Cross border payments

Visa has a deal to acquire the London-based bank payments provider Earthport for 198 million pounds ($250.6 million U.S.), pending approval from Earthport's shareholders.

The financial services and payments industries are aggressively trying to replace older systems with sleeker technology, but Swift has a separate goal in mind with the Global Payments Innovation system, or GPI.

On the surface, Ant Financial's reported discussions to acquire U.K.-based WorldFirst demonstrate a savvy business move to establish itself beyond the substantial market it controls in China. It also shows how far the Chinese payments giant is willing to go to resist the headwinds of U.S. policy.

The ubiquity of plastic payment cards makes it hard to imagine a future without them, but Japan’s JCB card network already envisions it.

Latin America’s fast-growing e-commerce industry is providing opportunities to provide payments gateways for cross-border transactions originating in countries that don't favor digital or credit card payments.

The Global Payments Innovation service now moves 55 percent of Swift's cross-border transactions as it nears its second anniversary.

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.