Asia

Just 16 months after demonetization forever changed the way Indians pay for things, WhatsApp is set to disrupt the market yet again.

On-demand transportation and mobile payments provider Grab has launched Grab Financial, which will serve as its fintech platform.

China’s Ant Financial, which already has a large stake in India’s Paytm and operates its own Alipay wallet in China, is taking a 45% stake in Pakistan’s Telenor Microfinance Bank (TMB).

Ant Financial’s consumer lending has reached at least 600 billion yuan ($95 billion) despite the affiliate of Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. facing a tougher environment for securitizing its loans, people familiar with the matter said.

In India, tens of millions of merchants still operate largely in cash with a mostly unbanked rural population. Technology could solve their problems, but the bigger differentiator may be in how payment services are sold.

Countries all over the world are embracing faster payment processing, and Di Challenor is one of the major forces behind the movement in Australia.

Japan’s financial regulator ordered further improvements at embattled cryptocurrency exchange Coincheck Inc. and penalized six others, including one operated by publicly listed GMO Internet Inc.

Sentbe, a South Korean international money-transfer company, is expanding its payout options and market reach in a partnership with the mobile cross-border payments network TransferTo.

Ripple, the U.S. digital payments company, is working with 61 Japanese banks on an application that will enable customers to settle cash transfers instantly around the clock, the latest effort to apply blockchain technology in finance.

Ant Financial’s Alipay is working with the Canadian payments processor Motion Pay Technology to push Ant's geographic reach in North America.