TRENDING: Minor League Baseball, Jumbo Shrimp And A Payments Payroll Changeup

As faster payment schemes emerge and expand, financial institutions (FIs) and businesses uncertain about real-time payments need to know what the developments mean for them — and how they should respond.

That means deciding whether it’s worth engaging with the schemes and, if so, deciding which ones. FIs and companies need to understand what they can expect from a given faster payments scheme, the level demand from their customers, and which products and services they should offer by leveraging the scheme to best answer that demand.

The October Faster Payments Tracker explores the latest faster payments scheme developments and examines how players in the space are working to help others make sense of it all.

Around The Faster Payments World

FIs and other players in Asia-Pacific will need to make decisions on their faster payments approach quickly, as several initiatives are taking shape in the region.

Financial messaging services provider SWIFT has been collaborating with banks from China, Singapore, Thailand and Australia in an effort to enable faster cross-border transactions between domestic real-time payment schemes through its SWIFT gpi system. Under the initiative, SWIFT is making its first integration by connecting its SWIFT gpi with Australia’s New Payments Platform (NPP), enabling settlement of cross-border transfers in real time.

TransferGo is also focusing on speeding up cross-border transactions with a new service, which allows European residents to send remittances to India in real time. To support the service, TransferGo is leveraging Ripple’s blockchain technology as part of an effort to provide instant communication between its European operations and Indian banking partners.

The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA), meanwhile, launched its own faster payments scheme, known as the Faster Payments System (FPS). FPS aims to enable businesses and consumers to send real-time payments for free between banks and payment platforms, such as Alipay and WeChat Pay.

Jacksonville Jumbo Shrimp Hit A Payments Home Run

The Jumbo Shrimp — a Jacksonville, Florida-based minor league baseball team — has a new, speedier employee payment solution in play.

The MiLB club recently embraced payroll cards for instantly issuing real-time payments to its fleet of ticket-takers, concession stand operators and other part-time workers. Previously, explained Harold Craw, general manager of the Jumbo Shrimp, employees had to pick up paper checks in-person.

In this month’s feature story, Craw tells PYMNTS how payroll cards are not only helping to speed up game-day operations and streamline back-end processes, but improving workers’ quality of life — and maybe even boosting employee retention.

To get the full story, download the Tracker.

Faster Payments

The PYMNTS Faster Payments Tracker is the go-to resource for staying up to date on faster payment developments and initiatives on a month-by-month basis. The Tracker highlights the contribution of different stakeholders, including institutions and technology providers coming together to make this happen.