Worldline S.A.’s decision to enter negotiations to sell its Terminals, Solutions and Services unit to asset-management firm Apollo Global Management Inc. may allow the unit’s Ingenico brand to refresh its point-of-sale technology operation under the umbrella of a new owner and away from the short-term expectations of the public markets, observers tell Digital Transactions. “I suspect that going private will allow this Ingenico business to better focus on transforming itself from a legacy POS hardware player to a services-led payments provider without having to manage the scrutiny from Wall Street,” notes Jared Drieling, senior director for market intelligence and insights at The Strawhecker Group, an Omaha, Neb.-based consultancy, in an email message.
Shares of Coinbase, the American crypto trading giant, initially soared when it reported its Q4 2021 earnings , but investors quickly sold off the spike bringing the stock price down as much as 9 percent hovering just above an all-time-low. The company bested investor expectations in the trailing period. However, citing a “decline in crypto asset volatility and crypto-asset prices,” Coinbase said that it expects retail monthly transacting users (MTUs, in its parlance), and total trading volume to decline sequentially in the first quarter.
The Strawhecker Group (TSG), a globally recognized analytics, intelligence, and consulting firm in the payments industry, is pleased to announce that it has expanded its BrandInfluence service. Pegged as a quasi-marketing agency for payments brands, BrandInfluence combines TSG’s trusted brand with credible thought leadership to support clients on mission-critical marketing and sales activities.
Physical gift cards are still preferred by slightly more than half (54%) of consumers, according to a new study published this week from payments company Fiserv, despite the rise of digital cards. That's similar to data from a 2019 study which also showed physical gift cards were favored by both purchasers and receivers, although more of those giving than receiving had a preference for the tangible card. But just as the COVID-19 pandemic has sped up broader payments innovation, it’s fueled the rise of digital gift cards: Over the last two years, 48% of consumers polled said they’ve bought more digital gift cards than physical ones.
Jim McKelvey, who co-founded Square with his pal Jack Dorsey, hasn’t been content to merely create a hugely successful innovator in card payments and survive a competitive attack by Amazon, he wanted to understand what had made it successful. And he wanted to see if Square had developed principles or skills that could be applicable to other companies. So he spent three years researching the book which has recently come out, The Innovation Stack. He probably didn’t write it for the money; Square, now named Block, has a market cap around $56 billion.
As Federal Reserve officials consider whether to launch a digital version of the dollar, several former officials of one company with a direct stake in the outcome are working to inform the project, a new report based on public records finds. At least five employees of Circle, which issues the world’s second-most popular stablecoin, have left the company over the past three years to work at the Boston Federal Reserve Bank as it researches how a U.S. digital currency might work.
Citigroup will eliminate overdraft fees this year, becoming the biggest lender in the nation to get rid of the charges, which regulators have criticized. The bank will do away with fees for overdrafts and returned items by the summer, it said in a statement on Thursday. It follows smaller lenders, including Capital One and Ally Financial, that said last year that they would halt the fees. Among the nation’s banking giants, Bank of America said it would cut — but not eliminate — overdraft charges to $10 from $35 this year, while JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo have tweaked their services for strapped customers.
A key investment case for bitcoin is deteriorating as geopolitical uncertainty and rising inflation hammer cryptocurrency prices. The price of bitcoin fell to a two-week low Tuesday after Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered troops into Donetsk and Luhansk, two breakaway regions in eastern Ukraine, shortly after declaring them as independent. Bitcoin is often referred to as “digital gold” by its backers. The term refers to the idea that bitcoin can provide a store of value similar to gold — one that’s uncorrelated with other financial markets, like stocks.
Scalapay, a ‘buy now, pay later’ provider has raised $497m in Series B investment funding. The round, which pushes the Italian fintech above the $1bn valuation level making it Italy’s first fintech unicorn, is made of $213m of equity and $284m of debt capital. Tencent and Willoughby Capital led the round, with participation from Tiger Global, Gangwal, Moore Capital, Deimos, and Fasanara Capital. Scalapay was founded and launched in 2019 and is active in Italy, France, Germany, Spain, Portugal, Finland, Belgium, Netherlands and Austria.
Got some pocket change you want to throw at crypto? It won’t go as far on Venmo. Venmo and its parent PayPal Holdings Inc. alerted their users earlier this week that they’re changing their fees for crypto transactions under $200. While the companies said the pricing adjustments were just an effort to provide investors with more transparency, a closer look shows any customer making transactions of $100 or less will be a lot worse off.
Lowe’s on Wednesday surpassed quarterly earnings expectations and raised its forecast for the year, as Americans buy, fix up and renovate homes in a tight real estate market. The company’s shares rose more than 3% in afternoon trading, after the home improvement retailer said momentum carried into February. Aging houses, rising real estate values and generational trends are fueling demand for home projects. Americans — including millennials, the country’s largest generation — have been buying houses and upgrading to bigger ones during the coronavirus pandemic.
