Cross border payments

The parent of Alipay is also investigating uses for biometrics and artificial intelligence.

The Western Union Company agreed to pay $586 million and admitted to a lapse in anti-money laundering controls in an agreement with the U.S. Justice Department and other U.S. authorities.

UnionPay customers can now transfer funds from Canada to China without fees through a partnership with Canadian bank CIBC.

The Financial Conduct Authority has given the green light to Geoswift, the Hong Kong-based cross-border payments company, to operate collection and settlement services between the U.K. and China.

A growing number of U.S. merchants, both large and small, are using online marketplaces to sell their wares worldwide. Payment companies that specialize in currency exchange have taken note.

Hong Kong-based OKLink, a blockchain-based digital payments network specializing in international remittances, is now available in Vietnam, the twenty-first country it's reached since launching six months ago.

Axis Bank, one of India’s largest private-sector financial institutions, has reportedly become the first bank in the country to partner with Ripple for a blockchain-powered approach to cross-border payment.

The Society for Worldwide Financial Telecommunication is exploring the potential of distributed ledger technology for banks to provide real-time reconciliation of their databases for accounts they hold in other banks in a foreign currency.

Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. pioneered shopping on the internet in China. Now it thinks it can teach old-school retailers a thing or two about real-world commerce.

Around the same time PayPal spun off from eBay Inc. to become its own company last year, it also took on the global money transfer provider Xoom. This acquisition may have been overshadowed by PayPal's bigger news, but it remains key to the company's post-eBay strategy.