ust over three months after its last funding round, European fintech giant Klarna is announcing today that it has raised another $639 million at a staggering post-money valuation of $45.6 billion. Rumors swirled in recent weeks that Klarna had raised more money at a valuation north of $40 billion. But the Swedish buy now, pay later behemoth and upstart bank declined to comment until now. SoftBank’s Vision Fund 2 led the latest round, which also included participation from existing investors Adit Ventures, Honeycomb Asset Management and WestCap Group.
As the buy-now-pay-later payment model continues to grow in popularity, Shopify is unleashing a new feature that will allow its hundreds of thousands of merchants to offer customers the option of shopping through installment plans. The new product, Shop Pay Installments, will be powered through an exclusive partnership with buy-now-pay-later giant Affirm in the United States. The Ottawa-based ecommerce platform said the new payment plan option will be enabled for all customers by default when they switch on Shopify Payments.
Card companies American Express and Synchrony are among the bidders to replace JPMorgan Chase as the issuer of Amazon’s co-branded credit card, Bloomberg and Reuters reported Tuesday. JPMorgan’s Amazon card gives Prime members 5% cash back on purchases made on the retailer’s website and at its grocery subsidiary, Whole Foods. Such perks make it the fastest-growing of the 10 largest co-branded cards, a 2019 study by Packaged Facts found. Amazon and JPMorgan have partnered on a Visa card program since 2002, but the nation’s largest bank is hardly the retail giant’s only credit-card partner.
Lightspeed, the company behind an integrated point-of-sale (POS) system used by the likes of Sony, Goop, and Five Guys, has announced plans to acquire Shopify rival Ecwid and digital catalog builder NuOrder in deals worth $500 million and $425 million, respectively. The acquisitions come as brands across the spectrum have had to adapt to a new commercial landscape, with shoppers flocking to ecommerce in record numbers.
Soon, there might be just two states that prohibit credit card surcharging with the passage Tuesday of a bill in Colorado that would permit the pricing strategy. The bill, SB21-091, passed both the Colorado House and Senate and now moves to Governor Jared Polis’s desk. He has 30 days to sign it. If signed into law, only Connecticut and Massachusetts would still prohibit credit card surcharging. Earlier this year, a surcharging ban in Kansas was struck down after CardX LLC, a surcharging-services provider, filed suit against it. CardX also lobbied in support of the Colorado measure.
Join FIS’ Jason Pavona and Kimling Lam, and TSG’s John Jakobe for a discussion about commerce and technology trends in North America from the 2021 Global Payments Report and why they directly influence the ways you do business now and in the future. Discover how last year increased the velocity of technological change. Register now
One of the country’s largest retail trade groups, the National Retail Federation, boosted the industry’s outlook for the year on Wednesday, saying it anticipates “the fastest growth that we’ve seen in this country since 1984.” Retail sales are expected to grow between 10.5% and 13.5% to an estimated total of $4.44 trillion to $4.56 trillion in 2021, as the economy rebounds from the coronavirus pandemic and customers spend money they have socked away, the NRF’s chief economist, Jack Kleinhenz, said at a virtual event.
Bitcoin surged on Thursday, a day after El Salvador passed a law to adopt bitcoin as legal tender. The cryptocurrency jumped 6% to more than $37,000. It last changed hands at $37,653.44 at about 8:18 a.m. ET, according to CoinDesk data. On Wednesday, lawmakers in the Central American country passed a law that made bitcoin legal tender. Among other things, it means prices can now be shown in bitcoin and tax contributions can be paid with the digital currency.
Shares of payment processing company Marqeta closed up 13% after its market debut Wednesday on the Nasdaq. Shares closed at $30.52, giving the company a market cap of just over $16 billion. Marqeta priced just over 45 million shares at $27 apiece on Tuesday, above its initial $20 to $24 target range. The company raised $1.2 billion at an implied $15.2 billion valuation, up from its last private market valuation last year of about $4.3 billion.
Facebook announced a host of new chat and messenger features Thursday (June 10). One new feature was particularly interesting: the addition of QR codes and payment links to Messenger. Facebook says this feature lets users leverage QR codes and payment links to send or request money with Facebook Pay, even if they aren’t connected to the other person on the platform.
Digital payment firm Square has partnered with Bitcoin technology startup Blockstream to launch a 100% solar-powered Bitcoin mine in the United States. The firms will also publicize details about economics of the project as well as metrics reflecting the mine’s performance, according to a June 5 release from Square and Blockstream. The new initiative is a part of Square's pledge to be carbon neutral in its Bitcoin activity by 2030.
Banks must set aside enough capital to cover losses on any bitcoin holdings in full, global banking regulators proposed on Thursday, in a “conservative” step that could prevent widescale use of the cryptocurrency by major lenders. The Basel Committee on Banking Supervision, made up of regulators from the world’s leading financial centres, proposed a twin approach to capital requirements for cryptoassets held by banks in its first bespoke rule for the nascent sector.
In the wee hours of Tuesday morning, a tech vendor named Fastly experienced a major outage that inadvertently broke some of the biggest sites on the web. And now, we know why. In a blog post published late yesterday, Fastly engineering VP Nick Rockwell explained the company “experienced a global outage due to an undiscovered software bug,” that surfaced when a single customer just... reconfigured his internet connection.
