Twitter and Square CEO Jack Dorsey has long been a bitcoin enthusiast. In fact, he's so optimistic about the cryptocurrency, he reckons it could bring about a more peaceful planet. The billionaire suggested bitcoin could help address financial inequalities and allow humanity to concentrate on bigger issues. “My hope is that it creates world peace or helps create world peace,” Dorsey said. “We have all these monopolies off balance and the individual doesn’t have power and the amount of cost and distraction that comes from our monetary system today is real and it takes away attention from the bigger problems.”
A year and a half after Currencycloud raised $80 million in a round that included Visa, the London-based developer of APIs that power remittance and currency exchange services is getting even closer to the financial services giant. Today, Visa announced that it would acquire Currencycloud in a deal valued at $963 million (£700 million). This price is a very decent leap from that last funding round, when sources told us the startup was valued at around $500 million.
Venmo announced it's removing its global social feed on Tuesday, the payment app’s notorious feature that allows strangers to potentially view payments you make and receive on Venmo. Now Venmo’s social elements will be limited to your actual friends on the app in the “friends feed” without you having to toggle any features in the app. The company buried the change in a blog post detailing an update to the Venmo app. Until recently, Venmo also offered users no control over who saw their friends list within the app, which is potentially incriminating in an entirely separate way from seeing the content of a transaction.
Square, best known for its small-business payment systems, is becoming a full-fledged neobank, offering checking and savings accounts to its users. Starting Tuesday, Square will start offering fee-free checking and savings accounts to users, after obtaining a banking charter earlier this year. The new checking service, Square Checking, is a natural extension of the company’s debit card, which launched in 2019, says Christina Riechers, Square Banking’s head of product. Existing Square debit card users will be automatically rolled into the new FDIC-insured checking account. Square is continuing to use Sutton Bank as its partner to provide this account.
May require account to read. MoneyGram International Inc., one of the largest money-transfer services in the U.S., has received preliminary takeover interest from Stellar Development Foundation and private equity firm Advent International, according to people familiar with the matter. San Francisco-based Stellar, which oversees a network for facilitating cross-border payments, is working with Advent on a potential acquisition of MoneyGram, said the people, who asked to not be identified because the matter isn’t public. No final decision has been made and Stellar and Advent could opt to not proceed with a deal, they said.
May require account to read. Costs at the top US banks jumped more than $6.6bn in the most recent quarter, as the intensifying battle for talent and the growing threat from new fintech rivals forced executives to step up spending. The 10 per cent increase in costs compared with last year at JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America and Citigroup surprised analysts. Many had predicted that expenses would fall modestly this year as the extra spending associated with doing business during the pandemic faded away.
Article written by TSG Senior Associate, Cliff Gray
By the late 1980s, MasterCard was removing humans from the authorization cycle, replacing them with modems. By the 1990s, the Internet was connecting the last mile to merchants, replacing modems with instant authorization. Will the 2020s be the decade when the payment ecosystems remove issuing banks from the process?
Many have long questioned the viability of cryptocurrency as a transaction medium and dismissed it as a volatile investment. For the moment, let’s cast aside discussion of crypto as an investment. This article is about buying things with crypto instead of with cards.
Robinhood is seeking a market valuation of as much as $35 billion in its upcoming initial public offering, according to an amended SEC filing released Monday. The stock trading app will attempt to sell its share at a range of $38 to $42 per share, according to the updated prospectus. Robinhood is looking to sell 55 million shares at that range to raise as much as $2.3 billion. Robinhood’s last private market valuation was $11.7 billion as of September. Goldman Sachs, Citigroup and JPMorgan are the lead underwriters on the deal.
Dwolla CEO Brady Harris felt like his business crashed in on him when he took the reins last year. Ben Milne, the founder of the Des Moines financial technology company, had stepped back from day-to-day leadership a month earlier. The company cut staff. Then the COVID-19 pandemic began. "It was like jumping over the beaches of Normandy in World War II and meeting your troops as battlefield commander for the first time as you're parachuting into combat," said Harris, who started with Dwolla on March 30, 2020.
