Venture funding

Ant Financial, the Chinese payments giant controlled by Jack Ma, is expected to close a fundraising of at least $10 billion in the next few days, attracting Carlyle Group and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board as first-time investors, according to people familiar with the matter.

Square has come a long way since it debuted in 2009 with a simple plastic card reader for micro-merchants. But it didn't make its journey alone.

In one of the biggest fundraising rounds for a European fintech this year, Revolut Ltd., a U.K. startup that provides digital banking, received $250 million.

Ant Financial Services Group has formed a strategic partnership with bKash Limited, the mobile payments platform Bangladesh’s central bank established to expand financial inclusion.

Sapphire Ventures and Cervin Ventures were involved in the Series B funding round, bringing their total of support to $31 million for Mountain View, Calif.-based Punchh.

The U.K. government has committed to a 5G Urban Connected Communities Project for a city-wide trial of 5G wireless technology as part of the fourth phase of the government’s 5G strategy. This trial should spark substantial investment in new payments technology.

Companies that aspire to be the Uber of their industry should take a second look at the ride-sharing market, where Grab has become a lightning rod of payments investment and innovation.

Alibaba is investing billions into mobile ordering technology in China — but what is more fundamentally American than spending large amounts of money on food?

The funding round comes on the heels of what BitPay cited as a record year in 2017 in processing more than $1 billion in bitcoin payments.

Midigator, which markets software to help e-commerce merchants manage payment card chargebacks, has received $30 million in funding from private equity firm LLR Partners to further develop the product.

The team that founded marketplace lender Avant Inc. raised about $15 million to start a firm that will use blockchain technology and digital tokens to motivate companies to share data about customer identities and credit worthiness.

With 1.3 billion people who are mostly unbanked in an economy where 85% to 95% of all transactions are still conducted in cash, few other markets have such an opportunity to modernize payments.

China’s Ant Financial, which already has a large stake in India’s Paytm and operates its own Alipay wallet in China, is taking a 45% stake in Pakistan’s Telenor Microfinance Bank (TMB).

To detect and combat transaction laundering — the practice of hiding illegal activity behind a business that appears legitimate — American Express' investment group took a minority equity stake in EverCompliant.

Backbone Hosting Solutions Inc., a cryptocurrency mining company, said it plans to invest C$250 million ($193 million) in computing centers in Sherbrooke, Canada.

RecargaPay, an eight-year-old mobile payments platform targeting unbanked and underbanked consumers in Brazil, has secured $22 million in funding to reach more users and merchants.

Customer support may seem like it's innovating through the use of artificial intelligence and chatbots, but all of that is built on a foundation that's stuck in the stone age.

The goal of the competition is to increase diversity in the financial technology industry.

U.S. fintechs attracted $5.8 billion in the fourth quarter as institutions sought an AI edge.

Payworks has raised $14.5 million in a Series B funding round with several participants including Visa and CommerzVentures.