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Check out the presentation and recording from TSG's recent webinar!
TSG recently hosted a webinar titled The Rise of eCommerce: Are Payment Gateways Ready? to walk through the process a start-up, small and medium-sized (SMB) merchant experienced when trying to create an online store during the course of the current global pandemic and the continued rise of eCommerce.
Lightspeed POS Inc., a leading provider of cloud-based, omnichannel commerce platforms, announced it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire ShopKeep Inc. (ShopKeep), a leading cloud commerce platform provider based in New York City. This acquisition reinforces Lightspeed's status as a clear category leader for complex retailers and restaurateurs seeking to modernize their operations as the global economy undergoes unprecedented digital acceleration. The acquisition immediately expands Lightspeed's U.S. market share, allowing for increased investment in sales, marketing, and research and development to capitalize on the increasing demand for modern, cloud-based, omnichannel commerce solutions.
The Department of Justice is looking to block Visa’s planned acquisition of fintech start-up Plaid on grounds that it would limit competition in the payments industry. U.S. attorneys for the DOJ outlined potential for the deal to extend a Visa “monopoly” on debit transactions. For antitrust reasons the $5.3 billion acquisition, which was announced in February, “must be stopped,” according to the complaint. “By acquiring Plaid, Visa would eliminate a nascent competitive threat that would likely result in substantial savings and more innovative online debit services for merchants and consumers,” the Justice Department said in the complaint, which was filed in a Northern California federal court.
PayPal this week laid out its vision for the future of its digital wallet platform and its PayPal and Venmo apps. During its third-quarter earnings call on Monday, the company said it plans to roll out substantial changes to its mobile apps over the next year to integrate a range of new features, including enhanced direct deposit, check cashing, budgeting tools, bill pay, crypto support, subscription management, buy now/pay later functionality and all of Honey’s shopping tools. While PayPal had spoken in the past about bringing Honey’s capabilities into PayPal, CEO Dan Schulman detailed the integrations PayPal has in store for the deal-finding platform it bought last year for $4 billion, as well as a timetable for both this and the other app updates it has in store.
Square was climbing in after-hours trading Thursday after the electronic payment system operator beat Wall Street's. third-quarter earnings expectations. Shares of the San Francisco-based company were up 6.46% to $186.95 after the market close. Square reported net income of $37 million, or 8 cents a share. Adjusted income came to 34 cents a share. Revenue totaled $3.03 billion, up 140% year over year, the company said, as more users of Cash App, Square's mobile payment service, bought and sold digital cryptocurrency Bitcoin.
Shift4 Payments Inc. on Thursday jumped into e-commerce payments processing with both feet with its acquisition of 3dcart, a 23-year-old web-store platform with some 14,000 clients globally. Terms were not announced. The deal diversifies Allentown, Pa.-based Shift4’s product mix but also buttresses its long-term strategy aimed at moving merchants from gateway services to the more lucrative full-service, end-to-end processing business. “We’ve been doing a lot of research into entering the e-commerce market. We did a competitive matrix of the top five players in the market, and 3dcart scores high,” Shift4 chief executive Jared Isaacman told equity analysts early Thursday while discussing the deal and the company’s third-quarter results.
Italy's biggest payments group Nexi said on Monday it was in exclusive takeover talks with Denmark's Nets over an $8 billion deal which follows its multi-billion euro tie-up with Milan-based SIA less than a month ago. Merging with private equity-backed Nets would give Milan-listed Nexi access to advanced digital payments markets in northern Europe, where the Scandinavian group has a leading position, as well as exposure to central and eastern Europe which offers growth potential. Nexi said exclusive talks over an all-share merger would last 10 days.
The consumer payments ecosystem is a moving target, observes Jared Drieling, Senior Director of Consulting and Market Intelligence at The Strawhecker Group (TSG). “We’re seeing a fluid situation in terms of how consumers are making payments, the tools they are leveraging and where they’re spending,” he says. The fast pace of change is highlighted by research TSG conducted in partnership with Visa. The study puts some hard numbers on payment trends, particularly contactless cards and mobile wallets. One of the most significant findings is that these changes have proven to be a shot in the arm for fintech players like Square and Shopify. While it is still true that the incumbent providers of payment system services also benefit, the seeds of increasing disruption are being sown as digital payments rapidly evolve.
