Payments

Financial institutions are confronting major compliance challenges given the demands of Russian sanctions as well as the explosion of online gaming transactions and marijuana sales.

A day after Bank of Russia Gov. Elvira Nabiullina touted the country’s alternative to the SWIFT financial-messaging service, the regulator said it will no longer publicly disclose who participates.

The companies, which partnered to create a new digital shopping experience, say it made sense to focus on mom and pop stores that had to pivot to e-commerce during the pandemic. These businesses will be the first to get collaborative cloud-based tools including maps, marketing and payments.

Robinhood Markets agreed to acquire Ziglu, a London-based crypto and payments company, ending the U.S. brokerage’s long pause on international expansion.

Nandan Sheth hopes his experience as a fintech founder and as an executive with firms such as Fiserv will help the installment lender become a better partner for card issuers.

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.

A community development financial institution in New York City says it's the first U.S. bank to launch a contactless payment ring. It's betting that novelty will be part of the draw.

People with a wealth of crypto holdings are loath to trigger a taxable event by cashing out. But they still represent a sizable market for the payments industry, according to the bank and fintech. "Demand for transacting in crypto is building, and we're preparing," said GreenBox CEO Fredi Nisan.

Each company has introduced its own program to give dealerships access to real-time digital transactions.

Circle Internet Financial has conducted a number of “state visits” to the U.K. in the last year, flying over its most senior executives to engage with government, regulators and industry bodies with a view to expanding its business in the region.

The banks that own the peer-to-peer payment network are reportedly considering a retail launch that could fend off rival payment methods — or simply cannibalize the sizable revenue issuers get from credit and debit cards.