Real-time payments

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

To consolidate the data flows that are increasingly becoming part of real-time payment processing, Ingenico is turning to MapR Technologies to provide artificial intelligence and analytics to its platform.

Digital payments are becoming a critical aspect of nearly every new service for merchants or financial institutions.

The Canadian government is consulting with the country’s banking industry on opening up Canada’s payments infrastructure to nonbank payment service providers and fintechs, in a far-reaching move to spur innovation and competition.

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.

Visa Canada plans to offer real-time B2B and B2C disbursements via its Visa Direct card-to-card transfer service, competing head-on with Canada's Interac network and a product Mastercard launched in the country earlier this year.

The Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication has its sights set on expanding real-time payments in the Asia-Pacific region as part of its plan to further its first value-add service created from the Global Payments Innovation initiative.

For the U.S., being late to the real-time payments game has some tactical advantages, namely the ability to learn from other countries' successes and failures.

The Clearing House expected to take some time to introduce its new network to financial institutions and play up its benefits.

Ripple, the U.S. digital payments company, is working with 61 Japanese banks on an application that will enable customers to settle cash transfers instantly around the clock, the latest effort to apply blockchain technology in finance.