Google and Walmart have a new challenge ahead of them as they race to expand the reach of their payments apps in India: They won’t be permitted to grow beyond a certain limit. National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), the body that operates the popular UPI payments infrastructure, said Thursday evening that it will enforce a cap to ensure that no single payments app processes more than 30% of UPI transactions in a month. The payments body said the move is aimed at addressing the “risks” and “protecting the UPI ecosystem as it further scales up.
India allowed Facebook Inc. to start operating its WhatsApp payments service in the world’s biggest open technology market. WhatsApp pay can go live using the homegrown, multibank Unified Payments Interface, the National Payments Corporation of India said in a statement Thursday. The U.S. firm can gradually expand its UPI base starting with as many as 20 million users. Facebook has been testing WhatsApp payments in India for years, but regulatory hurdles have kept the app’s pilot project to a very small number of users.
China is well on its way to become the world's first cashless economy, with mobile payments already accounting for four out of every five payments, according to a study by the South China Morning Post. The figures come from the broadsheet's inaugural China Fintech report, which tracks the latest trends and future trajectory of the world’s largest financial technology ecosystem. The report states that China’s massive domestic financial market has an estimated 87% of consumers using fintech services, a US$29 trillion mobile payment market in 2019, and the largest global market for online securities trading.
The sudden halt to Ant Group Co.’s giant initial public offering left investors hanging, employees shell-shocked and shareholders trying to come to grips with why China pulled the plug on the record-breaking deal when it was so close to the finish line. A growing regulatory assault on Ant and co-founder Jack Ma is forcing a reassessment of how much the financial-technology giant is worth and whether the company’s growth and profitability will be severely crimped by Beijing in the years ahead.
Brazilian payments firm Conductor has raised $150 million in a private funding round to expand its business in Latin America ahead of a possible stock market listing in the United States, Chief Executive Antonio Soares told Reuters. The fundraising underscores the expectation that financial technology companies can grow as more individuals in the region access the banking system. Backed by investment firm Riverwood Capital and payments processor Visa Inc V.N, Conductor provides payments services and software to companies including fintech businesses and retailers. It has 30 million active users and processes 1.5 billion transactions per year, according to Conductor's website.
The 2020 holiday shopping season will be different from any that have come before it, and much of the difference will revolve around digital capabilities. But everything else about the season is up in the air, Kount Chief Marketing Officer Gary Sevounts told PYMNTS. Merchants are adapting quickly to a rapidly digitizing environment, caught between trying to build a smooth, seamless experience for their good customers and trying to prevent fraud of all sorts as attacks increase in both number and activity level. Sevounts said there are no silver-bullet solutions, but there are data to be leveraged to build a better, more secure experience and improve business operations as a whole.
Criminals are prepping to reap ill-gotten gains this holiday season, and one way they’re doing that is by bringing their organizational skills to return and refund schemes. That’s the word from Signifyd Inc., a fraud-prevention services provider. Return and refund fraud is one of three trends gaining prominence now, says Ping Li, head of risk operations at San Jose, Calif.-based Signifyd. The always-problematic account takeovers compose the second trend and buy online, pickup in store or curbside is the third. Li says fraudsters will just drive around and pick up items. “We are definitely seeing concentrated areas where they target,” Li says.
More than seven years have passed since Ross Ulbricht was arrested in the science fiction section of a San Francisco library and charged with running the sprawling, dark web drug bazaar known as the Silk Road. But when the Feds laid hands on Ulbricht's laptop that day, they found keys to unlock only a fraction of the bitcoins that he had amassed over the Silk Road's years of bustling black market drug trade. Today the Justice Department finally revealed where a billion-dollar tranche of the Silk Road's treasure ended up: stolen by a mysterious hacker, and now seized by the US Treasury.
Only a few hours after polls closed on Tuesday, fraudsters started using the uncertainty over the winner of the U.S. presidential election to send out spam messages that are designed to infect devices with the Qbot banking Trojan, according to Malwarebytes. In this campaign, the fraudsters are hijacking email threads and using them to send spam or phishing emails that have an election theme as part of a social-engineering ploy. In many cases, the messages come with an attached zip file labeled "ElectionInterference" as a way to entice a target to open the document, according to Jerome Segura and Hossein Jazi, threat researchers with Malwarebytes.
Employment growth was better than expected in October and the unemployment rate fell sharply even as the U.S. faces the challenge of surging coronavirus cases and the impact they could have on the nascent economic recovery. The Labor Department reported Friday that nonfarm payrolls increased by 638,000 and the unemployment rate was at 6.9%. Economists surveyed by Dow Jones had been looking for a payroll gain of 530,000 and an unemployment rate of 7.7% a touch lower than the September level of 7.9%.
