Goldman Sachs is acquiring fintech lender GreenSky for $2.24 billion as the investment bank pushes further into consumer finance. The all-stock deal for GreenSky, called the biggest fintech platform for home improvement loans in a release announcing the transaction, is expected to close by the first quarter of 2022, the companies said on Wednesday. GreenSky shares surged 53%. “We have been clear in our aspiration for Marcus to become the consumer banking platform of the future, and the acquisition of GreenSky advances this goal,” Goldman CEO David Solomon said in the release.
The prediction from Mastercard, whose network enables credit and debit card transactions, follows on a year of mainly rising sales. The company's August snapshot said retail sales rose 8.1% over last year, mirroring an 8.1% increase in e-commerce sales for the month. Payments industry consulting firm The Strawhecker Groupreleased data recently that echo the trend, showing 21% growth in consumer spending on credit and debit cards nationwide in July compared to the same month last year. Card spending by consumers in July was higher in most of the 250 industries covered by TSG’s year-over-year analysis released Aug. 25.
The biggest U.S. processor of card transactions announced on Thursday it has started processing credit card payments in the U.S. for the massive Alibaba.com online marketplace. As part of the arrangement, J.P. Morgan Merchant Services said it is working with the mobile and online payments provider Alipay to manage transactions on the massive business-to-business platform. China-based Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., which operates Alibaba.com, holds a 33% stake in Alipay.
SpaceX’s first private flight blasted off Wednesday night with two contest winners, a health care worker and their rich sponsor, the most ambitious leap yet in space tourism. It was the first time a rocket streaked toward orbit with an all-amateur crew — no professional astronauts. Leading the flight is Jared Isaacman, 38, the Lehigh Valley billionaire who made his fortune with a payment-processing company he started in his teens.
Boston technology company Toast on Monday revealed more details of its plan to go public, including terms that would value the company in the stock market at up to $16.5 billion, more than triple the price it fetched in a private financing last year. In a new filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Toast said it plans to sell 21.7 million class A shares at $30 to $33 apiece. That would raise up to $717 million to help Toast expand.
Fortis Payment Systems, LLC (FortisPay), a payment technology leader for businesses, independent software vendors (ISVs) and developers, announced it has acquired OmniFund, whose cloud-based Payments-as-a-Platform solution is leveraged by software and enterprise resource planning ERP solutions across the country. Founded in 2005, Omni is dedicated on delivering superior commerce solutions for their software partners and business clients. The acquisition will enable FortisPay to expand its platform of offerings and capabilities while pursuing new accounts receivable and ERP initiatives.
Adobe said it is launching Payment Services for Adobe Commerce to add native payments to its customers' digital storefronts. The effort takes Adobe into a crowded payment space, but customers will be able to manage payments directly from their Adobe Commerce Admin without integration with third-party payment providers. PayPal Commerce Platform is powering Payment Services for Adobe Commerce, which will be available by the end of the year.
Last year at this time, SpotOn was on the brink of announcing a $60 million Series C funding round at a $625 million valuation. Fast-forward to almost exactly one year later and a lot has changed for the payments and software startup. Today, SpotOn said it has closed on $300 million in Series E financing that values the company at $3.15 billion — more than 5x of its valuation at the time of its Series C round, and significantly higher than its $1.875 billion valuation in May (yes, just three and a half months ago) when it raised $125 million in a Series D funding event.
The problems aren't limited to technical glitches. One of the young workers at the Chivo automatic teller machines set up to handle transactions acknowledged as much. “The problems continue, but there has also been a lot of false information,” said the worker, who would identify himself only as Steven. “People are saying that if someone downloads the app, the government can spy on them, or even empty their bank accounts,” he said in disbelief. “So many things have been said that it gets into people's heads, and added to that is that first, the system collapsed and the errors have continued.”
AMC on Wednesday expanded the range of cryptocurrencies it soon plans to accept for movie-ticket and concession purchases. In its second-quarter earnings report in August, AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc., the nation’s largest movie-theater chain, announced it would accept bitcoin for online ticket and concession purchases before the end of this year. In a tweet Wednesday, AMC Chief Executive Adam Aron said Ethereum, Litecoin, and Bitcoin Cash will also be accepted.
