Mastercard Inc and Visa Inc on Tuesday postponed plans to raise the fees U.S. merchants pay when customers use cards online until April next year, as businesses continue to struggle during the COVID-19 pandemic. “Mindful that some merchants are still facing unprecedented circumstances...we are delaying our previously announced interchange adjustments in the U.S. until April 2022,” Mastercard said. Interchange fee is the charge a merchant pays to the card-issuing bank every time a consumer swipes their card.
The payments industry is no stranger to disruption, which is why it was so well equipped to handle the economic and health crises of 2020. Each payment company had a role to play — whether it was reaching underserved audiences, distributing stimulus payments or increasing digital access to accounts — and none of these tasks would have succeeded without strong leadership. This year's Most Influential Women in Payments honorees demonstrate how a diverse background and a unique perspective can prove crucial in difficult times. Their leadership philosophies will also come into play as the payments industry moves into a hybrid workforce and advances on cultural issues worldwide.
Move over, SpaceX and Instacart: Payments processing company Stripe is now the most valuable startup in America. Stripe announced Sunday a new $600 million round of funding at a valuation of $95 billion, nearly tripling its last valuation of $36 billion. The new funding vaults Stripe ahead of Instacart, which recently raised new financing at a valuation of $39 billion, as well as Elon Musk's SpaceX, which is now valued at $74 billion. Stripe has gotten a boost thanks to the pandemic-fueled surge in demand for online and mobile commerce.
Today, many software companies and online marketplaces have taken on the role of payment facilitators. Payment Facilitation, or PayFac, challenges the balance of power in the merchant services space. Becoming a PayFac is a process that can be demanding at times.
To help better understand Payment Facilitation, 9 fintech experts (including TSG's John Jakobe) share their thoughts about the most common mistake every new payment facilitator should avoid. Their insights may be helpful as your own business may be considering embedding payments, monetizing payments, or moving toward becoming a Payment Facilitator.
Using credit cards stimulates the brain’s reward system and an urge for further spending, according to a recent study from MIT that examined the neuroscience of buying things. Credit card shopping tells us to “step on the gas” and leads to more “purchase cravings” in the future, Drazen Prelec, study author and professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management, said in a release. Previous research has shown that people tend to spend more when paying with a credit card versus cash. For this new study, researchers used MRI machines to see what’s happening in the brain when people are prompted to buy an item with cash or a credit card.
With 21 states having legalized sports betting in one form or another, major payments processors sense a growing opportunity. The latest development comes from Virginia, where Nuvei Corp. said Wednesday a subsidiary has been granted a sports-betting vendor registration by the Virginia Lottery. “The company can now offer its innovative payment technology and industry expertise to provide an optimized payment experience and increased revenue opportunities for licensed gaming operators across the state,” Nuvei said in a press release. Virginia represents the fifth state where Montreal-based Nuvei has won approval to process sports bets, following Colorado, Indiana, Tennessee and West Virginia.
PayPal Holdings Inc. said there’s been no slowdown in online shopping even as cities around the world begin to reopen. “Even as people get vaccines and start to go out, their business will forever be changed,” Chief Executive Officer Dan Schulman said in an interview with Bloomberg News reporters and editors Monday. “I don’t think there’s any going back to what was.” The technology giant is on track to process at least $1 trillion a year in payments, Schulman said. That compares with $936 billion for all of 2020.
Bank of America Corp. is confident in its growth prospects even as competition intensifies from fintechs including Walmart Inc.’s startup. “I respect every competitor, I don’t fear any competitor,” Bank of America Chief Executive Officer Brian Moynihan said in an interview Monday on Bloomberg Television. “We study all competitor moves, whether it’s the fintech disruptors or major players.” Walmart lured a pair of senior bankers last month from Goldman Sachs Group Inc. to run its fledgling financial-technology operation.
Morgan Stanley is the first big U.S. bank to offer its wealth management clients access to bitcoin funds, CNBC has learned exclusively. The investment bank, a giant in wealth management with $4 trillion in client assets, told its financial advisors Wednesday in an internal memo that it is launching access to three funds that enable ownership of bitcoin, according to people with direct knowledge of the matter. The move, a significant step for the acceptance of bitcoin as an asset class, was made by Morgan Stanley after clients demanded exposure to the cryptocurrency.
Square, Inc. released a new report highlighting the impact of COVID-19 on global commerce and payments behavior. One year after the onset of the pandemic, the steady increase in cashless adoption rates and online and contactless payments demonstrates a renewed preference toward digitization among business owners and consumers. This is the fourth installment of Square’s Making Change series, which examines whether or not we’re headed toward a cashless society.