Federal Reserve officials made only minor adjustments to their policy statement Thursday, leaving rates unchanged and pledging to act as needed to protect the economy and sustain its recovery from the depths of the pandemic-spurred recession. “Economic activity and employment have continued to recover but remain well below their levels at the beginning of the year,” policymakers said in their post-meeting statement. Fed Chair Jerome H. Powell, speaking at a news conference following the meeting, said the economic outlook is “extraordinarily uncertain” and called the rise in new coronavirus cases in both the United States and overseas “particularly concerning.”
According to the Amex Trendex: Holiday Business Spend Survey, 78% of small- and mid-size business owners and financial decision makers said payment flexibility is important during this holiday season, with a majority planning to focus their spending on technology (54%), protective equipment (40%), and office supplies (38%). The Holiday Business Spend Survey respondents also said the three biggest challenges they currently face are finding new customers (40%), adapting to new technologies (38%) and cash flow (38%).
The Bank of England is pumping another £150 billion ($195 billion) into the UK economy after warning of a double-dip recession because of the coronavirus pandemic and an uncertain outlook because of Brexit. The UK central bank said on Thursday that it would keep interest rates unchanged at a record low of 0.1% but would increase its purchases of UK government bonds to £875 billion ($1.1 trillion). Restrictions introduced to tackle a rapid rise in Covid-19 cases would weigh on consumer spending to a greater extent than the bank projected in August, "leading to a decline in GDP" in the fourth quarter of this year, it added.
EVO Payments, Inc. announced its third quarter 2020 financial results. For the third quarter ended September 30, 2020, reported revenue was $117.0 million compared to $122.4 million in the prior year. On a reported and currency neutral basis, revenue for the third quarter decreased 4%. On a GAAP basis for the quarter ended September 30, 2020, net income was $14.6 million compared to net loss of $5.0 million in the prior year. Net income for the current quarter includes an after-tax gain of $14.1 million on the Company’s investment in Visa Series A preferred stock. Adjusted EBITDA decreased 4% to $40.4 million for the quarter, and on a currency neutral basis, adjusted EBITDA declined 2% compared to the prior year.
ACI Worldwide, a leading global provider of real-time digital payment software and solutions, announced financial results for the quarter ended September 30, 2020. “During the pandemic, ACI has focused on keeping our employees and their families safe, assuring continuity of service to our customers, and preparing the Company to emerge from this challenging time stronger than before.” said Odilon Almeida, President and CEO of ACI Worldwide. “We are advancing on all of those fronts and continue to drive toward our goal of creating significant value for our shareholders, which is demonstrated by our performance year-to-date.
TSG, Pure Storage and Netspend, a Global Payments company, recently participated in an interactive, roundtable discussion - Preparing Your Payments Platform for Tomorrow’s Growth. Check out the recording to learn about topics such as: the evolution of the payment processor industry, preparing your payment processor platform for growth, and how the accelerating digitization of the financial industry is impacting processors.
Discover Financial Services, a digital bank and payments provider, announced the formation of a new Data and Analytics (DNA) organization within the company and named newly promoted Executive Vice President Keith Toney as Chief Data and Analytics Officer to lead the unit. Toney joins Discover’s Executive Committee and reports directly to CEO and President Roger Hochschild. “This leading-edge move elevates the critical importance of DNA throughout the organization. The market demands greater business value from our data-driven decision-making across all of Discover’s lines of business and functional areas,” Hochschild said.
Nuvei Corporation, the global payment technology partner of thriving brands, announced it has completed the previously announced acquisition of Smart2Pay Global Services B.V. (“Smart2Pay”). The acquisition strengthens Nuvei’s presence in high-growth digital commerce verticals and further expands the Company’s geographic footprint in additional regions. Furthermore, the transaction creates one of the largest and most complete alternative payment method (APM) solution providers in the world, with 450 APMs supporting online merchants in more than 200 global markets.
Stripe, a global technology company building economic infrastructure for the internet, announced an expanded partnership with Mindbody to power advanced online and in-studio customer experiences for wellness customers in North America and across Europe. With more than 1.3 million monthly active users, 3.7 million classes booked monthly, and more than 145,000 new users monthly, Mindbody connects the world to wellness and is now teaming up with Stripe to help the wellness industry adapt across the globe.
