Welcome to The Axis, your late look at payments news from around the world. Coverage includes Silk Way Bank’s launch of a new project for cashless payments. In addition, China’s Alipay is working to step up efforts to monitor its platform for peer-to-peer crypto trading transactions, as it also taking more measures to prevent fraud.
Azerbaijan-based Silk Way Bank has unveiled a new project to help make cashless payments more popular and improve customer service, the company said in an announcement. Through a payments terminal network called SWPay, customers can make immediate payments and receive a receipt as soon as a transaction is complete.
With the network, which comes with the Payments.iQ automated payment management system, customers can pay for the mobile phone or utility bills, as well as make loan repayments. In addition, customers can pay government fees such as duties, taxes and administrative fines through the system.
In other news, China-based Ant Financial is working to crack down on peer-to-peer digital currency trading through Alipay, CoinDesk reported. The company is reportedly stepping up efforts to look over customer and merchant accounts in addition to sites that integrate Alipay to make crypto trading happen. An Ant Financial spokesperson told CoinDesk, “Alipay adheres to the principle of not providing services for virtual currency transactions.”
And Alipay has also taken measures to help protect users from fraud and assist with the retrieval of funds that are mistakenly transferred, according to reports. To use the system, users can decide to delay a payment and create an alert to stop a transfer. In the event that authorities do find that there is a case of fraud, a user will have his or her funds credited. Alipay also has the ability to flag a transaction that it believes to be risky based on transaction history or other signs.