Author: Digital Trade Outlook

HLB Private Bank has launched the HLB Chief Investment Office Fund, a wholesale fund backed by the research and portfolio construction capabilities of its strategic alliance partner, Lombard Odier. The bank intends the fund to serve as the foundation for all future portfolio construction across its wealth business. The announcement was made in Singapore on September 28, 2026.The fund is designed as a discretionary portfolio management solution, spreading investments across global equities, fixed income and specialised market instruments. Holdings are selected from an open architecture universe of more than 50,000 global funds and include active fund managers, passive instruments and…

Land Bank of the Philippines (LANDBANK) has entered into discussions with NPCI International Payments Limited (NIPL), the international arm of National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), which operates the Unified Payments Interface (UPI), over possible collaboration on digital payments and interoperability. The meeting was held in New Delhi during President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr.’s visit for the 18th BRICS Summit in India.LANDBANK President and CEO Lynette V. Ortiz led the discussions with NIPL Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer Ritesh Shukla. The agenda focused on enhancing cross border payments, streamlining government collections and disbursements, and expanding access to digital financial…

Sri Lanka’s Cargills Bank has extended its long running technology relationship with Intellect Design Arena, choosing the Indian fintech’s Composable eMACH.ai Core Banking Architecture as the base for the next stage of its digital transformation. The expanded programme brings the bank’s ‘Core Banking’, ‘Lending’, Trade Finance and Treasury’ functions onto one platform with a modular, cloud ready design. It covers the full range of day to day operations: bringing in new customers, handling deposits and payments, originating and servicing loans, managing credit limits and collateral, and running trade finance and treasury. According to Intellect, the goal is to help the bank launch…

IndusInd Bank has set up a dedicated banking vertical for Global Capability Centres (GCCs), the offshore units multinational companies run in India, bringing its corporate and employee banking services for the sector under a single relationship. The bank announced the launch in Mumbai on September 28, 2026.The vertical combines five services: digital banking, employee banking, commercial card solutions, capital account and foreign exchange management (FEMA) solutions, and foreign-currency accounts offered through the bank’s International Banking Unit (IBU) at GIFT City. The IBU gives GCCs a way to hold foreign-currency accounts and handle certain cross border banking needs alongside their domestic banking,…

Mastercard has launched Advanced B2B Analytics, a platform that uses AI to help banks and their corporate clients identify which suppliers are most likely to accept card payments. The company announced the platform from Purchase, New York, on September 28, 2026.Mastercard said supplier payments remain one of the biggest pain points for banks and corporates, and that issuers and buyers often have no data driven way to decide which suppliers to approach about card acceptance. Scattered data and manual work can delay efforts to get suppliers paid by card, leaving companies on less efficient payment methods for longer, even though…

Aljazira Bank has signed an agreement with cross border payments network Thunes to modernise and widen its international remittance services, giving the Saudi lender’s retail customers faster ways to send money abroad. The announcement was made in Riyadh on September 28, 2026.Under the partnership, Aljazira will use Thunes’ Direct Global Network to add new payout options and destinations to its remittance service. Retail customers will be able to send funds in real time to bank accounts and mobile wallets around the world, with Thunes pointing to high volume routes across Asia Pacific, Europe and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) as…

Luno, the digital asset platform, has acquired GTXN, a licensed cross border payments provider, giving it a way to offer businesses a single route for moving money between developed and emerging markets. GTXN will now operate as the group’s cross border payments business across its markets. Under the new setup, businesses collect and pay out through one provider rather than arranging transfers through a series of banks and intermediaries. Payments run over the infrastructure Luno owns and are settled using Luno’s own liquidity, which the company states will speed up settlement and lower transaction costs on routes that have long been…

Bank Indonesia (BI) and the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to deepen cooperation on cross border payments made through QR (Quick Response) codes. BI Governor Destry Damayanti and HKMA Chief Executive Eddie Yue signed the agreement on September 24, 2026.The two authorities said the aim is to make payments between Indonesia and Hong Kong quicker, cheaper, more transparent and more inclusive. Under the MoU, they will discuss the technical, operational and regulatory questions involved, and look at arrangements that would allow QR payment systems in the two places to work with each other.…

IBM has rolled out two new beta capabilities for its Digital Asset Haven platform, aimed at helping banks, governments and other regulated organisations offer digital asset services without loosening their grip on security. The first connects the platform to permissioned blockchain networks, including Swift’s shared ledger, while the second lets clients run Digital Asset Haven entirely inside their own data centres.IBM tied the launch to a wider modernisation drive across the industry, citing J.P. Morgan Payments research showing that 93% of financial institutions are upgrading their payments infrastructure as they look for quicker ways to move money across borders and…

SOOHO.IO, a leading innovator in digital financial infrastructure, and Partior, the live global settlement network for USD, SGD and EUR, have signed a memorandum of understanding that links Korea’s deposit-token infrastructure directly to global payment rails. Announced August 26, 2026 in Seoul, the deal will let Ezys, SOOHO.IO’s liquidity-aggregation platform, settle cross-border, multi-currency payments on Partior’s tokenised deposit network. Ezys connects with multiple global financial institutions and automatically compares exchange rates and transaction terms to find the best route for each payment, then executes settlement on Partior and other global rails. Partior’s network is built to strip out the delays…