Wirecard

Wirecard has introduced a new biometric payment approach enabling consumers to check out in stores by scanning their palms.

Wirecard will supply all digital payment POS services for KaDeWe, a dominant department store operator in Wirecard’s home market of Germany, as part of an expanded relationship.

With Wirecard's value tumbling since a Financial Times report two months ago alleging an accounting scandal in its Asian operations — and a followup Wednesday reporting that half of its revenue comes from "three opaque partner companies" — the German payments processor received a lift from a €900 million ($1 billion U.S.) investment from Japan's SoftBank.

The company’s investment in a small business lender is said to be the biggest ever in Europe; the merger may raise questions from regulators, spur more mergers.

Wirecard AG expects an investigation by an outside law firm to dismiss concerns of accounting breaches and validate conclusions already made by an internal inquiry, as it looks to move past fraud allegations.

Petrol, Slovenia’s leading gas station operator, has partnered with Wirecard and Mastercard, enabling users of Petrol’s MBills mobile wallet to add a prepaid Mastercard to their accounts.

Wirecard is partnering with Visa in Romania on a white-label digital wallet service enabling any card issuer to offer mobile contactless payment solutions through a wallet featuring card controls and account notifications.

Wirecard is developing a fleet card platform enabling companies to control fuel and other vehicle expenses through an open-loop system with Visa payment cards.

Wirecard and Enio, an Austria-based supplier of electric car charging stations throughout Europe, are collaborating to enable contactless payments at thousands of sites.

Wirecard has partnered with Garmin to enable payment acceptance at contactless-enabled payment terminals across Europe through boon, Wirecard’s mobile payment platform.

French banking giant Crédit Agricole’s payments unit has signed a deal with Wirecard to develop an integrated payment acceptance and acquiring platform serving large merchants.

TransferWise, which recently added a consumer-targeted account to its business-to-business services, has selected Wirecard to issue a cross-border debit card for consumers.

Susanne Steidl loves building things, which suits her job as chief product officer for Wirecard, where she continualsly develops new use cases for digital payments in everything from the gig economy to global travel.

Wirecard is aggressively pursuing bank partnerships to diversify its offerings and address global trends in payroll and other transaction types.

Wirecard has partnered with SES-imagotag, which makes electronic shelf-labeling systems, for a new technology enabling consumers to buy products directly from store shelves with their smartphones.

Wirecard has gained a foothold in using virtual prepaid cards to streamline corporate payments across business units, platforms and borders for companies with sprawling operations. Now the German company wants to do the same for more U.S. companies going global.

Wirecard's going after a big market. More than 2 million Chinese tourists visit Europe annually, spending on average about US$3,400 each.