Cross border payments

Gifting is becoming more international and diverse, leading to a role for a a distributed ledger to streamline the user experience and bolster incentive marketing.

Fifteen major banks will test Swift's pre-validation service for Global Payments Innovation transactions, focusing on quickly identifying and eliminating errors or omissions in payment messages.

Kenya’s Family Bank Ltd. will collaborate with London fintech SimbaPay to launch a transfer service to China with WeChat.

New payments technology and rising demand for services are expanding the scope and reach of most of the world’s leading domestic payment schemes. But challenges from Visa and Mastercard loom large.

In the past few years the Chinese government has loosened restrictions on foreign travel, enabling millions of its citizenry to visit foreign lands. Along with a greater ability to travel is the enhanced prosperity Chinese consumers have reaped at home — and now bring with them on vacations to purchase foreign goods.

A former Lloyds Banking Group executive is joining financial messaging service provider Swift as its head of U.K., Ireland and Nordics operations.

Ripple Labs Inc., the blockchain startup whose digital money is often used as a proxy for other cryptocurrency payments, is gaining new customers because financial firms are seeking faster, more up-to-date technology than the Swift banking network, Chief Executive Officer Brad Garlinghouse said.

Kenyans using the M-Pesa wallet to make payments and receive funds can now send cross-border payments through a connection with Western Union's global platform.

The payments and financial services industry has enjoyed an unprecedented wave of invention, but the fruits of that labor are threatened by an ideologically driven political climate that complicates the evolution of global interoperable mobile-driven commerce.

LVMH Group, makers of Louis Vuitton handbags and other luxury goods, leans heavily on cross-border transactions to distribute its products. To streamline its processes, the company has partnered with FIS.