Payments

Artificial intelligence is steadily making its way through the payments and financial services world. The technology's usefulness for fraud detection is clear, but there are other areas where AI can have an impact.

A full changeout of AML and KYC rules would stress compliance. Working to improve current practices would be better for the financial services and payments industries.

A new generation of Internet-connected vending machines could make digging for spare change and fiddling with uncooperative dollar bills a thing of the past. At a growing number of locations, customers can now pay by credit card and mobile wallet.

Wells Fargo & Co. is expanding its ExpressSend remittance payout network in India to include Axis Bank and, beginning next month, expanding a free-transfer promotion previously available only for those sending at least $500.

Germany's Wirecard is expanding again through the acquisition of MyGate Communications, a small but fast-growing payment services provider based in Cape Town, South Africa.

Visa, Global Payments Inc., Samsung and Arval will help the bank operate Spain's first Payment Innovation Hub in Barcelona.

WeChat, China’s most popular social media and messaging service, has launched a new bid in Europe and the U.S. to develop its payments offering and win new advertisers.

Consumers are increasingly positive about loyalty programs, mobile ads, chatbots and making a purchase from a smartphone, despite an early resistance to changing their payment habits when mobile wallets debuted years ago.

Business still use lots of checks for payments. That may have worked in the past, but it likely won't work in an increasingly digital future.

If the European Commission's revamped Payment Services Directive had a goal of enticing more innovation and, thus, more startups to enter financial services, Modulr Finance Ltd. CEO Myles Stephenson got the message.

The next phase of India’s national digital payments initiative begins next month when 20 banks launch Aadhaar Pay, an app enabling merchants to accept payments on smartphones from consumers using biometric authentication.

Siam Commercial Bank Pcl, Thailand’s oldest homegrown lender, plans to reinvent its mobile digital payment platform as a lifestyle app to help fend off competition from upstart financial technology providers.

Machine learning, Siri and Alexa are taking off quickly, particularly among younger consumers. Banks and payment companies need to get in the game now.

U.S. restaurants' EMV migration has lagged behind other retail categories for several reasons, including the hassles of replacing centralized payment systems with pay-at-the-table routines that chip cards often require. But another reason: Restaurateurs have other priorities.

Business-to-business payments network provider Viewpost will encourage more small and mid-size clients to convert to electronic payments through Visa virtual commercial cards.

Swedish startup Truecaller has become the newest entrant in India’s busy digital payments space, via a tie-up with ICICI Bank Ltd. to offer a local mobile-payments service.

Amazon.com Inc. has agreed to buy Dubai-based online retailer Souq.com, betting that e-commerce in the Middle East is poised to take off.

With AmazonFresh Pickup, a brick-and-mortar extension of its grocery delivery services, Amazon is edging further into the crowded grocery market with a model that downplays the process of wandering the aisles of a physical store. But unlike some of Amazon's other retail efforts, this one is not as big a departure as it first seems.

Passwords are often restrictive, undynanmic and draw attention from fraudsters. And there's also the risk of repeated cybercrime linked to old authentication.

The business-to-business payments market is one of the laggards in transaction automation, and a reason often given is the lack of customization options. Businesses are using consumer-style technology for business purposes, and the fit isn't right.