U.K.

As the coronavirus pandemic took hold in March and the U.K. went into lockdown, many of the country’s e-commerce businesses suddenly found themselves facing a nigh unprecedented level of demand.

Traditional U.K. businesses found innovative ways to serve their customers under coronavirus restrictions. Iconic London black taxi cabs, independent local community pharmacies, old-fashioned pubs, and QSRs have turned to in-app mobile payments to enable their businesses to carry on.

Merchants prevailed in a long-running legal battle with Visa and Mastercard in the U.K. over whether interchange fees the payment card networks charged for years in Britain were anticompetitive, which could increase scrutiny on U.S. card interchange rates.

Mobile commerce provider Bango has added Softbank Corp. customers to its list of Japanese mobile phone carriers whose customers can now make purchases in their Amazon accounts and charge the cost to their phone bill.

Coronavirus has made traveling a dicey proposition to begin with, but when U.K. consumers do venture beyond their homes during the pandemic, far fewer plan on using cash for payments.

Once the payment holiday is over, monthly repayments are likely to be higher, leaving many borrowers struggling to manage their debt.

The global coronavirus outbreak has up-ended daily life for many consumers, including where they shop and how they pay for things. The U.K. is no exception, as issues of health and hygiene have now been introduced as important factors when it comes to both planned and impulse shopping.

U.K. fintech Rapyd is offering clients the ability to accept all payment methods through one application interface, a digital service it says eliminates the need for companies to develop complicated payments infrastructures.

In the U.K., many policy researchers predict that the economic fallout of the pandemic in the U.S. could change attitudes toward the idea of basic income on both sides of the Atlantic.

U.K. fintechs are using their technology to assist British businesses and consumers during the coronavirus pandemic by helping banks disburse emergency business loans, enabling e-commerce merchants to offer installment payments to consumers, and giving employees access to salary advances.