2024: Top five payments stories of the year
Looking back on 2024, FinTech Futures highlights some of the year’s most significant developments in payments, spanning innovative partnerships and regulatory shifts.
Here are five standout payment highlights, featuring Klarna, the European Parliament, Apple, and others.
European Parliament authorises new regulations for instant money transfers
European regulators set new rules for instant payments
Back in February, the European Parliament adopted a fresh set of regulations in a push to guarantee that euro money transfers arrive in bank accounts “within ten seconds” throughout the EU.
The updated regulations aim to improve the speed and safety of financial transfers, with particular emphasis placed on ensuring SMEs don’t have to wait for their money.
The immediate processing of credit transfers now falls to banks and other payment service providers (PSPs), which must ensure that the recipient receives the transfer within 10 seconds.
Bird taps Airwallex to power international payments operations
Bird, a communications platform based in Amsterdam built to enable companies to message their customers on their preferred channels, selected Airwallex in April to power its global payments operations.
Through the partnership, the two firms have been working together to provide Bird’s finance team with greater consistency, speed, and depth of reconciliation.
Moreover, Bird has selected Airwallex and its global payments and financial infrastructure to power its in-house foreign exchange engine and issuing solution.
Mastercard commits to phasing out manual card entry in e-commerce by 2030 with tokenisation, Click to Pay and payment passkeys
Mastercard seeks to tokenise e-commerce
In June, Mastercard affirmed its “global commitment” to phasing out the requirement for manual card entry during online purchases.
The payment network claimed to be leveraging “tokenisation, streamlined guest checkout and payment passkeys”, with the overarching aim of facilitating “a consistent experience across devices, browsers, and operating systems” and phasing out manual card entry for e-commerce in Europe by 2030.
To achieve this, Mastercard will replace traditional card numbers with secure tokens via its tokenisation service, enhance its Click to Pay checkout integration, and replace passwords with biometric-powered payment passkeys for online transactions.
Apple set to open up access to NFC tech to third-party app developers
Apple announced in August its plans to allow third-party app developers in several regions to access its near-field communication (NFC) contactless payment technology.
The tech giant says that starting with iOS 18.1, developers in the US, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Japan, New Zealand, and the UK will be able to offer in-app contactless transactions “from within their own apps on iPhone, separate from Apple Pay and Apple Wallet”, by leveraging its NFC technology and Secure Element (SE) chip.
Following the release of the iOS 18.1 update, supported transactions will include in-store payments, closed-loop transit, corporate badges, car keys, event tickets, home and hotel keys, student IDs, and merchant loyalty and rewards cards.
Klarna picks New York for upcoming IPO
Klarna picks New York for IPO
In November, Swedish buy now, pay later (BNPL) giant Klarna announced it has selected the US for its much-awaited initial public offering (IPO).
The fintech revealed that it has submitted an application to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for the “proposed initial public offering of its ordinary shares”.
Klarna has yet to disclose the number of shares or the expected price range for its offering, stating that the IPO is anticipated to proceed “after the SEC completes its review process, subject to market and other conditions”.
