It’s a holiday weekend ahead but we’ve still got your global payments news roundup to keep you current. MasterCard purchased POS loans platform Vyze while Amazon announced plans to depart the China online marketplace. We’ve got a look at contactless cards in the US and progress in the connected car payments market. The Netherlands is seeing a rise in British financial companies opening offices due to Brexit and Belgian e-commerce is booming.
Chase launches gift cards in the US and Facebook plans to shut down P2P payments via Messenger in France and the UK by June 15. Walmart will target kids through a subscription service agreement with KIDSBOX. We wish you a happy Easter if you celebrate it and we’ll be back with payments industry news as usual on Monday.
MasterCard enters POS loan market with Vyze acquisition
Mergers and acquisitions in the payments industry are growing as indicated by MasterCard’s purchase of fintech point-of-sale financing platform Vyze. According to Accenture, point-of-sale (POS) loans are a $1.8 trillion business opportunity. “Both consumers and businesses want the best choice and service, exactly when they need it,” Blake Rosenthal, executive vice president of global acceptance at Mastercard, said. Read more…
Contactless cards are just catching on in the US — years after the rest of the world
For many foreign tourists visiting the U.S., checking out at the register feels like a trip back in time. Inserting cards, entering pin codes and signing receipts are a thing of the past in countries that have embraced contactless payments. The world’s biggest economy, however, is just starting to catch on to the trend. An estimated 3% of cards in force in the U.S. are contactless, according to a study by AT Kearney. That compares with roughly 64% in the UK and as high as 96% in South Korea. Read more…
Connected car and other IoT payments gaining speed
A new Transaction Network Services (TNS) report shows connected car and other internet of things (IoT) payments are gaining traction with consumers. The survey of more than 3100 consumers in the US, UK, and Australia shows 26% of respondents that own a voice assistant have used it to make a payment, 57% would be willing to make a payment via a connected car if they owned one, and 45% would pay for groceries via a Wi-Fi refrigerator touchscreen or compatible application. Read more…
Shift to digital payments is an opportunity, UK expert says
Consumers are definitely favoring digital payments, according to Alison Wilkes, head of payments for FIS. 71% of banking transactions are now taking place online, on mobile or digitally compared to only 6% in UK bank branches. More than half of consumers save banks need to be aggressive in combating digital fraud in order to reassure customers. Read more…
Sharp rise in firms seeking Dutch offices before Brexit – central bank
The Dutch central bank said the number of financial firms seeking to open offices in the Netherlands has risen sharply over the past six months, partly because some are seeking a continental office after Britain leaves the European Union. De Nederlandsche Bank (DNB) said in a newsletter that 15 payment and electronic money institutions, as well as five non-financial sector firms, had opened in the country. Read more…
Belgian e-commerce is booming
E-commerce reached €7 billion ($7.91 billion) in 2018, an increase of €1.2 billion or $1.36 billion (+20%) over 2017. The average size of shopping carts was €100.05 ($113.10), up 3.31% from 2017 according to research from House of Marketing and SafeShops. In 2018, there were more than 70 million e-commerce transactions, an increase of 16% from 2017 when e-commerce grew 39%. Read more…
Facebook discontinues P2P payments in Messenger in UK, France on June 15
Facebook is pulling away from its ambitions to provide peer-to-peer money transfers via Messenger in Europe. Today, the company announced that it would be discontinuing the service — which let individuals send money to each other — in the two countries in the region where it had rolled it out, the UK and France, on June 15 of this year. It appears that for now, the service will remain active in the US. Read more…
Chase launches US e-gift cards
Chase checking account customers in the US can now send digital gift cards to other US residents instantly using the Chase mobile app or Chase.com. All that’s required is a recipient’s email address. “Our digital gift cards make it more personal than sending a person-to-person payment,” said Prashant Gandhi, head of digital payments for Chase. Read more…
Amazon to close domestic marketplace business in China
Amazon.com Inc plans to close its domestic marketplace business in China by mid-July, people familiar with the matter told Reuters on Wednesday, focusing efforts on its more lucrative businesses selling overseas goods and cloud services in the world’s most populous country. Read more…
US industry leaders form Center For Payments
A group of US payment associations is launching the Center for Payments, a program to develop the nation’s payments industry. ePayResources, EPCOR, MACHA, NEACH, PaymentsFirst, SHAZAM, Southern Financial Exchange, The Clearing House Payments Authority, UMACHA, WACHA, and WesPay are all participating in the initiative, which aims to combine their collective payments expertise and collaborate on ways to improve the ecosystem. The Center for Payments will generate actionable data and analysis that participating associations can use to further innovate and grow their solutions. Read more…
Walmart partners with KIDBOX for subscription service
Walmart announced it’s partnering with KIDBOX, a subscription-box company akin to Stitch Fix but focused solely on selling clothes for babies, girls, and boys. Walmart shoppers will now be able to purchase as many as six different boxes from Walmart.com, curated by KIDBOX, each year. That means there’s one new box available for each season, as well as for going back to school and the holidays, the companies said. Read more…
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