Jamie Savant, Co-Founder & Partner, will be retiring at the end of April. Savant has been with TSG for 15 years since partnering with Kurt Strawhecker to form the company in 2006. Since that time Jamie has used his entrepreneurial vision to build the firm into the largest analytics and consulting firm focused on the payments acceptance space.
Savant has made lasting contributions to the success and growth of the company, as well as the industry.
“The journey I have had with the team at TSG has been an extraordinary experience, and I am proud of what we have accomplished as a firm. I am looking forward to transitioning into the next phase of my life, which will include spending more time with my family and enjoying the outdoors in Tahoe. I will be cheering on TSG from the sideline!”
Please join us in congratulating Jamie on a long and successful career! We wish you all the best!
Coinbase made history Wednesday as the first major cryptocurrency player to go public, with an eye-popping $85.8 billion valuation and moving the digital currency market closer to the mainstream. The San Francisco-based exchange’s direct listing on the Nasdaq is both a milestone and test run of the public’s appetite for digital currency. In the past year, cryptocurrency has been embraced by such brands as Tesla and Square, while Wall Street giants as Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley have taken steps toward offering bitcoin and other digital assets to investors, CNBC has reported.
A fresh batch of stimulus checks sent consumer purchases surging in March as the U.S. economy continued to get juice from aggressive congressional spending. Advance retail sales rose 9.8% for the month, the Commerce Department reported Thursday. That compared to the Dow Jones estimate of a 6.1% gain and a decline of 2.7% in February. Sporting goods, clothing and food and beverage led the gains in spending and contributed to the best month for retail since the May 2020 gain of 18.3%, which came after the first round of stimulus checks.
As the price of Bitcoin continues to reach new all-time highs, major corporations with existing crypto offerings in place are beginning to discuss grand plans for the future. Most recently, Dan Schulman, CEO of PayPal, hinted at future developments for PayPal’s crypto offering during Forbes’ “2021 Blockchain 50 Symposium: Crypto Goes Corporate,” an online event that took place on April 13. During a fireside chat with Michael del Castillo, associate editor at Forbes, Schulman mentioned that the financial system will undergo more changes over the next five years compared to the progress that has been made in the previous 30 years.
In this interview, TSG’s Market Intelligence team-member Alex Ferguson sat down with NMI CEO Vijay Sondhi to learn more about his 25+ year journey through the payments industry and how NMI has found success and growth as an unseen engine of the payments industry. continue reading
Background: Vijay is the CEO of NMI and an accomplished fintech executive and investor. Vijay ran Visa’s CyberSource and Authorize.net businesses, was head of Visa corporate strategy and launched Visa’s flagship One-Market Innovation Center. He served as CFO for three private equity and venture-backed companies spanning a wide variety of fintech solutions, including ERP accounting, point-of-sale systems, hospitality reservations and billing, plus financial document management. Vijay serves on the board of Tangem.com and Altimar Acquisition Corp. II. He is passionate about entrepreneurship and enjoys skiing, cycling and being outside with his wife and two daughters.
It’s a relatively new arrival among payment options for general merchandise, but the newest buy now, pay later concept has been available for air travel for some time, helping boost airlines after a tough year in 2020. In the latest development, Universal Air Travel Plan Inc. on Wednesday announced it is adopting the Pay in 4 payment option from PayPal Holdings Inc. UATP processes alternative payments for more than 30 airlines and travel companies, including major brands like American Airlines, Southwest Airlines, and United Airlines.
Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said the central bank is involved in a large-scale research and development project on the digital dollar, and that questions of whether adopting such a currency would provide a public benefit have yet to be resolved. “It’s a very, very large, complex project. And, you know, this is really just table stakes,” Powell said in an interview with “60 Minutes” on CBS. “This is understanding the technology and the possibilities so that you can really address the policy issues.”
