In this interview, TSG sat down with UNION POS founder, Alex Broeker, to learn more about his quickly growing connected POS and mobile payment solution start-up. continue reading
Excerpt: Being a point-of-sale company focused on the restaurant/bar space what challenges have you faced during the pandemic? And how has your company adjusted/changed to better serve the businesses who may be struggling?
Alex:It’s been a challenge watching the devastation for sure. We saw transaction volumes drop 92% overnight in our base. Thankfully, since we serve very high-volume locations that were very well run, we’ve seen less than a 2% failure rate in our customers. They just battened down and are now opening again. 87% of our customers are now open. It did create an amazing opportunity for us at UNION/TabbedOut to accelerate all aspects of our integrated platform through connected consumers. 10 years of consumer technology adoption just happened in 6 months. Consumers expect to order and pay from a phone. Hand them a QR code and everyone knows what to do, freeing staff to truly deliver experience.
An Acquiring Merchant Portfolio, like the surface of the sea, may seem calm and steady at times, but there are many forces and undercurrents at play beneath the surface. For example, revenue rates may increase, decrease or maintain year-over-year, just like the ebbs and flows of open water, but what is driving these changes?
Even when revenue rates are flat year-over-year (YOY), there are still churning undercurrents that, without a deeper dive, are not superficially apparent. The AIM team at TSG has developed the Merchant Portfolio Flywheel concept to illustrate the mechanics and movement influencing changes in portfolio profitability.
Continue reading to learn about the three phases of the merchant lifecycle (New, Retained, and Attrited) as well as unique strategies that should be considered for each phase.
Mastercard is bringing bitcoin to the checkout counter. The company announced late Wednesday that it will support "select cryptocurrencies" directly on its network at some point later this year. "Our philosophy on cryptocurrencies is straightforward: It's about choice," Raj Dhamodharan, an executive vice president at Mastercard, wrote in a post late Wednesday. "Mastercard isn't here to recommend you start using cryptocurrencies. But we are here to enable customers, merchants and businesses to move digital value — traditional or crypto — however they want."
Top management at FIS Inc. made it plain Tuesday morning that growth through further acquisitions is a key priority only about 18 months after the company completed its massive buyout of the merchant processor Worldpay. But while the Jacksonville, Fla.-based company still keeps its powder dry for M&A, executives on an early-morning earnings call also focused on new products and services in the pipeline following a flat quarter for organic growth. “M&A is going to continue to be an important pillar in our strategy,” said Gary Norcross, FIS’s chief executive. “We don’t have to do M&A in order to grow, but if we can accelerate our growth, absolutely we will do another M&A transaction.”
“We are pleased to have ended 2020 with continued sequential improvement in the fourth quarter, highlighting the consistency of our execution since the beginning of the pandemic," said Jeff Sloan, Chief Executive Officer. "We also continue to make significant progress delivering against our strategic objectives, culminating in the announcement today of our new partnership with Google to substantially expand the opportunity set for our merchant solutions business. None of this would have been possible without the dedication of our exceptional team members during this challenging period, and we thank them for their commitment to our customers and communities.
“Fiserv delivered terrific financial and operational results in 2020 despite the unprecedented market conditions, demonstrating the strength and resilience of our business,” said Frank Bisignano, President and Chief Executive Officer of Fiserv. “I am incredibly proud of our associates for their unwavering focus on delivering the mission-critical products that help our clients succeed. That focus has enabled us to deliver our 35th consecutive year of double-digit adjusted earnings per share growth.”
Dutch online payments firm Adyen saw its shares surge over 10% Wednesday to hit a record high after posting annual profits that beat expectations. Adyen said its full-year 2020 earnings came in at 402.5 million euros ($488.2 million), up 27% from a year earlier and beating the 386 million euros expected by analysts, according to Reuters. The firm posted net revenues of 684.2 million euros last year, up 28% versus 2019, as it benefited from a boost in e-commerce volumes during the coronavirus pandemic. Shares of Adyen hit an all-time high of 2,123 euros Wednesday following the release of its 2020 numbers.
