Australia's NAB readies A2A payments, Tuscany upgrades transit fare

May 8, 2024 11:43 AM

National Australia Bank is adding a Pay By Bank option for near-instant payments, Italy is bringing open-loop payments to buses in Tuscany, and more.

Here's what's happening around the world.

Brendon Thorne/Bloomberg

Australian bank to broaden account-to-account payments

Sydney-based National Australia Bank is working with a London-based fintech Banked to support near-instant account-to-account payments using biometric authorization, the firms said in a Wednesday press release. The service will bring Pay by Bank technology to NAB's 10 million consumers to make real-time payments to thousands of Australian merchants via its integration with Australian Payments Plus (AP+).

When NAB launches Pay by Bank this summer, the service will enable participating merchants to send PayTo agreements to customers to initiate transactions and to send refunds to consumers for e-commerce purchases, along with recurring payments (including those with fixed or variable amounts), and split payment amounts, according to the release.

The first set of participating merchants will launch NAB's Pay By Bank services within the next several weeks, including e-commerce sellers, retail and nonbank lenders, said Katrina Stuart, general manager of business payments at AP+, which is helping to drive development of account-to-account payments in Australia. Launched in Sydney in 2022 with backing from Australia's central bank, AP+ joins Australia's domestic payments schemes including the eftpos debit network with BPAY for bill payment and NPPA — the public firm operating the country's faster-payments rail New Payments Platform, or NPP — into a single entity to streamline payments between businesses, government and consumers.

NAB in 2022 announced a $15 million investment in Banked, joined by Citigroup and NAB Ventures. Banked has raised $50 million to date, in four funding rounds with earlier backers including Bank of America and Edenred Capital Partners. —Kate Fitzgerald

Open-loop transit expands in Tuscany’s popular tourism zones

Italy's public-transit bus network in Tuscany and the trams serving Florence recently activated TipTap, a new open-loop contactless payments approach enabling passengers — including thousands of tourists — to pay for rides by tapping any contactless card or device at fare-collection points, according to a press release. TipTap extends across 273 towns and cities and is the largest open-loop payment deployment for mass transit in Europe, according to Kuba, the mobility payment specialist that integrated the system on behalf of transport operator Autolinee Toscane (AT). Visa partnered with AT to provide free rides using the contactless system from April 10 to May 5. In the first month after TipTap's March 28 launch, more than 400,000 passengers used the system, with 60% of users classified as "occasional" riders or tourists, meeting one of the key goals of the project, Kuba said in a press release. About 50% of rider traffic during that period paid with cards issued outside of Italy, the firm said. —Kate Fitzgerald

Nonprofits’ employees gain cross-border funds-transfer options

Miami-based Crowded has launched a cross-border funds-transfer service for nonprofit and membership organizations' temporary employees with help from Visa, Cross River and Checkout.com, according to a press release. The partnership enables registered nonprofit organizations using Crowded's digital banking platform to transfer funds within its app to their temporary employees and visitors, bypassing the need to open a local bank account during their stay. International summer camp staff working in North America this year will be the first users, who may receive their salary within Crowded's app and transfer funds to their home bank or digital wallet via Visa Direct at the end of the summer. Crowded plans to expand the use case this fall to include for business-to-business cross-border funds transfers for nonprofit organizations. —Kate Fitzgerald

Qatar airlines’ loyalty program launches credit card in the U.S.

Doha-based Qatar Airways' loyalty program has joined forces with San Francisco-based digital card-issuing firm Cardless to launch a pair of Visa rewards credit cards for U.S. users, according to a press release. The move marks the first international airline loyalty program to launch in the U.S. under the luxury Visa Infinite brand, the release said. The Qatar Airways Privilege Club Visa Infinite card, with an annual fee of $499 is made of metal, and rewards users with five Avios for every $1 spent at Qatar Airways; three Avios for restaurant purchases and one Avios for other purchases. A $99-a-year Signature Visa version provides four Avios on Qatar Airways purchases, two Avios at restaurants and one Avios elsewhere. First Electronic Bank, Salt Lake City, is Cardless' issuing partner for the program. —Kate Fitzgerald

Nepal merchants to accept Alipay+

Ant Group's Singapore-based Ant International unit has formed a partnership with Nepal Clearing House Limited, the payments arm of Nepal's central bank, to enable more than 800,000 merchants to accept payments via Ant's Alipay+ app, Ant said in a press release. The move advances interoperability for Nepalese locals and visitors using the Alipay+ digital wallet to pay at merchants that accept the national QR-based payment scheme Nepalpay QR. Nepal's post-pandemic tourism business is rebounding, with 100,000 arrivals per month during the first quarter of 2024. Nepalpay QR enables businesses of all sizes, including micro merchants, to accept cashless payments via handsets. The app is interoperable with more than 39 mobile banking apps, the release said. —Kate Fitzgerald

Mastercard, Citi, JPMorgan test ledger for settling bank money

Mastercard is joining with some of the largest U.S. banks to test shared-ledger technology that would allow the common settlement of tokenized assets such as commercial-bank money as well as Treasury and investment-grade debt securities.

The Regulated Settlement Network proof-of-concept will simulate transactions in dollars, Mastercard said in a statement Wednesday. The goal is to make transactions across borders and systems faster and easier, and to reduce the chance of error and fraud.

The ledger technology would likely dramatically change the way things are done in the financial world today. Currently, commercial bank money, wholesale central bank money, and securities such as investment-grade debt all reside on separate systems. But once these assets are turned into tokens that run on a distributed ledger, that can allow for settlement on the same system.

The trial builds on a previous, 12-week test began in late 2022 that focused on domestic interbank payments and cross-border payments in dollars.

Other participants in the new trial include Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, US Bancorp, Wells Fargo, Visa, Swift, TD Bank and Zions Bancorp. Project contributors, providing their expertise for the trial, include the Bank of New York Mellon Corp. and the International Swaps and Derivatives Association. The New York Innovation Center at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York will observe the participants' research and experimentation with tokenized settlement assets.

Financial companies around the world have been experimenting with shared ledgers for tokenized transactions. For example, Mastercard, Barclays Plc and Citi are among financial institutions involved in a new U.K. pilot announced in April.

The test doesn't mean the companies involved will pursue commercial deployment. —Olga Kharif, Bloomberg News