5.13.19 Your morning briefing

The information you need to start your day, from PaymentsSource and around the Web:

Pay later
Alipay is working with Adyen and Klarna to support a point of sale financing option at AliExpress, Alibaba's retail marketplace.

The move furthers Alipay's strategy to collaborate with local fintechs and merchants to expand Alipay's brand and acceptance outside of China. The Klarna/Adyen partnership initially covers Germany, the Netherlands, Austria and Finland, though more markets are expected.

It's also a way for Alipay to tap into installment payments at the point of sale, an increasingly popular way for retailers to reach young consumers who want an alternative to traditional credit cards.

Qilai Shen/Bloomberg

Payments pitch
U.K. football club West Ham United has hired fintech MuchBetter to provide digital payments and mobile wallet services, supporting transactions over multiple devices.

The football club will use the payments app for its various facility and website payment needs and incentive marketing. The partnership is also a branding play similar to the affinity deals sports teams make with credit card companies.

Sports facilities and franchises have long been venues for payments innovation, given their relatively captive and loyal audience of fans. This trend that has picked up steam as cashless payments start to take hold.

Code digital
Germany's reputation as a cash-heavy economy is starting to fade, leading fintechs to pursue new payments products that rely less on cash payments.

Nayax has integrated its Bluecode mobile payment app with vending machines, unattended kiosks and contactless terminals in Germany, supporting digital debit card payments via QR code.

The Bluecode app is available on iOS and Android and can be used on Apple Watch. Apple Pay and Google Pay have been picking up merchant support in Germany, providing a broader range of locations for contactless payments.

Popping up
EBay has opened an experimental pop-up store in Wolverhampton in the U.K., where it will allow consumers to scan items with a QR code, and later have those items delivered.

While eBay has opened similar pop-up stores for years, it will spend a month analyzing sales and traffic at the new U.K. location to get a deeper view into how online and traditional retail mix, alongside a workable level of cash vs. cashless technology, reports Engadget.

Amazon has opened several Amazon Go cashless stores, as have other technology companies and retailers. But there has been push back as laws in San Francisco, Philadelphia and New Jersey prevent no-cash stores, and Amazon now plans to support cash at its Go stores.

From the Web

UK tax office ordered to delete millions of unlawful biometric voiceprints
TechCrunch | Fri May 10, 2019 - The U.K.’s data protection watchdog has issued the government department responsible for collecting taxes with a final enforcement notice, after an investigation found HMRC had collected biometric data from millions of citizens without obtaining proper consent.

Nine charged in alleged SIM swapping ring
Krebs on Security | Fri May 10, 2019 - Eight Americans and an Irishman have been charged with wire fraud this week for allegedly hijacking mobile phones through SIM-swapping, a form of fraud in which scammers bribe or trick employees at mobile phone stores into seizing control of the target’s phone number and diverting all texts and phone calls to the attacker’s mobile device.

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In Germany, where cash has been king for so long, cards take the lead
Germans' devotion to cash is waning, as payments cards edged out cash for total transaction value in German retail sales in 2018.