Latest global banking news

June 8, 2022 1:45 PM

In global news this week, ANZ Bank New Zealand adds a Gender Affirmation Leave policy, Mastercard works with Mercado Libre to secure crypto in Brazil, American Express Ventures back a Nigerian e-commerce startup, and more.

Here's what's happening around the world:

Brent Lewin/Bloomberg

New Zealand's ANZ adds leave for gender affirmation

ANZ Bank New Zealand has created a Gender Affirmation Leave policy, which is designed to support staff who are undergoing gender affirmation including social, medical and legal procedures. The six weeks of leave do not require staff to use annual or sick leave time, and the policy is part of the bank's larger program to support the LGBTQ community. Procedures covered include adopting dress and style of presentation, surgery, hormone therapy and other medical visits, and legal tasks such as name changes for identification on passports, birth certificates and bank cards. The leave policy covers employees in New Zealand and Australia. —John Adams

Darren Staples/Bloomberg

Nationwide promises to protect U.K. branches

Bucking a larger trend toward bank branch closures in the U.K. and elsewhere as digital banking matures, Nationwide Building Society says it will not leave any town or city in its footprint without a branch until at least the end of 2023. The financial institution, which has more than 620 branches in the U.K., has a strategy of providing face-to-face service for consumers that are struggling with financial challenges due to the U.K.'s rising cost of living. The pledge is not absolute, according to the Daily Mail. Nationwide could close branches if a lease expires, or if there are multiple branches in an area or if a branch needs significant financial investment and there are other branches nearby. —John Adams

Amir Hamja/Bloomberg

Mastercard, Mercado Libre to secure crypto in Brazil

Mastercard is working with Latin American e-commerce company Mercado Libre to mitigate fraud and other security risks for digital asset transactions in Brazil. Mercado Libre will use Mastercard's CipherTrace to monitor and identify payment risks and to ensure compliance. Mercado Libre in late 2021 introduced cryptocurrency support for customers in Brazil, allowing users to buy, hold and sell crypto. CipherTrace uses artificial intelligence and analytics to vet crypto transactions, assigning a risk rating to parties involved in a transaction. Mastercard acquired CipherTrace in 2021. —John Adams

American Express Ventures backs African e-commerce startup

Nigerian startup Klasha, which enables African consumers to pay international online merchants in African currencies, has raised $2.1 million from early-stage investors including American Express Ventures. Klasha plans to use the funding to expand to five more African countries this year while launching a new version of KlashaCart, its app. More than 1,700 African merchants have signed on to Klasha since its launch in May 2021. —Kate Fitzgerald

Ant launches digital bank in Singapore

Chinese financial conglomerate Ant Group has opened ANEXT Bank, a wholesale financial institution based in Singapore. It's one of Ant's largest overseas investments since Chinese regulators scuttled Ant's $37 billion IPO in 2020, according to Reuters. Ant, which in 2020 received one of the first banking licenses the Monetary Authority of Singapore issued to foreign firms, plans to focus on small to mid-sized business clients with cross-border operations. Ant is affiliated with Alibaba, the Chinese e-commerce firm, and operates Alipay. Alibaba, Ant and Alipay control a substantial market in China, but also provide services in other countries, such as "own currency" payments for travelers from China. —John Adams

Stripe recruits brick-and-mortar business in Singapore

Stripe, which specializes in allowing small businesses to support online payments, has introduced its Stripe Terminal hardware in Singapore. The move is designed to allow businesses to support in-person payments as store shopping recovers. Stripe Terminal relies on tools such as application programming interfaces and software development kits to combine in-person and online payments through the same gateway. Early local adopters include Plato, a software company that provides clinic management technology for about 2,200 health care providers in Southeast Asia. Plato is using a connection to Stripe Terminal and other Stripe technology to support business tasks at clinics along with payment acceptance in multiple channels. —John Adams

MoneyGram expands in Saudi Arabia

MoneyGram International and entered a partnership with Saudi telecommunications company Mobily to launch MoneyGram's money transfer service on Mobily Pay, the telco's digital wallet. MoneyGram will extend its reach to millions of consumers in Saudi Arabia when the service goes live this year. The collaboration is part of MoneyGram's white-label services. MoneyGram, which is in the midst of a multi-year strategy to add more digital channels, earlier in 2022 went private, a move that's designed to make its technology strategy more nimble. —John Adams

Ripple partners with German fintech to power crypto payments

Blockchain firm Ripple is collaborating with Lunu to enable the Berlin-based fintech's luxury retail clients to accept cryptocurrency for payments in stores and online. The retailers will use Ripple's Liquidity Hub, a Ripple division that allows clients to create crypto assets by accessing exchanges, trading desks and other digital asset providers. Lunu's point-of-sale terminal and online widget support crypto payments, with retailer adopters at launch including Farfetch, Off-White Browns and Steven Stone. Lunu will use Liquidity Hub to centralize the conversion of cryptocurrencies to traditional money in a single location. —John Adams

Barclaycard bolsters small-business financing in U.K.

U.K. fintech Liberis and Barclays have entered a deal to offer financing to the fintech's base of small business clients. The product will be called Barclaycard Business Cash Advance and will advance funds to merchants, which will pay back the loan with an additional fee. Barclays previously invested about $50 million in Liberis in late 2021, according to Finextra. Liberis has similar small-business lending partnerships in the U.S., Ireland, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Czech Republic and Slovakia, and has provided about $1 billion in more than 45,000 transaction since its founding in 2007. —John Adams

Revolut teams with Tink for open-banking account access

Stockholm-based Tink, which operates an open-banking platform, has partnered with Revolut, a London-based fintech specializing in mobile banking and cross-border payments. The collaboration will enable Revolut’s customers across Europe to use Tink’s payment initiation services to move funds into their Revolut account from any designated bank account. Revolut’s app serves more than 18 million customers in dozens of global markets. —Kate Fitzgerald

Citi to hire 3,000 staff for institutional business in Asia

Citigroup plans to recruit around 3,000 new staff for its institutional business in Asia as it steps up its presence in the region. The new staff will work in areas including investment, corporate and commercial banking, in roles involving trading, securities services and trade finance, Citi spokesman James Griffiths said. The bulk of the recruits will be in Hong Kong and Singapore, but also in India, South Korea, China and Australia where the firm has large institutional businesses. “Despite exiting retail banking outside Hong Kong and Singapore, this region remains front and center of Citi’s global strategy,” he said by phone. “We’ve been in Asia for 120 years. We have a very strong local presence.” —William Shaw, Bloomberg News