Western Union buys a digital wallet; MoneyGram gets new CEO

Wise founder Kristo Käärmann was fined about $454,000 for breaking a U.K. tax law for corporate officers; Visa partners with DailyPay to combine payroll access with remittances to sell two of the payment industry's hottest products through a single integration; Klarna adds its BNPL product to a gift card store; and more. Here's what's going on in the world of payments.

Western Union to buy Singapore-based mobile wallet

Western Union last week entered into a conditional agreement to acquire Singapore-based mobile wallet Dash from Singtel Singapore, a telecommunications company in the country. The sale price was not disclosed.

Dash, which was launched in 2014 and boasts 1.4 million users, is an all-in-one mobile wallet that lets customers make payments, send remittances, save and invest money and find insurance.

The acquisition comes as Western Union looks to expand its financial ecosystem and double its digital business in 2025. Singtel, for its part, is looking to simplify its business to focus on its "core business and competencies," said Anna Yip, Deputy CEO of Singtel Singapore, in a Western Union release. —Joey Pizzolato

Visa, DailyPay meld earned wage access, cross-border transfers

Visa has expanded its partnership with earned wage access firm DailyPay to combine alternative payroll options with remittances.

Through a feature called International Remittances, DailyPay users can send money globally by tapping a button in the DailyPay app. Financial technology firm Brightwell and the Visa Direct peer-to-peer service are enabling the transaction processing.

The products include DailyPay's range of payroll features that are offered through employers as a benefit, which would exempt the EWA products from proposed Consumer Financial Protection Bureau regulations that would restrict EWA fintechs by subjecting payroll advances that charge fees to the same standards as a loan.

During the recent spike in inflation, EWA products became more popular as a way to avoid overdrafts by enabling workers to pay bills ahead of the traditional two-week payroll cycle. Paying contract workers and hourly employees has also become a growing EWA use case.

Meanwhile, remittances, which traditionally relied on large international networks of brick-and-mortar agents, are shifting to digital.

Fifty-three percent of remittance users access a digital app to send funds across borders, according to research from Visa that's not tied to the DailyPay announcement. —John Adams

Wise CEO Käärmann fined over tax issue

The Financial Conduct Authority has fined Wise co-founder and CEO Kristo Käärmann about $454,000 for breaking a U.K. tax law for corporate officers.

Käärmann did not notify the FCA about his capital gains tax liability when he sold about $14 million in Wise shares in 2017. The executive broke an FCA rule that requires executives disclose information that the FCA would "reasonably expect notice."

Käärmann's fine was reduced from about $650,000 after he agreed to resolve the capital gains tax matter. In an email from Wise's public relations office, Chairman David Wells said: "We're pleased that the FCA's conclusions are consistent with Wise's own assessment in 2021, and that the matter is now closed in its entirety."

Wells said the board conducted its own investigation into Käärmann after HM Revenue & Customs included his name on its list in September 2021. The board concluded Käärmann "remained fit and proper to continue in his roles at Wise" and required him to take actions to ensure his tax affairs were in order, Wells said.

Founded in 2014 and formerly known as TransferWise, Wise competes with Ripple, PayPal and other fintechs to enable cross-border payments, using technology to cut steps such as correspondent banks out of the process. —John Adams

Santander makes a play for Latin American e-commerce payments

Getnet, a payment technology firm tied to Spanish bank Santander, has launched Getnet SEP, a product that enables a unified payment gateway for Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Mexico. Services include payment acceptance, sales, refunds, security risk, subscriptions and other functions.

Santander is trying to reach online merchants that are selling in more than one Latin American country, such as streaming content or online marketplaces. Getnet is part of PagoNxt, a Santander fintech that develops payment services and supporting technology.

Santander is in the midst of a broader strategy that combines elements of a fintech with a traditional bank structure that includes branches.

The bank recently hired Swati Ghatia as head of retail banking and transformation in the U.S., to help drive digital strategies. —John Adams

MoneyGram taps Anthony Soohoo as CEO

MoneyGram International has hired former Walmart executive Anthony Soohoo as chief executive officer, succeeding Alex Holmes.

"Soohoo will be responsible for executing the company's focused digital innovation strategy, while strengthening and expanding MoneyGram's leading global partner network," the fintech company said Tuesday.

Holmes, who has been MoneyGram's chairman and CEO since January 2016, will serve as the company's advisor.