Remitly Global Inc., a mobile finance startup that makes it possible to send money from the U.S. to foreign countries, has filed paperwork to go public, with a goal of raising up to $294 million. The Seattle-based startup plans to sell 7 million shares of common stock with a maximum offering price of $42 per share, which would raise $294 million for the company, according to paperwork filed Tuesday with the SEC.
Across much of the retail world, relief from last year's declines and financial uncertainty is here. The speed of the recovery has been quicker than many expected going into the year. In even the hardest hit sectors, including apparel and department stores, many players have closed much of the gap between today and their pre-pandemic performance, if not surpassed it. The reasons for that are not complicated. The large majority of adults in the U.S. are at least partially vaccinated against COVID-19, meaning they are ready to return to stores and refresh their wardrobes.
Amazon’s palm-scanning technology, Amazon One, has always been about more than just fast payments. Really, it’s about Amazon controlling and verifying identities, with the company hoping to deploy its service in public spaces like offices and stadiums. Today, Amazon announced the tech’s first launch in an entertainment venue as part of a partnership with ticketing firm AXS. Amazon One will be available to validate entry into Colorado’s famous Red Rocks Amphitheatre, an open-air venue built into a rocky outcrop.
Walmart is continuing to expand its efforts to fulfill online orders with self-driving delivery vehicles. The discount giant, which previously collaborated with Ford and Postmates in November 2018 to test self-driving vehicles to deliver fresh groceries in Florida’s Miami-Dade County, is now working with Ford and autonomous vehicle technology platform Argo AI to launch an autonomous vehicle delivery service in Miami, Austin, Texas, and Washington, D.C. This effort marks Walmart’s first multi-city autonomous delivery collaboration in the U.S.
The Kroger Co. has partnered with Instacart to launch Kroger Delivery Now, a new “virtual convenience store” service offering delivery of fresh groceries and household staples in as soon as 30 minutes. Kroger and Instacart said Tuesday that 25,000 items are available through Kroger Delivery Now, with orders filled through the supermarket giant’s approximately 2,750 stores in 35 states and the District of Columbia.
New York officials won a court order shuttering cryptocurrency trading platform Coinseed, after it allegedly defrauded thousands of investors out of millions of dollars, according to State Attorney General Letitia James. The court awarded a $3 million judgment against Coinseed and its founder and CEO, Delgerdalai Davaasambuu. Some security experts say these Ponzi scheme-type activities may persist in the absence of mutually agreeable regulations adding more investor protections around fraud.
LexisNexis® Risk Solutions released the findings of its latest Cybercrime Report, which covers the first half of 2021. This edition of the biannual report reveals that bot attack volumes grew 41% year over year with human-initiated attacks falling 29%. The report confirms earlier trend patterns showing the financial services industry and media businesses bear the brunt of increased automated bot network attacks. The Cybercrime Report is an analysis of transaction data from the LexisNexis® Digital Identity Network®.
Entering a password each time you need to access an account can get cumbersome over time, especially if you’ve been working from home in the same pair of sweatpants for the last two years, going through the same routine from morning to night. Isn’t life dragging on enough? I digress. Microsoft envisions a password-free world, which I have to admit is appealing. The company is now letting you access your Microsoft account without typing in a password, though you’ll still need the Microsoft Authenticator app or a Windows Hello fingerprint or face to log in.
May require account to read. Treasury officials have identified what they believe are the most urgent risks posed by Tether and other stablecoins as they ready recommendations for stricter oversight of cryptocurrencies. Ensuring investors can reliably move money in and out of tokens is a top concern for officials crafting a policy framework set to be released in the coming weeks, according to people with knowledge of the matter who declined to be named because the work isn’t complete.
U.S. retail sales unexpectedly increased in August as a surge in online and furniture store purchases offset a continued decline at auto dealerships, which could temper expectations for a sharp slowdown in economic growth in the third quarter. The surprise rebound in retail sales reported by the Commerce Department on Thursday came as economists have been downgrading their gross domestic product estimates for the current quarter, citing plunging motor vehicle sales, which are the result of an acute inventory shortage.
