We start the week with a global payments industry news roundup and look at what’s new, what’s disruptive and what’s just around the corner in fintech, mobile payments and new payments technologies. Currencycloud raised $25 million in new funding, including Google Ventures funds, to expand its global cross-border payments business in US and Asia. Euronet and Infinitium Holdings launched a partnership to provide digital payments services in the booming Indian market.
Aviation Week predicted an $817 billion market in digital travel sales globally by 2020 and said airlines must move quickly to capitalize on opportunities in digital travel business and payment services. Analysts expect Alibaba’s profits and margins to soften due to investment in global expansion in the payment services industry. With more than $600 billion in trade between the US and China, blockchain technology is expected to play an important role in facilitating faster, more secure cross-border payments. Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) will test blockchain technology on settlement in bond trading to make payments faster, more transparent and secure.
Pay with a ring on your finger? Startup Kerv is now selling an NFC-enabled contactless payment ring that uses MasterCard M/Chip technology compatible with millions of payment terminals around the world. Samsung Pay e-wallets and payment services will soon be available on budget-priced smartphones around the world. Capital One launched Eno, its gender-neutral financial chatbot service.
Veem, a company that makes global payments easy for small businesses, closed a $24 million Series B funding from a group of investors including Google Ventures. New fintech dLocal hopes to help merchants anywhere collect payments in the developing world including Latin America, China, India and Turkey.
Currencycloud raises £20 million ($25M) from Google’s GV to expand in US and Asia
LONDON — Currencycloud, a fintech company that helps businesses make cross border payments, has raised £20 million ($25 million) from Google’s venture capital arm, GV.
GV led the “Series D” round of funding — the fourth injection of money from institutional investors — but Currencycloud also attracted money from existing investors, including Sapphire Ventures, Notion Capital, Japanese e-commerce giant Rakuten’s fintech fund, and Anthemis.
Currencycloud offers firms a simple piece of software that lets businesses send money internationally in a simpler and cheaper way than banks do. Over 200 companies use Currencycloud’s technology and more than $25 billion has been sent across its network. It works with leading UK fintech businesses such as mobile remittance business Azimo, crowdfunding platform Seedrs, and foreign exchange card Revolut. Via businessinsider.com
Euronet partners Infinitium to promote digital payments in India
Euronet Services, a global provider of electronic Euronet and transaction processing solutions, and Infinitium Holdings, an online electronic payments and authentication solutions provider in Asia, today jointly announced their strategic partnership to combine their service offerings.
The duo plan to collaborate to incorporate online technology innovation within India’s financial services and retail sectors. Euronet will leverage Infinitium’s differentiated technology for online authentication and authorization together with its knowledge of the Indian market to accelerate the adoption of digital payments.
Recognizing India’s booming e-commerce sector which has begun to see high volume of digital transactions, Euronet plans to create an end-to-end payments platform to enable its customers i.e. banks and merchants to participate in this thriving e-commerce ecosystem. Infinitium is providing the technology to implement back-end solutions for secured Bank Payment Gateway (BPG) and 3-D Integrated Mobile Secure (IMS) authentication platform. Via techseen.com
The mobile-centric gap costs travel operators significant revenues
A recent Aviation Week commentary noted the great potential for value creation from a “digital airline,” but it pointed out that airlines have been slow to adopt digital functionality. The applications currently being implemented tend to be fairly small-scale, and they focus primarily on delivering customized information to smartphones.
With an estimated $817 billion expected in digital travel sales globally by 2020, airlines are missing significant revenues by failing to exploit the potential of mobile commerce and payment innovation. It’s great to pick up a smartphone to confirm a departure time or board a plane. But with such a narrow informational focus, airlines lose the opportunity to increase the sales of profitable ancillary services while also building customer loyalty.
If airlines adopt mobile payment and transaction technologies in a secure and sustainable manner – such as partnering with payment platform providers, technology innovators and vendors that are already leading the charge – they will be successful in winning not only appreciation of passengers who are looking for an expanded array of mobile travel options, but also the added ancillary revenues that emerge by providing travelers with high-quality, convenient and reliable products and services that their total travel needs. Travelers will use their mobile wallets and other supported payment methods to purchase products and services directly from airlines via their mobile devices – allowing airlines to collect direct-channel revenues. Via mobilepaymentstoday.com
What’s Alibaba Up to in Its Deal with India’s Paytm?
Although Alibaba (BABA) is rapidly growing its top line, its bottom line could be a victim of its heavy investments in global expansion and its revenue stream diversification drive.
The company is pumping billions of dollars into growing its business outside its home market of China. It’s also spending heavily on a revenue diversification drive as it pursues opportunities in the digital video streaming and cloud computing markets.
With its heavy investments, Alibaba will likely struggle to see a meaningful margins improvement. It could thus have a tepid bottom line growth in the near term. Alibaba’s gross profit margin of 65.2% in 3Q 2017 fell 7.4% YoY (year-over-year). Its net profit margin of 43.5% fell 4.6% YoY. Via marketrealist.com
Blockchain Tracker: Blockchain and X-Border Pay
Given the encrypted nature of blockchain technology and its traceability, it may be safe to say that it’s one of the best ways to help safeguard all transactions made across country borders, because it’s one of the few known real-time security operations that ensures security for both parties alongside transparency.
One of the many challenges that typically arises when it comes to cross-border e-commerce payments is potential card-not-present fraud occurrences. This results in a loss of revenue for retailers and a potential decline in customer loyalty. With the advent and implementation of utilizing blockchain technology, funds can be verified in real-time to help avoid this issue.
