Facebook Launches New Payments System - Facebook Pay, Google to Offer Checking Accounts, PayPal Acquires Honey for $4B, Paytm Raises $1B

November has been super interesting and really intense for the FinTech sector. If in October we outlined Uber, which at the end of the month launched Uber Money and hence strives to go deeper into Finance per se, then in November we have 2 Big Tech companies going into Finance. Facebook has launched Facebook Pay and Google will offer Checking Accounts in partnership with banks as early as next year. In addition to that, Banco Santander, is to pay ￡350 million to acquire a 50.1% majority stake in Ebury, VISA has acquired a minority stake in Nigeria's Interswitch and much much more.

Hence, without further ado, let us dive into what has happened in the financial technology sector past month.

Santander Drops ￡350M for Majority Stake in Ebury

The first week of the month began with huge news from Banco Santander, which is to pay ￡350 million to acquire a 50.1% majority stake in Ebury, a provider of corporate banking services to SMEs that trade internationally.

Ebury, which operates in 19 countries and 140 currencies, has processed ￡16.7 billion in payments for its 43,000 clients trading across Europe and the Americas. 

mUnder the terms of the transaction, Santander will acquire a 50.1% controlling stake for ￡350 million, of which ￡70 million will be new primary equity to support Ebury’s plans to enter new markets in Latin America and Asia. 

Santander serves more than four million SME clients worldwide, of which more than 200,000 do international business. 

Ana Botín, Group Executive Chairman of Banco Santander, said:

Small and medium-sized businesses are a major engine of growth around the world, creating new jobs and contributing up to 60% of total employment and up to 40% of national GDP in emerging economies. By partnering with Ebury, Santander will deliver faster and more efficient products and services for SMEs, previously only accessible to larger corporates.

For Ebury, the deal will enable it to leverage Santander’s capabilities, brand and correspondent bank network to establish new bank partnerships.

Juan Lobato and Salvador García, co-founders of Ebury, commented:

Combining a big bank with nimble fintech means we can offer our clients the best of both worlds: they can benefit from our technology and high quality service safe in the knowledge that they are counterparty to one of the world most important financial institutions.

Card-as-a-Service Provider Deserve Raises $50M

During the same week, Deserve, a provider of bespoke white label credit card and loyalty programmes for third party audiences, has raised $50 million in a funding round led by Goldman Sachs.

The round also includes continued investment from existing backers Sallie Mae, Accel, Aspect Ventures, Pelion Venture Partners and Mission Holdings.

Deserve says it will use the cash injection to further develop its card-as-a-service offering, hiring engineers and data scientists to build out the platform's infrastructure, tools, APIs and machine learning capabilities, as well as expanding its B2B sales and marketing division.

"Goldman Sachs is supportive of Deserve's mission to expand access to credit, and to simplify the ability for organisations to offer their own bespoke credit card products," says Ashwin Gupta, managing director, Goldman Sachs. "We believe Deserve's card platform will bring meaningful savings and new opportunities to institutions across a range of verticals."

Riskified Announces $165M Funding

Further, payments and fraud-prevention company Riskified has announced its Series E funding round of $165 million, pushing its value beyond $1 billion.

The funding round was led by international equity firm General Atlantic, with Goldman Sachs serving as sole placement agent. 

Riskified provides an AI-powered fraud prevention service enabling merchants to recognise fraudulent customers, and counts LastMinute.com, Gymshark and Megabus among its clients.

According to Riskified, clients reduce fraud-related costs by a third and see approval rates increase by 20%.

The Israeli startup works as an intermediary between merchants, banks and shoppers to minimise friction at the point of sale. 

Aaron Goldman, managing director of General Atlantic's financial services sector, believes that Riskified provides "material improvements" compared to legacy fraud-prevention services and the payment failures and high-verification methods that can come with them.

Founded in 2012, Riskified had previously raised $64 million from investors such as Pitango Venture Capital and Qumra Capital, who both also participated in this round.

“Riskified began as a new and unproven approach to fraud prevention and payments," says CEO, Eido Gal. 

