In global news this week, WeChat Pay enables instant payments outside China, Mastercard takes a minority stake in Societe Generale subsidiary Treezor, Sella Group tests a fingerprint payment card in Italy, and more.
Singapore-based cross-border payment firm Thunes has formed a partnership with China’s Tencent Financial Technology to enable instant payments from outside China to users of the Tencent’s WeChat app, the companies said in a press release. The move adds 1.3 billion mobile wallets to Thunes’ payments network, enabling users to now send payments to 2.8 billion wallets, more than any other global payment network, according to Thunes. Visa Direct also recently announced a partnership with Thunes to reach 78 million digital wallet providers across 44 countries and territories. –Kate Fitzgerald
Mastercard partners with Societe Generale subsidiary
Mastercard has made a minority investment in Treezor, a subsidiary of Societe Generale that develops banking-as-a-service software. The card brand will also work with Treezor on payment technology projects. The funding will help Treezor expand its business in Germany, Italy, Spain and other markets. Treezor will additionally become a preferred banking-as-a-service provider, meaning it will have priority access to new Mastercard products such as credit service, open banking and a carbon calculator. Societe Generale acquired Treezor in 2019, leading to work on application programming interfaces for digital payment, insurance, credit and other banking products. —John Adams
HSBC, Wells Fargo extend foreign exchange collaboration
HSBC and Wells Fargo have added the offshore Yuan, or currency that circulates outside of China, to their bilateral FX settlement product. The settlement uses blockchain technology to support a shared ledger that settles cross-currency payments in U.S. dollars, U.K. pounds, euros, and Canadian dollars, with offshore Yuan becoming the fifth currency. Participants in the network are only aware of transactions they are involved in. The platform uses the Baton Systems CORE distributed ledger.
