Remitly Updates Money Transfer Service; Paysafe Plans Rebrand For iPayment

Welcome to The Axis, your late look at payments news from around the world. Coverage includes Remitly’s updates to its remittance service for sending funds to India. In addition, Japan’s Nippon Biodiesel Fuel plans to roll out an eMoney platform for farmers in Asia, and the U.K.’s Paysafe Group plans to rebrand iPayment.

Remitly is updating its money transfer service that lets people send remittances to India: The company is increasing its daily limit on money sent from the U.S. to India to $30,000, the company said in an announcement. In addition, Remitly has brought on Bollywood actor R. Madhavan as a brand ambassador. The moves come as the remittance industry is experiencing a digital transformation – and people in India received $69 billion worth of remittances last year.

In other news, U.K.-based Paysafe Group plans to rebrand iPayment as Paysafe after acquiring the company, Paysafe said in an announcement. Paysafe plans to replace the name with a new brand identity and a “Plug into Paysafe” proposition. Paysafe North America CEO of Payment Processing Todd Linden said the change has been well-received: “Our new ‘Plug into Paysafe’ brand positioning has resonated really well with our customers and partners, and the iPayment team is enthusiastic about taking advantage of it.”

And The Financial Supervisory Service, a South Korean regulator, is projecting that mobile payment transactions will double in value to 27.9 trillion won — or $25 billion — this year, Mobile World Live reported. Already, mobile transactions have reached 11.6 won in the first five months of this year, which is about equal to 12 trillion worth of won transactions for all of last year. In the country’s payment market, providers Toss and KakaoPay take the lead, controlling about 95 percent of the market share. Each counts international payment companies as backers.

In other news, Japan’s Nippon Biodiesel Fuel plans to roll out a system called AgriNet that will provide farmers in Asia with an eMoney platform, Nikkei Asian Review reported. The platform, for example, will allow villages to come together to purchase fertilizer and equipment by selling crop yields with mobile money. In all, the site seeks to connect farmers with banks, equipment dealers and agrimarkets.