Cross border payments

Payments professionals have done too little to leverage transformational changes in technology to improve the overall client experience.

International payments and risk-based services provider INTL FCStone says its London-based global payments division will become a non-bank participant in Swift's global initiative to improve the cross-border transaction landscape.

Amidst all of the complexities that e-commerce businesses have in completing or accepting cross-border payments, PayU says the application programming interface (API) can make the biggest difference.

Boston-based Flywire has made another move to diversify beyond its original cross-border tuition payments niche by acquiring Pace Invoice, a multi-currency invoicing platform enabling clients to more easily link outgoing cross-border invoices with incoming receivables.

The integration is designed to improve user experience for international transactions.

Pangea’s instant-transfer app serves six Latin American countries and it’s eyeing expansion to Asia, with a formula based on speed and simplicity.

Ria Money Transfer is significantly expanding its presence in India through partnerships with three leading cash remittance payout agents with broad reach within India, the world’s largest recipient of migrant remittances.

Calling it a first in international payments, the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication [Swift] is providing a cross-border, real-time payments tracker for banks handling global transactions.

The U.K.’s Payment Systems Regulator is escalating its inquiry into the role banks play in preventing money-transfer scams where consumers are tricked into sending funds to fraudsters.

Ant Financial, China’s largest provider of internet financial services, will continue investing in mobile-payment providers around the world to boost offshore revenue and buttress itself from rising competition and tighter regulation at home.

MoneyGram’s stockholders have voted to approve a deal to be purchased by China’s Ant Financial for $1.2 billion.

U.S. payment companies frustrated by Chinese regulations blocking direct access to its vast consumer market could get a break under the terms of a new U.S.-China trade deal.

Stellar, which started as a splinter group from Ripple, has formed a for-profit company called Lightyear.io to help financial institutions integrate its software.

Alipay wants to leverage the millions of Chinese customers who travel abroad by offering them services in different parts of the world.

The company's original markets are India and China, but it plans to reach 10 major markets for B-to-B cross-border payments in the next year.

FleetCor Technologies, with broad operations in fleet cards and payroll solutions, has announced plans to purchase Cambridge Global Payments, which specializes in cross-border business-to-business payments, for $675 million.

U.K.-based TransferWise has enabled online customer verification at its new Asia Pacific base in Singapore, so users need not visit an office to set up an account with TransferWise's cross-border funds-transfer service.

In working with correspondent banks in developing countries for more than two decades, INTL FCStone Ltd. spent a fair amount of time collecting market information over the phone and through e-mail from those banks to share with others. It ultimately determined there was a better way to do this.

The B-to-B payments market is ripe for digital innovation. Here are some of the most recent moves to bring B-to-B payments up to speed.

While Germany's Wirecard AG in recent years has been steadily racking up a deep portfolio of payments technology fused with banking services through a white-label approach, it has also quietly established a global business through acquisition.