Latest global banking news

November 23, 2022 12:00 PM

In global news this week, WeChat Pay enables instant payments outside China, Mastercard takes a minority stake in Societe Generale subsidiary Treezor, Sella Group tests a fingerprint payment card in Italy, and more.

Here's what's happening around the world.

Chan Long Hei/Bloomberg

Thunes connects to WeChat for global payouts

Singapore-based cross-border payment firm Thunes has formed a partnership with China's Tencent Financial Technology to enable instant payments from outside China to users of the Tencent's WeChat app, the companies said in a press release. The move adds 1.3 billion mobile wallets to Thunes' payments network, enabling users to now send payments to 2.8 billion wallets, more than any other global payment network, according to Thunes. Visa Direct also recently announced a partnership with Thunes to reach 78 million digital wallet providers across 44 countries and territories. –Kate Fitzgerald

Daniel Acker/Bloomberg

Mastercard partners with Societe Generale subsidiary

Mastercard has made a minority investment in Treezor, a subsidiary of Societe Generale that develops banking-as-a-service software. The card brand will also work with Treezor on payment technology projects. The funding will help Treezor expand its business in Germany, Italy, Spain and other markets. Treezor will additionally become a preferred banking-as-a-service provider, meaning it will have priority access to new Mastercard products such as credit service, open banking and a carbon calculator. Societe Generale acquired Treezor in 2019, leading to work on application programming interfaces for digital payment, insurance, credit and other banking products. —John Adams

HSBC signage is displayed outside of a branch in New York.

Bloomberg News

HSBC, Wells Fargo extend foreign exchange collaboration

HSBC and Wells Fargo have added the offshore Yuan, or currency that circulates outside of China, to their bilateral FX settlement product. The settlement uses blockchain technology to support a shared ledger that settles cross-currency payments in U.S. dollars, U.K. pounds, euros, and Canadian dollars, with offshore Yuan becoming the fifth currency. Participants in the network are only aware of transactions they are involved in. The platform uses the Baton Systems CORE distributed ledger. —John Adams

Italian bank pilots fingerprint payment cards

Italy-based Sella Group is testing biometric payment cards enabling users to authorize each payment with their fingerprint. Sella's contactless Visa credit cards are embedded with F.Code technology developed by Idemia, a French company which specializes in identity solutions. Pilot participants in Italy will each receive a home kit with instructions for enrolling their fingerprint on the card without the need to visit a bank branch, according to a Sella press release. Credit and debit cards equipped with fingerprint-enabled biometric authorization technology are on the rise in several nations outside the U.S. —Kate Fitzgerald

Firms collaborate on restaurant payments in Egypt

Foodics, a restaurant management system based in the UAE, has teamed with Cairo-based payments technology firm Paymob to provide digital checkout services for Egypt's food and beverage companies in collaboration with Banque Misr, a Cairo-based acquiring bank. The API system, which the companies claim to be the first of its kind in Egypt, will enable restaurants using Foodics' platform to accept all types of cards via Paymob's POS devices. Paymob will also add its dashboard displaying restaurant operators' real-time financial data to Foodics' platform. —Kate Fitzgerald

Bank of London names Phil Knight as group CTO, CISO

The Bank of London, a British clearing, agency and transaction institution, announced Wednesday that Phil Knight was appointed as group chief technical officer and chief information security officer. Knight joins from his most recent role as chief information officer for the London-based financial technology firm 10x Banking. "This is a tremendous opportunity to be at the forefront of real technological innovation in the banking and wider financial services industry, and I look forward to working with such a high caliber team to build the future of banking," Knight said in the release. —Frank Gargano

'Astounding' $575 million crypto fraud yields arrests in Estonia

Two Estonian men arrested in their nation's capital were charged in the U.S. with defrauding hundreds of thousands of people worldwide in a $575 million cryptocurrency fraud and money-laundering conspiracy. Sergei Potapenko and Ivan Turogin, both 37, persuaded victims to enter into fraudulent rental contracts for crypto mining equipment and to invest in a virtual currency bank that wasn't really a bank, the Justice Department said Monday in a statement. In an indictment unsealed in Seattle federal court, Potapenko and Turogin were also accused of using shell companies to launder the fraud proceeds through at least 75 real estate properties, six luxury vehicles, cryptocurrency wallets and thousands of crypto mining machines. "The size and scope of the alleged scheme is truly astounding," said Seattle U.S. Attorney Nick Brown. "These defendants capitalized on both the allure of cryptocurrency, and the mystery surrounding cryptocurrency mining, to commit an enormous Ponzi scheme." —Joel Rosenblatt, Bloomberg News

Saudi Arabia set to deposit $5 billion at Turkish central bank

Saudi Arabia is set to deposit $5 billion at Turkey's central bank, a major boost for President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's bid to keep the lira stable ahead of presidential elections next year. The kingdom is in the "final" stage of discussions to offer Turkey assistance, a Saudi Ministry of Finance spokesperson said, confirming an earlier report by Reuters. Turkey's Ministry of Treasury and Finance also confirmed that the two countries are about to finalize the deposit deal. Almost certain to be inked soon, the agreement crowns a recent rapprochement that ended years of hostility between the Turkish and Saudi governments. It will also be the a major win for Erdogan since he turned to Gulf Arab states for financial help earlier this year. His finance chief Nureddin Nebati has led the efforts to secure assistance from the kingdom as well as Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. Erdogan told journalists earlier that Turkey's official reserves would likely rise to $130 billion soon, up from the 2022 peak of $117.5 billion seen during the week of Nov. 11. —Matthew Martin, Beril Akman and Firat Kozok, Bloomberg News