Point-of-sale financing has proven so appealing to younger buyers that upscale brands including Peloton, Mirror and West Elm now subsidize interest-free installment loans through Affirm. Retailer payments made up half of Affirm’s $596 million in revenue in the 12 months ended September 30. The company has yet to book a profit, losing $97 million over those 12 months. For now, however, investors are buying growth, and buy now, pay later will become the fastest-growing e-commerce payment method on the planet by 2025, predicts Worldpay. Affirm and its competitors, Sweden’s Klarna and Australia’s Afterpay, financed more than $10 billion in U.S. transactions in 2020, up from roughly $100 million five years ago.
Shopify announced this morning it’s partnered with Facebook to expand its payment option, Shop Pay, to all Shopify merchants selling across both Facebook and Instagram. This is the first time Shop Pay will be made available outside of Shopify’s own platform, and represents a significant expansion for the e-commerce platform’s payments technology. The company tells TechCrunch Shop Pay will first become available to all Shopify merchants using checkout on Instagram in the U.S., and will then be rolled out to Facebook in the weeks that follow.
Payments and shopping platform Klarna, known for its buy now, pay later (BNPL) option, is now offering consumer bank accounts in Germany as it moves closer to becoming an all-in-one app for its users. “Our focus is to provide a superior shopping experience to our consumers at the intersection of retail and banking,” Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski said in a Wednesday (Feb. 10) blog post. “And we know that there’s still massive room for improvement to the way many people bank and save their money today.” By rolling shopping and banking into a single app-based platform, the company said, Klarna shoppers can bank the way they shop.
Twitter and Square CEO Jack Dorsey and rapper Jay Z have created an endowment to fund bitcoin development initially in Africa and India, Dorsey said Friday. The duo is putting 500 bitcoin, which is currently worth $23.6 million, in the endowment called ₿trust. The fund will be set up as a blind irrevocable trust, Dorsey said, adding that the duo won’t be giving any direction to the team. ₿trust is looking to hire three board members. The mission of the fund is to “make bitcoin the internet’s currency,” a job application describes.
Chinese consumers made an average of three mobile payments a day during 2020, while 98% of the Chinese population consider mobile payments to be their most frequently used transaction method, an increase of five percentage points on last year, a new survey reveals. The number of consumers making mobile payments using a QR code also rose to 85%, up six percentage points on 2019. The research, published jointly by payments giant China UnionPay and 17 other Chinese payment and banking services, also shows that 98% of survey participants consider mobile payments to be safe and that “people born after 1995 are the major force frequently using mobile payments”.
Wall Street's acceptance of data breaches and investor "fatigue" has numbed the reaction of traders following a cybersecurity incident, new research suggests. Over the past decade, the rush to harness data to improve business operations, management, and customer relationships did not occur in tandem with improving cybersecurity hygiene in order to protect this data -- and organizations are still courting huge risks to their share prices to this day as a result. According to IBM's latest Cost of a Data Breach report, the enterprise sector can expect an average bill of $3.86 million -- but in the case of large security incidents involving consumer records, this may rise to up to $392 million -- to remedy a breach.
Tillit, a fintech startup that is building something akin to buy now, pay later for B2B purchases, looks set to become Sequoia’s next European investment, TechCrunch has learned. According to multiple sources, the Silicon Valley VC — which recently expanded to Europe with an office in London — is backing a €2.5 million round in the Oslo, Norway-based company, alongside seed investors LocalGlobe and Visionaries Club. Sequoia and LocalGlobe declined to comment.
PayPal could be to central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) what private banks are to physical dollars. The company’s CEO, Dan Schulman, laid out a vision during its investor day on Thursday for PayPal’s digital wallets being the means by which central banks distributed CBDCs to consumers across income levels. “You think about how many [digital wallets] we’re going to have in the next two, three or five years, and we’re a perfect complement to central banks and governments to distribute those digitized forms of currency,” Schulman said.