Consumers have increasingly adopted Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) services for multiple reasons; a desire for financial flexibility, a way to avoid incurring credit card debt, or to purchase items outside of their budgets. However, despite its popularity, consumer debt and missed payments have led to calls for additional research and regulation. To take a closer look, The Strawhecker Group (TSG) conducted a survey of over 1,500 U.S. consumers in early 2021 with a goal of understanding domestic attitudes and perspectives on the use of BNPL services. The complete findings, a selection of BNPL provider profiles, and market landscape details can be found in the firm's new report Buy Now, Pay Later: An Analysis of Key Trends and Consumer Attitudes.
May require account to read. The pandemic threatened to clobber Stripe Inc. Instead, it turbocharged the company. Stripe processes payments for e-commerce companies, keeping a tiny cut of each purchase as a fee for its services. When stay-at-home orders early in the pandemic caused spending to plunge and refund requests to skyrocket, the outlook wasn’t great. Then everything moved online. More than 500,000 doctors’ offices, farmers markets and other businesses migrated to online payments and used Stripe to do it. As people worked out at home, redecorated or both, Stripe customers such as Peloton Interactive Inc. and Wayfair Inc. enjoyed blockbuster sales.
Finance app downloads spiked by 15% during the pandemic, with mobile fintech applications outperforming banks by a factor of up to 10.8x, according to figures from mobile analytics platform App Annie. The report found that amid economic uncertainty, demand grew for finance apps across investing, banking, cash transfers and government aid. Finance apps were downloaded 4.6 billion times in 2020, with consumers spending 16.3 billion hours scanning their mobiles to check their finances.
Dogecoin started out as a joke. Now it’s a top-10 digital currency worth $34 billion. And now, defying all odds, dogecoin has a total market value of $34 billion, according to crypto market data site CoinGecko, adding about $19.9 billion in the last 24 hours. The digital token reached an all-time high above 28 cents Friday morning, more than doubling in price from a day ago.
The details for Ant’s overhaul have arrived. Ant Group, the fintech affiliate of Alibaba controlled by Jack Ma, will become a financial holding company that will bring more regulatory scrutiny over how it lends and generates profits, China’s central bank said on Monday. Ant started as an online payments processor for Alibaba marketplaces and has over time blossomed into an empire of payments, lending, wealth management and insurance. Its encroachment onto the existing financial industry had not been particularly welcome in China, and a few years ago, the giant began positioning itself as a “technology provider” rather than one competing with big banks and conventional wealth managers.
The scandal over the collapse of Wirecard AG expanded as German financial regulator BaFin faces a criminal probe into how it oversaw the payment processor and whether some of the agency’s staff illegally traded the stock. Frankfurt prosecutors said Monday they opened the probe after reviewing information collected from BaFin in February when they visited the regulator’s offices. For now, no individual suspects have been identified, Nadja Niesen, a spokeswoman for the prosecutors, said in an email.
The pandemic has affected nearly every corner of the global economy, from front-page headlines about store and restaurant closures to behavioral shifts in how consumers conduct payments. Cash use had been on the downswing, but the pandemic hastened its decline, with 50 percent of worldwide shoppers leveraging digital payments more often now than they did before the health crisis began. The increased digital transaction volume has also opened more doors for money launderers to slip through, however. Anti-money laundering (AML) teams have had to monitor higher payment volumes than ever before and remain vigilant for launderers seeking to capture illegitimate funds.
Bitcoin tumbled more than 4% on Friday after Turkey’s central bank banned the use of cryptocurrencies and crypto assets for purchases citing possible “irreparable” damage and transaction risks. The decision could stall Turkey's crypto market, which has gained momentum in recent months as investors joined the global rally in bitcoin, seeking to hedge against lira depreciation and inflation that topped 16% last month. Bitcoin was down 4.6% at $60,333 at 1117 GMT after the ban, which was criticised by Turkey's main opposition party. Smaller coins ethereum and XRP , which tend to move in tandem with bitcoin, fell between 6%-12%.
