Deluxe, a Trusted Business Technology™ company, announced an agreement to acquire First American Payment Systems (“First American”) for $960 million in cash, subject to customary adjustments. This transaction is expected to accelerate the company’s transformation into a leading payments technology company as part of its One Deluxe strategy. First American is a privately owned, industry-leading, large-scale payment processor. The company provides partners and merchants with comprehensive in-store, online, and mobile payment solutions, including powerful digital payment processing services that help customers navigate through traditional, mobile, and virtual point-of-sale channels.
Venmo is adding support for cryptocurrency, starting Tuesday. The company says it will begin to roll out the ability for Venmo’s more than 70 million users to buy, hold and sell cryptocurrencies directly in the app, similar to the support Venmo parent company PayPal added late last year. Initially, Venmo will support four types of cryptocurrency: Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin and Bitcoin Cash — the same that PayPal offers its U.S. users.
The company had already announced its plans to introduce cryptocurrency on Venmo in 2021. Both Venmo and PayPal support for crypto come by way of a partnership with Paxos Trust Company, a regulated provider of cryptocurrency products and services.
Australian buy-now-pay-later company Afterpay said on Tuesday it is exploring a U.S. listing after North America became its biggest market, offering global investors an easier path to owning a stock that has boomed through the pandemic. Afterpay has tapped Goldman Sachs to advise on the listing, two sources with direct knowledge of the matter told Reuters. Goldman declined to comment. The Melbourne-based firm was last valued at nearly A$37 billion ($28.7 billion) despite never having posted a profit, thanks to the coronavirus-driven surge in online shopping and rapid expansion in overseas markets including the United States.
Coinbase's public listing came quickly on the heels of the ride-sharing app Grab announcing plans to go public through a deal that could value it at nearly $40 billion. They're just two examples of companies taking advantage of the past year's rush to digital payments to raise billions in the stock market. Both companies are also diversifying their business lines by adding payment products and financial services, drawn by the cross-selling opportunities and recurring usage that comes with digital commerce.
Mastercard said on Monday it had agreed to buy digital identity verification company Ekata in a deal valued at $850 million, as the global payments processor bets on a boom in demand for companies in the digital security space. Ekata’s products allow businesses to separate fraudsters from legitimate customers during digital interactions like opening an online account or making digital payments. It operates in three industries: ecommerce, payments, and financial services, according to its website.
BlueSnap and Tilpalti are on different sides of the payments industry, but both believe targeting their cross-border digital payments services at the middle market is a winning strategy, mainly because so few companies in that arena have shifted their business online. "The big change in the market now is that everybody's moving to digital payments," BlueSnap CEO Ralph Dangelmaier said in an interview this month.
Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies were deep in the red early Friday, selling off over worries that the US government will hike taxes in the near future. Bitcoin dropped below $50,000 per coin for the first time since early March. Bitcoin was down more than 9% at $49,759 early Friday, according to trading platform CoinDesk. The second-largest cryptocurrency, Ether, was down more than 12% at $2,263 per token. The steep drop followed the same pattern as US stocks in the prior session.
Amazon One is expanding to its biggest area yet: the company is now testing its palm-scanning payment technology in Whole Foods, starting with a single store in Amazon’s home city of Seattle. The company has been using Amazon One payment technology in its Amazon-branded stores in the Seattle area (including Amazon Go and Amazon Books), but the Whole Foods rollout will make the most substantial expansion of the technology yet. The company says that thousands of customers have already signed up with Amazon One.
The buy now, pay later trend has eased online purchases for consumers over the past year, but at the other end of those transactions is the flow of returns after buyers get their merchandise. Now Affirm Holdings Inc., a leading player in the fast-growing BNPL arena has attacked the issue with a $300-million deal for Returnly Technologies Inc., a 7-year-old, San Francisco-based startup. Unlike traditional layaway plans, BNPL options allow consumers to receive merchandise and then pay for it over three or four installments, though Affirm’s terms usually are three, six, or 12 months.
Facebook wanted to revolutionize finance with a global digital currency — then came the regulators. First proposed in June 2019 with the name libra, the token was initially intended to be a universal currency tied to a basket of sovereign currencies such as the U.S. dollar and the euro. But after facing strong opposition from regulators around the world, the organization overseeing the project lost major backers including Visa and Mastercard.
