France

The Bank of France will shut down more than a third of its cash handling centers by the end of 2022 as the Covid-19 pandemic accelerates a decline in the use of notes and coins.

PayPal is bringing its contactless Business Debit Mastercard rewards card into five additional European countries.

PayPal has launched a new online installment lending product in France geared to serving small and medium-sized businesses.

Small World Financial Services is addressing a gap in its cross-border network by making a deal to buy French money transfer agent MoneyGlobe.

As the incumbents gets bigger, the innovation that created the urgency continues unabated.

French mobile payments app Lydia has raised €40 million (about $45 million) in a Series B fundraising round led by Tencent Holdings, owner of WeChat Pay.

The effort is part of a push by interim Chief Executive Officer Noel Quinn to cut costs at Europe’s largest lender by assets.

The Federal Reserve’s Lael Brainard this week tossed fresh regulatory pressure on Facebook’s Libra cryptocurrency project, comments that come as central banks around the world work on digital currencies to counter the social network’s cryptocurrency project.

France’s Orange Bank, the online bank launched in 2017 by telco Orange, is expanding its mobile payment app’s reach by adding Google Pay through an integration via Wirecard.

Facebook has informed users of its P2P Messenger money transfer option in the U.K. and France that the service will no longer be available as of June 15.