The Week in Review

The Week in Review

Friday March 13, 2020 –

Here are the new and noteworthy stories we have been following this week.

Visa teams up with Nigeria’s Paga

Paga, Nigeria-based payments startup is partnering with Visa to expand mobile payments for consumers and merchants in the markets in which it operates; a significant aspect of this collaboration will see Paga join Visa’s Fintech Fast-Track Program and provide Paga customers access to Visa credentials allowing them to transact globally at Visa acceptance points.

https://www.finextra.com/pressarticle/81748/visa-teams-up-with-nigerias-paga

Alipay opens platform to become one-stop gateway for 40 million service providers across China

Alipay is pursuing a plan to become digitally entrenched in the businesses of 40 million service providers across China, the three-year plan involves opening up the Alipay platform as an online gateway for these enterprises – in industries ranging from consumer retail, food and beverage, and transport to hotels and accommodation, and medical services.

Credit Sesame launches a digital banking service focused on improving credit scores

Credit Sesame is launching a digital banking service, ‘Sesame Cash’ that will provide many features found in other digital banking apps like no service fees, early access to pay, and a debit card with free ATM access; however, in keeping with its focus on financial health, Sesame Cash will leverage insights on users finances to offer personalized product recommendations from its financial institution partners.

https://techcrunch.com/2020/03/10/credit-sesame-launches-a-digital-banking-service-focused-on-improving-credit-scores/

SpotOn Raises $50M To Help SMBs Operate More Efficiently

SpotOn, a payments and software startup focused on small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), has raised $50 million in Series B funding led by 01 Advisors; in addition to payments processing, SpotOn  provides SMB’s tools that include custom website development, scheduling software, marketing, appointment scheduling, review management, analytics and digital loyalty.

https://news.crunchbase.com/news/spoton-raises-50m-to-help-smbs-operate-more-efficiently/

Behind Sequoia’s stumble

Sequoia walked away from a $21 million investment that it had made in Finix in February after realizing a conflict with Stripe, one of its portfolio companies; the problem apparently stemmed from market perception that Finix and Stripe are competitors vs. any weakness in Sequoia’s due diligence process.

https://www.axios.com/sequioa-capital-finix-d4307f3e-7280-4141-a09b-59abe1fc82f7.html

BBVA moves to get more out of fintech partnerships

BBVA’s Open Innovation unit is moving to a more practical and results-oriented approach and using guidance from the bank as it sources new fintech partnerships; specifically, the bank’s Open Talent competition for startups will establish challenges that it wants to address with fintech companies based on business needs vs. seeking out “interesting fintechs.”

https://www.finextra.com/newsarticle/35442/bbva-moves-to-get-more-out-of-fintech-partnerships

We’ve launched “Banking as a Service”

Standard Chartered has launched its “Banking as a Service” solution, ‘nexus’ to enable digital platforms and ecosystems like e-commerce, social media or ride hailing companies to offer loans, credit cards and savings accounts co-created with the bank to their customers under their own brand name; nexus is starting off with a major e-commerce platform in Indonesia as its first partner.

https://www.sc.com/en/media/press-release/weve-launched-banking-as-a-service/

Wirecard to embed Klarna products into merchant checkouts

Wirecard and Klarna have announced the launch of a new enhanced joint payment solution where Klarna’s payment solutions will be embedded into merchants’ checkout via a single integration through the Wirecard digital financial commerce platform; this will allow merchants to offer consumers the full range of Klarna payment methods in nine European countries followed by the US and Australia later this year.

https://www.finextra.com/pressarticle/81806/wirecard-to-embed-klarna-products-into-merchant-checkouts

Nets acquires Polskie ePłatności, a leading Polish payment provider

Nets has announced the acquisition of Polskie ePłatności (PeP), one of Poland’s major payments processing company for an enterprise value of  €405 million; PeP specializes in processing card and non-cash payments for in-store and e-commerce merchants and has an installed base of more than 125,000 POS terminals and expects net revenues of around €55 million in 2020.

https://www.eu-startups.com/2020/03/nets-acquires-polskie-eplatnosci-a-leading-polish-payment-provider/