Cross-border transactions are in great abundance and will likely only continue to grow, as Gartner predicts nearly 21 billion connected devices by 2021. In PYMNTS’ X-Border Payments Optimization Index that recently tracked 192 merchants from around the world, we found the goods and services trade between the U.S. and China alone was approximately $660 billion. Given the use of blockchain technology, the amount of cross-border transactions between countries like these are likely to increase exponentially. Via pymnts.com
MAS to test blockchain technology on bond trading settlement, cross-border payments, Government & Economy
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The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) on Thursday said that it would test blockchain technology on settlement in bond trading to make the process more efficient. The project will be driven by the Singapore Exchange.
MAS will also focus on new methods to conduct cross-border payments using central bank digital currency.
It is in early stages of discussions to develop links from Singapore to other countries using distributed ledger technology (DLT) to allow cross-border payments to settle directly using central bank accounts. The central bank said that this follows the successful conclusion of the proof-of-concept project to conduct domestic inter-bank payments using DLT, which powers the use of blockchains. Via businesstimes.com.sg
Contactless Kerv Payment Ring Is Available For Purchase Now
Kerv, a startup that launched a ring for NFC-powered transactions on Kickstarter in late 2015, announced Wednesday at the annual Wearable Technology Show in London that the device is now up for sale on the company’s website.
TechRadar reports that the launch is a U.K.-only affair for the moment, with the United States and Australia to follow if everything goes according to plan. The ring retails for 100 pounds — the equivalent of a little more than $120 U.S. — and is available in 14 different color combinations.
The brainchild of Philip Campbell, London-based Kerv touts itself as the “world’s first contactless payment ring.” Following recent M/Chip certification from Mastercard, the device is compatible with millions of terminals worldwide that support the credit card company’s proprietary technology, and is issued alongside a Mastercard prepaid account into which funds can be deposited and withdrawn. Via digitaltrends.com
Samsung Pay is still coming to lower-end phones eventually
In theory, hundreds of millions of people around the world already have access to easy, secure and convenient mobile payments with Samsung’s digital wallet service that is now available everywhere from the US to Korea, China, Australia, Spain, Brazil, Russia, Canada and even India.
On the bright side, new financial partners are brought into the fold regularly, and that long-time-coming expansion of support to “non-premium” Samsung smartphones is likely just around the corner.
Better yet, you could see Samsung Pay activated even on “recently-manufactured” budget handsets without fingerprint scanners soon enough, though an important security layer would thus be lost. PIN authorization is what Android Pay-eligible phones running 4.4 KitKat or up use when lacking biometric features, so the technology is definitely achievable sans the hottest sensors out there. Via Pocketnow
Capital One launches Eno, gender-neutral virtual assistant
Capital One Financial Corp has developed a “chatbot” named Eno, an automated program that can communicate with the bank’s customers via text message to give them information on their accounts and help them make credit card payments from their smartphone.
Capital One’s gender-neutral virtual assistant, which is being rolled out as a pilot to a segment of its customers, uses artificial intelligence to respond to natural language text messages from users about their money, the bank said on Friday.
For example, customers might ask Eno to show them their recent account balances or pay off a credit card bill. Ken Dodelin, Capital One’s vice president of digital product development, said the bank had deliberately chosen a gender-neutral name. The predominance of female names among popular digital assistants has provoked criticism recently. Via reuters.com
Align Commerce Raises $24 Million Series B to Simplify Global Payments for Small Businesses; Rebrands as Veem
Align Commerce, the company that makes global payments simple for small businesses, today announced it has closed a $24 million Series B funding round and renamed the company to Veem. The investment, led by National Australia Bank (NAB) Ventures, includes GV (formerly Google Ventures) and SBI Investment Co., Ltd. and will help Veem expand into more countries, enable payments in other currencies, and continue to transform the global payment process for SMBs.
Veem Removes Friction of Global Payment Process for SMBs
Cross-border payments is a $25 trillion market. SMBs represent $6 trillion of that but pay $50 billion in fees due to an antiquated wire transfer system that is cumbersome to use and provides little visibility into the status of transfers. These complexities and uncertainties make the international payment experience difficult for busy small businesses. Veem’s platform provides SMBs with an end-to-end payment experience that is simple, trackable and integrated into the rest of the businesses’ processes. It allows even the smallest businesses to Veem payments between multiple geographies and in various currencies without worrying about where their money is.
“At Veem, we understand even ‘mom and pop’ businesses must embrace globalization to compete with incumbents, grow their businesses and innovate,” said Marwan Forzley, CEO and founder, Veem. “Unfortunately, the current international payments experience is fundamentally broken, stifling SMBs’ globalization efforts. Our platform creates an experience that is simple and frictionless, allowing businesses to easily Veem payments, data and invoices across the globe.” Via finance.yahoo.com
dLocal and Developing World e-commerce
For developed world shoppers, e-commerce is as easy as pointing and clicking. dLocal wants to make that experience global.
Jump outside of the boundaries of the developed world for a moment or two, though, and a different situation starts to emerge very, very quickly. There are plenty of consumers who want to buy and scores of merchants that want to sell to those consumers — who simply can’t connect to make the conversion happen because of payments.
The opportunity grew into dLocal, a firm that wants to make it possible for merchants anywhere to collect payments in the developing world — specifically in Latin America, China, India and Turkey, where the firm is focused today. Via pymnts.com
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