Germany

The bank and European air carriers are hoping to cut into air fare payment fees that are as high as $8 billion per year.

French banking giant Crédit Agricole’s payments unit has signed a deal with Wirecard to develop an integrated payment acceptance and acquiring platform serving large merchants.

Wirecard is aggressively pursuing bank partnerships to diversify its offerings and address global trends in payroll and other transaction types.

Backed by the Clover platform, merchants using the devices can manage their businesses in real-time over an online backend portal that can be accessed from a smartphone, tablet, or computer.

Payworks has raised $14.5 million in a Series B funding round with several participants including Visa and CommerzVentures.

Wirecard has gained a foothold in using virtual prepaid cards to streamline corporate payments across business units, platforms and borders for companies with sprawling operations. Now the German company wants to do the same for more U.S. companies going global.

Crime may not always pay for criminals, but fighting it does sometimes.

Germany joined European governments pushing for global bitcoin regulation amid mounting alarm that the world’s most popular digital currency is being used by money-launderers, drug traffickers and terrorists.