The Weekly Wrap: all you need to know by Friday COB | Feb 18th

By Gaia Lamperti

The Weekly Wrap is published every Friday and recaps the week’s main stories and deals, as well as upcoming events and announcements. For Prime subscribers only.

The Big Story

The dispute between Amazon and Visa is (so it looks)  finally over. And at a global level. The two giants have announced an agreement on Thursday, details of which have not been disclosed, confirming that customers can continue to use Visa credit cards when purchasing from the e-commerce giant.

In November, Amazon was considering dropping Visa credit cards payments in the UK because of high transaction fees. Indeed, Visa and other payments cards have faced increased pressure about their fees as more shoppers have turned online during the pandemic. But in January, the two agreed on a truce that culminated with this week’s deal.

“It’s no surprise that Amazon and Visa have struck a global agreement. The stakes were too high for Amazon otherwise, given cards issued by the likes of Visa, as well as Mastercard, are so ubiquitous,” commented David Ritter, Financial Services Strategist at CI&T.

In his opinion, “it’s more likely that Amazon has been applying pressure tactics. Major players in the retail space tend to have bespoke rates with payment firms, rather than paying published rates. The pressure on Visa was likely a way to negotiate a longer-term agreement on rates, or even to push for a freeze to its current rates.”

Deals of the week

• Funding Societies raises $294 million to fuel expansion plans in SEA
• Atom Bank raises more than £75 million to fuel growth as it heads toward IPO
• Intesa Sanpaolo invests £40 million into Thought Machine and selects Vault to power new digital banking platform
• Neo.Tax raises $10 million and partners with Mercury
• African Development Fund signs $14.2 million grant agreement for financial digitalisation initiative
• Trace Finance announces $4.3 million seed funding to disrupt global banking
• Fayre raised $3.8 million to help brands create and manage NFT communities

Be on the lookout for

The rise of Open Banking, This week, the  Open Banking Implementation Entity (OBIE) announced that more than 5 million people in the UK use Open Banking services. The figure comes from data provided by the CMA9, the nine banks and building society mandated by the CMA to implement Open Banking in the country.

Such milestone brings benefits for customers and the industry alike. “Open Banking can simplify data sharing and money movement to deliver on such a proposition and to personalise interactions with customers,” said Jody Bhagat, President of Americas, AI-driven platform for Banking Personetics.“The biggest opportunities in open banking, however, are what it means for customers and how it can help them access an ecosystem of services to better manage their financial wellbeing.”

“The UK has enacted some of the most progressive regulatory regimes to spur the adoption of open banking, supported by regulatory guidance of GDPR and PSD2 policies,” he added.