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Brazilian banks will be implementing a new standardized blockchain identity solution co-developed by IBM and the central bank, CIP. It is reportedly to be integrated into the Brazilian Payment System.

The ECB and BoJ published the outcome of Poject Stella, their joint research on DLT-based synchronised cross-border payments system. It concludes that the safety of today's cross-border payments could potentially be improved by using payment methods that synchronise payments and lock funds along the payment chain, but further reflections on legal and compliance issues, the maturity of the technology and a cost-benefit analysis would be required before the possible implementation of such new methods could be considered.

Darrell Duffie examines key issues around the introduction of digital currencies and faster payment systems, including financial inclusion, payment system efficiency, control by central banks of monetary policy transmission, privacy and anti-monetary laundering, and competition for banking services.

The Eurosystem wholeheartedly supports the creation of an innovative single payments market for the euro through its market infrastructure projects and policy work.

SWIFT has concluded a trial to integrate its "global payment initiative" with Singapore's Fast And Secure Transfers (FAST) domestic instant payment service, that linked 17 banks across seven countries. It said all payments in the trial were settled within between 13 and 25 seconds.

In our last post, we explored mobile money as the driving force for financial inclusion in Sub-Saharan Africa, and the increasing digitisation of use cases across different sectors - many of which were not imagined in the early days of mobile money. This post focuses on the future of mobile money. Looking ahead, we see three key areas of future growth in mobile money across Sub-Saharan Africa.

Global payment services provider Swift has said that its new cross-border payments platform is coping with greater consumer demand for speed and transparency. Swift launched its global payments initiative, or GPI, in 2017, in an attempt to speed up cross-border payments systems.

United States-based payments startup Fold has made Lightning Network (LN) payments possible at Amazon, Starbucks, Uber and other big name retailers. The news was revealed in an official blog post published on July 10.

PayPal launched Xoom-its international money transfer service-in 32 markets across Europe.

The Bank of England announced plans to consult on opening access to its balance sheet to new payment providers. Allowing all payment providers to store funds overnight in interest-bearing accounts at the central bank would help achieve the goal that similar activities should be regulated consistently.

Mastercard has teamed up with P27 Nordic Payments Platform to deliver fast, cross-border, multi-currency account to account payments across the Nordic region. The partners claim this is a world first in terms of a real-time and batch multi-currency platform, which will offer immediate payments with lower costs, higher security and increased competitiveness. P27 Nordic Payments Platform is owned by Danske Bank, Handelsbanken, Nordea, OP Financial Group, SEB and Swedbank.

South Koreans are increasingly going cashless as more people turn to e-wallets in South Korea for both online and offline purchases.

For a moment, it worked as planned. As CoinDesk reported last summer, a user in South Africa could pay their mom's electricity bill in Uganda using a crypto-powered payments app called Wala. But despite early traction in facilitating remittances and other small payments for Africa's underbanked, Wala was effectively broke by early 2019, laying off its staff and closing access to the company's flagship app in February."

Ripple has struck a deal to buy a stake in money transfer giant MoneyGram that will see MoneyGram using XRP as part of its day-to-day operations by way of Ripple's xRapid transaction product. MoneyGram started piloting the token back in January 2018.

With mainstream society increasingly accepting Bitcoin (BTC) as a means of payment, financial firms are increasingly seeking to offer a frictionless and convenient means for consumers to make payments using crypto.

Many are trying to solve the problems associated with the remittance market today. Ripple is one of the best platforms in this sector but has a major competitor in PayPal who have launched their international money transfer app Xoom.

Union Bank of the Philippines recently became the first Philippine bank to successfully pilot blockchain-based remittance from Singapore to the Philippines. This was done in partnership with OCBC Bank, Singapore, using the Adhara liquidity management and international payments platform.

The Coinbase Card will be available in Spain, Germany, France, Italy, Ireland and the Netherlands. The card allows users with Coinbase accounts to spend cryptocurrencies in stores and online at any merchant that accepts Visa.

WhatsApp will launch an in-app payment service later this year, with the service to initially be rolled out in India. A pilot trial of the payments service that is conducted on UPI standards is already underway.

PayPal is ramping up its presence in India, looking to capitalise on surging digital payments demand as the country's 450m mobile users leap online and as growth slows in the US and Europe.