E-commerce


Payments funding round-up: 12 September 2017

Pineapple Payments announced a $35 million equity investment for its merchant-focused payments technology, PayJoy snagged $6 million while B2BPay won BBVA’s Open Talent Global Fintech for Companies competition.

Walmart Taps Google for Omnichannel Commerce Play

Google and Walmart are teaming up to take on Amazon (and Alexa) with voice-activated commerce and more plans for 2018. Starting in late September, the retail giant will be working with Google to offer hundreds of thousands of items for voice shopping via Google Assistant.

eMerchantPay Gets E-Money License, Joins PIF

Global payments service provider eMerchantPay has received authorization from the Financial Conduct Authority as an e-money institution, which means it can issue products including payouts, e-wallets and prepaid cards, and has joined the Prepaid International Forum.

paysafecard Enters UAE to Enable Online Payments with Cash

Prepaid pioneer paysafecard, part of Paysafe Group plc, announced its entrance into the United Arab Emirates. With its flagship prepaid solution, paysafecard will enable consumers to pay cash at vending machines and in retail stores for a prepaid PIN they can use to shop online.

Fintech earnings round-up: 31 July 2017

Several major payments companies have released Q2 earnings, including The Bancorp, Discover, Mastercard and PayPal. Overall, payments volume is on the rise and partnerships are proving particularly important for PayPal, which has been on tear with recent strategic announcements.

Ingenico Buys Bambora for €1.5 Billion

In payments, the big guys just keep getting bigger and more diversified. Ingenico Group on July 20 announced its €1.5 billion (US$1.74 billion) purchase of Sweden-based payments company Bambora from Nordic Capital.

PayPal Teams with Samsung Pay

The partnerships keep coming for PayPal. Following recent news that the company is partnering with Apple for payments on iTunes and in the App Store, the company announced July 17 that it’s expanding its partnership with Samsung to enable PayPal as a payment method in any channel Samsung Pay is accepted.

Apple Deal Puts PayPal One Step Closer to Ubiquity

One small step for consumer choice in e-commerce, one giant leap in PayPal’s quest for ubiquity. The company announced a partnership with Apple to enable shoppers to pay for their purchases in the App Store, iTunes, Apple Music and iBooks using PayPal.

Bold statement three: statements from around the bleeding edge of innovation

Hello all and apologies it’s taken a little while to get to the third instalment of the series about “pet peeve statements”. For those who are new, I am talking about those bold, declaratory statements that puff up the chest and make people feel awfully progressive and far sighted – and as I have said before, all sound and fury, signifying stormy waters ahead!

Citi Pay Lands in U.S. with Masterpass

After launching in 2016 in Singapore, Australia and Mexico, Citi Pay has arrived in the U.S. and is enabling tokenized payments via existing online credentials.

Planet Payment, ACI Launch UnionPay’s SecurePlus

Processors Planet Payment Inc. and ACI Worldwide are working together to bring UnionPay International’s SecurePlus solution to merchants eager to accept the Chinese issuer’s debit and credit cards with less customer friction and more currency options.

Instant Payments Set to Displace Cards in Europe, Report Says

More than $809 billion is set to switch to the fledgling instant payments system in Europe by 2027, representing a significant threat to cards, according to a new report from Ovum, a London-based consultancy. Instant, or real-time, payments enable account-to-account bank transfers in seconds instead of days.

TSYS launches fraud prevention tool that learns

Global payments provider TSYS announced June 12 it has launched TSYS Foresight Score with Featurespace, a fraud-prevention and risk-scoring product that integrates artificial intelligence, enabling the software to learn and improve its ability to detect fraudulent behavior while reducing false positives, the company says.

Want to Fight Fraud? Join the Team—Literally

All payment providers and merchants grasp the dynamic nature of fraud. But fraud prevention requires more than the latest software and security protections—it requires active collaboration. Here’s why.

