Our global payments news roundup is truly worldwide this week. Visa and MasterCard reported solid year-end financials, although both cards remain locked out of China during the trade dispute. In India, Amazon and Walmart’s Flipkart are scrambling to respond to new stringent e-commerce regulations on foreign businesses.
The National Retail Federation reports 15,000 new jobs in January, despite the traditional post-holiday seasonal layoffs. Amazon’s financials were also positive with more than $10 billion in annual profits for 2018. PayPal also had a strong year of business as did subsidiary Venmo. Mexico is making moves to introduce a real-time financial payments app to reduce cash transactions and Australia introduced real-time payments nationally. All this and much more payments news you can use.
Amazon, Walmart Reel as India Curbs Plunge Market Into Chaos
Amazon.com Inc and Walmart Inc’s grand plans for India were thrown into chaos on Friday after the country implemented new e-commerce regulations, which could cut their growth in the market by as much as half this year. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government tightened rules for the retail giants after strident complaints from small shops and domestic sellers. Amazon and Walmart’s Flipkart are now banned from cutting exclusive arrangements with sellers, offering deep discounts or holding any business interest in online merchants on their websites. Read more…
Retail Jobs Grew Nearly 15,000 in January Over December
Retail industry employment in January was down by 15,100 jobs unadjusted from a year earlier but increased 14,800 jobs seasonally adjusted from December, the National Retail Federation said today. The retail numbers, which exclude automobile dealers, gasoline stations and restaurants, came as the nation added 304,000 jobs overall compared with December, the Labor Department said. Read more…
Amazon’s product sales climb nearly 20% in 2018, but only 8% in Q4
Third-party sellers accounted for 52% of units sold in Q4, and netted Amazon more than $13 billion in fees during the quarter. Amazon’s store sales declined year over year. Profit topped $10 billion in 2018. 2018 was a busy, profitable year for Amazon.com Inc. E-retailing’s leader generated $141.92 billion in product sales in 2018, up 19.7% from $118.57 billion in 2017. Product sales in the fourth-quarter holiday period accounted for 31.5% of 2018 product sales, coming in at $44.70 billion, up 8.2% from Q4 2017. Read more…
PayPal Chalks up a Big Quarter as It Decouples from eBay and Ratchets up Venmo
In reporting its performance for the fourth quarter of 2018 as well as the full year, PayPal Holdings Inc indicated its dependence on former owner eBay Inc is down, Venmo monetization is up, and active accounts are surging. Meanwhile, the San Jose, Calif-based company said it is entering a potentially huge new transaction market through a deal with Charlotte, NC-based bill-payment processor Paymentus Corp. Read more…
Visa Eyes More Contactless Cards and More Volume From Visa Direct
Visa Inc. saw payment volume growth of nearly 11% in the quarter ended Dec 31 and sees ever-more contactless cards and volume on its Visa Direct real-time payments service in its future. Visa on Wednesday reported a respectable first quarter of fiscal 2019, according to its chief executive, despite the beginning of the US federal-government shutdown, Brexit worries in Europe, and weakening cross-border payment growth. Worldwide payment volume totaled $2.2 trillion, up 10.7% year-over-year on a constant-currency basis. In the U.S.,quarterly payment volume grew 10.6% to $980 billion from $886 billion the year before. Read more…
Visa, Mastercard Still Locked Out of China
Both Visa and Mastercard posted solid fourth quarter earnings and outperformed analyst estimates, yet the companies are still waiting for approval to do business in China. Though it’s been more than a year since each submitted applications to process payments in the $124 trillion market, the People’s Bank of China (PBoC) hasn’t acknowledged and accepted the applications. Once it does, the bank has 90 days to finalize a decision. Read more…
Fast payments roll out nationally down under
The four major Australian banks reached a tipping point in the roll out of fast payments via the country’s new payments platform (NPP) for their customers. According to The Sydney Morning Herald, after criticism from regulators, the big four banks now offer near real-time payments for most customers. Launched in February 2018, the PayID lets customers transfer money to an external account without entering an account number. Money transferred in this way settles within minutes compared to 2-3 days by traditional banking systems. Read more…
Reducing shopper pain points for e-retail success
New research identifies key ways online retailers can increase sales by reducing friction and making the shopper journey smoother. In the whitepaper – Addressing the Pain Points in eRetail – Juniper Research identifies seven stages in the sometimes-bumpy road in today’s online shopper journey. In the first stage – search and discovery – shoppers are challenged to find products of interest. Juniper says that traditional keyword searches are giving way to advances in natural language search by Google, Apple and Microsoft. Read more…
Merchant Payments Ecosystem 2019 – what’s in store for payments and fintech
One of the biggest trends of 2019 will be partnerships with all-in-one providers. In even faster disruption pace, businesses will look for the best connection to as many financial products as possible in a fraction of time. Only one contract with Bankingblocks will allow fintechs and PSPs to access real multi-currency IBANs, POS and e-commerce acquiring, a wide variety of alternative payment methods,transaction screening, KYC and AML checks, risk mitigation, future-proof core banking platform, PCI 1 compliant gateway and more. Read more…
Meet Codi: the new Banxico app that seeks to strengthen digital payments
The insecurity and the low banking of the Mexicans has limited the use of apps destined for the digital collection but soon this could change since the government wants to promote the reduction of the use of cash with Codi, an app that using QR codes will be able to make payments in all types of establishments using mobile phones. Read more…
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