Fortis Payment Systems, LLC (FortisPay), a payment technology leader for businesses, independent software vendors (ISVs), and developers, announced today the acquisition of EpicPay International, LLC (EpicPay), an award-winning payment facilitation (PayFac) platform and processor, and Change Merchant Solutions, LLC (CMS), an integrated payment solutions provider. These investments will not only bring incremental scale and new technology partnerships to the company but also further enhance FortisPay’s offerings to developers and ISVs. Technology partners will be able to choose from a wide array of operating models while connecting to a single payment platform.
Clean data is key to instant payments, real-time settlement, open banking initiatives and blockchain technology — but such details are often lost or garbled when sent between parties. To better preserve this data, the U.S. financial services industry is turning to the ISO 20022 messaging standard. With approximately 70 countries using the ISO format, the number of data fields used generally depends on the country. Overall, there are more than 1,000 data fields available as part of the standard. "Historically, it used to be that two different technologies had to merge with one another," said Cliff Gray, senior associate with The Strawhecker Group. "It would be using EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) format and then baking in some payments stuff into that EDI framework, or if you did payments already, you would bring in some EDI for the extra data and information."
In the connected economy, financial services ecosystems are being woven across all points of contact – across hardware, software, mobile devices – with a digital-first (and sometimes digital-only) focus. To that end, as reported, Square is planning to expand its financial services offerings for its clients, with an eye toward introducing checking and savings accounts for small to mid-sized firms. It’s a bid, it seems, for Square to operate more like a traditional bank. The plans are hinted at, according to reports, via lines of code that are embedded in an update to the company’s app for Apple devices such as the iPad and the iPhone.
The relationships between banks and fintechs are multi-faceted. In some cases, they partner. In many cases, they compete. In other cases, one acquires or invests in the other. Well, today, an announcement by global payments giant Visa is aimed at helping facilitate banks and fintechs’ ability to work together. Specifically, Visa said it has expanded its Visa Fintech Partner Connect, a program designed to help financial institutions quickly connect with a “vetted and curated” set of technology providers.
May require account to read. Paytm, India’s leading digital payments provider, is aiming to raise about 218 billion rupees ($3 billion) in an initial public offering late this year, according to a person familiar with the deal, in what could be the country’s largest debut ever. The startup, backed by investors including Berkshire Hathaway Inc., SoftBank Group Corp. and Ant Group Co., plans to list in India around November and its offering could coincide with the Diwali festival season, said the person, asking not to be named because the details are private.
The fact there are nearly 11 billion EMV cards deployed worldwide clearly reflects the benefits that EMV chip offers to merchants, acquirers, card issuers, businesses and consumers through improved transaction security, reduced counterfeit cards and fraud, and a consistent payment experience. And to really appreciate the significance of this milestone, it is important to recognise that EMV chip technology benefits from a network effect. Higher deployment and adoption of EMV chip technology reduce the points of weakness that fraudsters can exploit, while increasing consistency and familiarity for consumers and merchants, which in turn creates greater confidence in the technology.
Payments startup SpotOn Transact Inc. has raised $125 million in new funding to accelerate product development and expand its market presence. The Series D round was led by Andreessen Horowitz’s a16z. Additional investors included DST Global, 01 Advisors, Dragoneer Investment Group, Franklin Templeton and Mubadala Investment Co. The round was raised on a $1.875 billion valuation, giving SpotOn unicorn status for the first time.
Building on what it says is its strategy to make electronic bill payment simpler and more accessible to consumers, doxo Inc. is offering consumers a bill-payment service that avoids fees. The Seattle-based provider of digital billing and payment services says it is bypassing the transaction fees some billers, such as utilities, levy on consumers for paying online by enabling consumers to connect their bank account to their doxo account for bill payment. More than 11,000 banks and credit unions are connected to doxo through data aggregator Plaid Inc., a conduit that also allows consumers to see how much money is in their account when they pay their bill.
May require account to read. Acorns Grow Inc. plans to go public through a merger with a blank-check company in a deal that values the digital savings and investing app at about $2.2 billion. The Irvine, Calif.-based financial-tech company said Thursday that it would combine with Pioneer Merger Corp., a special-purpose acquisition company affiliated with the hedge funds Falcon Edge Capital and Patriot Global Management. The plans were first reported by The Wall Street Journal. Pioneer jumped 3% in early trading. Acorns automatically invests small contributions from users into baskets of stocks and bonds.
