Stay ahead of payments with our latest video insights focusing on digital payments. Explore expertly curated content providing practical tips and best practices for safeguarding your digital payments and personal data in an increasingly interconnected world.
Incumbent banks have largely prevailed against digital entrants targeting the SME segment, and we understand why - the opportunity that’s arising here is…well let me explain ya! New initiatives are happening on a daily basis and Embedded Finance solutions are a major new competitive threat as well as a significant growth opportunity for any company that can embrace it in its strategy.
Among many other industries, the metaverse has sparked a desire among financial innovators to learn how FinTechs and banks can provide financial services in this entirely new world. The Metaverse is about to create new business models that could lead to the emergence of crypto as a large-scale alternative financial system.
If you’ve even moderately kept an eye on any payments related news source, there’s no way you have not been bombarded with the Buy Now Pay Later craze in 2021. Almost all the widely known payment players in the field who could partake in the BNPL craze… actually did. We are quite sure that you have heard about the likes of; Klarna, Affirm, and Afterpay, but industry Giants such as Mastercard, Paypal, Visa, Square, Monzo, Revolut, Amazon, and even Walmart, are all offering BNPL options at checkout or are partnering with BNPL companies to offer this service to their customers. Even mighty Apple is climbing aboard.
Apple’s push to secure a spot in the payments ecosystem is still going strong. Or at least that’s the plan — executing on it may be … well, not that simple. This is because Apple has been making moves to build a network of merchants, among the most critical components of the payment value chain … with functionalities that are already out there in the market.
As competition in the payments ecosystem is riling up between traditional and challenger banks, reshaping core systems and technologies of traditional banking is long overdue. When talking about future-proofing banks and financial services, the term Banking-as-a-service is starting to come up a lot. But what is banking as a service all about and how is it reshaping the industry?
Digitalization has swept through the entire FinTech industry, and that has only been accelerated in the midst of the ongoing pandemic. This has sparked a series of new fintech trends, which we have been observing throughout 2021. Most of which are based around AI, Blockchain, the cloud, and data.
2021 has been a year full of change, and as consumers continue to gravitate towards online shopping, businesses are also transforming to meet the demand for convenience and frictionless digital payments for businesses and consumers.
Historically speaking, Latin America has always been challenged economically and politically, which held the region back from technological advancement. But today, Latin America is the hottest FinTech market in the world, and in this article, we’ll tell you why.
With non-cash-transactions continuing to surge, the world's central banks are working fast to create digital versions of national currencies. In the latest news, Japan said it aims to launch a yen-based digital currency in 2022. This digital currency will be backed by bank deposits and use a common platform to speed up large-scale fund transfers and settlements among companies. So what is the digital currency hype all about and what implications does this have for the world of payments?
Something peculiar is unfolding between Amazon and Visa. It’s not unusual for merchants to drop schemes and networks, so the news that Amazon is considering shifting its US co-brand credit card from Visa to Mastercard, is not particularly alarming…. but adding that they banned the use of Visa cards in the UK, raised Visa credit charges in Australia, and that they are incentivizing their customers to use other payments methods, then one starts to wonder:
Open banking, once introduced as a revolution in banking by allowing for free movement of customer financial data, is currently one of the hottest topics in FinTech Advocates say it could democratize data and fuel a fintech revolution. But…. reality often fails to live up to its potential and the dream, as open banking has been received with an underwhelming adoption rate, non-cooperating banks, and unimpressed regulators.
Until not so long ago, cars were simply a means of getting from point A to point B. But the industry's biggest innovators are constantly developing its user experience & mobility as a whole. And thanks to this latest connected car solution, Daimler drivers will be able to pay for gas, parking, and numerous goods and services from the convenience of their dashboard - a big step in the right direction of innovative mobility.
For as long as we can remember, we have always been taught to not share our data and banking information with anyone, for good reasons of course. But a few years ago, this embedded belief was contradicted by the introduction of the Payments Service Directive 2 (or PSD2 for short). This article addresses the biggest concerns consumers have with regards to PSD2 regulations and the challenges this imposes for banks, FinTechs and their customer relationships.
After a cat and mouse game between N26 and the German BaFin it looks like they’re taking their penalizing of malpractice to a whole new level. While the German challenger seems to be enjoying the high waves of the funding race with rivals like Revolut and Monzo, the same cannot be said about its relationship with the regulators. If you are remotely connected to the payments world, you probably heard about the hefty fine they received over their failing anti money laundering strategy.
