May require account to read. Square bet the future of “buy now, pay later” on Afterpay, acquiring it for $29 billion. Investors should spread their chips around.
The deal unleashed a flurry of buying not just in online checkout carts but in the stock market. Shares of other so-called BNPL players, including Affirm Holdings and Zip Co., jumped after the deal despite the fact that their giant competitor teamed up with Square. The thinking appeared to be that Square’s willingness to pay a premium for one of their peers shows that fears about installment payments becoming commoditized are overblown, and that the market is overall poised for huge growth.
Even if it seems counterintuitive, there are definitely reasons to hop on the bandwagon. BNPL providers don’t all do exactly the same thing: Affirm, for example, also offers larger, longer-term point-of-sale loans for bigger purchases. Overall, BNPL likely represents less than 3% of e-commerce globally, and about half of BNPL users recently surveyed had used more than one service, according to The Strawhecker Group.
Fresh off a pair of acquisitions in the Latin American market, Paysafe Group Holdings Ltd. over the weekend announced a major move into the European Continent with a deal to acquire viafintech, a neobank and payments provider based in Berlin, in an all-cash transaction. Terms were not announced. The deal hands Paysafe, based in the United Kingdom but with major operations in the U.S. market, a substantial player in banking services, payments, and open banking. Ten-year-old viafintech has developed a network of 20,000 point-of-sale locations with more than 20 merchants companies, according to information released Sunday.
Over the last year, as e-commerce surged and consumers looked for alternate payment options, Klarna has continued to attract shoppers to its platform. In June 2020, the company surpassed 7 million customers thanks to its partnerships with various clothing, cosmetic and shoe brands. In its Monday announcement, the company highlighted recent brand and retailer partners like Petco, Bed Bath & Beyond, The Honest Company and Yoox Net-a-Porter. As Klarna builds up its retailer roster, the platform has also enhanced its mobile app over the past couple of years.
As tens of thousands of fans watched the WWE SummerSlam, a nationwide payment system outage rocked the boat. Because of that, vendors were unable to complete transactions in the cashless stadium. That led to a dearth of alcohol sales. But there were reports of free soda and food being given to fans. Reports had the vendors, who had been planning on the event to sell their products, not being able to sell them due to the outage. Because of the disruption, reports had the concessions workers beginning to give away food and drinks for free because of the broken expectation.
May require account to read. Facebook’s financial services chief says the social network is unbowed by the rush of companies into the digital banking market, even as its cryptocurrency wallet and other ventures have yet to get off the ground. The public’s embrace of digital banking during the pandemic has drawn in new competition, which in turn will attract more consumers to the market and benefit all players, David Marcus said in an interview this week.
In April 2018, some of the biggest names in central banking filed into an auditorium at the Brookings Institution for one of the think tank’s first major presentations about cryptocurrencies. The governor of the Swedish central bank was there, as was the head of the Bank for International Settlements, and a former governor of India’s central bank. Janet L. Yellen — recently dismissed from her post as chair of the Federal Reserve — sat in the front row and listened attentively. The price of bitcoin was around $7,000 at the time, down more than 50 percent in three months.
Consumers are embracing cashless transactions. A study from The Strawhecker Group found that 26% of consumers expect to use cash less frequently than they did before the pandemic. In fact, many consumers are afraid to touch cash due to the risk of germs. Instead, 27% expect to use credit and debit cards more often, while 34% will use their digital wallets. The movement away from cash could be here to stay. Seventy percent of consumers say they expect their shift to cashless payments will be permanent. Of course, COVID impacted stadiums, too. During the pandemic live events were canceled or held without fans, greatly impacting stadium revenue. As management started planning the reopening process, going cashless made sense.
TikTok announced it’s piloting a new in-app shopping experience on Tuesday as part of its ongoing partnership with Shopify. TikTok Shopping allows select merchants from the US, Canada, and the UK to use a new shopping tab and product links to sell products from Shopify storefronts. The shopping tab is basically a dedicated section of a TikTok profile with a scrollable list of products that you can click through to be taken directly to a merchant’s Shopify storefront. Product links offer similar integrations by allowing merchants to link directly to a product from a TikTok post.
PayPal is bringing the ability to buy, hold and sell cryptocurrencies across to the other side of the pond, the better part of a year after it launched in the US. In a statement, the company said that UK-based users would be able to buy, hold and sell Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin and Bitcoin Cash via their PayPal account. In addition, the PayPal app will enable users to view real-time cryptocurrency prices and access information about the opportunities and risks that buying such currencies entail.
Nubank, a Brazil-based FinTech that has amassed more than 40 million clients in Latin America in part by looking for business among constituencies ignored by traditional banks, could be worth more than $55 billion when it holds a planned initial public offering (IPO), Reuters reported. When Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway recently invested in Nubank, the deal carried a valuation of $30 billion, according to the report. A valuation in the range suggested by unnamed sources that would make Nubank not only bigger than any bank in Brazil, but also would put the company among the world’s largest FinTechs.
