Latest global payments news

Digital pound gets a target date

The Bank of England has released details on a potential digital pound and has launched a consultation to study technical issues connected to its development. Progress toward a central bank digital currency in the U.K. is expected to be incremental. The consultation period will be four months and a final decision on whether to move forward won't come for several years. Even if a digital pound is approved, it won't be available to consumers until around 2030. The BofE is advocating for a digital pound, explaining that the government would not "program" money, which refers to the use of digital smart contracts to automatically trigger payments. And digital wallets would require user permission to use programmable money. —John Adams

Indian firms advance CBDC for consumers

A group including ICICI Bank, Kotak Mahindra Bank, Innoviti Technologies and Reliance Retail will accept digital rupees for payments, an early rollout of a retail central bank digital currency in India. Consumers would use a digital rupee QR code at checkout. Reliance is one of India's largest merchant chains, and will debut India's CBDC at its Freshpik grocery stores in Mumbai, then expand to other regions and stores in Reliance's network. India is among the dozens of countries that are developing or considering how to develop CBDCs. Retail CBDCs, which are geared toward consumers, are considered more difficult to develop because there are more stakeholders among consumers, banks and merchants. Wholesale CBDCs are designed for larger transactions between commercial banks and central banks, and have progressed faster. —John Adams

JCB launches credit card for Vietnamese young adults

JCB, a credit card network based in Tokyo, has partnered with a Vietnamese bank to launch a credit card designed for young adults in Vietnam, according to a press release. JCB has joined with Vietnam Prosperity Joint Stock Commercial Bank, based in Ho Chi Minh City, to issue the VPBank JCB card, which offers 10% cash back on spending across everyday categories including food, entertainment and transportation. The card, which targets Generation Z consumers under age 30, also offers a no-interest installment loan program available through millions of participating merchants in JCB's acceptance network. —Kate Fitzgerald

Australia drops Queen Elizabeth from banknotes

Australia plans to remove a portrait of Queen Elizabeth II from its AU$5 banknote and replace it with a new image evoking Australia's indigenous culture, CNBC reports. The federal government and the Reserve Bank of Australia collaborated on the decision, in which the central bank will consult with indigenous groups to develop a new image for the banknote, a process that will take several years to complete. An illustration of the Australian Parliament will continue to appear on the back side of the AU$5 banknote. King Charles III, who succeeded the Queen last year, remains head of state for Australia, New Zealand and 12 other nations historically connected to the British Commonwealth, but there are no plans for him to appear on other Australian banknotes. —Kate Fitzgerald

U.K. challenger bank raises $93 million

London-based Zopa Bank, which became a digital bank in 2020, has raised another $93 million, bringing its total equity investments to more than $800 million. The latest funding round was led by existing investors; Silverstripe International Holdings and SoftBank are among Zopa's core investors. The firm, which got its start in 2005 as a peer-to-peer lender, in just over two years has issued more than 400,000 credit cards and attracted more than $3.5 billion in deposits, according to a press release. —Kate Fitzgerald

CBA ups its anti-scam game

Commonwealth Bank of Australia released new research saying consumers are getting more worried about scams, and has added technology designed to make it harder for crooks to target consumers. The bank has deployed NameCheck Technology for money transfers and caller verification for the CommBank app. As consumers make a P2P transfer, NameCheck vets the payment's destination to determine if the recipient's address or identity may be fake or part of a scam. The product specializes in false billing scams, business-email compromise and payments made to the wrong address. —John Adams

Mizuho hires Oracle to power real-time processing

Mizuho Financial Group is planning a multi-year overhaul of Mizuho Bank, its corporate and retail banking unit, as the financial institution prepares for the maturation of real-time payments and other digital financial services. The bank will outsource parts of the project to Oracle, using products from Oracle to enable instant settlement, straight through processing for deposits, and automated cash management. Other tasks include upgrading the digital communication and financial information transfer between branches, local offices and subsidiaries. Mizuho is starting the project with offices outside of Japan, including a replacement of the bank's legacy system in New York. Mizuho also recently launched Oracle's cloud-based technology to update links between transaction processing and enterprise resource planning systems in New York and other locations such as Singapore. —John Adams

Paytm Shares climb after payments giant reports narrower loss

Shares of Paytm rose after India's leading digital payments brand posted a narrower third-quarter loss with a surge in revenue. The stock gained as much as 7.4% in early trading Monday after the late Friday earnings report, the biggest intraday gain in about two months.Paytm's net loss in the quarter through December shrank to 3.9 billion rupees ($48 million) from 7.8 billion rupees a year earlier. Revenue from operations rose 42% to 20.6 billion rupees, while total costs climbed at a slower pace. Paytm is growing its product offering to attract more customers, seeking to convince investors of its earnings potential. Its shares had plunged after its high-profile $2.5 billion initial public offering in late 2021, on concerns over mounting losses and intensifying competition from Google Pay, Amazon Pay, Walmart PhonePe, and several smaller fintech startups. Paytm said its loan business continued to expand, with the number of loans it has distributed more than doubling from a year earlier to 10.5 million.-Saritha Rai, Bloomberg News