It is nearly impossible for businesses in some African countries to receive money from PayPal. While the payments giant has not given reasons why this is so, speculation hints at factors like insufficient regulation and poor banking security in said countries. That might be a thing of the past for some businesses, as African payments company Flutterwave today is announcing a collaboration with PayPal to allow PayPal customers globally to pay African merchants through its “Pay with PayPal” feature.
Online crime has surged during the pandemic, with more than $4.2 billion in losses reported by victims to U.S. authorities in 2020. So says the FBI in its latest annual Internet Crime Report, noting that its Internet Crime Complaint Center, or IC3, received nearly 792,000 victim reports of suspected internet-facilitated crime last year. That record-setting number was a 69% increase from the 300,000 complaints it logged in 2019. "The top three crimes reported by victims in 2020 were phishing scams, non-payment or non-delivery scams and extortion," the FBI says.
A database which contains highly sensitive information on more than 24,000 WeLeakInfo customers in a ZIP archive was discovered online. As reported by CyberNews, the forum user is now selling highly sensitive information of former WeLeakInfo customers that made their illicit purchases using Stripe. The data available for sale includes their full names, IP addresses, addresses, partial credit card data, transaction dates, Stripe reference numbers and phone numbers for around $2 in virtual forum currency.
Facing accusations of illegally using client accounts to move money to its U.K. headquarters from a Brazilian bank, Wise (formerly Transferwise) vehemently denied those actions and said it is the target of a smear campaign. MS Bank, a former local partner of Wise, claims that London-based Wise used the names and data of more than 600,000 customers to send money abroad irregularly and without paying taxes. The bank is alleging fraud of about £12 million (U.S. $16.7 million).
If you sell Web-based software for a living and ship code that references an unregistered domain name, you are asking for trouble. But when the same mistake is made by a Fortune 500 company, the results can range from costly to disastrous. Here’s the story of one such goof committed by Fiserv, a $15 billion firm that provides online banking software and other technology solutions to thousands of financial institutions.
The COVID-19 pandemic boosted U.S. online shopping by $183 billion, according to a new report by Adobe’s e-commerce division, released this morning. This figure represents the increase in online shopping during the months of March 2020, when the pandemic began in the U.S, through February 2021. During this time, U.S. consumers spent a total of $844 billion online. Meanwhile, $813 billion was spent during the calendar year 2020 alone, up 42% over 2019. To put this $183 billion in perspective, Adobe notes it’s nearly the size of the last holiday shopping season, when $188.2 billion was spent online during the months of November and December 2020.
The global economy is set to grow by 4.7% this year thanks to a stronger-than-expected recovery in the United States, a report by the U.N. Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) said on Thursday, revising up its previous forecast of 4.3%. The upwards revision from its previous forecast made last September factors in an expected boost in U.S. consumer spending on the back of progress distributing COVID-19 vaccines and a vast stimulus package, the report said.
A year after the pandemic shut down the US economy, America's workers are still hurting. For the past 12 months, first-time claims for jobless benefits have been higher than during the worst moments of the Great Recession. Economists, politicians and workers alike are hoping that the continued vaccine rollout and warmer weather that allows more outdoor social activities will help the economy heal at a faster pace in the coming months. But, for now, improvements are still a bit harder to come by. Last week, 770,000 Americans filed initial claims for unemployment benefits on a seasonally adjusted basis, the Department of Labor reported Thursday.
Swedish payments firm Trustly on Tuesday reported a 42% growth in revenue in 2020, helped by a surge in digital transactions during the pandemic. The company is planning a second-quarter flotation that could value it at up to 9 billion euros ($11 billion), people close to the matter had earlier told Reuters. Net revenue for the year rose https://news.cision.com/trustly/r/trustly-reports-continued-strong-growth-and-record-profits-in-2020,c3306723 to 1.97 billion Swedish crowns ($231.85 million) while processed transaction volumes rose 43% to 190.1 billion.
Kabbage, an American Express Company, released its new Small Business Recovery Report, a recurring study tracking U.S. small business growth through 2022. Polling more than 550 small business leaders, the data provides insights into how American businesses are recovering and adapting today. The survey tracks key business performance metrics, including headcount, total revenue, profit, online strategies, as well as future outlooks, across all-sized small businesses. The survey covers the smallest businesses with fewer than 20 employees (55% of respondents), medium-sized small businesses with 21 to 100 employees (27%) and the largest small businesses with 101 to 500 employees (18%). The results show how the path to recovery differs by size of business.
Global Payments Inc., a leading worldwide provider of payment technology and software solutions, announced that TSYS, its Issuer Solutions business, has signed a multi-year agreement with UMB Bank, a subsidiary of UMB Financial Corporation. Under the agreement, TSYS will provide a range of processing and support services for UMB Bank’s consumer and commercial credit, debit and healthcare card portfolios. “We selected TSYS because of their commitment to technology and continued investment in innovation,” said Uma Wilson, Executive Vice President and Director of Product Management at UMB.
