Venture funding

Everybody thinks business travel payments and bookings are a headache, until consumer-style rewards are thrown in.

The payments industry has been overrun with innovation in mobile, wearable and cloud-based digital payments. But many niches are years — if not decades — behind this trend.

If you've ever walked past a film shoot, it's easy to see how much more there is to the movies and TV than just the star and director. There's often dozens or even hundreds of other people involved in the production — bit players, stunt performers, musicians and more — and they all have to be paid, at times irregularly and under different rules.

Tala, based in Santa Monica, Calif., makes its loan decisions after analyzing data on the mobile phones of users in Kenya and the Philippines.

The payments technology revolution of the past few years has given consumers myriad new ways to shop across different channels. Business payments have not enjoyed the same level of attention.

Billionaire investor Carl Icahn reduced investments in PayPal Holdings Inc., Nuance Communications Inc. and Freeport-McMoRan Inc., according to a regulatory filing Tuesday.

The wave of technology that's turned card swipes into dips, phones into wallets and micro merchants into global sellers will proliferate, says Andrew Rueff of Waud, a Chicago-based private equity firm.

Nyca is one of the most active venture capital firms in fintech globally and its second fund should give it plenty of dry powder to pursue further deals.

Loyalty programs can be a mixed blessing. When they work as advertised, they can lock in consumers and build relationships; when they fail, they vex shoppers and sour relationships.

Letgo, an online marketplace for buying and selling used goods, said it raised $175 million to invest in growth plans and grab market share from EBay Inc. and Craigslist.

Hong Kong-based OKLink, a blockchain-based digital payments network specializing in international remittances, is now available in Vietnam, the twenty-first country it's reached since launching six months ago.

Kasisto, a provider of chatbots to banks, announced Thursday a $9.2 million Series A funding round led by Propel Venture Partners with participation from Mastercard and Commerce Ventures.

Disruptors have chased banks for years with the promise of easier and more social payments and other services, but only recently have they started wielding a weapon that should have incumbents worried, says investor Adam Dell.

Swedish mobile point of sale company iZettle has raised about $80 million in funding, in part from U.S. investors.

Luminate Capital Partners has made an investment in Financial Information Technologies (Fintech), a company that sells data management, payment and software to the spirits industry.

Samsung has launched a $150 million venture capital investment fund to expand its partnerships and collaborations with fintech startups.

The blockchain startup Axoni has raised $18 million in a Series A funding round led by Wells Fargo and Euclid Opportunities, the fintech investment business of the interdealer brokerage ICAP.

A Danish company called Cardlay has closed a $4 million funding round to deploy its white label card management solution to banks.

To launch its payments platform, Digitzs used crowdfunding as an alternative to the traditional venture capital. Its founder explains how it made that happen.

The growth of China’s fintech scene is providing a less developed financial market with much-needed updates. But those improvements also serve as a stepping stone to bring Chinese fintech players to Western markets.