Cross border payments

The Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication has its sights set on expanding real-time payments in the Asia-Pacific region as part of its plan to further its first value-add service created from the Global Payments Innovation initiative.

TransferWise is the first nonbank to become a member of the U.K.’s Faster Payments service (FPS), but with Brexit on the horizon, it has to make sure it is similarly invested in other markets.

Ant Financial, the Alibaba affiliate that operates Alipay, is planning an IPO that could be worth hundreds of billions of dollars — but the funds it could raise are secondary to the consumer population it already controls.

So far, U.K. fintechs' options range from relocating to other countries to finding ways to offset negative effects by attempting to “Brexit-proof” their businesses. The latter option can still be a substantial undertaking.

Fintech companies such as WorldFirst, TransferWise, OFX, and WorldRemit give people more cost-effective means to make cross-border transfers, writes Jon Dela Cruz, a researcher for iCompareFX.com.

In deploying the Social Pay money transfer service, ICICI Bank says it is the first bank in India to allow nonresidents to send money to family and friends in the country for special occasions like festivals and birthdays.

This year could be a pivot point for blockchain to move past proofs of concept to adoption, propelled by strong investor interest. But many still see the tech as being three to four years away from going mainstream.

Despite increased bank and investor activity around digital P2P payments, consumers haven't flocked to P2P in expected numbers.

Considering Walmart spent the better part of a decade trying to establish its own bank, it comes as no surprise that the retail giant is aiming big with its latest financial service.

The funding round comes on the heels of what BitPay cited as a record year in 2017 in processing more than $1 billion in bitcoin payments.

Elizabeth Rossiello heard that cryptocurrencies would be the next big thing so she founded BitPesa. And while she benefited from the initial craze around bitcoin and blockchain, her company also shares bitcoin's reputational wounds.

President Trump's isolationism is colliding head-on with a lucrative trend of Chinese tourists coming to the U.S. looking — and payments companies are caught in the crossfire.

Despite more bank and investor activity around digital P2P payments, consumer usage of P2P is a mixed bag.

Denizen is designed for expats and migrants to receive money and make payments without international transfer fees or currency exchanges.

Digital money transfer provider SimbaPay has added an artificial-intelligence-powered chatbot that will enable banks and other companies to offer international money transfer to customers across Africa and Europe through text messaging.

China's declaration on Wednesday that its payments market is now open to foreign companies gives Chinese payments processors an opportunity to grow globally — but it's made similar moves before, with little effect.

The speed at which money transfer payments are evolving from legacy, paper-based systems to digital platforms couldn’t be more stark at Western Union, where Sheri Rhodes has just been named executive vice president and chief technology officer.

Flywire is teaming up with Flutterwave to improve payments technology in Nigeria, which has Africa’s highest number of international students and medical patients traveling outside the country.

Cryptocurrencies bring truly worldwide reach and a single set of rules and fees for the whole globe, writes Kirill Radchenko, CEO of Paygine.

TransferWise, which recently added a consumer-targeted account to its business-to-business services, has selected Wirecard to issue a cross-border debit card for consumers.