc., the blockchain startup whose digital money is often used as a proxy for other cryptocurrency payments, is gaining new customers because financial firms are seeking faster, more up-to-date technology than the Swift banking network, Chief Executive Officer Brad Garlinghouse said.

The OCC finds widespread problems in bank retail sales practices; Ripple and Swift competition for payments pits technology against convention.

Enterprise customers will be able to send payment data to the bank through an application programming interface, rather than as XML or Swift files.

The digital-currency startup, which markets software to banks, appears keen to signal that it wants to play by the rules.

The bank consortium is going directly after the business of its former partner Ripple in the middle of their legal battle over an option for digital currency worth $1 billion.