Etsy tops the list after its platform saw huge sales growth throughout the COVID-19 pandemic as consumers flocked to online shopping. In particular, Etsy was a popular place for consumers seeking homemade masks to protect themselves from contracting COVID-19. The majority of the companies on the list all saw sales booms partly because they were able to capitalize on pandemic-related products and services, including home improvement, online grocery and pet care. Many retailers were also able to offer consumers convenient fulfillment options, great prices or both, CSA reported.
It is a good time to be a major multinational pizza chain — not as great a time to be a small, independent pizzeria. Domino’s Pizza, the world’s largest pizza chain (by sales) with 18,000-plus stores in 90 countries, announced Thursday (July 22) that same-store sales grew 3.5 percent during the second quarter of 2021. This marks 41 consecutive quarters of overall same-store sales increases for the chain, and 110 of international increases, amid industry-wide sales growth.
Victoria’s Secret is getting a makeover. The lingerie maker is preparing to to spin out of L Brands into a separate public entity next month known as Victoria’s Secret & Co., and part of its strategy is to move away from traditional shopping malls. During a virtual investor presentation on Monday, Victoria’s Secret & Co.’s CEO Martin Waters explained the retailer plans to test a “store of the future” at three locations later this fall.
A new survey indicates online will remain the primary channel for Americans to complete their holiday shopping in 2021. According to a survey on 2021 holiday shopping behaviors, 81% of respondents did more than half of their 2020 holiday shopping online and plan to purchase the same amount, if not more, of their gifts online during the upcoming holiday season.
Like the rest of the financial services sector, the payments industry is on alert about a rise in cybersecurity incidents, a concern that has only become more acute as the world economy adjusted to the Covid-19 pandemic. Large industry players are aware of the growth in cybercrime and are taking steps to fight it, leveraging automation and artificial intelligence, but are increasingly concerned about third-party risk from vendors and clients, many of them small businesses that don’t have the same security resources at their disposal.
A bipartisan group of senators formally introduced a federal breach notification bill Wednesday that would require federal agencies, federal contractors and organizations that are considered critical to U.S. national security to report security incidents to the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency within 24 hours of discovery. Under the Cyber Incident Notification Act of 2021, companies that do not report an incident within 24 hours could face a maximum financial penalty equal to 0.5% of the previous year's gross revenue. The measure, however, allows for exceptions to the penalty, depending on the circumstances.
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen will convene top U.S. financial-market and bank regulators on Monday to discuss rules for so-called stablecoins, a key part of the cryptocurrency market where government officials are increasingly fretting about a lack of oversight. The meeting of the President’s Working Group on Financial Markets will “discuss interagency work on stablecoins,” the Treasury Department said in a statement last Friday.
May require account to read. The highly contagious Delta variant of Covid-19 doesn’t pose an immediate risk to the strength of the U.S. economic recovery, with analysts expecting a robust expansion to continue in the second half of the year. Many economists are maintaining forecasts for solid economic growth due to expectations of steady hiring and continued spending, driven by accumulated savings and Americans’ desire to travel and socialize more than a year into the pandemic.
The number of Americans seeking unemployment benefits rose last week from the lowest point of the pandemic, even as the job market appears to be rebounding on the strength of a reopened economy. The Labor Department said Thursday that jobless claims increased last week to 419,000, the most in two months, from 368,000 the previous week. The number of first-time applications, which generally tracks layoffs, has fallen steadily since topping 900,000 in early January.
“In the second quarter, our marketing investments, strong value proposition, and accelerating sales trends produced sequential card receivables growth, while credit performance continued to improve. Additionally, we generated significant capital which supported our decision to substantially increase our dividend and share repurchase authorization,” said Roger Hochschild, CEO and President of Discover. “Looking ahead, these results improve our confidence in our loan growth expectation for this year, while we see opportunity to increase our marketing and other investments to accelerate growth in future periods.”
Mastercard announced it will enhance its card program for cryptocurrency wallets and exchanges, making it simpler for partners to convert cryptocurrency to traditional fiat currency. Working with Evolve Bank & Trust and Paxos Trust Company, the leading blockchain infrastructure and regulated stablecoin issuance platform, and Circle, a global financial technology firm and the principal operator of the USD Coin (USDC), a dollar digital currency or stablecoin, Mastercard and its partners will test this new capability to enable more banks and crypto companies to offer a card option to people wanting to spend their digital assets anywhere Mastercard is accepted.
