Venture funding

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.

Flywire has raised $100 million in new venture capital to continue expanding its B2B cross-border payments platform beyond educational institutions to more corporations.

Dan Loeb’s Third Point has taken a stake in PayPal Holdings Inc. in a vote of confidence for the payments processor as it faces increasing competition from the likes of Amazon.com Inc. and Square Inc.

Merchant acquirers have moved mountains to embrace software and e-commerce over the old model of selling point of sale hardware, but there are signs that transformation is not enough to please investors.

Both PayPal and Citigroup are taking a bigger role in the market for cross-border payments, a strategy that led both companies to participate in a $50 million round in PPRO Group, a U.K.-based cross border e-payment company.

Restaurant point of sale and back-office management provider Toast has received $115 million in Series D funding that the company plans use to develop technology and expand its market.

Denver-based P2Binvestor plans to use the new funds to expand its bank partnership program.

U.K. private equity firm Dunedin says it has invested "a significant stake" in a £44 million (U.S. $58 million) funding round for Global Processing Services, which provides payment processing and technology for financial institutions, digital banks, challenger banks and fintechs.

Marqeta Inc. may never be a household name, but its behind-the-scenes payments services have attracted plenty of attention. The fintech startup announced Tuesday that it is raising $45 million from investors including Iconiq Capital, the family office with investors including Jack Dorsey and Mark Zuckerberg, and Goldman Sachs Group Inc.’s investment bank.

Billionaire Jack Ma’s Ant Financial is lifting its fundraising target to more than $12 billion by bringing in existing Chinese shareholders in a yuan-denominated financing round, people familiar with the matter said.

Square's taking on hundreds of millions of added debt to battle PayPal, indicating that the simple business model of turning a smartphone into a point of sale terminal is largely a thing of the past.

Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. is leading the purchase of 10 percent of Chinese delivery service ZTO Express (Cayman) Inc. for $1.38 billion, a deal that’ll augment the e-commerce giant’s ability to ship packages around the globe.

YellowPepper's strategic investment from Visa as part of a $12.5 million Series D funding round gives the company a chance to expand beyond its focus on Latin America and into new markets such as Europe and Asia.

When Visa opened its tools to third-party developers two years ago, it was a strong pivot away from a longstanding of operating a closed, proprietary network. Its latest investments indicate this strategy is of growing importance on a global scale.

PayPal Holdings Inc. is teaming up with Indonesian venture-capital firm Alpha JWC Ventures to back emerging financial technologies that can be developed for Southeast Asia.

Fair Square Financial has received a $100 million equity investment from the Orogen Group to fund a credit card designed for underserved U.S. consumer segments.

Ant Financial, the Chinese payments giant controlled by Jack Ma, is expected to close a fundraising of at least $10 billion in the next few days, attracting Carlyle Group and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board as first-time investors, according to people familiar with the matter.

Square has come a long way since it debuted in 2009 with a simple plastic card reader for micro-merchants. But it didn't make its journey alone.

In one of the biggest fundraising rounds for a European fintech this year, Revolut Ltd., a U.K. startup that provides digital banking, received $250 million.