Latest global payments news

January 11, 2023 9:20 AM

Ant Group's Alipay teams up to expand mobile wallet acceptance, CaixaBank forms a cybersecurity consortium, Santander plans buy now/pay later for businesses, and more.

Here's what's happening around the world.

Qilai Shen/Bloomberg

Alipay, Thunes collaborate on Asian mobile wallet acceptance

China-based Ant Group's Alipay has formed a partnership with Singapore-based fintech Thunes to extend Alipay's reach to Thune merchants across Europe in anticipation of expanded post-pandemic Asian travel, Fintech Magazine reports. The collaboration will streamline online and in-store payment connections between European merchants and five Asian digital payment wallets including China's Alipay, Malaysia's Touch 'n Go and Boost, the Philippines' GCash, South Korea's KakaoPay and Thailand's Rabbit Line Pay and TrueMoney, the report said. Thunes, founded in 2016, supports payments to 130 countries. —Kate Fitzgerald

Bloomberg Creative Photos/Bloomberg

U.K. sets timeline to adopt ISO 20022 payments-messaging standard

The Bank of England has formalized its plans to adopt the global ISO 20022 payments-messaging standard to streamline compliance and regulation for international transactions, according to a recent announcement from the central bank. The first milestone will be in June 2023, when Britain's high-value payment system Chaps will migrate to the new standard, and in the spring of 2024 an ISO 20022 settlement engine will go live. The moves conform with the New Payments Architecture the U.K. announced in recent months to modernize the country's real-time payments program introduced in 2008. —Kate Fitzgerald

Christophe Morin/Bloomberg

BNP Paribas invests in AccessFintech

BNP Paribas has joined a Series C funding round for AccessFintech, a London-based firm that sells settlements, payment technology, claims management and a suite of capital markets technology. BNP Paribas plans to partner with AccessFintech to support the bank's corporate and institutional banking unit, offering transaction processing and data management to its clients, which face pressure from shorter settlement cycles. AccessFintech offers products such as Synergy, which uses cloud-hosted technology to provide data governance and regulatory compliance for institutional investors. Other large banks have recently invested in AccessFintech, including JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, BNY Mellon and Bank of America. —John Adams

Santander plans business-focused BNPL offering

Santander's corporate and investment banking unit is collaborating with trade credit insurance firm Allianz Trade and buy now/pay later technology company One to build an installment lending program for multinational corporations. The three firms will use an application programming interface from Two to connect Santander's Corporate and Investment Banking and Allainz Trade's non-payment risk engine. This is designed to allow the bank to make decisions about B2B BNPL at the point of sale. While BNPL has become widely known as a way for consumers to finance purchases at checkout without using credit cards, a market is developing for supply-chain finance and other business purchases. Silicon Valley Bank, for example, recently led a $125 million credit facility to enable business lender Slope to build a BNPL product. —John Adams

CaixaBank forms international consortium for cybersecurity research

CaixaBank has formed a European research consortium to explore ways to improve cybersecurity by leveraging artificial intelligence and big data. The bank is working with 11 international organizations on a three-year project called AI4CYBER, which will develop and test technology designed to detect and analyze cyberattacks and prepare systems that can withstand attacks. Other work includes finding ways to improve response times and building models to detect suspicious transaction patterns and other red flags. CaixaBank will test new technology that comes out of the project. CaixaBank's existing cybersecurity program includes a specialized response team and centralized coordination of cyber risk across the banking group. —John Adams

South Korea’s SentBe launches cross-border services in U.S.

SentBe, an international money-transfer fintech launched in South Korea in 2015, has debuted its services in the U.S., enabling users to send funds to and from South Korea in real time. A lower-cost option to send funds in one day is also available. Targeting migrant workers, Korean residents and students studying abroad, SentBe is collaborating with banks, fintech partners and government agencies to drive awareness and usage in the U.S., according to a press release. SentBe, which also offers remittance services to Singapore and Indonesia, plans to extend its money-transfer services directly in Canada, Europe, Japan and Australia, the release said. —Kate Fitzgerald