Paysafe, a leading specialized payments platform, which recently announced it would become a public company via a merger with special purpose acquisition company, Foley Trasimene Acquisition Corp. II, announced its Board of Directors, effective at the closing of the business combination transaction. The post-merger Company Board, led by Chairman Bill Foley, is comprised of eleven (11) directors, bringing decades of industry experience across payments, banking, technology, gaming, entertainment, legal & regulatory affairs, capital markets and M&A.
UnionPay International (UPI) announced that with significant progress in Latin America, UnionPay acceptance network has now extended to 180 countries and regions, over half of which accept UnionPay mobile payments. As many as 55 million merchants worldwide take UnionPay cards. According to a report released by RBR , UnionPay is among the most widely accepted card brands in the world. With its vast network, UPI is striving to serve more overseas residents, facilitate China's exchange with other countries, and boost the internal and external circulations.
"The momentum that we built in the third quarter continued through the fourth quarter and while these successes would have been meaningful in any year, I am especially proud of our team given the challenges presented by the pandemic," said Tom Priore, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Priority. "We produced growth in revenue, gross profit and adjusted EBITDA and with our Finxera acquisition, we will be a one stop-shop for payments and virtual bank account management that today's merchants and modern software companies are seeking in order to manage and monetize their payment networks."
Wells Fargo has hired JP Morgan Chase's Reetika Grewal as its head of digital for commercial banking and corporate and investment banking. Joining in April and based in San Francisco, Grewal will be responsible for accelerating the development and implementation of digital capabilities that help simplify the way that the bank interacts with commercial and corporate clients. Grewal joins after a stint as head of digital for JP Morgan Chase's commercial bank. Previously she worked at Silicon Valley Bank as the global head of payment strategy and solutions.
Worldline and PSA Payment Services Austria GmbH (PSA) are extending their collaboration, working together at the heart of Austria’s payment system. Worldline will act as the technical clearing and settlement partner for domestic and international interbank payments. Austria will then become the next country besides The Netherlands, Italy, Hungary and the islands Aruba and Curacao, to rely in whole or in part on Worldline’s clearing and settlement platform. Through this cooperation, PSA and Worldline are laying the groundwork for a new real-time payment platform for instant, secure and device-independent payments across Austria.
Nexus, a leader in AP automation and payments for the real estate industry, has pioneered a new payments solution in partnership with WePay, the integrated payments business of JPMorgan Chase & Co., to allow SMBs to accept payment through a virtual card to simplify their payment process and improve working capital. The newly developed payments solution, called NexusDirect powered by Chase, allows sole proprietors and small business suppliers - such as those in lawn care, pest management, marketing services, facility management, and others - to get payments directly into their bank accounts using a single-use virtual card.
IRIS CRM announced two enhancements to its TSYS integration for Retail independent sales organizations (ISOs) this week. With Accelerated Deposit Reporting and PDF Statements, IRIS CRM provides more value than ever for TSYS Retail ISOs. IRIS CRM’s new Accelerated Deposit Reporting enhancement ensures that TSYS Retail ISOs are able to access the most recent deposit information on their IRIS CRM site. Powered by a new reporting dataset, TSYS Retail ISOs gain next-day deposit reporting which allows teams to reconcile accounts and accurately support merchants with up-to-date deposit information.
CardFlight, the leading SaaS payment technology company, today released the CardFlight Small Business Report, analyzing how small businesses have adapted after one full year of the COVID-19 pandemic. The data offers insights into changes in consumer behavior as they embraced low- and no-touch forms of payments at the over 70,000 small businesses in all 50 states using CardFlight’s SwipeSimple software to accept credit and debit card payments.
Splitit, a global payment technology company, announces continued global expansion as the company demonstrates a strong start to 2021. With new progression into key verticals and a new global partnership with a leading financial services institution, Splitit maintains its strong position as the only buy now pay later solution that enables shoppers to pay in instalments directly on their credit card. “With nearly $3 trillion of available credit on US credit cards, the death of the credit card has been greatly exaggerated,” said Brad Paterson, CEO of Splitit.
Flywire Corporation (Flywire), a global payments enablement and software company, launched Flywire eStore, an online platform that provides a seamless, secure e-commerce experience for clients and their customers. With Flywire eStore, organizations - such as higher ed institutions - can offer a marketplace of stores where end customers can securely purchase goods and services, as well as register for events. “Our clients are increasingly looking to consolidate their systems and vendors in order to achieve greater operational efficiencies,” said David King, Flywire CTO.