In less than three years, OPay has gone from a curious startup known for its motorcycles in Lagos, Nigeria, to a financial services company worth $2 billion. The latest valuation comes after it raised $400 million from a round led by SoftBank, the Japanese investment firm, with Sequoia Capital China, and five other large firms participating. No other startup whose operations are based in Africa has raised as much in one round. Flutterwave achieved a value of $1 billion in March this year, after raising $170 million.
Eyeglass brand Warby Parker has lost money or broken even over each of the past three fiscal years — and warned it may face headwinds as it tries to turn a profit as a public company, according to documents filed Tuesday with securities regulators. The retailer, which is best known for selling lower-priced, fashion-forward prescription glasses, is preparing to debut on Wall Street. It said in January it had confidentially filed for a stock market listing in the U.S.
The newest retail delivery platform needs no introduction. Walmart is taking on the likes of Instacart and DoorDash with the launch of new line of business called Walmart GoLocal, which delivers goods to customers of other businesses. The discount giant is building the new service on the existing infrastructure supporting the Express Delivery same-day delivery service it rolled out in 2020. This includes drones, autonomous vehicles and market fulfillment centers.
By this point in the COVID-19 pandemic, Best Buy was supposed to be headed back to the days of Best Buy of old — reasonable levels of sales and earnings growth as people bought tech gear only when really needed or around a cool product launch. But that hasn't happened, actually quite the contrary. With work life likely changed forever because of the pandemic — at the very least well into 2022 judging by pushed out return-to-office dates from the likes of Apple and others — Best Buy appears to be settling into new, higher top and bottom line growth rates.
A new survey from pure-play contract logistics provider GXO Logistics revealed a link between higher returns and increased e-commerce activity. More than one-third (36%) of surveyed respondents noted returns have increased over the past 12 months. Plus, 37% said the higher returns rate has pushed up operational costs. Nearly three-quarters (72%) of surveyed retailers are investing in their returns management processes. More than 25% also recently invested in additional warehouse space, which has become competitive in some markets.
When the digital identity verification company Socure launched operations in 2012, online gambling was still illegal, cryptocurrency networks didn’t exist and buy-now-pay-later was still something you did in a store with a credit card. Now, Socure has some 500 clients in sectors as varied as government and healthcare, all focused on securing payments and other transactions, CEO Johnny Ayers said. “When we did our research in the very early days of starting the company, everybody we interviewed said ‘There is so much headroom for you guys,’” Ayers said during an interview, noting Socure signed up 217 customers in the second quarter of 2021.
Tech giants Apple, Google and Microsoft have pledged billions to bolster U.S. cybersecurity following a meeting with President Joe Biden at the White House on Wednesday. The meeting, which also included attendees from the financial and education sectors, was held following months of high-profile cyberattacks against critical infrastructure and several U.S. government agencies, along with a glaring cybersecurity skills gap; according to data from CyberSeek, there are currently almost 500,000 cybersecurity jobs across the U.S that remain unfilled.
LexisNexis® Risk Solutions UK Limited, part of RELX, has acquired TruNarrative, which provides a cloud-based orchestration platform that detects and prevents financial crime and fraud. TruNarrative will become a part of the Business Services group of LexisNexis Risk Solutions. Founded in 2016 and headquartered in Leeds, UK, TruNarrative enables organizations to manage the entire financial crime lifecycle within a single, unified platform that allows for simplified and automated onboarding, a dynamic risk score and transaction monitoring.
Kount, an Equifax Company, the leader in digital identity trust and fraud prevention, has published the first of its kind "Digital Payments in 2021: Opportunities and Chargeback Risks" survey. The survey takes a deep dive into 2021 chargeback trends and risks across customer experiences, both pre and post payment authorization. Kount commissioned Atomik Research to survey over 500 U.S. adults who work for companies that process at least 500 online transactions monthly.
Initial claims for unemployment insurance were little changed over the past week, hovering around coronavirus pandemic-era lows as the jobs market shows further signs of healing. First-time filings totaled 353,000 for the week ended Aug. 21, a slight increase from the previous week’s 349,000, the Labor Department reported Thursday. That was slightly worse than the 350,000 Dow Jones estimate.
Is the Delta variant hurting the economy? It depends on who you ask. A handful of businesses over the past several weeks have said customers are closing their purses. Consumer confidence fell through the floor, and retail sales sank. Yikes, right? Well, maybe not. Job growth remains electric. Inflation has come off its highs, and the broadest measure of the economic activity showed considerable strength in the spring.
A supply chain crunch that was meant to be temporary now looks like it will last well into next year as the surging delta variant upends factory production in Asia and disrupts shipping, posing more shocks to the world economy. Manufacturers reeling from shortages of key components and higher raw material and energy costs are being forced into bidding wars to get space on vessels, pushing freight rates to records and prompting some exporters to raise prices or simply cancel shipments altogether.
According to a new Carat Insights report released by Fiserv, Inc., omnichannel commerce trends that emerged and accelerated during the Covid-19 pandemic are showing their staying power. Data shows commerce experiences that blend the physical and digital are increasingly popular among consumers, digital spending has increased across verticals throughout the pandemic, and in-store payments made digitally are gaining share. Carat Insights represents a cross section of data measuring consumer perceptions toward emerging payment trends, and how actual consumer spend has evolved in market.
