Asia

The world’s most profitable car manufacturer is investing $1 billion in Singapore’s Grab Holdings Inc., valuing Southeast Asia’s largest car-hailing service at just over $10 billion.

Beem It, a startup owned by three of Australia’s largest banks, has launched a free real-time social payments app designed to run on older debit networks instead of the country's new faster payments platform.

Tencent Holdings Ltd. is working with the Chinese government to create an electronic pass system that smooths travel between Hong Kong, Macau and the southern province of Guangdong.

Geoswift has launched an inbound P2P money transfer service in China — offering the flip side of its core services supporting tuition and other corporate payments for Chinese students, workers and tourists who are outside of their home country.

Billionaire Jack Ma’s Ant Financial is lifting its fundraising target to more than $12 billion by bringing in existing Chinese shareholders in a yuan-denominated financing round, people familiar with the matter said.

As consumers spend more time interacting over social media and messaging platforms, those providers are making sure that they can also make payments related to any topic of conversation. But the arrival of Apple Pay Cash is complicating the market.

Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. is leading the purchase of 10 percent of Chinese delivery service ZTO Express (Cayman) Inc. for $1.38 billion, a deal that’ll augment the e-commerce giant’s ability to ship packages around the globe.

Facebook Inc. is set to offer its WhatsApp payment services to the whole of India as early as next week in an attempt to win market share, even though its partners aren’t all ready, said people familiar with the matter.

Despite Canada's high penetration of contactless POS terminals and consumer affinity for the technology, the country has lagged behind nations such as the U.K. and Singapore in contactless payments. That is set to change as Canada's transit schemes launch contactless open-payment systems.

Bank of Hawaii will serve Japanese citizens looking to conduct business in the United States.