Industry-wide supply chain challenges that include factory shutdowns, chip shortages and port congestion are expected to last through the holidays and well into next year. The pressures threaten to spoil the holiday season for families that don’t shop soon enough. Many phases of the manufacturing and delivery processes are taking longer than normal. Consumers can expect packages to take more time to get to their doorsteps, as delivery carriers including UPS and FedEx work through their own bottlenecks.
Starting this week, Square sellers will be able to accept payments through Cash App Pay, a new contactless payment method for both online and in-person transactions. With Cash App Pay, consumers can seamlessly pay with their Cash App account at participating Square sellers. For both in-person and online transactions, customers simply scan a seller’s QR code at checkout, or click a button on their mobile device for a payment process that is fast, elegantly designed, and more secure.
Intuit is buying email newsletter platform Mailchimp for about $12 billion in its biggest deal ever. The maker of tax return product TurboTax and other financial software announced the cash-and-stock deal Monday, saying that it hopes Mailchimp will help it "become the center of small business growth." As part of the agreement, Mailchimp will work with QuickBooks, Intuit's accounting software, to help small and medium-sized businesses acquire and retain customers, Intuit CEO Sasan Goodarzi said in a statement.
Visa announced it has helped to digitally-enable an estimated 16 million small and micro businesses (SMBs) worldwide, or just over 30% of the multi-year goal it set in 2020 to digitize 50 million SMBs. Since the start of the pandemic, Visa has launched community-based programs from Dubai to D.C., to help more small businesses accept digital payments and gain greater access to the digital economy.
Paysafe, a leading specialized payments platform, announced it has appointed seasoned iGaming executive, Zak Cutler, as CEO, North America iGaming. The newly created executive role, which reports directly into Group CEO, Philip McHugh, forms part of Paysafe’s ongoing strategic focus in the North American iGaming vertical which continues to show explosive growth as more and more states in the U.S. regulate online gambling, sports betting and iLottery.
At CSG Forte, we continuously strive to improve the ways we make payments smarter, faster and scalable. One area of focus is our payments gateway. Over the past year, we’ve looked at several ways to make our platform, which is fueled by modern APIs and RESTful architecture, perform even better. A recent Gateway Enterprise Metrics (GEM) Real Transaction Metrics report by The Strawhecker Group (TSG), a recognized leader in payments analytics and consulting, ranked CSG Forte first out of 22 gateways for overall payment gateway performance from January through June 2021.
Tapping BNY Mellon's new real-time electronic bill and payment service, Verizon customers with Citibank accounts can now pay their bills immediately, at any time of day, 365 days a year. Verizon customers who bank at Citi can also use Citibank Online to schedule the payment to be made at a specified date and time in the future, such as on their next recurring payday or as an on-demand payout from a platform supporting a supplementary income stream, such as a ride-hailing or food delivery app.
Capital One will be testing out a buy now, pay later (BNPL) product as consumer loans see rising competition, Reuters reported. FinTech firms have been enabling merchants to offer cheap financing for purchases, the report stated. The company’s test BNPL product will come with point-of-sale (POS) loans for a limited set of merchants Capital One has already worked with, according to CEO Richard Fairbank, per the report.
Financial Transmission Network, Inc. (FTNI), a provider of industry-leading integrated receivables, payment processing and cash application solutions, announced that SHAZAM, a nationwide provider of financial services to community financial institutions, has launched FTNI’s ETran Mobile Remote Deposit Capture (mRDC) services to streamline the acceptance and processing of consumer banking check deposits among its community financial institutions.
i2c Inc., a leading provider of digital payment and banking technology, today announced its partnership with Solid, a modern Fintech as a Service (FaaS) platform, to provide streamlined access to banking, payments, and card services to companies. By working with fintech enablers like i2c, Solid offers SMEs, FIs, and neobanks a compliant, managed solution to support a variety of payments use cases on a single, digital first platform.
Monzo, the UK’s leading digital bank, has launched a ‘buy now, pay later’ (BNPL) product called Monzo Flex, which will allow customers to split the cost of purchases into three payments, with any retailer. The digital challenger bank says Monzo Flex is the ‘better’ way to pay later compared to existing BNPL schemes, credit cards, loans, and overdrafts, offering shoppers more flexibility and control with their borrowing.