What makes the restaurant industry so interesting? It’s always changing. In recent years, we've witnessed a huge spike in online ordering, a new focus on reducing food waste, the adoption of server handhelds, the implementation of robots in restaurants, and a host of food trends that have surged across social media. 2022 is here, and it's already been a whirlwind. If things have gotten a little messy in your restaurant office – it happens! – take a moment to reassess and make sure you're still on course.
The decision was made public Tuesday, Feb. 22, during the company’s end-of-year earnings call with analysts. Macy’s CEO Jeff Gennette revealed the company has been working with advisors to consider its options, including from Alix Partners. Ultimately, the retailer decided it would not split up. "In every scenario we considered, we found that the combination of our profitable digital platform with our national footprints will deliver greater value to shareholders than a separation of our digital and physical assets," Gennette said during the call.
Talkshoplive, the most adoptable streaming, social buying and selling platform for anyone anywhere, announces its regularly scheduled content with Walmart. This month Walmart launches eight talkshoplive shopping experiences and regular programming scheduled through March. This partnership serves as an example of how the strategic use of social shopping, as a medium for retailers, unlocks a new level of growth for brands and marketers.
Amazon is officially offering its “Just Walk Out” autonomous checkout experience in its Whole Foods Market division. As announced in September 2021, Amazon is now live with “Just Walk Out” at a new 21,500-sq.-ft. Whole Foods store in Washington, D.C.’s Glover Park neighborhood. Amazon’s Just Walk Out” tech leverages a combination of computer vision, sensor fusion and deep learning — similar to what is used in a self-driving car — that enables shoppers to shop the store, select products and skip the checkout when they’re done.
Just one week after the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense, which oversees the nation's military, suffered a distributed denial-of-service outage, reports have surfaced that government sites again have been pushed offline in a similar attack. According to the Telegram channel of Mykhailo Fedorov, who heads Ukraine's Ministry of Digital Transformation, the attack - detected around 4 p.m. local time - also affected banks, which have not been named.
May require a subscription to read. A payment security standards group released a warning this month about the growing threat of ransomware, echoing forecasts from the U.S. government and others that an uptick in such attacks, which coincided with the pandemic, will likely continue. The Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council, formed by Visa, Mastercard and other major credit card companies in 2006, said Feb. 10 its ransomware bulletin was one of only two it would release this year. The National Cybersecurity Alliance joined the standards council in releasing the notice.
Credit Suisse has called in outside experts to help find the source of a leak that exposed the details of accounts held by wealthy clients allegedly involved in torture, drug trafficking, money laundering, and corruption. The huge trove of banking data was leaked by an anonymous whistleblower to the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung. “I believe that Swiss banking secrecy laws are immoral,” the whistleblower source said in a statement.
American consumer confidence slipped again in February, a new report from the Conference Board said Tuesday. The index tracking how Americans are feeling fell to 110.5 this month, a steeper decline than economists had expected and the lowest level since September. The January number was revised down as well. Inflation continues to weigh on people's minds -- and wallets. Prices keep rising across the nation, particularly when it comes to energy.
May require a subscription to read. Over the past decade intensifying geopolitical risk has been a constant feature of world politics, yet the world economy and financial markets have shrugged it off. From the contest between China and America to the rise of populist rulers in Latin America and tensions in the Middle East, firms and investors have carried on regardless, judging that the economic consequences will be contained. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is likely to break this pattern, because it will result in the isolation of the world’s 11th-largest economy and one of its largest commodity producers.
The number of Americans collecting unemployment benefits fell to a 52-year low after another decline in jobless aid applications last week. Jobless claims fell by 17,000, from 249,000 to 232,000 for the week ending Feb. 19, the Labor Department reported Thursday. The four-week average for claims, which compensates for weekly volatility, fell by 7,250 to 236,250. It was the third straight week of declines after rising for five straight weeks as the omicron variant of the coronavirus spread, disrupting business in many parts of the U.S.
ValueAct, an activist investor, has gotten a seat on Fiserv’s board because of a settlement with the FinTech and payments firm, Bloomberg reported Wednesday (Feb. 23). Fiserv said in a statement that it had appointed Dylan Haggart, a ValueAct partner, to its board. He will also be nominated at the company’s next annual general meeting. ValueAct first disclosed its stake in Fiserv in August. At the time it said it thought the company’s Clover credit card processing business could be worth $185 billion by 2024.
Barclays on Wednesday reported a full-year net profit of £6.38 billion ($8.67 billion) for 2021, ahead of analyst expectations of £5.75 billion, as its corporate and investment banking division boomed. Fourth-quarter net income attributable to shareholders came in at £1.12 billion, outstripping a mean forecast of £756.5 million, according to Refinitiv data. The figures marked a significant improvement from the £1.53 billion net profit reported in 2020 and £220 million in the fourth-quarter of that year, as the U.K. navigated fresh nationwide Covid-19 lockdowns.