NMI, a leading global payments enablement technology company, and J.P. Morgan, the #1 acquirer of web transactions in Europe for the sixth year running, will utilize NMI’s portfolio of retail, mPOS, unattended and tap to mobile technologies to serve J.P. Morgan customers in a selection of European countries. In today’s competitive marketplace and with consumer expectations continuing to evolve as in-store shopping recovers, merchants and their customers require a variety of payment methods across a variety of devices
Financial technology leader Worldpay from FIS® has been selected by cryptocurrency platform OKCoin to provide global merchant acquiring and foreign exchange services to support its continued global expansion, currently spanning 190 countries. OKCoin is a global exchange that enables customers to easily transition between crypto and fiat currency into bitcoin, ethereum and 25+ other cryptocurrencies, as well as earn yield via staking on DeFi protocols. The exchange was looking for a proven and experienced partner to make card-to-crypto payments easier for its global customers.
Bill.com, a leading provider of cloud-based software that simplifies, digitizes, and automates complex back-office financial operations for small and midsize businesses (SMBs), announced it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Invoice2go in a stock and cash transaction valued at approximately $625 million. Invoice2go is a leading, mobile-first accounts receivable (AR) software provider that empowers small businesses and freelancers to grow their client base, manage invoicing and payments, build their brand, and much more.
American Express Company and Sberbank, Russia’s largest bank and the third largest merchant acquirer in the world, are expanding their business partnership, significantly increasing the number of places where American Express cardholders can pay with their cards across Russia and online. In addition, American Express clients will be able to withdraw rubles using Sber ATMs. The number of merchant locations and ATMs accepting American Express will be growing throughout 2021 and 2022.
Fiserv Inc., a leading global provider of payments and financial services technology, announced the integration of a cutting-edge fraud prevention solution into its e-commerce payment gateway to reduce the fraud-related chargeback risk for Mexican e-commerce. The Vesta fraud prevention platform helps secure online payment transactions, reduces the decline rate, and includes a “Zero Chargeback Guarantee.”
Paysafe, a leading specialized payments platform, announced a new independent software vendor (ISV) partnership with Smart Property Systems, a state-of-the-art software as a service (SaaS) provider for property management. The Smart Property Systems platform will embed Paysafe’s credit and debit card, ACH and eCash payment solutions to enable North American property managers to offer tenants frictionless digital transactions for their rent payments.
Sezzle Inc. announces the upcoming launch of 'Sezzle Capital', a program enabling retail partners with working capital up to US$10 Million. Powered by Wayflyer, a hassle-free, flexible funding platform, Sezzle Capital provides merchants with a bridge to fast, affordable, unsecured funds. The new program solves the difficult task eCommerce businesses have in sourcing working capital. With higher approval rates than traditional lending and simple pricing models, Sezzle Capital will extend its mission of financial empowerment to eCommerce businesses.
The American Transaction Processors Coalition (ATPC) Cyber Council, focused on promoting public and private cooperation in cyber security for the Financial Services industry, continues to expand membership, adding three new members from critical transaction companies, including Deluxe, U.S. Bank and MerchantE. The three new ATPC Cyber Council members join the 10 existing members from FIS, NCR, Mastercard, InComm, ACI Worldwide and more.
UnionPay International (UPI) announced the cooperation with the International Air Transport Association (IATA) to launch multiple UnionPay payment products on the IATA Financial Gateway (IFG). UnionPay cardholders can now make easy reservations via all airline distribution channels including travel agents and mobile apps of international airlines that accept UnionPay products. As one of the most important organizations in the aviation industry, IATA represents over 290 member airlines, covering 82% of global air traffic.
Leading smart payments provider and merchant acquiring bank, Credorax, has announced it is upping the ante in the world of fraud protection and chargeback mitigation by launching a cutting-edge solution to preventing chargebacks. Credorax’s Chargeback PREVENTION marks a landmark partnership with Ethoca (owned by Mastercard), the leading, global provider of collaboration-based technology, and Verifi (a Visa solution), the leading provider of transaction risk management services for card-not-present merchants.
