According to TechCrunch, scammers are using Zelle to take advantage of customers; a seller of a product who is attempting to defraud customers will ask a customer to pay using Zelle instead of PayPal; many users are not aware that Zelle does not provide some of the same buyer protections that PayPal has been known for; Zelle is more similar to Venmo for transferring money to those you trust. Source
PayPal saw payment volumes grow by 29 percent and they added 8.7 million new accounts in Q4 2017; the recent announcement that eBay was replacing PayPal with Adyen for processing overshadowed what was another strong quarter by the company; while the Adyen news was not positive for PayPal it could be seen as that in the long term as the company has been diversifying more in recent years; PayPal has seen growth through more partnerships with card networks and banks globally. Source.
Adyen is a payments company based in Amsterdam and currently is valued around $2.3 billion; the company has over 4,000 clients which includes names like Netflix, Facebook, Uber and Spotify; Forbes profiles the company and their co-founder and president, Pieter van der Does. Source
Marqeta has hired its first employee in London as it aims for a 2018 European launch; the firm provides payment card technology and works with other fintech firms such as Square and Kabbage; they have raised a total of $76 million, which includes a recent $25 million investment which was led by Visa; CEO Jason Gardner stated in a Business Insider interview, “The use-cases we see here in the US and Canada are very similar to the use-cases we see in Europe. Since our inception [we] have always seen ourselves as a global issuer-processor and Europe is obviously an enormous market.” Source
While the full English report is still in the works KPMG releases their annual Fintech 50 for China; China has become one of the most important fintech markets in the world as some of the largest companies are from the market; they are also one of the most diversified markets as they have leading companies in insurtech, payments, regtech and online lending. Source.
Paytm is looking to expand beyond their Indian roots and Canada is their first test case; “Paytm Canada is our beta test, or our warhead to get an entry into new geography beyond India,” said founder and CEO Vijay Shekhar Sharma to TearSheet; while their bill pay products help top build customers their big revenue driver is when businesses pay them fees to accept payments; the current test case in Canada has Paytm signing up thousands of Canadian companies where they incentivize customers to pay bills with cash back offers; having a large Indian population in Canada has helped the company gain early success, but expanding to markets like the US is a different type of challenge. Source.
Citing low usage numbers by customers and retailers the payments company says they will end all bitcoin related payments by April 23rd; "Empirically, there are fewer and fewer use cases for which accepting or paying with Bitcoin makes sense," Stripe product manager Tom Karlo wrote in the announcement reported by Business Insider; the volatility of price and mining fees also played into the decision by Stripe and has been cited by others as an issue that needs be be addressed. Source.
Google Wallet, Android Pay and Pay with Google will now all become Google Pay; this way the company can better brand their products and make it less confusing; Google has launched a number of products in the last 10 years aimed at different payments markets and found varying degrees of success; they hope ensuring the same brand for multiple layers of products will help to cut down on confusion and hopefully help them to build a better customer experience to compete with the likes of Apple Pay and Samsung Pay. Source.
While on the surface Affirm’s business may appear to be focused on lending and payments, the company can also help merchants in marketing; the company has large amounts of data on who is buying products, what they are buying and where they are buying; with this information they plan to offer their merchants more services in the future; Tearsheet shares more on Affirm’s plans. Source
Companies like TransferWise, Venmo and PayPal have forced banks in Europe to look at creating their own affordable real-time payments service; the idea is in the early stages but it shows the effect that fintech players can have on the traditional banks; the service would also look to head off the increased competitive threat from open banking which is set to begin in early 2018. Source.