Japanese credit card scheme JCB is collaborating with Singapore's Keychain to develop a a secure infrastructure for processing credit-based micropayments between IoT devices. The innovation seeks to enable direct human-to-machine and machine-to-machine payments at scale without the confines of credit cards. The go-to-market plan consists of enhancing the technology, practical real-world pilots, production infrastructure build out during 2021, and go-live in 2022.
U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on Wednesday warned about an “explosion of risk” from digital markets, including the misuse of cryptocurrencies, but said new financial technologies could also help fight crime and reduce inequality. In remarks to a financial sector innovation roundtable, Yellen said such technologies could be used to stem the flow of dark money from organized crime and fight back against hackers, but also to reduce digital gaps in the United States.
Wall Street's acceptance of data breaches and investor "fatigue" has numbed the reaction of traders following a cybersecurity incident, new research suggests. Over the past decade, the rush to harness data to improve business operations, management, and customer relationships did not occur in tandem with improving cybersecurity hygiene in order to protect this data -- and organizations are still courting huge risks to their share prices to this day as a result. According to IBM's latest Cost of a Data Breach report, the enterprise sector can expect an average bill of $3.86 million -- but in the case of large security incidents involving consumer records, this may rise to up to $392 million -- to remedy a breach.
Arkose Labs, provider of online fraud and abuse prevention technology, released new data on the latest fraud trends that reveal a massive spike in fraud across all industries from Black Friday onwards. As consumers continue to flock online in droves greater than ever before, credential stuffing, account takeover (ATO) attacks and gift card fraud are poised to be top attack vectors in 2021. “2021 remains full of unknowns, however what’s certain is the frequency and severity of fraud will never return to pre-pandemic levels,” said Vanita Pandey, VP of Marketing and Strategy at Arkose Labs.
T-Mobile is being sued by a customer as a result of a SIM attack that resulted in over losses of over $450,000 in cryptocurrency. The plaintiff, Calvin Cheng, lost 15 bitcoin after an interaction with Brandon Buchanan, T-Mobile customer and co-founder of investment fund Iterative Capital, who had been victim of a SIM-swapping attack. The plaintiff's attorneys claim that T-Mobile's "systemic and repeated failures" to protect customers' sensitive information despite increasingly frequent SIM attacks is to blame.
As some prominent economists fret that the government might overdo its pandemic response and prompt prices to shoot higher, the nation’s top inflation fighter has a counter-message: Policymakers should stay focused on restoring full employment. “Given the number of people who have lost their jobs and the likelihood that some will struggle to find work in the post-pandemic economy, achieving and sustaining maximum employment will require more than supportive monetary policy,” Jerome H. Powell, the chair of the Federal Reserve, said in speech to the Economic Club of New York on Wednesday. “It will require a society-wide commitment.”
The labor market is offering signs the economy is starting to mend from a steep winter slowdown. Worker filings for unemployment benefits—while still high—decreased to 793,000 last week, well below an early January peak that exceeded 900,000. Employers resumed hiring in January after payrolls fell at the end of 2020, and job openings picked up, driven by growth in industries that have weathered the pandemic relatively well.
Wells Fargo is opting to keep its private-label credit card unit after reaching out to potential buyers last year, according to a person with knowledge of the matter. The unit strikes agreements with retailers so that shoppers can buy merchandise such as jewelry, appliances and furniture on credit. Even after San Francisco-based Wells Fargo had started to reach out to possible bidders, the lender hadn’t made a final decision on a sale, people familiar with the talks said in November.
The OLB Group, Inc., a provider of cloud-based omnicommerce and payment acceptance solutions for small and mid-size merchants, announced it has upgraded its SecurePay payment gateway system to support Cryptocurrencies including Bitcoin, Ethereum, USDC and DAI across all merchant platforms. Merchants utilizing the OLB SecurePay gateway service or the OmniSoft cloud-based business management platform will immediately have the option to accept these alternative contactless payment methods without any equipment changes.