Apple is giving its Apple Card credit card an update. At the start of Tuesday's Spring Loaded Apple event, CEO Tim Cook announced what the company calls Apple Card Family. The new feature will allow "spouses and partners to share and merge their credit lines, have equal rights on their account and build credit equally," Cook said, adding that "this solution helps deliver financial equity." As part of the Apple Card Family offering, Cook also revealed that the credit card can "now be used by anyone in your family over the age of 13, with optional spending limits and controls for kids."
The success of the mobile wallet market was never guaranteed, even after the massive shift to digital payments that took place during the coronavirus pandemic. Amid success stories like Apple Pay, Google Pay and the Starbucks app, there are many wallet apps that failed to gain traction — or squandered it when they did. But there is a lot to learn from their experiences.
The U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill that would give state-authorized marijuana businesses easier access to banking services. The bill, HR 1996, called the SAFE Banking Act, would prohibit federal banking regulators from penalizing banks and other depository institutions for providing banking services to cannabis businesses. It passed Monday night on a 321-101 bipartisan vote. A total of 36 states and four territories have authorized the use of marijuana for medical purposes and 17 states have authorized it for recreational use.
The slew of online outages over the past several months – from Robinhood to Chime to WhatsApp – show just how interconnected various aspects of financial services, such as investing and banking, have become. And increasingly found at the center of all these financial platforms and exchanges are embedded payments. When sites go dark, the ripple effects can be significant, as transactions are in limbo. Investors can’t trade stocks (or cryptocurrencies); consumers can’t access merchants’ sites to buy what they need.
U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Gary Gensler is showing no signs of backing away from the regulator’s high-stakes lawsuit against Ripple Labs Inc. In a Wednesday court filing, the first the SEC has submitted in the case since Gensler took over last week, the agency asked a federal judge to block Ripple’s demands that the regulator turn over internal emails and communications on officials’ personal devices. The move signals that the SEC is pushing ahead with its December suit allegedly Ripple sold the XRP digital token without properly registering it as a security.
Charles Schwab, one of the largest retail brokerages and retirement account providers in the industry, is looking closely at offering cryptocurrency. The company said that it would like more clarity from regulatory bodies but would like to be a player in the space. "We would like to see more regulatory clarity," said Schwab's Chief Executive Officer Walt Bettinger on a call with analysts. "And if and when that comes, you should expect Schwab to be a player in that space in the same way it has been a player in other investment opportunities across the spectrum."
The U.S. jobs market recovery accelerated its pace last week as fewer Americans headed to the unemployment line, the Labor Department reported Thursday. First-time claims for unemployment insurance totaled 547,000, well below the Dow Jones estimate for 603,000 and a new low for the Covid-19 pandemic era. The total represented a further decline in claims and gets the jobs picture closer to where it was pre-pandemic, though there’s still plenty of distance to cover. Markets reacted little to the news, with stock futures pointing to a flat open and government bond yields mixed.
Just as some patients recovering from COVID-19 suffer long-lasting symptoms, it’s becoming clear that the same will be true for the global economy once this year’s V-shaped rebound fades. While $26 trillion worth of crisis support and the arrival of vaccines have fueled a faster recovery than many anticipated, the legacies of stunted education, the destruction of jobs, war-era levels of debt and widening inequalities between races, genders, generations and geographies will leave lasting scars, most of them in the poorest nations.
Stripe launched Stripe Issuing in Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, and the UK. Stripe Issuing enables users to create, manage, and distribute virtual and physical payment cards, giving businesses more control over how they spend their money. Whether it be an on-demand delivery marketplace giving couriers cards to pay for orders, or a car rental company providing cards for drivers to purchase petrol, Stripe Issuing puts businesses in complete control of how, where, and when their money is spent.
Continuing to build its footprint as a leading global acquirer, financial technology leader FIS® announced that it is expanding its payment processing capabilities into the rapidly growing markets of Malaysia, South Africa and Nigeria. FIS has secured a domestic acquiring license in Malaysia to provide its Worldpay payment processing platform. In South Africa and Nigeria, FIS is offering domestic payment processing services through its previously announced agreement with payments technology company Flutterwave, a 2016 graduate of the FIS Accelerator program.
American Express Company reported first-quarter net income of $2.2 billion, or $2.74 per share, compared with net income of $367 million, or $0.41 per share, a year ago. The results reflected the impact of $1.05 billion ($802 million after tax) in credit reserve releases2, primarily driven by continued improvements in the macroeconomic outlook and strong credit performance. “I am pleased with our results in the first quarter, where we saw continued improvements in our core business along with best-in-class credit performance, and I’m especially encouraged by the progress we’re making to rebuild our growth momentum going forward,” said Stephen J. Squeri, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer.
