Friday March 13, 2020 –
Here are the new and noteworthy stories we have been following this week.
Visa teams up with Nigeria’s Paga
Paga, Nigeria-based payments startup is partnering with Visa to expand mobile payments for consumers and merchants in the markets in which it operates; a significant aspect of this collaboration will see Paga join Visa’s Fintech Fast-Track Program and provide Paga customers access to Visa credentials allowing them to transact globally at Visa acceptance points.
https://www.finextra.com/pressarticle/81748/visa-teams-up-with-nigerias-paga
Alipay opens platform to become one-stop gateway for 40 million service providers across China
Credit Sesame launches a digital banking service focused on improving credit scores
Credit Sesame is launching a digital banking service, ‘Sesame Cash’ that will provide many features found in other digital banking apps like no service fees, early access to pay, and a debit card with free ATM access; however, in keeping with its focus on financial health, Sesame Cash will leverage insights on users finances to offer personalized product recommendations from its financial institution partners.
SpotOn Raises $50M To Help SMBs Operate More Efficiently
SpotOn, a payments and software startup focused on small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), has raised $50 million in Series B funding led by 01 Advisors; in addition to payments processing, SpotOn provides SMB’s tools that include custom website development, scheduling software, marketing, appointment scheduling, review management, analytics and digital loyalty.
https://news.crunchbase.com/news/spoton-raises-50m-to-help-smbs-operate-more-efficiently/
Behind Sequoia’s stumble
Sequoia walked away from a $21 million investment that it had made in Finix in February after realizing a conflict with Stripe, one of its portfolio companies; the problem apparently stemmed from market perception that Finix and Stripe are competitors vs. any weakness in Sequoia’s due diligence process.
https://www.axios.com/sequioa-capital-finix-d4307f3e-7280-4141-a09b-59abe1fc82f7.html
BBVA moves to get more out of fintech partnerships
BBVA’s Open Innovation unit is moving to a more practical and results-oriented approach and using guidance from the bank as it sources new fintech partnerships; specifically, the bank’s Open Talent competition for startups will establish challenges that it wants to address with fintech companies based on business needs vs. seeking out “interesting fintechs.”
https://www.finextra.com/newsarticle/35442/bbva-moves-to-get-more-out-of-fintech-partnerships
We’ve launched “Banking as a Service”
Standard Chartered has launched its “Banking as a Service” solution, ‘nexus’ to enable digital platforms and ecosystems like e-commerce, social media or ride hailing companies to offer loans, credit cards and savings accounts co-created with the bank to their customers under their own brand name; nexus is starting off with a major e-commerce platform in Indonesia as its first partner.
https://www.sc.com/en/media/press-release/weve-launched-banking-as-a-service/
Wirecard to embed Klarna products into merchant checkouts
Wirecard and Klarna have announced the launch of a new enhanced joint payment solution where Klarna’s payment solutions will be embedded into merchants’ checkout via a single integration through the Wirecard digital financial commerce platform; this will allow merchants to offer consumers the full range of Klarna payment methods in nine European countries followed by the US and Australia later this year.
Nets acquires Polskie ePłatności, a leading Polish payment provider
Nets has announced the acquisition of Polskie ePłatności (PeP), one of Poland’s major payments processing company for an enterprise value of €405 million; PeP specializes in processing card and non-cash payments for in-store and e-commerce merchants and has an installed base of more than 125,000 POS terminals and expects net revenues of around €55 million in 2020.