The American Bankers Association has adopted a defensive stance over the possible future issuance of a central bank backed digital currency (CBDC), warning lawmakers about real-world trade-offs that could significantly reshape the banking system. While recognizing that CBDC proposals are often driven by laudable goals, the American Bankers Association has cautioned that the introduction of a CBDC could “fundamentally change the role of the central bank in the United States and reshape the banking system.”
This is a map of the internet’s biggest sources of breached data, from June 2011 to today. Each bubble represents a single breach, and as you scroll down, you’ll see them getting bigger and coming faster, until the sheer volume is overwhelming. Crucially, they build on each other: if your favorite password didn’t leak out in the Dropbox breach, hackers could have gotten it from LinkedIn, Yahoo, or hundreds of others. (This, as you probably know, is why you need a unique password for each service.)
Consumer prices roared higher last month, rising at their fastest pace in decades. Inflation rose 5% in the 12-months ending in May, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Thursday. That marked the biggest jump since August 2008. Stripping out food and energy costs, which tend to be more volatile, inflation stood at 3.8% over that 12- month period. It was the biggest increase in so-called core inflation since June 1992.
The global economy is set for the fastest recovery from recession for more than 80 years, but poor nations are at risk of falling further behind wealthy countries amid slow progress with the Covid-19 vaccine, the World Bank has said. In its half-yearly outlook report, the Washington-based institution said the world economy was forecast to grow at 5.6% this year, in a sharp upgrade from previous estimates it made in January for growth of 4.1%.
The number of Americans applying for unemployment benefits fell for the sixth straight week as the U.S. economy, held back for months by the coronavirus pandemic, reopens rapidly. Jobless claims fell by 9,000 to 376,000 from 385,000 the week before, the Labor Department reported Thursday. The number of people signing up for benefits exceeded 900,000 in early January and has fallen more or less steadily ever since.
Stripe announced the launch of Stripe Tax to help businesses automatically calculate and collect sales tax, value-added tax (VAT), and goods and services tax (GST) in over 30 countries. Stripe Tax makes every aspect of global sales tax handling as frictionless as the rest of Stripe. It automates tax calculation and collection for transactions on Stripe, tells businesses where they need to collect taxes, and creates comprehensive reports to make filing taxes easy.
Visa announced a global strategic partnership with Goldman Sachs Transaction Banking to help businesses – large to small – move money effortlessly around the world. Through its implementation of Visa B2B Connect and Visa Direct Payouts solutions, Goldman Sachs will help its commercial and corporate banking clients simplify complexities and costs associated with existing systems and inefficient processes. These solutions will enhance Goldman’s cross-border business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) payments program for high and low value payments.
Bank of America is adding a new payment solution to its suite of business-to-consumer (B2C) payment capabilities. Named Pay to Card, the solution supports corporates’ growing need to pay consumers quickly and digitally by depositing funds directly into an individual’s or small business’ bank account. Pay to Card leverages the details of a bank card (excluding credit cards) associated with an account to process the transaction.
Paysafe, a leading specialized payments platform, announced an expanded partnership with IntelliPay, a Utah-based provider of an intelligent cloud-based payment platform and alternative payment models. IntelliPay, which already leverages Paysafe’s payment processing services, will now add the Paysafecash online cash solution as an alternative payment method to its platform, further promoting financial inclusion by giving consumers without bank accounts the opportunity to pay for bills online.
As PRIDE month kicks off, Mastercard is proud to announce the expansion of its True Name® card feature across the globe as Global Payments, a leading provider of payment technology and software solutions, implements this feature for its TSYS issuer customers. In addition, Mastercard partners across Europe and North America will enable cardholders to leverage their chosen name on their card offerings, including bunq and Monzo as the first issuers to implement in Europe and expanded deployment in North America through BM Technologies, Inc. (BMTX) and Republic Bank & Trust Company.
Paya, a leading integrated payments and commerce solution provider, announced that its platform has achieved certification for Acumatica’s 2021 R1 update, available across all of Acumatica’s ERP editions and customer portal. Paya’s advanced solution enhances back-office efficiency, offers features such as e-invoicing, automated card account updater and recurring billing. Paya delivers seamless card, ACH, and check payment acceptance, reporting, and reconciliation functionality directly into management workflows.
Worldline, the European leader in the payments and transactional services industry and number 4 worldwide, announced it has partnered with Microsoft to integrate Dynamics 365 Fraud Protection into Worldline’s digital commerce payments suite. Online fraud increased significantly during the recent pandemic and economic downturn, with losses of an estimated $12 billion worldwide.
Wix, a leading global SaaS platform to create, manage, and grow an online presence, announced the launch of Wix POS solutions for Wix business owners to accept secure in-person payments of goods and services in store, online and on the go, allowing them to manage all sales, inventory and data directly from the Wix platform. Over the past year, Wix took a leading role in facilitating the global shift online - businesses with online commerce capabilities built on Wix grew by more than 45% between March 2020 and March 2021.