The U.S. economy picked up speed going into the spring on the back of growing confidence among consumers, the Federal Reserve said on Wednesday, and Fed Chair Jerome Powell said it is on track for stronger growth and hiring in the coming months.
Economic activity between late February and early April was buoyed by increased COVID-19 vaccinations and strong fiscal support, and the labor market also improved as more people returned to work, the U.S. central bank said in its latest “Beige Book,” a collection of anecdotes about the economy from its 12 regional districts.
In an encouraging and positive report, the United States Department of Labor announced that initial weekly jobless claims have plunged to a pandemic-era low. The number of Americans seeking unemployment benefits dramatically dropped to 576,000 compared to January’s 900,000 highpoint and a stubbornly consistent 700,000 claims. This decline is a much-needed piece of good news potentially signaling that the U.S. is recovering and the massive layoffs are subsiding.
Three of e-commerce platform Shopify's seven top executives will be leaving the company in the coming months, chief executive officer and founder of Canada's most valuable company Tobi Lutke said in a blog post on Wednesday. The company's chief talent officer, chief legal officer and chief technology officer will all transition out of their roles, Lutke said, adding that they have been "spectacular and deserve to take a bow." "Each one of them has their individual reasons but what was unanimous with all three was that this was the best for them and the best for Shopify," he said.
Nuvei Corporation announced it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Mazooma Technical Services Inc. (“Mazooma”), a U.S. focused gaming and sports wagering payment technology provider for approximately $56 million plus additional consideration subject to the achievement of specific performance criteria (over a maximum 3-year period from the closing date) of up to a total maximum consideration of approximately $315 million.
Splitit, a global payment technology company, announces a new global partnership with UnionPay International, part of China UnionPay, the provider of bank card services and a major card scheme in mainland China. UnionPay International will be integrating Splitit to make it available to its network. This will give UnionPay card holders and those accepting UnionPay the opportunity to utilize Splitit’s installment payments product. The UnionPay global acceptance network has expanded to 180 countries and regions, covering over 55 million merchants.
In the four years since its founding, Modulr has established itself as a digital alternative to traditional banks in the wholesale and transaction payments market, which moves $120 trillion each year. Over the course of the past year, the firm has become one of the few non-banks to gain direct access to Faster Payments and Bacs. It has also struck partnerships with Visa and Mastercard, and gained an e-money license in Ireland. FIS intends to use Modulr’s API-based payments infrastructure to facilitate and automate real-time, business-to-business, payments in the UK and Europe.
Worldline, the European leader in the payments and transactional services industry, has announced the release of a new unified payment solution that allows consumers in Europe to pay for electric vehicle (EV) charging quickly, conveniently and safely. The use of EVs is soaring across Europe, with 455,000 vehicles in the United Kingdom at the end of February, while Germany registered 20,000 electric cars in a single month. EV registrations are overtaking diesel vehicles and there is a 71% jump in electric vehicle purchases projected for 2021.
Pineapple Payments, a leading payments technology company that provides omni-channel merchant solutions, and eServices Technology, a technology company specializing in online payments for EMS, Fire, Air Medical, and Public Sector entities, announced today the expansion of its integrated payments partnership. Together, the Pittsburgh-based companies recognize the importance of technology in payments, sharing a similar vision in which commerce is made easy and accessible to all.
WEX, a leading financial technology service provider, announced the signing of an agreement to acquire benefitexpress, a leading provider of highly configurable, cloud-based benefits administration technologies and services. benefitexpress significantly expands WEX’s offerings in benefits administration by adding a complementary suite of solutions to WEX’s Health offerings, including employee enrollment and decision support tools for employees, benefits administration, and important value-added services, such as Affordable Care Act compliance, dependent verification services, and other benefit administration services.
