Payments Ecosystem

Ripple is to acquire a 40% stake in Asian cross-border payments specialist Trianglo.

PayPal customers in the US can now pay at millions of online merchants around the world with bitcoin, litecoin, ethereum or bitcoin cash.

US pharmacy chain Walgreens is launching its own mobile and online bank account in partnership with InComm Payments and Meta Bank.

Marcus, Goldman Sachs' digital retail banking service, is launching a Cash ISA in the UK.

Having initially dismissed reports of the leak of 100 million customer files on the dark web, Indian payments processor MobiKwick has brought in external investigators to conduct a forensic data security audit.

Brazil's central bank has given Facebook-owned WhatsApp the greenlight to relaunch P2P payments in the country - nine months after suspending the service.

Japanese buy now, pay later (BNPL) outfit Paidy has raised US$120 million in a Series D funding round.

Santander's consumer bank in Norway has released a new PFM app using Open Banking tools from Nordic API Gateway.

Jack Dorsey's Cash App has recruited Miley Cyrus to front up a promotional campaign that will give away $1 million worth of stock to the star's followers.

The Australian Prudential Regulatory Authority is to impose stricter conditions on applicants for deposit-taking licences following the recent collapse of digital challenger Xinja and the sale of 86 4000 to National Australia Bank.

Bengaluru-based fintech lending platform KreditBee’s holding entity, Finnov has raised an additional $70 million in a follow-on Series C round from TPG-backed NewQuest Capital Partners and Motilal Oswal Private Equity.

Sweden's SEB is going all-in on Google Cloud, accelerating a shift that will bring a raft of new products to retail and corporate customers based on data, analytics, and AI.

Owners of the new Fiat 500 electric car will be rewarded for eco driving with free cryptocurrency that can be spent at a dedicated online marketplace.

Cryptocurrency wallet provider Blockchain.com has secured $300 million in a Series C funding round that values the London-based company at $5.2 billion.

UK-based salary-on-tap firm Wagestream has acquired Australian counterpart Earnd from administrators of the collapsed Greensill business empire.

AI-based financial crime detection platform Feedzai has joined the Unicorn club, raising
$200 million at a valuation of above $1 billion.

Banco Santander to is to shutter 111 branches in the UK and shift its headquarters to a new purpose-built campus in Milton Keynes.

Mastercard, Visa and host of America's biggest banks have joined a $40 million Series A funding round for Greenwood, the digital banking startup targeting Black and Latino people and business owners.

Germany's central bank says that successful tests of a project to implement a distributed ledger for electronic securities settlement should negate the need for a central bank digital currency.

Payments infrastructure provider PPRO has topped up its latest $180 million funding round with an additional $90 million investment from JPMorgan Chase and Eldridge.

Finastra announced that it has joined the Federal Reserve’s FedNow Pilot Program to support development, testing and adoption of the FedNow Service.

DBS is the first Asian bank to successfully close a trade financing transaction on Ant Group's blockchain platform Trusple.

Web payments firm Stripe plans to hire 1000 new staff in Dublin over the next five years on the back of a fresh $600 million funding round.

ING Ventures is investing an additional $3 million into Flowcast, a fintech startup that applies AI to the credit and collection process for non-performing loans.

A Bank of Thailand project to explore the use of a central bank backed digital currency and distributed ledger technology in B2B invoice payments found commercial benefits to users but limitation in supporting large transactions volumes and preserving privacy.