Cross border payments

Despite the real-world use cases being found around blockchain and distributed ledger technology, banks are being warned to be cautious about committing to any such projects.

International migration has hit an all-time high in recent years, with 250 million migrant workers across the globe. This has created a booming new international payments market for remittance providers.

In monitoring the patterns of a North Korean cyberattack organization that has stolen more than $1.1 billion from global financial institutions since 2014, security firm FireEye says these hackers are still at work in targeting a bank's access to the Swift messaging network.

London-based TransferGo is using Ripple’s blockchain platform to support digital money transfers from Europe to India. But TransferGo isn’t the first remittance company to work with Ripple — and it isn't on the same path that others have taken.

China’s e-commerce giant Alibaba Group is partnering with Saxo Payments Banking Circle, a European B2B payments platform specializing in online cross-border transfers.

The single-platform transfer is part of London-based Moneycorp's full integration of Commonwealth FX, a U.S.-based corporate international payments business it acquired at the start of the year —and part of a strategy to expand its U.S. market.

Singapore-based money transfer platform TransferTo is working with Stellar.org to facilitate low-cost blockchain-based cross-border remittances for underbanked and unbanked consumers in emerging markets.

South Korean cellular carrier LG Uplus, a unit of LG, says early next year it will launch a test of a blockchain-based overseas payment system.

At this year’s Swift Business Forum in New York, executives said banks can build "more intelligent routing" to speed up payments and reduce the cost of processing and delivery.

The payments company released a platform made up of nine B2B networks and powered by Microsoft’s Azure.