U.S. Bank announced a substantial investment in modernizing its technology foundation through the selection of Microsoft Azure as its primary cloud provider for U.S. Bank applications. Powering the majority of its infrastructure and application portfolio with cloud computing will allow U.S. Bank to modernize how it works in an increasingly digital world – including the ability to rapidly access and analyze data, expediting time to market while more quickly scaling innovative products to customers and partners, and empowering its increasingly agile workforce.
Paysafe, a leading specialized payments platform, announced a new partnership with Bally’s Corporation, a global casino entertainment company with a growing omni-channel presence of online sports betting and iGaming offerings. Paysafe has launched the partnership by streamlining player deposits for both the new Bally Bet online sportsbook for Arizona and the BallyCasino.com brand for New Jersey. Through an integration with Paysafe’s payment gateway, the Bally Bet online sportsbook in Arizona will allow players within state lines to easily deposit funds with the brand using their credit or debit card.
NMI, a leading full commerce enablement technology company, announced another milestone year in 2021 with plans for further growth in 2022. On the heels of company growth and expansion with the acquisitions of USAePay and IRIS CRM, NMI accelerated the sign up and onboarding process for partners and advanced product innovation through these acquisitions, furthering its mission to help their partners create a seamless merchant experience through all phases of commerce enablement, from sign up to payout.
Online lender SoFi Technologies has agreed to buy cloud-native core banking platform Technisys in an all-stock deal worth around $1.1 billion. The deal bolsters SoFi's effort to build a full-stack, multi-product digital banking technology platform or, as the firm puts it: "the AWS of fintech". Technisys will operate alongside Galileo, the financial services API and payments platform that SoFi acquired for $1.2 billion in 2020 and operates as an independent subsidiary.
EVO Payments, Inc. on Wednesday reported fourth-quarter net income of $3.9 million, after reporting a loss in the same period a year earlier. The Atlanta-based company said it had net income of 2 cents per share. Earnings, adjusted for one-time gains and costs, came to 29 cents per share. The results exceeded Wall Street expectations. The average estimate of six analysts surveyed by Zacks Investment Research was for earnings of 25 cents per share.
American Express and Resy announced the 'Every Resy Counts' reservation drive to encourage millions of consumers across the country to dine at independent restaurants throughout the month of March. The effort is part of the company’s broader ‘Let’s Grab a Table’ marketing campaign which is focused on bringing attention and support to independent restaurants throughout the United States. “As we approach the two-year mark of the pandemic, restauranteurs continue to need community support to help make up for lost revenues,” said Elizabeth Rutledge, Chief Marketing Officer, American Express.
Visa, a leading global payments technology company, announced the launch of Visa Minority Depository Institutions Accelerate, a new program to help reduce economic disparities and expand access and opportunity in communities of color across the United States. Through this multi-year program, Visa will invest up to $100 million via deposits with MDIs to help them catalyze lending. Visa will also provide tailored insights and digital solutions to these banks to help them meet the needs of their clientele and the communities they serve.
ACI Worldwide, the global leader in mission-critical, real-time payments software, announced a partnership with one of South Africa’s leading financial services providers, Nedbank, to drive its digital transformation journey including real-time payments. Nedbank is embarking on a wide-ranging modernization program, migrating all of its legacy systems to ACI’s award-winning ACI Enterprise Payments Platform, including the move to ISO20022, the global financial messaging standard.
TreviPay, a global financial technology company, announced its acquisition of BATON Financial Services, Inc., a technology company which has built a unique, innovative B2B invoice payments network. To meet the trade credit needs of small businesses, Baton’s payments network has enabled the seamless delivery of structured financial services in partnership with financial institutions. This successful acquisition is part of TreviPay’s ongoing, global expansion plan to make B2B payments faster and more flexible for its clients.
Italian bank BPER has entered exclusive negotiations with local payments processor Nexi for the sale of its merchant payments business. BPER says it has received a non-binding offer for the business from Nexi as part of a competitive bidding process. The bank says it has granted Nexi - a player with which the bank already has commercial agreements in place - a 60-day period of exclusive negotiations to conclude a deal.
The United Soccer League announced that it has selected Shift4, the leader in integrated payments and commerce technology, as the league’s Official Payment Solutions Partner. The multi-year partnership marks the first league-wide agreement for Shift4, whose services will be implemented across the USL’s entire footprint. The multi-faceted partnership will deliver a streamlined omnichannel payment experience for fans.
Tipalti, the leading global payables solution, announced unprecedented growth in 2021, with payments volume increasing more than 100 percent YoY to more than $36 billion. Coming on the heels of a $270 million series F funding round, Tipalti quadrupled its valuation to $8.3 billion. With a total funding of just over $550 million, it is among the most valuable private fintech companies in the world. Tipalti's customer base surged past the 2,000 mark with companies including Amazon Twitch, GoDaddy, Roku, ZipRecruiter and Roblox relying on its award-winning technology.
