CaixaBank forms gen AI team, Ripple rebrands cross-border payments

CaixaBank and its CaixaBank Tech unit have put together a team of more than 100 people to work on generative AI projects for internal and customer-facing services. The Spanish bank is also partnering with Microsoft and Accenture staff in Madrid and Barcelona, with Microsoft enabling access to chatGPT, which is developed by OpenAI, a Microsoft-backed tech firm. The team's early work includes updating digital customer service, risk analytics, preparing product tests and documentation for future technology products. Caixa anticipates deploying gen AI-enabled functions during 2024. Banks globally are working on use cases for gen AI, with most focusing on internal tasks such as aiding IT projects. Other functions include spotting messaging language that can portend potential financial abuse.
—John Adams

Blockchain and crypto technology firm Ripple is updating its international payments business, a change that includes a rebranding from RippleNet to Ripple Payments. Ripple also hopes to reach a broader customer base through the rebrand, including small and medium-sized enterprises, noting that it has money transmitter licenses in the U.S. and Singapore. It has additionally added integrations with the XRP Ledger's decentralized exchange, which is designed to lower the barrier to entry to new countries by adding more liquidity markets. Ripple for years has used the XRP Ledger, which powers the XRP cryptocurrency, to enable cross-border payments without requiring correspondent banking to manage foreign currency exchanges and other processing steps, a model that is designed to lower costs and time for international payment processing.  The company more recently has worked on developing networks to enable central bank digital currencies and stablecoins to work with each other and in different countries. Ripple is also expanding partnerships with other payment companies and financial institutions to extend the reach of the XRP Ledger. —John Adams

Use of coins and banknotes are on the rise in the U.K. for the first time in more than a decade, according to the British Retail Consortium. The trade association attributed the trend to consumers' efforts to control spending amid rising prices. In its annual survey of payments data completed this year, the BRC found that during 2022, cash use increased to 19% of all transactions, up from 15% in 2021. Card payments accounted for 76% of transactions, down from 83% in 2021 during the same time period. Alternative payments — including those driven by open banking and buy now/pay later lending, rose from less than 2% to about 5% in 2022 compared with 2021. The average transaction value in the U.K. fell to £22.43 (US$28.19) in 2022, down from £24.49 (US$30.78) a year earlier, as consumers made more numerous, but smaller, purchases, the BRC said. Overall, cards accounted for 85% of all money spent, with debit cards driving 75% of funds spent via cards. Retailers participating in the survey accounted for 35% of the U.K.'s total sales, the BRC said. —Kate Fitzgerald