Payment Services

Hastened by a potential replacement by Blockchain cross border payments, Swift’s one-year-old global payments innovation (gpi) service is growing at a rapid rate and significantly improving cross-border transaction speeds. A year after the first banks went live with Swift’s gpi, the service has been adopted by more than 150 financial institutions around the world, according to figures released by the global transaction ... Read More »

PayPal Makes a Move Toward Traditional Banking by partnering with small banks to offer debit cards, direct deposit to withdraw cash at ATMs and the ability to add funds to accounts by taking a photo of a paper check or by having employers direct-deposit earnings there. PayPal Holdings Inc. is nudging its customers closer to mainstream banking services.  The San Jose, Calif.-based ... Read More »

Standardized Accounting and Payment Processing for E-Commerce at Arvato Financial Solutions. Designed for international use and highly scalable. Aqount, Arvato Financial Solutions now allows retailers to take complete control of all their financial processes.  Aqount is the ideal solution for companies wishing to outsource complex and time-consuming financial processes from receivables management and payment processing to debt collection. Aqount is ... Read More »

The Saudi Arabian Monetary Authority (SAMA) — the central bank for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) — has signed an agreement with Ripple to help banks in the KSA improve their payments infrastructure using xCurrent.  This ground-breaking pilot program is the first of its kind to be launched by a central bank. Participating banks from the KSA will use xCurrent to instantly settle ... Read More »

What’s Happening with China’s Fintech? As US-based card payment companies like American Express, MasterCard, and Visa strive to set up shop in China, Chinese consumers are increasingly using their mobile phones to buy goods and services. In effect, the country has leapfrogged from cash to mobile payments, bypassing the payment cards system.  Furthermore, mobile payments constitute just one of seven ... Read More »

Qarar partners with STS Cloud to launch first of its kind cloud based Decision-as-a Service solution for the banking and finance sector in Jordan.  Qarar’s proprietary SmartSuite Credit Risk Management software and a hosted risk management models for the benefit of Banking and finance sector client’s in Jordan Qarar, a leading regional decision analytics company, has announced that it has signed ... Read More »

Australia is preparing to launch its real-time payments infrastructure—the New Payments Platform (NPP)—in early 2018 to support its growing digital economy. According to an article on the Open.gov website, the NPP will support payments between business accounts and customers at different financial institutions in Australia by providing “fast, versatile, data-rich payments any time and any day.” The plan was first ... Read More »

Stake will be first since Ant’s controversial 2011 spin out Alibaba also raised sales forecast after results top estimates Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. will buy 33 percent of Ant Financial, assuming to clear the way for an initial public offering of the Chinese payments giant. Alibaba will acquire new shares in its finance affiliate in exchange for certain intellectual property rights, ... Read More »

SBI Ripple Asia has formed a consortium with some Japanese credit card companies to utilize blockchain technology. Called the Credit Card Industry Consortium, the group will be formally established in January. Formed in 2016, SBI Ripple Asia is the Asia-Pacific partnership of Japanese financial services company SBI Holdings and FinTech payments firm Ripple. It manages a consortium of more than 60 ... Read More »

The Octopus payments system has again been the subject of much discussion in Hong Kong in the past few weeks. Even the venerable British magazine The Economist, in its November 23 issue, published an article entitled “Does Hong Kong’s Octopus cards have too many tentacles?”. Instead of the usual high praise about its innovation since its inception days in 1997, ... Read More »

ANT Financial Services Group (“Ant Financial”, or the “Company”) announced the appointment of Cherry Huang as General Manager, Cross-border Business for South and Southeast Asia of Alipay. Huang will lead business operations and growth in the region to further strengthen Alipay’s payments platform leadership through enabling cross-border transactions. The appointment of Huang reinforces Ant Financial’s mission to leverage Alibaba’s online ... Read More »

Ant Financial triumphed in the second annual Financial Times fintech awards, taking the “impact” prize. Ant Financial is a dominant player with a share of more than half of China’s fast-growing $5.5tn mobile payments market.  This Alibaba spin-off has raised more funding than any rival and is valued at over $70bn — more than most banks. Launched in 2004 as ... Read More »

Alipay’s technology to upgrade payment experience for local users of Mynt’s GCash The Philippine mobile operator Globe Telecom announced that Ant Financial Services Group, one of the world’s leading digital financial services providers, has entered into a strategic partnership with Globe Fintech Innovations, Inc. (Mynt), a wholly-owned subsidiary of Globe Capital Venture Holdings (GCVHI) under Globe Telecom, and Ayala Corporation, one ... Read More »

Alipay, the digital payment company affiliate of Alibaba has entered into a partnership with Poynt, the maker of smart terminals. According to a news release from Poynt, under terms of the deal, Alipay’s more than 520 million registered users in China will be able to pay with Alipay across all Poynt devices in North America. “Given all the capabilities built ... Read More »

Callcredit Information Group is helping payments service firm ShieldPay provide secure online payments to its customers. ShieldPay´s unique and patent pending technology protects both buyer and seller in any payment by verifying both individuals. Using Callcredit’s ID and bank verification solutions ShieldPay can verify both party’s identity and bank account reducing the chances of peer-to-peer payment fraud. Callcredit’s solutions also ... Read More »