ETA’s “7 Guiding Principles for CBDC” are important, because the stakes here are high. The U.S. has a well-developed, interconnected system that provides — among other things — secure, robust, reliable mechanisms for consumers, including low-and moderate-income consumers, to engage in commerce. To be clear, ETA believes the conversations around CBDCs are vital, and we look forward to constructively engaging on the topic. But we believe that those conversations cannot occur in a vacuum, and that any proposal must be evaluated to determine whether it would significantly enhance the innovative, ubiquitous, and secure payments ecosystem that currently makes access to financial services a reality.
Klarna, a European buy-now-pay-later company, is close to securing a new funding round at a valuation of more than $40 billion, according to a source familiar with the matter.
The investment is being backed by SoftBank and multiple other investors. The exact size of the investment round is unknown. However, it is expected to be less than the $1 billion that Klarna raised in March, when it was valued at $31 billion, according to Business Insider.
With more people than ever before going online to pay for things and pay each other, startups that are building the infrastructure that enables these actions continue to get a lot of attention. In the latest development, Paysend, a fintech that has built a mobile-based payments platform — which currently offers international money transfers, global accounts, and business banking and e-commerce for SMBs — has picked up some money of its own.
Payments company OPay could be looking at raising $400 million, according to a report from TechCabal. The company launched in Egypt this year and is looking at raising funding to expand more. OPay says it processed $1.4 billion in payments in October 2020 by itself. The number was $2 billion by December of that year. Last July, OPay raised money from Sequoia Capital, IDG Capital, Source Code, GSR Ventures, Opera and Meituan-Dianping. Later in the year, OPay raised another $120 million in its Series B round.
Global payments giant PayPal plans to let users withdraw cryptocurrency to third-party wallets, its blockchain lead said. “We want to make it as open as possible, and we want to give choice to our consumers, something that will let them pay in any way they want to pay,” da Ponte said. “They want to bring their crypto to us so they can use it in commerce, and we want them to be able to take the crypto they acquired with us and take it to the destination of their choice.” The company ships new developments every two months on average, he said, though it’s unclear when the withdrawal functionality is coming.
Resolve, a buy now, pay later billing company spun out of Affirm, has raised $60 million in funding. Launched in 2019, Resolve is enjoying strong demand demand for B2B buy now, pay later billing for business purchases as the pandemic forces more commerce transactions online. Resolve removes the complexity and risk of offering extended payment terms, enabling hassle-free customer billing and deferred payments over 30-, 60-, or 90-day net terms.
May require account to read. MTG Co., a Japanese health and beauty company, has started selling the “Evering,” which it envisions as a one-stop digital wallet. The chip-embedded ring, made out of zirconia, the synthetic crystal that’s sometimes used in place of diamonds in jewelry, lets people lock their door as they step out for a run as well as pay for drinks in stores.
The Hydra darknet marketplace, which initially focused on narcotics sales, now also offers stolen credit cards, SIM cards, VPN access and cryptocurrency laundering services, with annual sales exceeding $1 billion, according to a report by the research company Flashpoint and the blockchain analysis firm Chainalysis, which explains the market's tactics. "Hydra market activity has skyrocketed since its inception, with annual transaction volumes growing from a total of $9.4 million in 2016 to $1.37 billion in 2020," the report states.
E-commerce fraud prevention company Forter has hit a $3 billion valuation after raising $300 million in a Series F funding round led by Tiger Global Management. Third Point Ventures, Adage Capital Management, Bessemer Venture Partners, Sequoia Capital, March Capital, NewView Capital, Salesforce Ventures and Scale Venture Partners joined the round, which sees Forter's valuation triple since a Series E six months ago. Forter processes over $250 billion in online commerce transactions, protecting more than a billion consumers globally from credit card fraud, account takeover, identity theft and more.
Iran is temporarily banning cryptocurrency mining after some of the country’s major cities experienced repeated blackouts. President Hassan Rouhani said that the ban would last until September 22nd. The country has experienced summer blackouts in years past, and while the current round of outages is mostly being blamed on a drought that’s affecting the country’s ability to generate hydroelectric power, it seems that the Iranian government is eager to cut down on any aggravating factors. Power-hungry cryptocurrency mining operations, for instance.
The U.S. jobs market edged closer to its pre-pandemic self last week as initial jobless claims totaled just 406,000 for the week ended May 22, the Labor Department reported Thursday. While that level is still well above the pre-Covid norm, it is the closest to the previous trend since the crisis began in March 2020 and a decline from the previous week’s 444,000. In a separate report, the Commerce Department left its initial estimate on first-quarter gross domestic product unchanged at 6.4%. Also, orders for long-lasting goods unexpectedly declined by 1.3% in April, against the forecast for a 0.9% gain.