"Achieving success required merchants to believe in our vision and partner with us. Today’s announcement is a testament to those partnerships and the leadership position we attained in this important market.” 

The investment will be used to expand Riskified's footprint in the payments and fraud-prevention space and finance a new office in Shanghai, to go with its existing premises in New York and Tel Aviv.

Immersive Labs Raises $40M

The second week of November was one of the hottest weeks this year. It began with Immersive Labs, a British cyber skills startup created by a former GHQ staffer, that has raised $40 million in Series B funding through Summit Partners and existing investor Goldman Sachs.

The Immersive Labs platform uses real-time feeds of the latest attack techniques, hacker psychology and technological vulnerabilities to build cyber wargames for IT and security teams to learn from. 

The company was founded by ex-GCHQ researcher James Hadley and is chaired by former GCHQ chief Robert Hannigan. Other big corporates on the client list include BAE Systems, Sophos and Grant Thornton.

The latest funding round comes 11 months after Goldman Sachs injected $8 million into the firm, saying its technology had helped hone the skills of the people at the front line of its cyber defenses and to identify new talent throughout the organization.

The company, which has achieved 750% year-over-year growth in annual recurring revenue and hired over 100 employees, says a share of the funding will go towards growing its presence across the Atlantic, having already set up an outpost in Boston.

Apple Card Faces Investigation Over Sexist Credit Limit Claims

During the same week, US regulators have opened a probe into the algorithm used to determine the credit worthiness of Apple Card applicants after a man took to Twitter to call it sexist for giving him a credit limit 20 times higher than his wife's.

On Friday, David Heinemeier Hansson, a prominent technology entrepreneur, complained to his 355,000 Twitter followers that the Apple Card is "such a fucking sexist program" because its "black box algorithm thinks I deserve 20x the credit limit she [his wife] does".

The Twitter vent, in which Hansson revealed that his wife has a better credit score than him, quickly went viral, with Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak among those chipping in to report similar issues.

By Saturday, regulators were involved with New York State Department of Financial Services superintendent Linda Lacewell tweeting that "financial services companies are responsible for ensuring the algorithms they use do not even unintentionally discriminate against protected groups. @NYDFS will take a look."

Goldman Sachs, which issues the Apple Card, says in a statement: "Our credit decisions are based on a customer's creditworthiness and not on factors like gender, race, age, sexual orientation or any other basis prohibited by law."

Meanwhile, one couple has carried out an experiment, both applying for an Apple Card, with the wife offered a higher limit and lower APR:

??All You Need to Know About Apple's New Credit Card??

Visa Acquires Minority Stake in Nigeria's Interswitch

Moreover, Visa is to acquire a 'significant' minority equity stake in Nigerian payments processor Interswitch in a deal that propels the African firm into Unicorn territory.

Visa will join existing investors, Helios Investment Partners, TA Associates and IFC, as shareholders in Interswitch, alongside company management.

Founded in 2002, Interswitch now processes over 500 million transactions per month in a market that is seeing soaring growth in electronic payments. Further progress is expected to be driven by population and urbanization growth, GDP growth above the global average, increased mobile and internet penetration, as well as a supportive regulatory landscape for electronic payments and financial inclusion.

Mitchell Elegbe, Intersitch Founder and CEO commented:

Sub-Saharan Africa is the fastest growing payments market in the world, with growth driven by a young and dynamic population, rapidly evolving consumer behaviour, and an increasing desire for payment solutions that can be accepted across the continent and abroad. I am delighted that Interswitch has formed a partnership with Visa, with whom we plan to drive the next phase of transformation in the African payments landscape.

In addition to its switching and processing services, Interswitch owns Verve, the largest domestic debit card scheme in Africa with more than 19 million cards activated on its network, and the Quickteller consumer payments platform from which consumers can initiate peer-to-peer transfers, bill payments, airtime purchases, and other e-commerce transactions. The latter processes 42 million transactions monthly through direct, indirect and Paypoint channels. 