“Our first quarter results were characterized by sustained strong credit performance, robust sales growth, and solid execution on operating and funding costs. These results highlight that our value proposition continues to resonate with consumers, and underscores the efficiency and capital generation of our digital banking model,” said Roger Hochschild, CEO and President of Discover. “As the economy recovers, we believe the actions we took through the pandemic to protect our employees, aid our customers, and invest in our franchise create a compelling position for Discover in 2021 and beyond.”
Santander has teamed up with Prosegur Cash to launch an in-store digital cash management service in Spain that puts the notes and coins merchants accept straight into their bank accounts. The Cash Today service is designed to guarantee the cash merchants collect is held in a secure device and contractually insured. It mirrors the benefits of card payments so clients can have the cash the device confirms immediately in their Santander bank account. Users can also track all transactions on their Cash Today device in real time online.
Square announced the availability of new inventory management features for Square for Retail sellers, to help automate and improve one of the most challenging, but critical, processes businesses of all sizes face. New features like Easy Item Create, Quick Inventory Counting, and Smart-Stock Alerts provide sellers greater control over their inventory management, and improve efficiency with better ways to create, count, and reorder inventory.
Splitit, a global payment technology company, announced the availability of Splitit Plus, a new service enabling merchants of all sizes to offer payment installments to their customers in minutes. Any merchant can now activate Splitit through the Splitit Plus gateway or any integrated gateway partner that Splitit supports worldwide. Splitit built Splitit Plus as an integrated payment gateway for installment payments.
Worldline, the European leader in the payments and transactional services industry, announces that it has completed the second phase of development of its new “Payments Platform as a Service” (PPaaS) solution. The commercial launch of PPaaS is scheduled for the second half of 2021, supporting the Group’s Terminals, Solutions & Services division’s (TSS) transformation towards being an ecosystem enabler and trusted technology partner in the new world of cloud-based payments acceptance.
Payrix, the acknowledged leader in embedded fintech, announced a full refresh of its brand identity, website and user interface. The Company’s enhancements and growth in revenue, client signings and private equity channel partnerships follow its international expansion into Australia and New Zealand in Q4 2020. Payrix is quickly becoming a global payment technology leader with loyal vertical software as-a-service (SaaS) clients and a growing geographic footprint. Payrix is achieving this by expanding its product set, ensuring client success and growing functional areas of the business.
Shakepay, a Montreal-based financial technology platform that allows Canadians to buy and sell digital currency and pay their friends, announced today that it has partnered with Marqeta, the global modern card issuing platform, to power the launch of a new Visa prepaid card for Shakepay customers, issued by Marqeta’s sponsoring financial institution People’s Bank. Shakepay was founded in 2015 and is a leading platform for buying and selling digital currencies in Canada.
Adyen, the global payments platform of choice for many of the world's leading companies, has been selected by NDM Hospitality, an innovator in the travel and dining industries, to process payments for their brands across Florida, including the Margaritaville Orlando Resort, Encore Resort at Reunion, The Bear's Den Resort, Beach Walk Resorts, and BurgerFi restaurants. Adyen will support point-of-sale and ecommerce volume for the hotel properties and restaurants, providing NDM Hospitality with a unified commerce solution.
Sphere, a leading provider of end-to-end integrated payments and security software, announced it has teamed up with Raintree Systems, a provider of practice management, revenue cycle, clinical documentation, and interoperability solutions to a broad range of healthcare specialties and industry segments including physical therapy, pain medicine, rheumatology, and more. For nearly 40 years, Raintree Systems has been building software solutions for the healthcare and wellness market.
Fattmerchant, a leading provider of integrated payment technology, announces it is changing its name to Stax to mirror the fintech’s growth and transformation from an innovative payments company to its position today as a leading technology and solutions provider in the financial space. The rebranding also includes a user interface (UI) overhaul of its desktop app and the introduction of a completely new version of the mobile app, enhancing the overall product experience.
As the demand for quick, secure, and easy digital payments solutions continues to grow, Citi’s Treasury and Trade Solutions (TTS) announced today that it has expanded payment options for Citi® Payment Exchange institutional clients through the integration of Mastercard Send™. Citi’s corporate and public sector clients in the United States can now leverage Mastercard Send to send funds directly to a consumer debit or prepaid card account. Citi is the largest global treasury bank to implement Mastercard Send.
