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.

Samsung Electronics France is partnering with French card issuer Prepaid Financial Services to allow its line of PCS Mastercard prepaid cards to be loaded onto the Samsung Pay wallet.

Our annual Most Influential Women in Payments feature, now in its seventh year, highlights the women who are creating change and opportunities in the payments industry. For the first time, the editors of PaymentsSource have also recognized one woman for lifetime achievement.

Merchant terminals—the longtime bedrock technology of the payments industry—are rapidly evolving, and few people have a better view than Jennifer Miles, executive vice president of North America for France-based payment terminal maker Ingenico.

In a new, global twist to its ongoing Visa Everywhere competition, Visa is targeting female entrepreneurs who are looking for the right technology to solve their payment-related business problems.

Visa is working with handbag designer Rebecca Minkoff to debut a global program to fuel networking among women business owners, while also connecting them to companies in the Visa ecosystem such as Square and Yelp.

Terminal manufacturer and payments technology provider Ingenico Group has completed its acquisition of New Zealand-based payments network Paymark.

The Swiss banking giant has been accused of helping wealthy French clients hide assets from tax authorities.

LVMH Group, makers of Louis Vuitton handbags and other luxury goods, leans heavily on cross-border transactions to distribute its products. To streamline its processes, the company has partnered with FIS.

France-based Ingenico has named a new CEO a month after receiving an unsolicited takeover bid, signaling a strategy shift in the face of increasing pressure on the last of the independent payment terminal hardware giants.

Societe Generale launched a contactless biometric payment trial in France for a debit card with a built-in fingerprint reader.