Andrew Torre, Regional President at Cemea, Visa, said:

Africa is a priority region for us, and we continually seek strategic partnerships with local players to further strengthen our leadership position and enhance the payments ecosystem across the continent. This partnership aligns with our global strategy to work with and invest in innovative partners, and we look forward to working with Interswitch to provide new consumer and merchant experiences and support the rapid growth of digital commerce across Africa.

The transaction is expected to close by Q1 2020.

Australian Neobank 86 400 Rolls Out Digital Mortgage Offering

Also, just nine weeks after going live to the general public, Australian neobank 86 400 has entered the mortgage business, offering entirely digital home loans through a network of brokers. 

The offering provides brokers with a digital platform embracing everything from electronic statement capture to mobile ID verification, and electronic signatures, delivering a faster time to a home loan decision with just a single piece of paperwork needed for a purchase - the contract of sale.

Eighteen months in the making, 86 4000 worked with an array of service providers to develop the platform, and has signed a partnership deal with Specialist Finance Group to strengthen its national distribution of home loans, with a select network of 2,800 brokers.

Melissa Christy, Home Loan Lead, 86 400 comments:

Our smart technology works on the brokers behalf, to make their life simpler every step of the way. We know mortgage brokers drive competition and choice for consumers, which is why we have focused on erasing their pain points so they can deliver the best value to customers. This is the first offering in recent years that offers real, tangible benefits to both brokers and homebuyers.

Led by CEO Robert Bell and chaired by Anthony Thomson, 86 400 launched in September 2019 with transaction and savings accounts.

Facebook Pay is a New Payment System for WhatsApp, Instagram, and Facebook

One of the most interesting and intriguing piece of news this week (and this month) came from Facebook, which is launching a new payments system today, appropriately named Facebook Pay. It will be available across Facebook, Messenger, Instagram, and WhatsApp, and it’s designed to facilitate payments across Facebook’s popular social networks and apps. You’ll be able to use Facebook Pay to send money to friends, shop for goods, or even donate to fundraisers. The service will be separate from Facebook’s new Calibra wallet and the Libra network, and it’s “built on existing financial infrastructure and partnerships,” according to the company.

Facebook is planning to start rolling out Facebook Pay on Messenger and Facebook in the US this week. It will initially be available for fundraisers, person-to-person payments, event tickets, in-game purchases, and some purchases from pages and businesses that operate on Facebook’s Marketplace. “Over time, we plan to bring Facebook Pay to more people and places, including for use across Instagram and WhatsApp,” explains Deborah Liu, Facebook’s vice president of marketplace and commerce.

Facebook Pay will be available in the settings section of the Facebook or Messenger apps, and it will support most debit and credit cards and PayPal. Facebook is using Stripe, PayPal, and others to process these payments. 

Facebook isn’t revealing exactly when this payment system will be available across all of its apps, nor when it will launch internationally. Facebook Pay comes just weeks after a large number of payment companies dropped out of Facebook’s Libra project. PayPal, which is supporting Facebook Pay, was one of the first companies to distance itself from the Libra Association, the nonprofit organization that oversees the creation of the cryptocurrency and its rollout. 

Every major US payment processor has now exited the association, and it’s left Facebook with the daunting task of convincing governments that Libra is an option, just when trust in Facebook is at an all-time low. That’s not stopping Facebook from launching a more traditional payment system today, though. 

“Facebook Pay is part of our ongoing work to make commerce more convenient, accessible and secure for people on our apps,” says Liu. “We’ll continue to develop Facebook Pay and look for ways to make it even more valuable for people on our apps.”

??Catching Up with Apple, or Why Does Anyone Need Facebook Pay???

Google to Offer Checking Accounts in Partnership with Banks Starting Next Year

Finally, another cherry on cake came from Google, which now is the latest big tech company to make a move into banking and personal financial services - the company is gearing up to offer checking accounts to consumers, as first reported by The Wall Street Journal, starting as early as next year. Google is calling the project Cache, and it’ll partner with banks and credit unions to offer the checking accounts, with the banks handling all financial and compliance activities related to the accounts.

Google’s Caesar Sengupta spoke to the WSJ about the new initiative, and Sengupta made clear that Google will be seeking to put its financial institution partners much more front-and-center for its customers than other tech companies have perhaps done with their financial products. Apple works with Goldman Sachs on its Apple Card credit product, for instance, but the credit card is definitely presented primarily as an Apple product.

