Cross border payments

Mike Kennedy is OFX's new president for North America, providing more local digital payment experience for the Australian-based international transfer company.

Canadian startup Payment Rails, which aims to use APIs, blockchain and artificial intelligence to find efficient routes for cross-border payments, has closed a seed round bringing funding for its concept to $1.1 million.

Payments services provider INTL FCStone is offering a real-time exchange rate feed for its corporate customers to better calculate the cost of cross-border payments.

Bank of Ireland's quest to offer a faster path for cross-border payments has fed the sort of collaboration that's becoming more common as issuers seek to advance their technology.

International payments will only get more complex as faster payments take hold globally, steering banks and money movers to establish central hubs for handling cross-border transactions.

International sourcing is stressing businesses that are already too reliant on paper-based payment methods, argues Hyperwallet's Tomas Likar.

Alipay has entered agreements with Nordic trade and tourism institutions to further enable merchants in that region to accept payments from Chinese customers through Alipay's in-app marketing program.

An integration with transfer company bux will remove navigation and manual processes for remittances to India.

Alipay has worked with First Data, Verifone, Ingenico and others to connect with merchants in North America, but more as a service for Chinese travelers than a direct competitor to existing payment providers.

SBI Ripple Asia has formed a partnership with Dayli Intelligence to build a presence across Asia.

The preparations underscore the trouble Chinese buyers face in persuading the panel that investigates foreign acquisitions to greenlight takeovers.

In India, dLocal wants to enable global e-commerce companies to accept payments from and make payments to India to serve consumers, contractors and supply chains.

Blockchain is already taking a bite out of the fees traditional financial institutions extract from cross-border transactions by providing a workaround that avoids third parties.

Payoneer will work with the mobile wallet eZ Cash to make it easier for its mobile wallet users to convert funds from cross-border payments to funds in the wallet.

The cross-border payments specialist has developed a workaround to comply with a format that requires Chinese characters for certain transactions.

China's Metaverse Foundation collaborated with Russian crypto investment bank CyberTrust to create the Cryptocurrency Fund to support ICO projects from China and Russia through KICKICO's crypto crowdfunding platform.

Ant Financial's Alipay is a big deal in China, and it wants to be a big deal globally. It's got several strategies already in motion, some of which have very big implications for other markets.

Payments are getting more complex as business gets more global, adding channels and expanding ways to sell. Part of the strategy at the matchmaker crowdSPRING is to find a match of its own: AliExpress, Alibaba's online marketplace. It’s also considering a foray into virtual currency.

The simple act of moving money can have a big impact on any political movement, so banks and payment networks are often caught up in issues of national importance. Here are some recent instances where payments and politics came head-to-head.

China's Alipay already has broad global reach—its mobile wallet is accepted at more than 100,000 retail locations in 70 international markets—but in North America it’s just getting started.