More than a year after the pandemic began, the US economy is on the cusp of a full recovery. But reaching that milestone still won't be easy. CNN Business' Back-to-Normal Index, developed in partnership with Moody's Analytics last year, shows the US economy is 90% of the way back to where it was before the pandemic began over a year ago. The index, which is comprised of 37 national and seven state-level indicators, had bottomed out at around 57% in April 2020. But despite the immense improvement, getting that last 10% back is going to be hard.
Stripe, a global technology company building economic infrastructure for the internet, this week announced the launch of Payment Links: the simplest way for businesses to create a full payment page with just a few clicks, and share the link with their customers—no code required. Payment Links simplifies the process of building a payment page by allowing businesses to generate a custom checkout page directly from their Stripe Dashboard, without needing a website, app, or any coding skills.
Repay Holdings Corporation, a leading provider of vertically-integrated payment solutions, announced a partnership with Paysafe, a leading specialized payments platform, to enable REPAY merchants to accept cash payments at over 60,000 of Paysafe’s retail partner locations, including major convenience stores, dollar stores, and pharmacies across the United States. Leveraging Paysafe’s Paysafecash online cash, or eCash, solution, these cash transactions are recorded as real-time payments, adding even greater convenience to payers and expanding the capabilities of lenders and B2C companies to meet customer payment preferences.
Rev19 LLC, an integrated financial payment solution provider founded in 2017, has announced a rebrand of the company to Agile Financial Systems (AFS). The name change reflects AFS’ broader commitment to its agents, partners and customers to unify the company’s operations under a new focus and set of core values. AFS’ mission is to revolutionize the financial technology industry through robust cloud-based solutions. Their goal is to provide a variety of tools, technology and data that will allow businesses to efficiently manage their operations in today’s rapidly changing, technology-driven marketplace.
ACI Worldwide, a leading global provider of real-time digital payment software and solutions, announced a collaboration with J.P. Morgan, a global leader across banking, markets and securities services, that will enable merchants in certain European countries to deliver in-store payment acceptance capabilities to their customers. “We are keen to be in a position to support merchants as they navigate the post-lockdown era after a significantly challenging period of time,” said Basil Bailey, Head of Product for EMEA Merchant Services, J.P. Morgan. “ACI’s Omni-Commerce solution will play a key role helping us to do that.”
DLocal Limited (“dLocal”), a technology-first payments platform enabling global enterprise merchants to connect with billions of consumers in emerging markets, announced that it has launched its initial public offering of 29,411,765 Class A common shares pursuant to a registration statement on Form F-1 with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”). dLocal is offering 4,411,765 Class A common shares and the selling shareholders are offering 25,000,000 Class A common shares.
First American Payment Systems announced its partnership with ReadyFore Software to supply integrated POS solutions designed specifically for golf course owners and operators. This partnership allows golf course owners to securely deliver digital convenience to their members and guests while also simplifying business operations. “First American is a proven expert in the payments space. Their unified payment technology platform is an exceptional integration into the ReadyFore solution,” said Andrew Chambers, Founder of ReadyFore.
RS2, the global payments processing and technology provider, has announced that its German subsidiary RS2 Financial Services GmbH has been granted an E-Money Institution (EMI) license by the German regulator, the German Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFIN). Continuing with the implementation of its strategy, the e-money license will enable RS2 to provide a wide range of payment acceptance and other financial services to merchants and consumers across Europe, as well as to process cross-border merchant payments globally.
Agora Services, the challenger bank technology platform for community banks and credit unions, announced it has partnered with i2c Inc., a leading global provider of digital payment and open banking technology, to provide modern digital first issuing and processing. Challenger banks are encroaching on community banks and credit unions by providing a digitally native user experience that meets the needs of today’s consumers.
Paystand, the fastest growing, blockchain-enabled B2B payments platform, announced its partnership with Sage, the market leader in cloud business management solutions. The partnership enables a “Venmo for businesses” through Paystand’s B2B payment network, which is now integrated with the Sage Intacct cloud financial management system and is available via the Sage Intacct Marketplace.
Luminor Bank, the third largest financial services provider in the Baltics and Worldline, European leader in the payments and transactional services industry and #4 player worldwide have signed a five-year agreement under which Worldline will unify and upgrade Luminor’s current ATM network. Partnering with Worldline will allow Luminor to offer a more customer-friendly and newer ATM network for its customers.
