The information you need to start your day, from PaymentsSource and around the web:
Sharing a ride
Lyft plans to add Venmo as an option to pay for rides, an option that also allows groups to split the fee for a single ride. The support extends to bike and scooter journeys.
The payment option requires consumers to have the latest version of both apps, with a consumer choosing a person who's covering the entire fee for a mobile transfer, reports
Off the menu
Restaurant commerce company GoTab is expanding outside of that category, approaching grocery, gas stations, event spaces, stadiums, golf courses and general retailers.
The four-year-old GoTab uses a cloud-hosted system to add digital functions on top of payment acceptance, such as remote kitchens, outdoor pickup, delivery and pop-up grocery store support.
The pandemic has pushed businesses to
Speaking of shopping
Facebook has updated WhatsApp to allow purchases directly from chats, another in a series of moves the social network is making to link different properties with shopping and checkout.
Users send a message to a business and receive a link to a product in return. The shoppers add items to their cart and checkout from the app, reports
Poppy seed
HSBC is installing more than 250 contactless donation boxes in Canadian branches to support donations for the Remembrance Day veterans holiday.
The Pay Tribute Poppy Box allows consumers to tap their phone against a glowing poppy to make a $2 donation. The bank has partnered with the Royal Canadian Legion to design the boxes, which are shaped like headstones of fallen soldiers, reports
Contactless donations have been on the rise for the rise for several years, and have expanded quickly during the pandemic as
From the web
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL | Friday, October 23, 2020
Lufax Holding Ltd., a smaller rival to Chinese financial-technology giant Ant Group Co., is seeking to raise as much as $2.4 billion from an initial public offering in the U.S.
TECHCRUNCH | Friday, October 23, 2020
Flipkart is acquiring a 7.8% stake in Aditya Birla Fashion as the Walmart-owned Indian e-commerce firm makes further push into the apparel category in one of the world’s largest retail markets.
ENGADGET | Thursday, October 22, 2020
Grocery delivery service Instacart will soon begin accepting food stamps as a form of payment within its app. The company announced that “in the coming weeks,” it’s beginning a pilot with grocery chain Aldi to accept food stamps for its same-day delivery and pickup service.
More from PaymentsSource
Small and midsize merchants in North America continue to struggle with the effects of COVID-19 on their bottom lines, but those who have developed an online presence and made changes to in-store payments have found the process to be a vital step.
As fraud continues to rise, there are a series of steps merchants can take to bring themselves into PCI compliance, says Qualpay's Penny Townsend.
The media company Urban One has launched a new digital bank account geared toward Black consumers that rewards users for shopping at Black-owned businesses.
Sales volume climbed 4% in September and 7% in the first half of October, Discover said in a third-quarter earnings presentation Thursday. Growth in retail sales and grocery purchases have been enough to offset a 49% drop in travel spending so far this month.
For the 44.6 million households who rent, based on U.S. Census Bureau data from 2019, coming into the crisis almost 27% were already paying half or more of their monthly income on housing. That meant they had little ability to save for an emergency, let alone a pandemic that would cause record job losses.
It's the last all-hands meeting before launch day for your fintech startup. In a crowded market, your product seems like a standout. The accompanying mobile app sparkles and the perks you came up with for cardholders are a hit in early audience testing.
The Department of Justice can still investigate and arrest the developers behind the automatic transactions, says Exante's Anatoliy Knyazev.
Several large mobile point of sale projects are hitting the market at once to reach financially troubled retailers, with JPMorgan Chase making use of a three-year-old acquisition to push back against the technology firms that have been gobbling up small-business clients.
PayPal isn’t the first company to open its platform to cryptocurrencies, but its technique is more hands-on than most payment providers.
