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:
Have Alipay, will travel: China's Alipay has entered a partnership with VTB Group, one of Russia's largest merchant acquirers, to make Alipay available at more than 120,000 points of sale in Russia. Like most Alipay partnerships outside of its home base of China, the deal is more focused on Chinese travelers than locals. Alipay estimates the partnership will serve about 1 million Chinese travelers per year. A pilot will start later this month, with full rollout in the fourth quarter with a focus on core cities such as Moscow and St. Petersburg. Alipay, which has about 520 million active users, is the world's largest digital wallet. It first launched in Russia in April 2017, though this new collaboration will quickly scale the service, said Bogdan Zadorozhny, Alipay's business developer director in Russia, in an Aug. 4 press release. Alipay in the past two weeks has also partnered with
Cardless ATMs reach UAE: Cardless ATMs are starting to gain hold in a number of markets, and are seen as a way to promote broader adoption of
Self-service advances in Africa: Diebold Nixdorf's rival
Ideas for fraud fight: The European Banking Authority is seeking public consultation on its reporting guidelines for data on fraud under the new Payment Services Directive (
From the Web
The New York Times | Thu Aug 3, 2017 - Most readers have probably heard of Bitcoin, the digital coin that dominates the cryptocurrency market. It has gained notice both because of its skyrocketing value (from less than a cent in early 2010 to around $2,600 currently) and because it is frequently a key player in hacking- and black-market-related stories, from the looting of nearly half a billion dollars in coins from the Mt. Gox exchange in 2014 to the recent demand for payment in Bitcoin in the WannaCry ransomware attack.
TechCrunch | Thu Aug 3, 2017 - Savings app Qapital wants people to make more conscious decisions around their money. While to date that meant helping its users build up savings, now Qapital will help manage their day-to-day spending through a new checking account and debit card. Qapital was founded about four-and-a-half years ago in Sweden and originally launched as a competitor to Mint in the personal finance management (PFM) category. The company came to the U.S. in 2014 and soon after began focusing exclusively on this market.
The New York Times | Fri Aug 4, 2017 - Payments processing company Paysafe Group has backed a 3 billion pound ($3.9 billion) takeover offer from a consortium of funds managed by Blackstone and CVC Capital Partners [CVC.UL], the latest in a string of deals in the sector. Payments companies have become sought-after targets as more shoppers switch from cash to paying for purchases by smartphones or other mobile devices. U.S. group Vantiv is in talks to buy Britain's Worldpay for 7.7 billion pounds.
More from PaymentsSource
Tokenization is the security process that most recently unlocked the mobile payments market, but the concept can be expanded.
The Internet of Things, as a collective term, encompasses almost infinite permutations of connectivity between devices, some with human intervention, others existing purely in a machine to machine (M2M) environment. The promise of a connected future has enormous implications for all aspects of our lives, but there are great risks along the way.
Flywire and Volvo Car USA have formed an agreement to streamline cross-border payments for international students leasing cars from Volvo.
A popular person-to-person payments app in Italy is getting the backing of Intesa Sanpaolo Bank to become an option at the point of sale in more than 150 retail stores in Milan, Rome and Turin.
