Cross border payments

Ripple, MoneyGram and FV Bank all bolstered their ability to distribute digital assets, with cross-border transactions emerging as a primary use case.

A punitive tax on payments sent overseas to the families of immigrants would have a cascading set of consequences — all of them bad.

Around the world, low-income communities are routinely cut off from modern payment infrastructures, causing serious economic harm. We must work toward a future in which they are included.

The payments platform is preparing for expansion to a market that has a fast-growing real-time transaction rail, making the country a hot spot for international investment.

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.