Faster payments

About half of Swift Global Payments Innovation transactions are credited within 30 minutes and many within seconds.

The advent of Faster Payments services plus Europe’s PSD2 have heightened concerns among banks about increased fraud risks. This has created opportunities for firms such as New York/Israel’s BioCatch and San Francisco’s BehavioSec, both of which develop technology around behavioral biometrics analysis.

Debit push payments proved an essential component of the ride-sharing boom, with many drivers opting to pay a fee for immediate funds throughout the day to cover fuel and other expenses. And the technology is finding fans in other niches as well.

Risk management and payments technology provider linked2pay says paycosmos has become the first independent sales organization to offer its merchants the Instant Merchant Settlements service.

One expert says the U.S. lags behind other countries, but changes are coming soon – and fast.

The biggest Nordic banks expect to launch a new piece of financial infrastructure next year, promising to dramatically speed up international transfers in one of the world’s most technologically advanced regions.

The quest for fast payments is advancing on the consumer side, but most banks are said to be undecided about a host of issues tied to speeding up transactions between businesses.

U.K. payments technology provider Paysafe has entered a partnership with Company.com and Ingo Money to offer same-day settlement to small business merchants in the U.S.

The move from standard to real-time transactions adds another layer of complexity and creates further opportunities for fraudsters. Quicker transaction times increase the chances of fraudulent transactions going undetected, writes David Worthington, vice president of payments at Rambus.

Beem It, a startup owned by three of Australia’s largest banks, has launched a free real-time social payments app designed to run on older debit networks instead of the country's new faster payments platform.