So why even bother getting into this game if it’s leaving a lot of the actual banking to traditional financial institutions? Well, Google obviously stands to gain a lot of valuable information and insight on customer behavior with access to their checking account, which for many is a good picture of overall day-to-day financial life. Google says it’s also intending to offer product advantages for both consumers and banks, including things like loyalty programs, on top of the basic financial services. It’s also still considering whether or not it’ll charge service fees, per Sengupta — not doing so would definitely be an advantage over most existing checking accounts available.

Google already offers Google Pay, and its Google Wallet product has hosted some features beyond simple payments tracking, including the ability to send money between individuals. Meanwhile, rivals, including Apple, have also introduced payment products, and Apple of course recently expanded into the credit market with Apple Card. Facebook also introduced its own digital payment product earlier this week, and earlier this year announced its intent to build its own digital currency called “Libra” along with partners.

The initial financial partners that Google is working with include Citigroup  and Stanford Federal Credit Union, and their motivation per the WSJ piece appears to be seeking out and attracting younger and more digital-savvy customers who are increasingly looking to handle more of their lives through online tools. Per Sengupta’s comments, they’ll also benefit from Google’s ability to work with large sets of data and turn those into value-add products, but the Google exec also said the tech company doesn’t use Google Pay data for advertising, nor does it share that data with advertisers. Still, convincing people to give Google access to this potentially sensitive area of their lives might be an uphill battle, especially given the current political and social climate around big tech.

??Welcome to the Google Bank - Your Everyday Banking from Google, NOT a Bank??

Elavon to Acquire Sage Pay for ￡232M

The 3rd week of November began with US Bank-owned Elavon, which is to acquire payments gateway Sage Pay for ￡232 million, expanding its business in the UK and Ireland.

Sage announced plans to sell its payments division three months ago. The unit, which has around 50,000 small and medium-sized business customers, reported revenues of ￡41 million and an operating profit of ￡15 million in 2018.

Elavon is currently the fourth-largest merchant acquirer in Europe. The acquisition extends the firm's market share in the UK and Ireland and follows on from its January 2019 accreditation as the first dedicated payments provider and e-commerce business to directly connect to the Faster Payments. 

“We are a customer-focused company that is helping businesses succeed in a global marketplace that is changing rapidly,” says Hannah Fitzsimons, President and General Manager of Elavon Merchant Services, Europe. “This acquisition brings tremendous talent and leading technology to Elavon, which can be leveraged across the European market.”

African FinTech OPay Raises $120M

During the same week, OPay, the startup behind one of Nigeria's leading mobile payments services, has raised $120 million in a Series B funding round joined by a host of Chinese investors. 

The round - which comes on the heels of a $50 million round in June - was joined by Meituan-Dianping, DragonBall Capital, GaoRong Capital, Source Code Capital, SoftBank Ventures Asia, Bertelsmann Asia Investments, Redpoint China, IDG Capital, Sequoia Capital China and GSR Ventures.

Incubated by Norwegian-based consumer internet outfit Opera, OPay launched its agent-centric mobile payments service in August 2018, entering a market with a large unbanked population.

The firm now has a network of over 140,000 agents and transaction volumes of more than $10 million a day and has begun branching out into motorbike ridesharing and food delivery.

The new funding will be used to continue the diversification and to move into new African markets, with Ghana, South Africa and Kenya all on the agenda.

Yahui Zhou, CEO, OPay, said:

We see ourselves as a key contributor to expanding financial inclusion in Africa, and helping local businesses and workforces to thrive from opportunities created by new, digital business models.

Earlier this month it emerged that Visa is making a $200 million stake in another Nigerian payments player, Interswitch.

Robinhood to Launch Investment Product for Early 2020 launch in UK

Moreover, Robinhood plans to offer its stock-trading service outside the U.S. for the first time, launching in the U.K. in the first quarter of 2020.