Enfuce, the Nordic payment service provider serving over 13 million end-users on its platform, recently made a huge announcement, marking a great leap forward in improving customer experience, navigating compliance requirements, and managing other critical issues pertaining to the payments industry. This article covers the Amazon Web Services Financial Services Competency and what it means for Enfuce’s ecosystem moving forward.
On October 4th, 2021, Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp disappeared from the Internet for 6 hours. A terrible day for Mark Zuckerburg for sure. But not just for him, when these apps, used by billions of people worldwide went out, businesses were cut off from customers . Not only did this outage reveal how much the world relies on the social media giant, but also the vulnerability of such giant techs. So, how did we get here and more interestingly, will facebook’s fintech ambitions sustain heavy damage?
We’re sure you have heard about the likes of; Afterpay, Klarna, Alma, Clearpay, and many more because they seem to be everywhere when you are shopping online, or browsing FinTech news. But payments powerhouse Mastercard has kicked off its fightback against the competing buy now, pay later providers, with the launch of “Installments”. This article addresses the biggest issue with Mastercard’s newest program and its role in the company’s open banking strategy
QR codes…. We’ve observed them being implemented in our day-to-day lives, yet not too long ago, these QR codes were mostly seen as a shortcut to access a webpage or a restaurant's menu. Now we’ve all heard of Asian countries where QR codes have been dominant in the payments landscape, but not until recently, western countries have started to leverage their widespread payment capabilities.
Money laundering is a wrecker for the global economy… The United Nations estimated that laundered money in one year makes up to 5% of global GDP. That's approximately $2 trillion laundered annually. In the Netherlands alone, it is estimated that an astonishing 16 billion euros are laundered every year. This money is connected to drug trade and human trafficking, which is a serious, complex social problem.
Amazon strikes once again…. Business Insider just revealed that they are developing a new point-of-sale system to attract small businesses - shortly after announcing the deal with Affirm to offer BNPL services-. In this article, we will tell you how this giant is taking on PayPal and moving towards the physical retail world.
Open banking rings a bell for anyone in the payments industry, yet tangible use cases and how this is going to benefit the payments industry or the consumer is not clear yet. With Mastercards acquisition of Aiia, we’ll explain to you exactly how Mastercards open banking strategy works and how disruptive its nature is.
Historically, geopolitical, currency-related risks, as well as the fragmented nature of the continent, have deterred non-African VCs from entering the region. Yet, after having lagged behind for many years, Africa might just become the next FinTech hub. This article covers the recent spur in Africa’s FinTech and which companies and sectors contributed to this growth.
The digital banking space across the world is flourishing with an astronomical number of transactions. It was estimated at a value of $12 Billion in 2020, and is projected to reach a size of $30 Billion by 2026, with an impressive growth rate of nearly 16%. To take advantage of this lucrative market, neobanks have been rushing to serve as many customers as possible. While they’ve been successful in establishing a large customer-base, many of these banks are failing to meet AML and KYC requirements.
We long wondered who would emerge as the winner in the brutal battle between the many neobanks that have popped up over the past decade. Although others have had quite a ride, including Chime with its new $25 billion valuation, Revolut is now clearly positioned at the front of the pack as It’s the UK’s most valuable private company.
2020 was a challenging year for most industries, and FinTech was no exception. Impressively enough, global investment in fintech bounced back strongly in the first half of this year, hitting an astronomical $98 billion with a record number of deals. So what are the largest fintech investments deals, and how did FinTech manage to bounce back so quickly?
It’s easy to still think of Square as just another payments company --- in reality, Square has been slowly edging towards bank-like features. A transition that will be accelerated by its new, whopping $29 billion acquisition of Afterpay. It is certainly worth noting that Square finally got conditional approval for a banking license.
Customer expectations of financial service providers continue to rise, and adding digital offerings is crucial for companies who want to remain competitive in the face of increased customer preference. In light of these changes, companies are increasingly utilizing the cloud as a way to accelerate their digital transformation for customers. Throughout this article, we take a closer look at what is ahead in terms of cloud in the fintech industry.
Technology has proven to be key in bringing financial services to a pool of new users. There still is, however, a gap in the accessibility of critical financial services to many people. Even with the seemingly unlimited access that mobile phones provide, there are still approximately 1.7 billion unbanked adults globally, with 40 million of those being in Europe. Are banks really doing enough to provide access to Finance? In this article, we explore how advanced they are in terms of providing financial services globally.
Financial institutions are on the frontline in the battle to combat financial crimes, such as fraud and money laundering. These criminal activities impose massive costs on the global economy. In fact, the United Nations estimated that laundered money in one year amounts to approximately 2- 5% of global GDP. In this article, we will bring you up to speed with the latest developments and trends within the Anti Money Laundering Area.