Soohoo previously served as executive vice president of Walmart's home division, where he led a digital transformation that enhanced the business segment's sales channels. He has also held executive roles at CBS, Yahoo and Apple, and founded and sold several technology businesses. —Mary de Wet

Standard Bank pushes key digital pay protocol in Africa

South Africa-based Standard Bank has hired bank technology firm Volante to accelerate the migration to ISO 20022, a standard that's designed to make it easier to execute international digital payments.

The ISO 20022 deployment will start in South Africa and will move to 18 other African countries, integrating more than 50 clearing and settlement systems with the bank's payment technology.

The collaboration will also streamline processing for real-time cross-border transactions, high value and corporate disbursements.

ISO 20022 expands the amount of information that is induced in a payments message, and also standardizes the fields that include that data. This enables payments to have more context, which can aid processing and security risk. But banks face a complex IT upgrade to comply with ISO 20022, which has delayed the migration for many institutions. —John Adams

Norway pushes cash payments in a largely cashless economy

New regulation that went into effect in Norway on Oct. 1 has expanded consumers' right to pay with cash in one of the world's largest cashless economies.

An amendment in the country's Financial Agreement Act, which was first proposed in 2022, solidifies customers' ability to pay with cash when other payment methods are accepted at retailers and requires store owners to offer customers the option to pay with cash for transactions under 20,000 kroner ($1,829.02).

Norway, and Scandinavia at large, is known for its largely cashless economies. Contactless payment volume in the Nordic region surged in 2020, according to Copenhagen-based payments technology firm Nets. In Norway, only 3% of payments were made with cash in 2022, according to research from Norges Bank, the country's central bank. —Joey Pizzolato

Klarna AB Expected To List In Europe IPO Bonanza

Hollie Adams/Bloomberg

Klarna launches BNPL gift card store in UK, partners with Worldpay as valuation soars

Klarna made two moves this week to expand its offering to new markets as one of its major shareholders upped the buy now/pay later firm's valuation ahead of its expected 2025 initial public offering.

The Swedish BNPL firm expanded its partnership with WorldPay that will make Klarna a network of choice by offering it as a default payment method to thousands of Worldpay's merchants alongside traditional card payments, according to a Klarna release.

Worldpay processed $2.3 trillion worth of commerce in 2023 for more than 1 million merchants globally.

"We want Klarna at every checkout, available everywhere, for everything, all the time," said David Sykes, chief commercial officer at Klarna, in a statement. "This expanded partnership is a massive leap towards that goal, making Klarna the default payment method for hundreds of thousands of retailers."

The expanded partnership with Worldpay comes on the heels of an Oct. 24 launch of a gift card store in the U.K. Klarna partnered with Blackhawk Network, a branded payments provider, to launch the gift card store following a successful launch of its U.S.-based gift card store last year. Consumers will be able to buy branded gift cards and use Klarna's BNPL product or its instant debit option to pay for them. Merchants include Airbnb, Fortnite, Adidas, IKEA, Playstation, H&M, Wagamama, Currys and Uber, among others.

Klarna said it plans to roll out the gift card store to other European markets by the end of the year. The gift card market in the U.K. is predicted to rise to 9 billion pounds ($11.7 billion) by 2025, up from 7 billion pounds in 2024.

Chrysalis Investments also this week raised its stake in the BNPL company to 120.6 million pounds from the 100.3 million pounds it assigned in the second quarter of this year, Bloomberg reported. That puts the company's valuation at around $14.6 billion.

Klarna is widely expected to list its stock in an initial public offering next year and has been making moves to increase the reach of its products, including two partnerships with big tech companies Apple and Adyen earlier this month. —Joey Pizzolato

Mastercard launches new generative AI assistant for client onboarding

Mastercard has partnered with Databricks to create a new generative AI-based digital assistant to hasten client onboarding, the payment card processor said at Money 20/20 on Tuesday.

The AI assistant automates routine tasks and is able to answer questions during the onboarding through a large language model that uses Mastercard's existing onboarding documentation as its knowledge base, according to Mastercard. It also employs a human-in-the-loop approach "to integrate feedback from subject matter experts."

Mastercard is already using machine learning models to parse out fraudulent transactions and payment disputes. Mastercard analyzes more than 143 billion transactions a year. —Joey Pizzolato