The modern ACH Network saw volume soar in the first quarter of 2021, setting two new records in the process. Quarterly volume of 7.1 billion payments was an increase of 11.2% from the same period in 2020. The value of those payments was $17.3 trillion, reflecting a nearly 19% increase from a year earlier. The first new record was set in February, when ACH volume averaged more than 118 million payments per day, the ACH Network’s highest daily average for a month.
PayPal is launching a new suite of fraud management features for mid-market and enterprise businesses that aims to help combat the rise in online payments fraud brought on by the pandemic. The COVID-19 pandemic spurred unprecedented growth in online spending in 2020, with e-commerce penetration reaching an all-time high of 21.3% -- the highest year-over-year jump for US retail sales ever recorded, according to estimates. But the spike in e-commerce and digital payments also led to an increase in online scams, sophisticated attempts at fraud by malicious actors and new operating risks for online businesses.
Forter, the leader in e-commerce fraud prevention, has announced a partnership with Flutterwave, Africa’s leading payments technology company. The partnership, the first of its kind in Africa, will enable merchants to accurately identify legitimate buyers from fraudsters, resulting in increased transaction approvals and reduced friction in the purchasing experience, all without the fear of fraud. Servicing more than 290,000 businesses and processing over 140 million transactions worth over $USD 9 billion worldwide since inception, Flutterwave is Africa’s largest payment service provider.
Checkout.com, the leading cloud-based global payment solutions provider, announced that it is launching its Payouts Product, enabling merchants to make seamless payments directly to eligible recipients’ cards and bank accounts. The solution will enable merchants to make payouts in real-time to over four billion cards in over 174 countries and seamless payments to local bank accounts in over 40 countries around the world.
Toast, the fastest-growing restaurant management platform, launched an enhanced suite of contactless and guest-facing solutions to help restaurateurs reimagine operations and reduce overhead as they rebound from the COVID-19 pandemic. Today, Toast debuted updates to its Toast Order & Pay™ solution, including pre-authorization tabs and group ordering. Designed to meet the ever-increasing demand for contactless solutions, Toast Order & Pay™ enables guests to order and pay in a restaurant via smartphone.
UATP announced it is broadening its work with PayPal to include Pay in 4 as an option for airfare purchased via UATP Merchant Airlines. With Pay in 4 from PayPal, customers pay for their purchases in four interest-free payments and merchants get paid up front. "The buy now, pay later (BNPL) product has become increasingly popular for travelers," said Ralph Kaiser, president and CEO, UATP. "The PayPal-UATP relationship has 15 years of demonstrated success and we expect that to continue with Pay in 4."
Gap Inc., a collection of purpose-led, lifestyle brands including Old Navy, Gap, Banana Republic and Athleta, and the largest specialty apparel company in the U.S., announced today that it has entered into new, long-term credit card program agreements with Barclays and Mastercard. Barclays will become the exclusive issuer of Gap Inc.’s co-branded and private label credit card program in the U.S. beginning in May 2022. In addition, Gap Inc. and Barclays will issue the co-branded credit cards on the Mastercard payment network. PJ Solomon served as financial advisor to Gap Inc.
ACI Worldwide, a leading global provider of real-time digital payment software and solutions, announced that it has partnered with BigDataCorp, a leading Latin American data specialist, to provide eCommerce merchants operating in Brazil with a CPF (Cadastro de Pessoas Físicas or Natural Persons Register) identity verification service, which adds an extra layer of validation for genuine customers. With this service, merchants in Brazil can ensure only legitimate orders are approved.
linked2pay, a leading payment software technology provider, announced the appointment of Tim McKenna as an independent member of the Transmodus Corporation Board of Directors, the parent company of linked2pay. As an experienced payments industry executive, Tim possesses proven skills in all aspects of go-to-market strategy including sales, operations, and product. His experience includes roles at large, publicly traded companies including Heartland Payment Systems and Global Payments, where after acquisition, his leadership team continued to operate as a U.S. business unit with an entrepreneurial mindset.
