Cross border payments

Alibaba’s gigantic stock debut in Hong Kong gives it extra fuel to become a global payments empire.

In a move that accelerates Western Union's plan for its money transfers to be part of advancing digital technology, the cross-border payment provider has entered an agreement with Amazon Web Services for long-term cloud services.

From its start four years ago as a PayPal service, the Xoom mobile money transfer network has positioned itself as an international P2P app that could rival traditional networks through its speed and ease of use.

Isolationist politics are creeping closer to the payments industry, with European banks threatening to build a localized payment ecosystem to push back against the major American card brands.

Swift and EBA Clearing have started developing the process by which Europe's large-value payment system will migrate to use of the ISO 20022 messaging standard.

Germany’s Wirecard has taken a controlling stake in AllScore Payment Services, a Chinese company with a set of cross-border payments licenses Wirecard hopes will extend its reach to merchants with ties to China.

In launching a new international account for its business clients, Starling Bank is converting the bank's debit card to support payments in either pounds or euros.

Finabler’s Xpress Money cross-border transfer service has partnered with Geoswift to enable consumers in global markets to send funds in real time to Chinese bank accounts.

Flywire is working with Bank of America to streamline cross-border payments for the bank’s higher education and corporate clients, whose foreign transaction traffic is rising along with global commerce.

Western Union has gone live with a service enabling real-time cross-border remittances to India harnessing Unified Payments Interface, the central bank’s payment rails.

Ravi Menon says that Facebook's bid to create its own digital currency has laid bare shortcomings in cross-border payments and financial inclusion that banks and regulators must address.

As e-commerce becomes international, American merchants should embrace alternative payment methods in other countries, says PPRO U.S.'s Steve Villegas.

Making a domestic or cross-border B2B payment should be as easy as a consumer making a payment at a retailer's point of sale. There are plenty of obstacles toward this goal, but also plenty of paths to success.

Incumbents and challenger fintechs dominate the remittance market, leading Majority to forge a very narrow use case for its initial corridor.

Ripple is collaborating with financial software company Finastra, boosting both companies' reach in the cross-border transaction market.

Europe's PSD2 doesn't directly impact Hong Kong, but its monetary decision makers support open banking frameworks, sparking a network of banks to support that effort through the help of HSBC and Swift.

PayPal’s cross-border remittance unit Xoom is hoping to build a faster payments market in South Korea by enabling direct delivery into bank accounts, a channel that tends to be more expensive than other options.

Samsung Pay users can use the app to send funds across borders to recipients with a bank account through a new service powered by Travelex.

The card networks are taking blockchain seriously as a means of streamlining cross-border B2B payments. But while they share a vision, they are taking different paths to this goal. Visa has opted for a closed network that it controls, while Mastercard envisages a wider, more open ecosystem.

Governments use varying methods for tracking the flow of money in and out of the country in order to deter fraud and money laundering, writes Nvoicepay's Alyssa Callahan.