Top News In Payments: Western Union Advances Real-Time Payments To India; InstaReM Rebrands To Nium

In today’s payments news, cross-border payments firm Western Union is advancing real-time money transfers to customers in India. Also, digital cross-border payments provider InstaReM is rebranding to become part of global payments platform Nium. And Jumio has announced the beta release of its first real-time, fully automated identity verification solution Jumio Go.

InstaReM Rebrands To Nium, Launches Open Money Network

InstaReM, a digital cross-border payments provider, is rebranding to become part of global payments platform Nium. Backed by investors including Rocket Internet, Vertex Ventures, MDI Ventures and Fullerton Financial Holdings, InstaReM is currently regulated in the U.S., the European Union, Singapore, Hong Kong, Australia, India, Canada and Malaysia.

Western Union Enables Real-Time Global Transfers Via India’s UPI

Cross-border payments firm Western Union is advancing real-time money transfers to customers in India. The firm was the first money transfer company to use Unified Payments Interface (UPI), which was developed by the National Payments Corporation of India under Reserve Bank of India (RBI) guidelines. The platform lets Western Union customers transfer money to banks in India using UPI ID.

Amazon Taps Into Bill Payments With Alexa

Amazon announced during its Money 20/20 keynote address that Amazon Pay users will soon have the ability to pay utility bills using Alexa. Amazon said in a tweet on Sunday (Oct. 27), “… any customer whose utility is a member of the Paymentus Instant Payment Network (up to 700 billers) can soon use Alexa to get bill notifications as well as proactively find out when their next bill is due by asking Alexa.”

Jumio’s New AI Tool Verifies Identity In Real Time

Jumio has announced the beta release of Jumio Go, the firm’s first real-time, fully automated identity verification solution. The product is designed to remove friction from the user onboarding process, while also preventing online identity fraud and meeting know your customer (KYC) compliance as well as anti-money laundering (AML) rules.

Why Super Apps Could Have Superpowers

Everyday apps don’t have to do everything. To be effective, however, they must eliminate the friction associated with jumping among the slew of apps with cards on file that consumers use today to get things done, or to fill the gaps in access that are already in existence.

As its moniker implies, a Super App is supposed to make it super easy for consumers to have more seamless access to the activities that are part of their everyday journey. And enabling payments for those services as well as goods within that Super App goes along for the ride.

Visa, Marqeta Team To Boost FinTech Expansion Across Asia Pacific

The drive to become a “borderless business” has its challenges. Many of them are technical in nature, as companies — especially FinTech firms and traditional financial institutions (FIs) that wish to bring digital payments to new markets — must traverse new relationships with multiple payment processors on a market-by-market basis to gain that acceptance.

To streamline the task, Visa and Marqeta said on Monday (Oct. 28) that they are tackling that challenge head on. They are solving the FinTech acceptance problem in an entirely new way through 10 pivotal markets in the Asia-Pacific region. FinTech companies with domestic wallets there can now turn user account balances into digital card credentials that are accepted everywhere Visa is taken, and where the Marqeta platform is certified.