Asia

Adapting to Chinese consumers’ expectations of mobile pay options can help international retailers remain relevant and competitive by offering an easy, smooth, and interactive customer experience, writes Franklin Chu, managing director for Azoya USA.

Ant Financial’s push to expand global acceptance of its Alipay mobile wallet to wherever Chinese tourists go continues in Australia through Tyro, a fintech payments operation that obtained a banking license in 2015.

Payments technology and fleet card provider WEX has partnered with Japanese-based international card network, JCB, as expands its virtual cards into Japan.

As mega data collaborations among multinational companies threaten to dominate payment technology, developers are digging even deeper into decentralized models as a workaround to sell both greater data analysis and more security.

Mastercard and Visa’s single online payment experience, which has angered some merchants and could shake up the e-commerce market from PayPal to Amazon, is progressing toward a 2019 launch.

Despite the fervor over mobile wallets and banking, one day consumers may never need to open a dedicated bank or payment app.

Grab and Mastercard have formed a partnership extending the reach of the ride-hailing app by making a prepaid card available to Grab’s 110 million users across Southeast Asia.

Ant Financial, Alibaba’s finance affiliate controlled by billionaire Jack Ma, agreed to buy a stake in the Brazilian payments firm StoneCo Ltd after the company prices its initial public offering, joining Warren Buffett in investing in Brazil’s booming financial-technology startup landscape.

Indian wallet provider Paytm has entered the Japanese market in a joint venture with SoftBank Group and Yahoo Japan.

India’s government has been aggressively (and, at times, dramatically) pro-digital commerce — but not necessarily when it involves foreign companies.