Payments

Mastercard's metaverse designs, a guilty plea for fraud conspiracy and more in banking news this week

As rising inflation and supply-chain shortages create new urgency for businesses to settle transactions quickly, more community banks and credit unions are recognizing the need for instant payments, according to The Clearing House.

Walmart named PayPal Chief Financial Officer John Rainey as its new finance chief, turning to a company outsider as it seeks to build a financial technology venture and a membership program.

Celebrities on the investor roster include Ashton Kutcher, Justin Bieber, Steve Aoki and Gwyneth Paltrow. 

A few months after cutting ties with its Diem stablecoin project, the company formerly known as Facebook is testing a virtual world marketplace.

In global news this week, Mastercard doubling headcount in Dublin; Ebanx in Brazil adds a cross-border option for merchants; NAB filters offensive content from mobile payments; and more.

The crypto payments startup Circle Internet Financial said it’s closer to submitting an application to operate as a bank in the U.S., pushing forward with a months-old plan even as regulators make it more difficult for crypto companies to secure this kind of license.

Bread Financial — formerly Alliance Data — offers its first general-purpose Amex credit card to expand consumer finance options following a couple of tumultuous years.

Vanguard Group will give some American Express credit card customers access to financial advice, a business the fund manager is working to build up.

"With ACH payments there's a latency in how they are processed; it can take two to five days. Things can happen," warns Silvana Hernandez, senior vice president of digital payments at Mastercard.