APIs

Legacy card issuers are facing a huge problem that threatens their relevance. Most of them are trying to launch a spaceship with a steam engine, and many of the solutions to that quandary are expensive, risky — and temporary.

Wyre has entered into a definitive agreement to sell the majority of its retail money transfer business to WorldFirst, giving the seller a chance to focus more on its cryptocurrency strategy.

Starling Bank, a U.K.-based digital-only bank, is among the latest European banks offering the benefit of its full banking license and its technology to companies that want to offer white-labeled banking products and debit or credit cards but don’t want to invest in a banking license or technology.

Even Financial, which provides an application programming interface between banks and third parties for consumers to be matched with financial products, raised the funds from investors including Goldman Sachs.

Under TrueLayer’s Payment Initiation license, its forthcoming Payments API could enable third parties such as online retailers to have consent-based access to customers’ bank accounts in order to take payments for goods and services. This would provide e-commerce merchants and service providers with a lower-cost alternative to accepting credit or debit card payments.

Sensing an opportunity in the small-business credit card market, Stripe is setting out to outflank big banks by offering application programming interfaces to enable its clients to issue their own physical and virtual credit cards.

Sensing an opportunity in the small business credit card market, Stripe is setting out to outflank big banks by offering APIs to enable its clients to issue their own physical and virtual credit cards.

Visa has partnered with U.S.-based fintech novae to launch an omnichannel digital rewards platform for Visa card-issuing banks in Latin America and the Caribbean. The collaboration with San Francisco-based Novae is an example of the card network's open approach to fintech.

TransferMate, a cross-border B2B payments service, has received a $25 million investment from ING Group N.V. to accelerate its global expansion.

The money flowing into alternative merchant acquiring is feeding an arms race, with each new deal adding pressure to become an automated one-stop shop for small businesses.