Visa Bolsters Transaction Security

Visa is beefing up its Verified by Visa authentication service. The payments network said it’s upgrading its back-end to support 3-D Secure 2.0. The 3-D Secure messaging protocol was invented by the network more than 15 years ago and has become an industry standard for online authentication.

Alipay Expands in North America with First Data Deal

The Alipay online payment platform operated by Ant Financial Services Group is moving further into North America through an agreement with payments technology provider First Data. Alipay is considered the world’s largest online and mobile payment platform, with more than 450 million global active users.

Mastercard AIs up future with start-ups

Mastercard has welcomed five new start-ups to its Start Path Global programme – its initiative to boost its share of the commerce market. The programme is open to all start-ups who focus on banking and payments and have raised a “significant seed” or Series A round of investment. Three out of the five firms joining […]

Mastercard Bolsters Authentication with NuData Acquisition

Mastercard is beefing up its transaction security and authentication capabilities in the age of connected devices, entering an agreement to acquire NuData Security, a Pay Award-winning provider of anti-fraud technology that uses session and biometric indicators to verify online transactions.

Tradeshift’s AI Ada aids commerce

Supply chain finance firm Tradeshift has unveiled Ada – an artificial intelligence (AI) layer on its commerce platform. Ada will learn from user interactions, “improve business processes”, and offer contextual information. It is available to third-party developers and interacts with users platform-wide as a conversational interface. Christian Lanng, CEO and co-founder of Tradeshift, says Ada […]

Criminals turn their attention to online fraud in the US

Criminals have deepened their focus on U.S. online transactions since the country’s October 2015 EMV liability shift, with card-not-present fraud expected to hit $6.4 billion in 2018, according to a new report from the U.S. Payments Forum. The expected total would represent a 23 percent increase from fraud losses in 2017, and a 68 percent increase from 2016.

Walmart Pushes Omnichannel Shopping with New Tech Incubator

Walmart recently announced another step toward further developing its e-commerce business with the creation of a technology incubator called Store No. 8 to create new retail online businesses as well as help the retail giant better compete against Amazon.com.

Mastercard Continues Masterpass Push with Postepay Integration

Mastercard and Poste Italiane have struck a new deal under which the Italian postal service’s Postepay app has integrated Masterpass to enable users to make mobile purchases—a deal the companies hope will appeal to Postepay’s large base of younger users.

Modern payments and banking APIs

Modern banking is not limited to banks anymore. It’s not only about online or mobile banking, it’s about all the things you would do in your banking system, but now you can do in apps or other solutions provided by third parties, not banks. Payments are one of such functionalities.

Mastercard victorious in UK interchange lawsuit

Mastercard can put a notch in the win column after a High Court judge ruled in the payment card network’s favor regarding a lawsuit brought on by retailers disputing cross-border interchange fees on debit and credit cards.

ING Bank Romania launches new mPOS service with GoSwiff and MasterCard

ING Bank Romania has launched a new mobile point-of-sale (mPOS) service, underpinned by MasterCard and specialist vendor GoSwiff. ING mPOS is aimed at local merchants of all sizes. It enables them to accept card payments through mobile devices, smartphones and tablets, connected to a card reader. It also supports other added-value services, such as consumer […]

New mPOS solution for Indonesian merchants launched by Indosat Ooredoo and GoSwiff

Indonesian telco Indosat Ooredoo and GoSwiff International have teamed up for a new mobile payment acceptance solution for merchants in Indonesia, D-Pay. Bank Negara Indonesia (BNI) is the acquiring bank. D-Pay is a financial service that enables merchants to accept mobile payments, allowing their customers to pay using debit/credit cards (Visa, MasterCard and JCB) and […]

Brexit: breaking the bank?

As Europe’s biggest e-commerce market, the UK’s e-money and payment services industries are thriving. But with the EU referendum right around the corner, are things likely to change? Craig James, founder and CEO of Neopay, explores the potential of a Brexit-shaped disruption. On 23rd June 2016, the UK public will take to the polls for […]