The Weekly Wrap: all you need to know by Friday COB | Nov 19th
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 Visa vs Amazon case has been on everyone’s lips this week. The retail giant has announced its decision to stop accepting Visa credit cards issued in the UK from January 2022 over a fees dispute.
For some, this new development will give merchants and online retailers the opportunity to explore alternative payment methods. “This move will prompt other merchants to explore alternative payment options and represents a tailwind for the adoption of newer methods, such as account-to-account (A2A) payments. Not only do these reduce the cost for businesses through removing the now-redundant intermediaries in each card transaction, they also make it easier, quicker and more secure to pay for consumers, thanks to other innovations like open banking,” commented Siamac Rezaiezadeh, Director of Product Marketing at leading FinTech in bank-to-bank payments GoCardless.
Others believe that the consumers will be the ones reaping the most benefit. “This dispute will bring the payments industry one step closer to card disintermediation, resulting in long-term benefits for the consumer,” Luke Massie, CEO of startup VibePay said. “Rather than the likes of Visa having a monopoly on the payments industry, these battles, which we expect to see more of in the future, will open the door for FinTechs who are taking advantage of technologies such as Open Banking and account-to-account payments. We will then see consumers have more choice than ever before.”
While the announcements from Amazon suggest that the move is resolutive, David Ritter, Financial Services Strategist at digital consultancy CI&T thinks that, ultimately, it will be too difficult for Amazon to call a monopoly, especially since cards issued tend to sit behind digital wallets, and Amazon’s automatic subscriptions are usually tied to Visa cards.
“I expect there will be a compromise between Amazon and Visa before January 19. Amazon is a retail giant so it has some leverage, but there’s no way they won’t accept Visa cards. Cards issued by Visa and Mastercard are ubiquitous and many of these cards also sit behind digital wallets, like Apple Pay and PayPal Plus, that consumers would have to change. At the end of the day, consumers want to use their preferred payment method and they won’t want Amazon to tell them it can’t be Visa, Ritter commented.
Deals of the week
- Bound secures $6.5 million Seed investment from VCs, including Klarna founder
- Practice Ignition raises $50 million to scale globally
- Defy raises $5.5 million to build India’s first social crypto exchange
- BetaBlocks raises $1.5 million to scale its White Label Tokenization Platform
- nCino signs definitive agreement to acquire SimpleNexus
- Bank Alfalah & LuLu Exchange to scale cross-border payments to Pakistan via RippleNet platform
- OnerWay partners with Tribe Payments for acquirer processing
Be on the lookout for
The world’s first digital bond. This week, the Swiss Exchange SIX placed its first senior unsecured digital CHF bond with a total volume of CHF 150 million and maturity in 2026 via its holding company SIX Group Ltd. The bond has been launched in a fully regulated digital market infrastructure and marks a milestone in the evolution of DLT and capital markets, showing the ongoing transformation of the financial market infrastructure towards new digital standards.
Daniel Schmucki, CFO at SIX commented: “This is an innovative and historic transaction as it is the first of its kind in the world on a regulated and fully integrated digital exchange. The transaction was supported by key Swiss market participants and has demonstrated that the investor base is convinced of the innovative power of the Swiss financial market and of the supporting role of SIX in the transformation and development of the financial centre.”
Events & Appointments
- Next week, IBS Intelligence will be at the RBR event, BankSec 2021 (Nov 39th – Dec 1st) the industry’s leading conference focused on physical, logical, and cybersecurity. The event boasts the participation of 500+ delegates representing 200+ banks, FinTechs, industry suppliers, press and analysts from 66 countries.
- Want to learn more about the neobanks landscape? IBS Intelligence, in collaboration with Codebase Technologies, is organising an exclusive webinar focusing on how neobanks in MENA have been winning customers and driving financial inclusion. You can register here.
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