Cross border payments

As with EVs, digital money was a niche product for years before gaining widespread acceptance. Now, digital blockchain-based monies might be on the verge of a major breakthrough.

Banks are boosting their use of new machine learning to improve security risk, but securing international transactions presents a different set of challenges.

The Chinese technology giant is partnering with BNP Paribas to reach more merchants; Sequoia makes an investment offer that could boost confidence in Stripe; and more.

Circle, Stripe and Coindesk all make moves to add scale for digital asset transactions.

The Biden administration should widen the scope of its junk fee initiatives and provide small- and medium-size businesses with relief from excessive international payments charges.

Mastercard launches palm checkout in Uruguay, the U.K. commits to a gradual rollout of King Charles banknotes starting this week, and more.

The Swedish financial institution argues over potential regulations that treat buy now/pay later lending like credit cards in the U.S.; Discover seeks the next hot market for real-time payments; and more.

Amex is working with Worldpay to reach businesses in the U.K., Western Union has resumed remittances to Cuba after shutting down that corridor in 2020, and more.

National Australia Bank is adding a Pay By Bank option for near-instant payments, Italy is bringing open-loop payments to buses in Tuscany, and more.

Mastercard established a new structure for businesses focused on card acceptance and transaction processing, new payment flows and value-added services. Separately, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York is joining several countries' central banks in a test of tech to support cross-border transactions.

Federal regulators need to mandate full disclosure of total costs for international money transfers, including all exchange rate markups, and to allow nonbanks access to the Fed's payment system.

Visa is working with Thunes; LemFi and Western Union to expand its reach; Swift has completed testing of 38 global digital currencies, and more.

Amazon is working with Stripe to expand its Just Walk Out retail stores in Australia and Canada; Safaricom is working with Onafriq to support remittances sent via M-Pesa to Ethiopia; and more.

Despite further delays, the country has taken two key steps to opening up access to its Real-Time Rail, including allowing payment companies to participate without a bank partner, but it has yet to commit to a date for the project to go live.

The fast-food chain is analyzing the cause of an issue that affected payments in multiple countries. Separately, dLocal, a payments processor in Uraguay, is making changes at the top.

Thomas Halpin, who heads global cash management for North America, talks about real-time processing, generative AI, central bank digital currencies and why the ISO 20022 messaging standard is cool.

The U.K. is considering a bill that would let banks and payment service providers put suspicious-looking peer-to-peer payments on hold for up to four days to conduct security reviews; Giesecke+Devrient is working with Brazil's central bank to develop an offline payment approach to a central bank digital currency; and more in global payments news this week.

Virgin Money has cut about 150 jobs and 39 branches thus far in 2024, the Central Bank of Nepal has hired ACI Worldwide to build a payment switch to enable interoperable card payments for merchants, and more.

Visa will be the payment partner for the 2026 World Cup and other events, companies in Canada are teaming up to promote open banking for credit unions, and more.

The bank's cross-border transaction service opens a new lane for customer acquisition in an increasingly competitive niche.