Fintech, Finance, Technology, Banking Highlights – 27 July 2018
Moneygram taps Visa push payments platform for cross-border remittances
Visa and MoneyGram announced a strategic agreement that will modernize and digitize the process of sending and receiving money overseas.
Utilizing Visa Direct, Visa’s real-time1 push payments platform, the agreement will enable secure cross border remittances; once live, MoneyGram’s service will enable its users to choose their preferred method of sending and receiving funds.
Visa Direct allows companies to leverage Visa’s global reach and scale to transform domestic and cross-border payments for businesses and consumers. The agreement with MoneyGram is the first cross-border use case for Visa Direct transactions originating in the U.S. The initial phase includes two priority corridors (United States to Mexico and United States to Philippines) and Visa and MoneyGram intend to later expand the agreement to enable MoneyGram to speed up transactions to additional markets. By collaborating with MoneyGram, one of the largest money transfer providers in the world, Visa is poised to enable the process of sending and receiving money internationally quickly and seamlessly for customers around the world, regardless of borders or location.
“Visa Direct and MoneyGram share a common goal of helping consumers move money around the world with confidence, transparency and security,” said Cecilia Frew, senior vice president and head of North America Push Payments, Visa. “By pairing Visa Direct’s push payments technology with MoneyGram’s expansive network, we are giving consumers a more convenient payment choice when sending money to their loved ones around the world.”
TransferTo partners with Stellar.org
TransferTo is excited to announce that it is partnering with Stellar.org to further enhance the way in which money is transferred across borders. Under this collaboration, financial institutions and partners of both Stellar.org and TransferTo will benefit from the combined network coverage, and be able to leverage new technologies to send and receive money more efficiently to more than 70 countries.
Stellar is a distributed and open-source blockchain platform that connects diverse financial systems and facilitates cross-asset transfers of value around the world. Stellar’s distributed ledger provides an instant clearing, settlement, and execution platform, enabling value to move across borders, directly between banks and payment gateways. TransferTo operates a cross-border mobile payments network for emerging markets, which interconnects financial institutions and digital financial service providers globally. Like the TransferTo network, Stellar also provides the benefits of real-time, secure, and low-cost transfers.
By integrating with Stellar, TransferTo will enable a more seamless and efficient settlement method between its network partners.
Aik-Boon Tan, Chief Customer Officer at TransferTo, says, “We always aim to be at the forefront of the payments industry, and by partnering with Stellar our goal is to trial the blockchain technology and scale our cross-border payment service to better serve our partners and reduce costs. This can enable our partners to better serve both the migrant workers sending money home and their families receiving it.”
Glue42 extends desktop user experience via open APIs
Glue42, the company bringing an entirely new desktop experience to capital markets, retail banks, and insurance firms, announced that developers can now acquire and deploy individual Glue42 services to augment their existing interop frameworks or containers. This new capability was largely made possible because of the emergence of platform agnostic standards, especially the Financial Desktop Connectivity and Collaboration Consortium (FDC3), a program of the Fintech Open Source Foundation (FINOS).
As a result, all Glue42 services will now be made available through Glue42 and through open APIs. These include app directory, advanced window management, notifications and multi-stack interop. The availability of these services will further streamline the user experience of fintech developers and their app consumers while delivering vital insight into users’ behavior, operational KPIs and compliance.
James Wooster, COO of Glue42, said, “Traders, wealth managers and knowledge workers in general have a large number of apps and not enough desktop real estate. It’s an all too common scenario in which users lose track of data and miss critical process steps.”
Wooster continued, “Currently, we are undertaking a global rollout of our next generation of fluid desktop with one of our clients. Users who were previously grappling with 25 plus applications are now presented with a fully integrated environment in which they appear to be using a single application. This will cut training effort, enable faster responses and improve business outcomes.”
