Ant Financial, the company behind Alipay, has bought a 20 per cent share of Thailand's Ascend Money, CNBC reports. Ascend is an electronic payments company with operations in Thailand, Indonesia, The Philippines, Vietnam, Myanmar and Cambodia. Ant will back Ascend's growth, while the deal will open doors throughout Asia for the Chinese company. Both companies target under-banked communities. Wells Fargo is in more trouble, agreeing to settle a claim that it overcharged hundreds of thousands of home loan customers for loan appraisals. Reuters reports that the bank has offered US$50 million to settle the case, which is due to be heard in the California Federal Court. According to the claim against the bank, a third party charged US$50 to carry out the appraisals and Wells Fargo routinely increased the charge to US$95 to US$125. A Japanese bank consortium planning to build a new real-time payments platform using technology from blockchain joint venture SBI Ripple Asia has expanded from 15 to 42 banking members. Finextra reports there has been heightened interest in distributed ledger technology since Japanese regulators moved in May this year to recognise virtual currencies and relax restrictions on bank investments in digital cash businesses.