BHMI, a leading provider of enterprise software applications and creator of the Concourse Financial Software Suite®, announced company co-founder and President, Dr. Lynne Baldwin, was named the winner of the Women in Payments 2021 "Distinguished Payments Professional" award. This annual awards program celebrates women making significant impacts in the global payments ecosystem, honoring their achievements, and recognizing those who have distinguished themselves as industry leaders and innovators.
Repay Holdings Corporation announced a technology integration with PN3 Solutions, a paperless B2B accounts payable (AP) authorization and automation software provider. Through the partnership, PN3’s business customers will gain the ability to automate outbound payments through the use of virtual card or ACH to their vendors – adding seamless, fully integrated payments capabilities to its procurement and AP workstreams.
F1 Payments, a fintech company focused on increasing business velocity for all constituents in the payments industry ecosystem, announced it has added three new independent members to its Board of Directors (the “Board”) following the strategic investment from York Capital. Payments and fintech veterans Ramón Martín, O.B. Rawls and Andy Sessions join the Board, effective immediately. "We are pleased to welcome Ramón, O.B. and Andy as directors to the F1 Payments' Board," said Sunil Kappagoda, chairman of the Board.
Adyen, the global payments platform of choice for many of the world’s leading companies, announced that DICK’S Sporting Goods, the largest U.S.-based, omni-channel sporting goods retailer, has selected Adyen as its primary payments provider for its U.S. transaction volume. Adyen will unify DICK’S payments infrastructure -- creating an enhanced customer experience across all channels and providing DICK’S with a best-in-class technology solution for online, in-store, and in-app purchases.
Togetherwork, the leader in integrated software and payments for managing communities, groups and organizations, announced the acquisition of Fonteva, the leading association and events management platform built on Salesforce. Fonteva serves over 350 client organizations with a full suite of Membership, Events, eCommerce, and online Community applications built on Salesforce. Fonteva empowers its customers to achieve their mission with applications designed to improve the member experience, drive revenue growth, and increase operational efficiency.
Ekata, a digital identity verification data provider, recapped a successful 2020, despite the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic. The company significantly grew its global customer base and revenues, gained momentum in the financial services and payments sector, expanded its product portfolio. It also drove significant growth in Europe and Asia-Pacific through its global offices and data infrastructure, according to a press release.
VizyPay, an award-winning leader in credit card processing, announced the appointment of Dang Saengchanpheng as the Director of Fintech Development and Data Analytics. Saengchanpheng is the first to hold this position at the company, and will manage the implementation of strategic technology advancements based on strategic, data driven insights. “We developed this position to help drive our business forward as innovation in the industry continues to accelerate,” said Austin Mac Nab, CEO and co-founder of VizyPay.
Worldline, the European leader in the payments and transactional services industry and number 4 worldwide, announced it has developed and launched a chatbot for Mexico’s eco-friendly theme park Grupo Xcaret, powering conversational commerce. The chatbot is now live, allowing visitors to chat, research and pay through the messaging bot, while reducing re-directs to mobile websites, which cause significant friction and empty shopping carts.
Atlantic-Pacific Processing Systems NV, Corp. (APPS), a leading fintech and financial services solutions provider, is pleased to announce enhancements to APPSos, pronounced “APP Sauce,” its proprietary SaaS-based acquiring customer relationship management (CRM) and clearing and settlement platform. Besides new white labeling capabilities to help enhance their businesses and brands, APPSos now provides acquirers, independent sales organizations, independent software vendors, payment facilitators and merchants with greater access to raw front and back-end processing data so they can perform detailed analysis of clearing and settlement information for better interchange optimization.
POSaBIT Systems Corporation, a leading financial technology company with an industry-leading cannabis point of sale system and unique payment processing solutions for cash-only businesses with a focus on those within the cannabis industry, has launched a dynamic, multifaceted ACH payment platform. The POSaBIT ACH payment platform is designed to fit seamlessly into any and all aspects of the cannabis dispensary ecosystem, allowing for in-store, curbside, and delivery payments.
