EMEA

While payments firms must navigate political and regulatory waters, consumers and merchants are best served by a competitive free market free of politics, with minimalist regulators playing the role of the night watchman, writes Eric Grover, a principal at Intrepid Ventures.

Ant Financial, the Chinese payments company that operates Alipay, has a scale that’s almost unimaginable to a U.S. audience. But the giant's ability to build a true empire has already run into regulatory trouble in the U.S.—and it’s affecting Ant's strategy worldwide.

London-based TrueLayer says its API is a cheaper, faster and more secure way to make online payments than using credit cards or manually-entered bank transfers.

It’s unusual for a seemingly healthy company’s website to implore its U.S. customers to seek out a competitor with less than a month's notice, but cross-border payment processor WorldFirst has done just that.

Regional and community banks are eager to buy branches and hire top performers from the merging companies.

The industry's largest acquisition in more than a decade will create the sixth-biggest bank in the country, with assets of more than $442 billion.

Payments providers PXP Solutions and Kalixa have merged to form PXP Financial, a London-based company focused on delivering omnichannel services to merchant acquirers.

Nordea Finance will license Divido’s white-label point of sale lending platform for launch to retailers across several Nordic countries.

The company will gain four branches in Athens, Ga., with the $52 million acquisition.

Peru is planning a real-time payment system with Vocalink that will put the country on par with similar systems in Thailand, Singapore, the U.S. and the U.K.