Santander's U.S. business is to buy the minority stake in its U.S. consumer unit it does not already own for around $2.5 billion, slightly more than it agreed to pay in July. The deal values the entire Santander Consumer U.S. unit (SC.N) at $12.7 billion, Santander said in a statement. The offer of $41.5 per share to buy out the stake of around 20% represents an increase of 6.4% from the $39 per share or $2.36 billion it originally offered to pay.
NCR Corporation, a leading enterprise technology provider, announced the acquisition of Foremost Business Systems, a point-of-sale (POS) and restaurant solutions provider in Minneapolis. This transaction further expands the reach of NCR’s restaurant technology – which is trusted by more than 100,000 restaurants around the world. Solutions including the signature NCR Aloha POS platform and NCR Aloha Essentials subscription package provide everything restaurants need to run their business, boost efficiency and increase growth.
U.S. Bank announced that it has partnered with Mastercard, a global technology company in the payments industry, to offer the U.S. Bank Voyager® Mastercard®, which can be used for fleet-related expenses anywhere Voyager or Mastercard are accepted. U.S. Bank currently offers the U.S. Bank Voyager Fleet Card which can be used to pay for fuel, maintenance and other expenses at more than 320,000 locations across the U.S. using the proprietary Voyager Network.
This new integration simplifies the payment process for hospitality businesses by removing the need for a list of platforms and suppliers which usually includes separate processes for property management systems, food and beverage point of sale, and guest experience platforms not to mention the different payments service providers for each. “Our partnership with Adyen allows us to further improve the operational efficiency of our customers by providing a platform that guarantees a truly seamless and personalized experience for their hotel guests,” said Michael Balzer, VP Shiji Payments, Shiji.
GoDaddy Inc., the company that empowers everyday entrepreneurs, announced GoDaddy Invoicing and Payments, a new feature in the Hub by GoDaddy Pro which enables easier and faster invoicing processing solutions for web designers and developers through a simple integrated user interface. This new innovation was made possible through technology acquired via the Poynt acquisition made in December 2020.
ACI Worldwide, a leading global provider of real-time digital payment software solutions, announced that it protects more than one billion consumers globally from new and emerging threats in the era of real-time payments and open banking through its award-winning ACI Fraud Management solution. While the pandemic has accelerated the global shift toward real-time and digital payments, it has also accelerated the creation of digital accounts– including new accounts from the previously unbanked population.
Qolo, the omnichannel payments platform for Fintech, announced it has successfully closed a $15M Series A round of funding, led by The Raptor Group with additional participation from other professional investors and strategic partners. “We experienced strong investor interest fueled by our unique value proposition and rapid pace of customer acquisition. The current fintech climate is driving massive growth, and Qolo’s 100% cloud-native, omnichannel offering is perfectly positioned to meet the demand,” said Patricia Montesi, Qolo CEO. “And we have yet to see a payments model we can’t power.”
i2c Inc., a leading provider of digital payment and banking technology, announced its partnership with Credijusto, the leading technology-enabled small business lender in Mexico, to provide frictionless credit solutions for the country’s small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), through the forthcoming launch of the Covalto American Express credit card. On a mission to change the accessibility and usage of contemporary commercial credit, Covalto will be available to businesses throughout Mexico in 2021.
F1 Payments, a fintech company focused on making the complex simple by complementing world-class technology with strong business and regulatory acumen, announced several key senior leadership appointments of payments and fintech veterans to fuel growth. Joel Gambiana has been named chief revenue officer, Tedd Huff has been appointed head of corporate strategy and William Popok joins the company as chief financial officer.
Cardknox, a leading developer-friendly payment technology provider, announced the release of its payment facilitator (payfac) model, Cardknox Go. As a comprehensive payment facilitator platform, Cardknox Go gives developers, ISVs, and VARs the ability to onboard merchant accounts easily and in record time, who in turn can provide their merchants with the benefits of flat-rate pricing and scalable payment solutions.
Finexio, the Orlando-based AP Payments-as-a-Service company, announced an oversubscribed $8 million growth round. The fintech company will use this institutional funding to accelerate growth in key industry verticals including higher education, hospitality, healthcare, and manufacturing, board new AP and procurement software distribution partners, and expand its leadership team.
InComm Payments, a leading payments technology company, and doxo, the largest bill pay directory in the nation, announced an exciting new partnership that will enable doxo users to pay household bills with cash at more than 60,000 retail locations throughout the U.S. According to the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, a little more than 12% of bills, equating to nearly 1.9 billion of the 15.5 billion bills paid by US households each year, are paid using cash.
Airwallex, a global fintech platform, announced its launch in the US. This launch represents Airwallex’s expansion into North America as Airwallex continues its international growth momentum. U.S.-based businesses can now enjoy a full suite of products to support their cross-border payment needs in a fast, transparent and secure way. Airwallex’s entry into the U.S. supports its global growth strategy aimed at achieving its vision to become the global financial infrastructure for businesses to operate anywhere, anytime.
