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No stock market for Stripe: Stripe has proven popular with venture capitalists, enough to nearly double its value in 2016, but it has no near term plans to go public. Digital Trends reports CEO Patrick Collison used Amazon's experience as a reason why Stripe will stay private for now. While Amazon is a mammoth company today, it had a few turbulent years after going public in 1997, according to Collison. There's also a broader structural challenge across the m-commerce technology industry that makes an IPO difficult at this time, Collison said. Finally, an IPO could challenge Stripe's ability to evolve at its own pace and take measured risks. Stripe, which offers tools that enable businesses to add payments functions to their own websites, was founded seven years ago, and has been gradually adding technology and international markets since. It has also played a major role in enabling payments for social networks.
Patrick Collison, chief executive officer and co-founder of Stripe Inc., speaks during a Bloomberg Television interview in Tokyo, Japan, on Wednesday, Oct. 5, 2016. Stripe, the online payments processor based in San Francisco, has received funding from Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group's credit card unit. Photographer: Akio Kon/Bloomberg
Akio Kon/Bloomberg
Kik chats about payments: Chatbots are still a work in progress when it comes to adding ancillary services, and one of the top executives in the business says payments can be the catalyst that sparks faster adoption for bot programs. Ted Livingston, CEO of Kik, which has more than 300 million registered users and is valued at more than $1 billion, told TechCrunch the chatbot market is in a holding pattern until payments technology can give it a boost. Kik opened its chatbot platform and store a year ago, and reports 20,000 bots have been built on top of Kik and more than 2 billion messages have been exchanged. Kik is now looking to build payments into its chatbot program, and it's in a race against other companies that seek to add transaction technology to chat programs. Slack recently adopted payments and Facebook has also embedded payments into bots. China-based WeChat is also attracting companies that wish to use the service to tap the lucrative market for Chinese travelers.
A tech payment account for techies: A South African developer group called OfferZen is testing a programmable account that allows users to build personalized services. According to iafrikan, the account includes codes for payment cards, savings and other financial transactions. Root hosts the code in the cloud, as well as application programming interfaces for online banking and digital payments. OfferZen's account is in private beta, and some of the early features include an Uber card with preprogrammed transaction parameters for a social group, SMS notifications for transaction types, transaction tracking, and a round-up feature that saves change from card purchases as part of a saving goal. OfferZen is positioning the service to technology developers as a way to gain more control over their finances.
Frankfurt's center of fintech : Similar to collaboration centers such as Toronto's MaRS, a new German development center is attracting financial and payment technology companies. Called "The Spot," it's located in Frankfurt's financial district and close to the city's main railway station. Finextrareports a number of financial technology companies have moved into the spot in the past few months, including digital payment provider Billwerk, fintech VC Digital+ Partners, fintech incubator MainIncubator and Ginmon, a digital investment advisor. The new center hopes to serve the 80 financial technology startups in Frankfurt and is designed to complement other development centers in the area such as Deutsche Bank's Digitalfabrik. Similar to centers that have opened in Paris and London, The Spot includes access to investors, researchers, and collaborative work areas.
Can Apple Double Its Service Business By 2020? Seeking Alpha • Alex Cho We expect Apple’s Service revenues to double by 2020 when assuming meaningful Apple Pay contribution. Apple may need to supplement these efforts with M&A, though effectiveness in terms of value addition is subjective at best.
Bank Valuations At Inflection Point: Q1 Earnings Reports Loom Large Seeking Alpha • Richard J. Parsons Summary The purpose of this post is to create a comprehensive framework for evaluating today's bank valuations. Bank valuations today are not extraordinary from a 27-year perspective but are significantly higher than at any time since the Financial Crisis.
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6 China fintech moves with global implications As more of China's citizens engage in travel and commerce across the nation's borders, more companies want to help them pay and collect money. Many of China's dominant payment brands are extending their reach globally, but U.S. and European companies are also focused on this audience.
Australia’s contactless payments far surpass mobile: Report Australian regulations recently denied banks the right to negotiate with Apple Inc. to directly add Apple Pay to their digital apps, but the victory may do little for Apple, considering consumers in the country appear to have little interest in using mobile wallets.
In this week's edition of the American Banker news quiz, gauge your understanding of topics like Trump's ongoing criminal trial, alleged misconduct within the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., industry succession planning and more.
Many banks got shares in the lucrative payments network when it went public in 2008. Some of them are now looking to sell in order to offset losses on their sales of underwater bonds.
Depositors are still flocking to online-only banking platforms offered by companies such as Ally, Capital One and Discover. But overall customer satisfaction took a "statistically significant" drop, according to a new J.D. Power report.
Executives of Allegiant, Breeze and Spirit complained to the heads of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and Department of Transportation that the relationships between big banks and big airlines are anticompetitive. Consumer advocates also questioned whether large airlines are delivering on promised rewards and if consumers are racking up debt to accrue miles and points.
The Federal Reserve Thursday released a report on its climate stress test pilot assessing the impact of climate change on big bank portfolios and found that loan defaults could increase as a result of climate events and shifts toward a lower carbon economy.
