Welcome to our weekly global payments news roundup with all the payments, fintech, and e-commerce news you need to know. We look at several challenger bank updates and closures, consumer coronavirus payments and shopping trends, global contactless spending data from Visa, coronavirus analysis from McKinsey & Company by country, and much more. Stay safe, enjoy your weekend, and keep your eye on your key business metrics.
Merchants and consumers turn to tap to pay as part of new daily routines
Tap to pay transactions in everyday segments in the US including grocery and pharmacy has grown more than 100% year over year. 31 million Americans tapped a Visa contactless card or digital wallet in March 2020, up from 25 million in November, with overall contactless usage in the US growing 150% since March 2019. The US now has the most contactless cards of any market globally at 175 million, with nine of the top ten US issuers actively rolling out new contactless cards to customers. Read more…
Visa: Coronavirus spending patterns will outlast the pandemic
At Visa, contactless payments grew 40% over the prior year’s quarter, a similar spike to what Mastercard reported. Nine of the largest 10 global supermarket chains and nine of the 10 largest issuers have adopted contactless payments. In the US, card-not-present payments grew 18% in April alone, while card-present payments declined 45%. Read more…
RBS closes digital bank Bó six months after launch
RBS has announced the “wind-down” of its digital challenger bank Bó, which will be merged with the bank’s small and medium-enterprise (SME) challenger bank Mettle. The bank said it “will wind down Bó as a customer-facing brand” in its Q1 2020 results. “The technology used in Bó will be integrated into Mettle as it is developed.” Customers will be given a notice of “at least” 60 days before their accounts are closed. Bó was launched just six months ago and accumulated 11,000 customers. Read more…
Digital bank Moven to shut down due to inability to sustain operations following coronavirus outbreak
On March 25, Moven began informing its clients that their bank accounts will be closed by April 30, 2020. In a release dated March 24, Moven said the transition was due to a strategic shift to focus on their patented wellness technology to enterprise-level partners. Additionally, plans to spin-off Moven’s consumer-facing business hit a significant snag with major multi-year funding withdrawn as a result of market conditions. At the same time, the Enterprise business remains funded and growing. Read more…
FIS has won a contract to provide the core tech architecture for US neobank Bambu
Memphis-based Bambu intends to offer app-only banking services to underbanked Hispanics and other Americans who lack access to bank accounts or other traditional financial services. The Bambu app offers FDIC-insured prepaid accounts, domestic and international bill payments and remittances, peer-to-peer transfers, check deposits, retail cash loading, and other services. Read more…
EU payments bodies call for further SCA delay
A group of payments industry associations and major companies have penned an open letter to the European Banking Authority (EBA) requesting a six-month delay to the final secure customer authentication (SCA) deadline due to complications surrounding the coronavirus pandemic. Major groups in the payments industry are calling for a further six-month delay for the market to be “fully ready” for the implementation of SCA. This would place the new deadline as 31 June 2021. Read more…
KPMG’s Wirecard audit fails to verify payments processing profits
KPMG has been unable to account for a series of profits and sales made by German payments company Wirecard, following a six-month audit into the company’s dealings. The audit was issued by a Wirecard supervisory board on the back of whistleblower allegations published in the Financial Times that the company was committing accounting fraud. A relationship between Wirecard and three major partners contributed to a majority of the firm’s operating profit from 2016 to 2018. Read more…
Global surveys of consumer sentiment during the coronavirus crisis
As governments and organizations continue to work toward containing COVID-19 and stem the growing humanitarian toll it is exacting; the economic effects are also beginning to be felt. We are tracking consumer sentiment to gauge how people’s expectations, incomes, spending, and behaviors change throughout the crisis across multiple countries over time. Please check back regularly for updates. Read more…
A global view of how consumer behavior is changing amid COVID-19
Governments and organizations continue to work toward containing COVID-19 and stemming the growing humanitarian toll it is exacting. Meanwhile, consumers globally are feeling its economic effects and are still pulling back dramatically on discretionary spending. European countries are the least optimistic, while China’s optimism is higher, and Chinese consumers’ intent to spend across select categories is starting to recover. Consumers have shifted toward digital channels, products, and services across categories, but that shift has not come close to offsetting the overall reduction in spending. Read more…
NEW DATA: Two-thirds of Main Street SMBs are not ready for the post-pandemic restart
Our research shows that the majority of SMB owners remain attached to their pre-pandemic business models, even though they recognize that consumers’ expectations are likely to change going forward. 66.4% of all SMBs believe online sales will make up a greater part of their revenues after the pandemic is over, but only 38% plan to reduce the amount of physical space they use to sell products in-store. Read more…
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