Latest global payments news

By Kate Fitzgerald, John Adams, Bloomberg News

May 31, 2023 12:57 PM

This week in global news: CaixaBank adopts softPOS; AI makes more inroads and more.

Here's what's happening around the world.

Jerome Favre/Bloomberg

Banks collaborate on pilot for digital Hong Kong dollar

The Hong Kong Monetary Authority has launched a series of pilots for a digital Hong Kong dollar with support from 16 firms including banks, payment services providers and technology companies, according to NFC World. HSBC, Bank of China, Mastercard, Alipay, Boston Consulting Group and Giesecke+Devrient are among participants in the pilot, which aims to test a central bank digital currency across various use cases for in-store and online payments, including Web3 transactions and settlement of tokenized assets. Hong Kong began discussions to test retail CBDC applications in 2021. —Kate Fitzgerald

Gabriela Bhaskar/Bloomberg

BNY Mellon plans AI hub in Dublin

BNY Mellon will invest about $10 million to create a digital research and development center in Dublin. The center will develop artificial intelligence and data analytic-driven products for the bank's global clients. BNY Mellon's hub will recruit IT workers with experience in data science, product design and machine learning. BNY Mellon has developed use cases for AI for several years, including work on bots that automate lower-level tasks that human staff traditionally performed including some customer service and fraud detection. —John Adams

Commonwealth Bank of Australia office in Sydney

Brent Lewin/Bloomberg

Commonwealth Bank using AI to overhaul digital banking

Australia's Commonwealth Bank has issued a series of updates to its online and mobile banking sites, responding to what it says is an acceleration among its business and consumer clients to digital channels. Called CommBank 5.0, it will include more tailored content and navigation. The updates additionally include the ability to buy, hold and sell shares through an integration with CommSec, the bank's investing site. The updates include the ability to navigate between personal and business accounts. CBA, which serves about 8.3 million customers through digital channels, is relying on artificial intelligence to more closely match services, marketing and engagement based on clients' evolving profiles. The AI engine includes more than 1,000 machine learning modules and 157 billion data points. —John Adams

Mastercard launches Click to Pay in UAE

Mastercard is collaborating with payment service provider Foloosi to deploy Click to Pay across Foloosi's merchant base in the United Arab Emirates. Click to Pay uses a token to replace card credentials. Often referred to as a "buy button," it creates a consistent checkout experience for digital payments and does not require consumers to enter card credentials for payments at different participating merchants. Click to Pay also enables merchants to add payment links to invoices that merchants can send through SMS, email and WhatsApp, among other services. "The launch of Click to Pay in partnership with Mastercard provides a new opportunity for our merchants and acquirers to improve the consumer online shopping experience and to positively impact their bottom line. We are confident that the move will support the growth of e-commerce and benefit merchants by eliminating guest checkouts," said Omar Bin Brek, founder and CEO of Foloosi, in a release. —John Adams

Restaurants in India testing Amazon Pay

Amazon's Indian division is testing Amazon Pay as a checkout solution for in-person dining in the Bengaluru region, TechCrunch reports. Diners at participating restaurants can pay their bill within the Amazon app using a credit or debit card, India's domestic payment scheme UPI or one of several bank account-based payment options, the report said. Amazon has struggled to gain traction in India in recent years, while Walmart has a solid foothold through its ownership of the Indian e-commerce operator Flipkart. —Kate Fitzgerald

Australian tech organization pushes data rights roadmap

FinTech Australia, an organization that advocates for financial technology development, is working with the open banking nonprofit trade group FDATA to lobby the Australian government to develop a consumer data rights (CDR) roadmap. The roadmap would cover privacy, data portability between organizations and consumer control over their own data in a digital economy. The Australian government plans to invest about $90 million over the next two years to work on a CDR policy. FinTech Australia argues that a strong CDR policy will improve the quality of financial services as well as boost financial literacy. FinTech Australia's push comes ahead of CDR Month in Australia in June. CDR Month will include education programs, encouragement of collaboration between public and private sectors, and use cases for CDR. —John Adams

CaixaBank launches smartphone payment app

CaixaBank has developed an app that supports payment acceptance, billing, refunds and account access via smartphones without hardware attachments. The bank's Smartphone TPV app enables Android handsets to accept Visa and Mastercard payments with security similar to a traditional point-of-sale terminal. The bank is positioning the technology for self-employed consumers, restaurants, retailers that deliver to consumers' homes and larger merchants. Typically known as softPOS, smartphone payment acceptance uses technology from Android and Apple to support contactless payments without hardware. But Apple and Google do not process payments, requiring partnerships with banks, payment companies or financial institutions. —John Adams

Wanda in talks with ByteDance, others to sell payments arm

Dalian Wanda Group is in talks with prospective buyers including ByteDance for its Chinese payments unit as the tourism-to-retail conglomerate tries to shore up its liquidity, people familiar with the matter said. Wanda has been in discussions to sell its digital payments license for about 1 billion yuan ($141 million), though some prospective buyers said the price could be lower based on negotiations, the people said, requesting not to be named because the matter is private. ByteDance's Douyin Group, which operates its flagship short-video app, had preliminary talks with Wanda about the deal, a Douyin spokesperson said, without offering further comments. The discussions are preliminary and could be subject to change, the people said. A representative for Wanda didn't respond to requests for comment. —Bloomberg News