Aurora Payments, a leading payments technology and software provider, partners with Arizona Small Business Association (ASBA) as their exclusive payments provider. Aurora continues to drive forward with strategic advancements in technology which impacts specific industries and the payments industry overall. ASBA, one of the largest associations in the Arizona, helps small businesses attain the startup resources they need as well as guidance to sustainability and growth. “Our members rely on us for trusted business relationships and Aurora is a local company with a track record of supporting small businesses in Arizona.
Major financial services corporation China UnionPay, an analog to card providers like Visa and Mastercard, has partnered with the South Korean payment provider Danal to launch a cryptocurrency-supporting digital card. Danal’s crypto wallet Paycoin and its crypto token of the same name will be the interface for the new, prepaid mobile card. Paycoin has indicated that users will be able to use both the card and Paycoin to pay for goods and services at over 30 million UnionPay merchants across 179 countries and regions.
Financial technology leader FIS™ has been selected as the exclusive payments provider to The Reynolds and Reynolds Company, a leading provider of automotive dealership software, documents, and professional services. Under the multi-year agreement, Worldpay from FIS has assumed all payment processing activities for Reynolds and Reynolds’ integrated payment solution, ReyPAY®, which provides fast, convenient, and contactless payment options for automobile dealerships and their customers. ReyPAY will now have Worldpay’s cloud-based data security and dynamic reporting to better manage payment operations.
Priority Technology Holdings, Inc., a leading provider of merchant acquiring, integrated payment software and commercial payment solutions, announced that the Board of Directors has approved the expansion of its senior leadership team with the hire of Dave Faupel as its new Chief Marketing Officer. With over 25 years of marketing experience across a wide array of industries, Dave has an extensive background building high-performing marketing teams to drive brand awareness and profitable growth at leading fintech, martech and healthcare companies.
Rev19, LLC, a Southlake, TX based fintech company, announced that veteran payments executive Dustin Siner has joined the company as Chief Revenue Officer. Siner was most recently Senior Vice President of Sales at TSYS, a Global Payments Company, where he was responsible for new and existing partnerships in the ISO, Agent, Payment Facilitator and Referral Partner Sales channels. At Rev19, Siner will lead all sales channels, as well as oversee Rev19’s operations. Siner not only brings extensive sales experience, but his background in operations and product marketing will greatly contribute to Rev19’s continued success.
Fiserv, Inc., a leading global provider of financial services technology solutions, today announced the appointment of Kevin M. Warren to its board of directors. Since 2018, Warren has served as Chief Marketing Officer at UPS, with responsibility for the company’s U.S. and international marketing, digital marketing and infrastructure analytics, e-commerce strategy, The UPS Store®, revenue management, business planning, customer experience and brand relevancy.
The PCI DSS was created to prevent data breaches and fraud by establishing standards for information security when processing, storing, and transmitting payment card data. Level 1 Compliance certification is granted only to merchants who process more than 6 million transactions per year and maintain the highest level of data security practices. To achieve Level 1 certification, merchants must undergo a thorough audit by a PCI-certified Security Assessor to confirm that they are following all of the numerous requirements, and must also submit to quarterly network security scans by an approved third-party vendor.
Electronic Payments, Inc. (EPI), national leader in payments and point of sale technologies, experienced a 12% increase in gross processing volume (GPV) for the third quarter of 2020 compared to the same period in 2019. Third quarter GPV exceeded $3.5 Billion amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The company attributes the growth to helping small businesses across the country navigate changes in consumer behavior and economic challenges to achieve continuity of commerce.
Skrill, the online payments company behind Skrill Money Transfer, is once again immediately dropping all fees and foreign exchange charges for anyone using Skrill Money Transfer to send money in or out of Italy as the country begins a new wave of restrictions. There will also be no charges for money transfers made within Italy. The restrictions are set to last until December 3, 2020 and the service will remain free until this date.
Epos Now, a global software and payments technology company supporting over 30,000 retail and hospitality locations, has launched a major partnership with US ecommerce giant, BigCommerce. The partnership pairs one of the world's leading ecommerce platforms with one of the world's leading cloud POS system providers. This will allow Epos Now's retail customers to take advantage of the global surge in online sales demand, and diversify their sales channels at a pivotal time for the sector.
Vivid Money, a German fintech startup raised $17.6 million Series A funding round. Ribbit Capital is leading the investment and the valuation of Vivid Money is approximately $117 million, according to report in TechCrunch. Vivid Money started accepting customers just a few months ago and with each account, customers receive a metal debit card which can be controlled from the Vivid Money app. The card can be locked or unlocked with the app and it works with Apple Pay and Google Pay.