2020 was, without a doubt, the year of digitalization. It's the year where every entity, small or large, had to go digital or rethink their digital strategies. The European Commission is no exception, as they just unveiled plans for a bloc-wide digital wallet, following the demand from member states for a secure way to access public and private services online.
Not so long ago, cars have simply been a means of transport. But with the new innovations in connectivity tech, car manufacturers have grown to offer the ability to pay for gas, parking and food right from your car’s dashboard. Read this article for the latest developments in the world of in-car commerce.
American Express is joining a new frontier for the buy now pay later movement. Offering its card members the option to pay for flights in installments. Is this a well calculated investment or is American Express just joining the buy now pay later hype?
Since the start of the pandemic. eCommerce has been skyrocketing, which is great news! The not-so-good news is that eCommerce carbon footprint emissions are skyrocketing too. But what if you could offset the carbon footprint involved in purchasing a new pair of sunglasses?
Although open banking is still a new concept, Europe is seeing a positive growth trend in Third Party Providers. That being said, Europe is still falling behind the UK in terms of open banking adoption. This article covers Instant Card Pay, the latest open banking solution by GoCardless and the open banking field in Europe.
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Payments service provider Stripe, just announced rolling out its own Issuing service in 20 European countries. This comes just weeks after revealing its plans to expand to the Middle east. Is this another step in Stripe’s grand plan to boost its penetration rates across the world? And who are their local rivals?
In a country where mobile payments are dominated by some of the world’s largest Financial Services Companies, the last thing you would think of is the entrance of a relatively young challenger bank. But Revolut might prove us all wrong! This article covers Revolut's reported expansion to China.
Just 55 years ago, the UAE was a tiny fishing village before the discovery of oil which has helped to build this urban state. Fast Forward to this day, the UAE is known to be one of the urban miracles to the modern world and one of the top financial centers in the world. This articles takes the reader through the UAE's FinTech journey and covers Stripe's expansion to Dubai.
The pandemic has been a catalyst for digital transformation and acted as an “innovation accelerator” for the economy. Many people experienced placing an online order for the first time or having a job interview via video call, some even realized they can attend an entire event virtually. This article covers Europe’s journey towards a cashless society by looking at payment trends within the continent, the paradox of banknotes, and Germany's decrease in cash payments.
Online supermarket, Picnic is one of the first merchants to offer a one-click payment method in a pilot with Mastercard, Adyen, and Rabobank. Marek explains why this is a huge leap forward for checkout optimization. This article covers cart abandonment rates, network tokenization, online payments architecture in the Netherlands and more
The shift towards cashless payments has driven entire new customer segments to use and favor digital payments. In fact, nearly 50% of global shoppers expressed that they are using digital payments, more than ever before. Evidently, contactless cards are the top payment methods benefitting from this change. What we also witnessed is that in the US alone, e-commerce spending grew by 93% year-over-year in the month of May.
The number of US social commerce buyers accelerated 25.2% to 80.1 million in 2020 and will grow another 12.9% to 90.4 million in 2021. Brands are strategically utilizing Twitter as a platform to implement conversational commerce where customers can interact with their favorite brands.
Buy Now, Pay Later is one of the fastest-growing online payment methods in the Netherlands, the UK, the US, as well as France, Australia, Brazil and Japan. As demand for BNPL solutions continues to grow, Afterpay and Stripe partnered with the goal to expand the reach of installment payments even further.
Mastercard in partnership with IslandPay just launched the world's first central bank-issued digital currency card. Is this another step towards making digital currencies mainstream? In this article we break down this exciting news and explain how this digital currency-linked card works. And as always, we'll also share our thoughts on how this could impact the blockchain market.
Buy now, pay later pioneer Klarna is launching its own banking accounts in Germany. Klarna was already a bank as the holder of a Swedish banking license, but without fully playing the "Bank" role in Europe. This is a remarkable step and certainly a big challenge for challenger banks!
Cryptocurrency has been a hot topic in a number of recent news reports insert popups of news reports, and we’re seeing an increasing number of issuers and banks making efforts in expanding digital currency roadmaps. This article covers Visa’s crypto API pilot and the possible effects of this initiative.
Mastercard has been under heat after it was announced that they will sharply increase interchange fees post-Brexit, revealing the power of credit card duopoly. Let's look at what caused this increase and how it could affect both merchants and buyers.
One-click checkout platform, Fast closes $102 M investment led by Stripe. In today’s episode of all about payment we cover cart abandonment issues and the advantages of one-click checkout, and what your focus should be as owner of an eCommerce site!