Payments

JPMorgan Chase has made several investments in financial technology startups, but its plan to buy WePay will give its 4 million small-business clients a much more direct way to adopt digital payments.

The Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication says its Global Payments Innovation service surpassed two million cross-border payments during September.

In a surprise move, the Supreme Court will decide whether Amex may bar merchants from steering customers to less expensive card networks. The card issuer will have to prove the consumer gain from its practices outweighs the merchant pain.

Bank services provider FIS has connected its Trax corporate payments platform to Citigroup via a series of application programming interfaces (APIs), enabling treasury payments to flow in real time and improving cash management for corporate customers.

BBVA has launched a new mobile app that is designed to help people in the U.S. send money to friends and family in Mexico — more quickly and cheaper than traditional remittance methods.

The U.S. Supreme Court accepted a case that could roil the credit-card business, agreeing to consider reviving government allegations that American Express Co. thwarts competition by prohibiting merchants from steering customers to cards with lower fees.

The bank that can effectively enable a corporate customer to manage its working capital and order-to-pay cycle, pay its employees, and provide analytics and insights to forecast cash flow will win the lion’s share of profits, writes Jessica Cheney, vice president of strategic solutions for Bottomline Technologies.

IBM plans to use blockchain technology to power real-time execution for international transfers, joining the push to streamline a traditionally cumbersome payment type.

Fintech solutions to send cross-border payments to unbanked consumers through smartphones are gaining momentum globally, but the volume of remittances going to bank accounts in developing countries is also on the rise, according to Small World Financial Services.

The Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (Swift) has issued a preliminary report stating blockchain can make cross-border payments more efficient.