Alipay opens to more tourists, Revolut gets Mexican banking license

April 17, 2024 9:40 AM

Ant Group's Alipay is linking to Pakistan's NayaPay as part of a push to support tourism to China, Revolut has obtained a license from Mexico's National Banking and Securities Commission, and more.

Here's what's happening around the world.

Amanda Mustard/Bloomberg

Ant Group promotes mobile payments to China-bound tourists

As one of the last countries to open its borders last year to tourists after the pandemic, China's government and key payments players are working to restart use of mobile payments by foreign nationals visiting the country, with promotions across local payment services providers, Chinese merchants and tourist site operators.

China-based Ant Group, along with about a dozen payment partners of its Alipay+ mobile payments service, this month launched a program inviting merchants, tourist sites and commercial districts across China to create International Consumer Friendly Zones, according to a press release. As part of the push, Pakistan's NayaPay became the 11th digital wallet to become interoperable with Alipay+, so that NayaPay users may transact at 80 million merchants in China using their NayaPay app, according to a press release.

In addition to Alipay+, the release noted that travelers may link their Visa, Mastercard, Discover, Diners Club and JCB cards to an Alipay app to enable in-app purchases for shopping, dining, ride-hailing and public transportation within the Chinese mainland. Ant Group is offering participating businesses help with multilingual support for its app, user guides and merchant training.

China hosted 35.5 million visitors in 2023, a seven-fold increase over 2022, during the first full year since reopening its borders, according to CNN. But the total number of foreign nationals entering and exiting the country last year was barely one-third of 98 million that traveled to China in 2019.

The Chinese government recently eased requirements for incoming travelers by enabling visitors from many European countries and Malaysia to enter China for 15 days without a visa, while visitors from the U.S. face fewer requirements and no longer need to submit a detailed itinerary when seeking permission to visit. —Kate Fitzgerald

Canada’s real-time payments rail to remain in test mode until 2026

Canada's domestic payments authority Payments Canada is resuming development of the country's real-time payments program after a series of delays, the agency said in a Tuesday press release. Payments Canada will oversee building of the clearing and settlement component Real Time Rail (RTR), with initial testing expected to begin next year with broader industry tests beginning in 2026. No date has been established for a formal launch of the system, which was originally slated to go live last year, although several recent milestones include expanding potential participants including through revised legislation. Payments Canada said new partners IBM Canada and Montreal-based CGI will collaborate with Interac, Canada's domestic digital payments network, to support the delivery and operation of the RTR. Separately, Canada's federal government announced that the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada will oversee open banking in Canada, and will receive $1 million in funding to support its development, with plans to establish technical standards for the initiative later this year. —Kate Fitzgerald

Revolut obtains banking license in Mexico

U.K. fintech Revolut has secured a banking license from Mexico's National Banking and Securities Commission with the goal of expanding its cross-border financial reach there, FinTech Futures reports. Revolut, which bundles free money transfers as part of its broader financial services, operates in 41 other countries, and began laying plans to operate in Mexico three years ago. The startup won a money transmitter license in Mexico in 2022 and in order to obtain a banking license, it gathered $88 million in capital. The firm must accumulate $110 million in capital before its service goes live in Mexico. —Kate Fitzgerald

Bank of England official says U.K. on cusp of payments revolution

Bank of England Deputy Governor Sarah Breeden said the U.K. is on the cusp of a technological revolution in finance that will slash the cost of using money, and allow micropayments and automatic payments on the delivery of goods.

Breeden said on Monday that "urgent action" is needed to prepare the U.K. finance sector for a "widespread, more fundamental technological change" that may lead to a wave of new players threatening traditional banks.

The U.K. central bank is preparing for a step change in the way Britons use money, including designing a central bank digital currency, known as "Britcoin," and regulation for stablecoins. While payments innovation may "offer significant benefits for customers and businesses, economic activity and growth," Breeden said in a speech at the Innovate Finance Global Summit that there are also risks.

She said that stablecoins — a cryptocurrency whose value is tied to an underlying asset — still remain a threat despite Facebook's Libra project coming to "naught."

"The possibility of stablecoins coming to be used at scale for retail payments (including by harnessing large firms' existing user bases) remains," she said. Respondents to a discussion paper proposing a regulatory regime for stablecoins warned the BOE that its rules could smother the sector, and "effectively bar use of stablecoins at systemic scale." —Tom Rees, Bloomberg News

Kotak restores services after outages hit digital transactions

Kotak Mahindra Bank restored services late on Monday after difficulties with its computer servers saw customers complain about problems with cash withdrawals and digital transactions.

Kotak's technical servers were "experiencing intermittent slowness" at the start of the week, but by late Monday evening normalcy had been restored, a bank spokesperson said. The lender's shares were down 1.1% in early Tuesday trading.

The disruption, nevertheless, drove customers at India's fourth most valuable bank to social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, to complain about their challenges on Sunday and Monday. The services impacted included cash withdrawals from its automated teller machines and bank branches, and customers were unable to make payments.

India's digital payments are expected to rise to 600 trillion rupees in the next five years. But local lenders' ambitions to expand their digital reach and capture a larger share of the market are often let down by technical glitches, which attract the regulator's ire. HDFC Bank, the nation's most valuable, faced similar challenges and was ordered to curb some of its digital and credit card operations following a series of digital outages in 2020. —Preeti Singh, Bloomberg News