“Five central banks in Southeast Asia have signed a deal to make cross-border payments faster and cheaper as part of efforts to deepen financial integration in the region. The central banks of Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines and Thailand on Monday said they expect the deal to be a “significant contributor to accelerating regional economic recovery and promoting inclusive growth,” supporting cross-border trade, investment, remittance, tourism and other things. The deal will include cooperation on QR codes and fast payment, the banks said in a joint statement, without elaborating further.”

“The Commercial Bank of Ceylon has become the first Sri Lankan Bank to introduce card acceptance through Android smartphones, allowing its merchants to conveniently and cost effectively accept card payment transactions, changing the landscape of the digital payment industry in Sri Lanka with this state-of-the-art low-cost technology. The Bank has announced that it is providing this facility in collaboration with PAYable Pvt Ltd. one of Sri Lanka’s leading fintech and digital payment solutions providers, and has integrated its payment system with PAYable SoftPOS, also known as PAYableTAP, which was developed in partnership with Mastercard and Worldline, a technology company that provides digital payment platforms to the financial sector. This solution converts any NFC-enabled Android smartphone into a payment acceptance terminal. To enjoy the convenience of this facility, merchants simply have to download the PAYableTAP app, register with Commercial Bank, and perform Tap and Pay transactions by simply allowing cardholders to tap their NFC enabled credit or debit cards on the screen of the device to make payments. The first of its kind in Sri Lanka, the SoftPOS solution is built on cutting-edge, secure digital payment technology and is one of the easiest to use, the Bank said. Commercial Bank certified this new technology with card schemes, and the Bank guarantees the security of the smartphone POS transactions to be the same as traditional POS transactions.”

“PayU , the payments and fintech business of Prosus, today announces that its controlled company Red Dot Payment , a South East Asia focused online payment solutions provider, has received direct acquiring licenses and connectivity to Visa and Mastercard. The expansion of PayU’s offering in South East Asia with Red Dot Payment’s direct credit card acquiring license opens up new opportunities for merchants to offer card payments and process payments locally. New capabilities will be available to both domestic merchants expanding across borders and international merchants integrated with the PayU Hub, PayU’s global platform to process cross-border payments.”

“Real-time payments are now as popular as cash as a payment method for consumers in Southeast Asia, according to new research from ACI Worldwide (NASDAQ: ACIW) and YouGov . Three out of five consumers (61%) in Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and Singapore prefer real-time payments as a favored way to pay in 2021, level with cash (61%) and higher than other payment categories, including digital wallets requiring cash or card top-ups (56%) and credit cards (30%).”