Last week, today, May 2: News in payments and fintech

Our bi-weekly news roundup collects some of the headlines in payments and fintech to watch, giving leaders across industries (or fintech enthusiasts) a quick glance at some of the news in the space. In Flywire’s 10+ years in delivering the most complex, high value payments, we’ve had a unique opportunity to work with many different organizations in the fintech and payments ecosystem. We’ve seen changes in how clients get paid, how their customers want to pay and how central the payments experience has become – not just across the industries we focus on, but every industry.

Headlines

Visa, Mastercard Leap Beyond 2019 in Cross-Border Spending - Skift
US travelers heading to the Caribbean and Latin America pushed cross-border volume for Mastercard and Visa well above pre-pandemic levels.

Open Banking Is Changing the Payments Game, and Enterprises Must Keep Up -PYMNTS.com
The ability to securely share data will bring many positive changes to financial services – are you ready? “The Guide to Open Banking: What Enterprise Customers Need to Know Now,” includes a checklist to judge preparedness.

IFGS 2023: Singapore seeks coordinated and global approach to fintech - FinExtra
Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) Chief Fintech Officer Sopnendu Mohanty discussed the current financial landscape in Singapore and how better connectivity between businesses is creating innovation for global finance.

Understanding ChatGPT and How it May Impact the Financial Industry - Payments Journal
Because it can provide support in multiple languages, 24/7, ChatGPT may prove useful for managing customer queries and enhancing customer satisfaction, the author writes. The caveat – “ChatGPT’s language model is not designed to provide an accurate response…” because it’s not necessarily operating on the most up-to-date information.

Building International Payment Systems: A Conversation with Glenbrook’s Elizabeth McQuerry - Modern Treasury
Innovation is happening at the core of payment systems, and “all the players—banks, fintechs—are working together and pushing on each other to do more and do better than they have before,” says Dr. Elizabeth McQuerry of Glenbrook Partners in this interview with Modern Treasury.

From Flywire

Gen Z & Millennial travelers turn to travel agents to plan luxury trips
Travel agents are in vogue with Generation Z and Millennials, who are increasingly gaining spending power and likely to use it on luxury trips.

What you need to know: How to help Nigerian students navigate education payments Nigerian students who want to study abroad may face some challenges with payments because of currency dynamics in the country. We’ve answered some questions on the situation, including the Form A application process.

Can your ERP system handle the complexities of cross-border B2B payments?
As international payment volume and complexity grows, the ERP system may need a boost, Flywire’s Greg Leven writes.

Introducing Built In’s 2023 Moxie Award Winners - Built In
Built In recognized 100 women across the tech industry for their outstanding contributions – and Flywire’s Social Media Manager Sam Mackowitz is one of them.

Stat of the week

$9.43 trillion - the value of card payments as payment methods used by consumers, businesses and the government, something that has been increasing by a rate of 10% a year since 2018, according to the Federal Reserve Payments Study.

Report of the week

Small-Business Payment Disruptors 2023 - Insider Intelligence
SMBs expect centralized account management, regulatory and compliance support, and easy, cost-effective cross-border payments from payment services providers, according to Insider Intelligence.

Word of the week

Cash digitization - converting cash to electronic currency, such as a card, something Axios details in this article on “Reverse ATMs take bills, dispense cards as stores go cashless.”

Conversation starter

Inside the secret list of websites that make AI like ChatGPT sound smart - The Washington Post
What data is AI technologies like ChatGPT training with? The Washington Post found that it differs depending upon the category, but "patents.google.com, wikipedia.org and scribd.com rose to the top overall.