Welcome to the PaymentsSource Morning Briefing, delivered daily. The information you need to start your day, including top headlines from PaymentsSource and around the Web:
Klarna launches P-to-P app: Swedish digital payments company Klarna has launched a free P-to-P service called Wavy. The Venmo-like service allows people in 31 European countries to transfer money by connecting their bank accounts or cards to Wavy and generating a payment link when they wish to transfer. The link can be shared through existing social media channels or send directly to a Wavy user, and the recipient of the funds does not have to sign up for Wavy to have the payment go to their bank account. Payment requests can be paid using EU-issued credit cards or SOFORTUberweisung and are settled in real time. Wavy uses #D animated stickers to illustrate the payment's purpose, such as dinner splitting or shared household expenses. In the past couple of months Klarna, a 12-year-old company that has its roots in providing retail installment payments to finance larger purchases at the point of sale, has received a
Andy Murray serves up fintech investment: Tennis star Andy Murray has joined a multi-million pound crowdfunding round for digital financial services startup Revolut, according to
PayPal invests in AI:
TransferWise-backed invoice startup sputters: DueCourse has gone into administration, or a form of court-administered insolvency, only a year after attracting about $8 million in investment through a combination of equity funding and debt financing, reports
From the Web
China Daily | Tue Aug 1, 2017 - WeChat and Alipay, two major online payment platforms in China, will call for consumers to go cashless and cardless in their daily life through promotions in August. Cashlessness is a new Chinese characteristic. In a Monday report by Tencent, the Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies at Renmin University of China, and French market research firm Ipsos, 84 percent of Chinese were "comfortable" going out with only mobile phones, no cash.
The Guardian | Mon Jul 31, 2017 - Figures come as FCA targets unauthorized overdrafts and high-cost lending to people less likely to be able to pay off debt. The financial watchdog has announced fresh measures to protect consumers from spiraling debt as official data showed that borrowing through credit cards, overdrafts and car loans has topped £200bn for the first time since the global financial crisis. The Financial Conduct Authority said it was cracking down on the high cost of overdrafts and reviewing the booming car loan market.
CNN Money | Mon Jul 31, 2017 - 26-year-old Nigerian entrepreneur Iyinoluwa Aboyeji wants Silicon Valley to fund a future where Africa is included. Aboyeji is the cofounder of Flutterwave, a payments API that makes it easier for banks and businesses to process payments across Africa. The service allows consumers to pay for things in their local currency; Flutterwave takes care of integrating banks and payment-service providers into its platform so businesses don't have to take on the expense and burden. U.S. investors just poured $10 million of fresh funding into it. This sizable round comes one year after Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan led a $24 million funding round into another Africa-focused startup, Andela.
More from PaymentsSource
Shopify is working to encourage more physical sales for merchants that don't have physical stores.
Data driven decisions are the only way to truly understand our customers. The days of “gut feel” subjectivity have quickly been replaced by data drive objectivity, and rightly so.
Prosper Marketplace, one of the largest marketplace lenders, is discontinuing the Prosper Daily app.
In the next phase of India’s push to diminish the country’s heavy reliance on cash, the Reserve Bank of India has approved the rollout of a national electronic bill-payment system.
