Cross border payments

Retail and hospitality payments software provider Veea Inc. is partnering with cross-border mobile payments provider Citcon to allow businesses using Veea services in the U.S. to accept Alipay and WeChat Pay mobile payments.

Robotics and automatically triggered transactions will pressure how data is collected and made trustworthy enough to be actionable, according to Raphael Davison, worldwide director of blockchain for Hewlett Packard Enterprises.

It's an important pivot point for the industry — consumer trust is threatened by a steady flow of data breaches, and consumers are divided on whether they want to stick with plastic or move on to mobile and wearable payments.

The banks contend distributed ledger technology (DLT) makes it easier to coordinate trade finance deals. And the use of smart contracts can help parties comply with contractual obligations such as staged payments.

Both executives assume their new roles as the Citi unit faces competition from both large banks and fintechs in the cross-border payments market.

Flywire has partnered with Billtrust, which specializes in B2B payments, to improve processing of cross-border payments.

Given the scant use of cryptocurrencies for payments relative to their use for investment, some companies are rooting for the kind of government oversight and monetary policy that used to be considered an assault on the alternative currency movement.

The Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication has its sights set on expanding real-time payments in the Asia-Pacific region as part of its plan to further its first value-add service created from the Global Payments Innovation initiative.

TransferWise is the first nonbank to become a member of the U.K.’s Faster Payments service (FPS), but with Brexit on the horizon, it has to make sure it is similarly invested in other markets.

Ant Financial, the Alibaba affiliate that operates Alipay, is planning an IPO that could be worth hundreds of billions of dollars — but the funds it could raise are secondary to the consumer population it already controls.

So far, U.K. fintechs' options range from relocating to other countries to finding ways to offset negative effects by attempting to “Brexit-proof” their businesses. The latter option can still be a substantial undertaking.

Fintech companies such as WorldFirst, TransferWise, OFX, and WorldRemit give people more cost-effective means to make cross-border transfers, writes Jon Dela Cruz, a researcher for iCompareFX.com.

In deploying the Social Pay money transfer service, ICICI Bank says it is the first bank in India to allow nonresidents to send money to family and friends in the country for special occasions like festivals and birthdays.

This year could be a pivot point for blockchain to move past proofs of concept to adoption, propelled by strong investor interest. But many still see the tech as being three to four years away from going mainstream.

Despite increased bank and investor activity around digital P2P payments, consumers haven't flocked to P2P in expected numbers.

Considering Walmart spent the better part of a decade trying to establish its own bank, it comes as no surprise that the retail giant is aiming big with its latest financial service.

The funding round comes on the heels of what BitPay cited as a record year in 2017 in processing more than $1 billion in bitcoin payments.

Elizabeth Rossiello heard that cryptocurrencies would be the next big thing so she founded BitPesa. And while she benefited from the initial craze around bitcoin and blockchain, her company also shares bitcoin's reputational wounds.

President Trump's isolationism is colliding head-on with a lucrative trend of Chinese tourists coming to the U.S. looking — and payments companies are caught in the crossfire.

Despite more bank and investor activity around digital P2P payments, consumer usage of P2P is a mixed bag.