The startup, valued at $7.6 billion in its most recent fundraising, received authorization from the Financial Conduct Authority to operate in the U.K. in August, has gained a following among U.S. millennials by allowing them to trade stocks for free on its mobile app. U.K. customers won’t be charged a commission for investing in U.S. and global stocks, nor will there be foreign-exchange fees or minimum account balance, according to a statement by the Menlo Park, California-based company.

U.K. customers already have plenty of choice of FinTech offering them savings and payments, yet there are fewer options for investing, Wander Rutgers, president of Robinhood U.K., said in an interview. For example, the finance startup Revolut is expanding into stock trading.

“U.K. fintechs have trained the U.K. population to try new financial products but most people don’t engage with investing and when they do they pay too much,” said Rutgers.

Robinhood was founded in 2013 by Baiju Bhatt and Vlad Tenev and counts DST Global and Sequoia Capital among its investors. The company says it makes most of its money from subscriptions to its Robinhood Gold service, as well as from rebates from market makers and stock loan income.

“At first we started with commission-free trading for the iPhone and now we are thinking how can we serve all financial needs for people at the lowest costs?” Tenev said in an interview.

The announcement of the U.K. expansion follows a public-relations setback in the U.S., when a glitch in its system allowed users to trade stocks with excess borrowed funds, giving them access to what amounts to free money. That came less than a year after a planned Robinhood checking account product was torpedoed by regulatory and insurance questions.

iZettle Ships mPOS Device Made from Ocean Plastic

Moreover, Swedish mPOS vendor iZettle has launched a recycled card reader made from fishing ropes and nets collected from the North and Baltic seas.

The creation of the device follows research stating that 46% of the five trillion pieces of plastic polluting the ocean is made up of old fishing nets. iZettle says that up to 75% of the Ocean Reader is made using recycled ocean litter. 

Today, there are almost 125 million card readers in the world, and this number is expected to grow by six percent on average every year. iZettle's ambition is that all new products it launches will include recycled materials by 2021.

Jacob de Geer, the Co-founder of iZettle, commented:

When it comes to things like sustainability, we have a responsibility to do all we can. I’m proud that iZettle is launching the world's first card reader made of recycled ocean plastics, but at the same time, it's a failure of the entire industry that this is only happening now, in 2019. We all have to do better.

The Ocean Reader comes with a charging dock, which is also made from ocean plastic, and will retail at ￡98+VAT. IZettle says it will donate 20% of the sale price of each Reader to organisations committed to removing plastic from the oceans.

Earlier this year, CPI Card Group introduced a payments card, called Second Wave, with a core made from recovered ocean-bound plastic.

PayPal to Buy Online Rewards Platform Honey for $4B

Finally, the week has ended with some massive news from PayPal that has agreed its largest ever acquisition - a $4 billion deal to buy Honey Science Corporation, the firm behind a browser extension and app that helps people find online shopping rewards and deals.

Founded in 2012, Honey is best known as a popular discovery tool that helps consumers find savings as they shop online. Over the years it has added other features, such as a mobile shopping assistant, an offers and rewards programme, and price-tracking tools and alerts.

The firm has 17 million active users and claims to have helped these people find more than $1 billion in savings over the last year.

PayPal says the acquisition will help it reach shoppers at the beginning of their journey, a vital advantage in the battle for e-commerce customers against a host of new rivals such as Apple Pay, Google Pay and Facebook Pay. 

For its part, Honey will get access to PayPal and Venmo's 275 million consumer accounts, as well as 24 million merchant accounts.

Honey, which was profitable on a net income basis in 2018, will keep its brand and LA headquarters once the deal closes early next year.

Dan Schulman, CEO, PayPal, said:

Honey is amongst the most transformative acquisitions in PayPal’s history. It provides a broad portfolio of services to simplify the consumer shopping experience, while at the same time making it more affordable and rewarding.

The combination of Honey’s complementary consumer products with our platform will significantly enhance our ability to drive engagement and play a more meaningful role in the daily lives of our consumers.

India's Paytm Raises $1B

The last week of November was big too. It began with news from Indian e-commerce and payments firm Paytm, which is to expand into insurance, lending, stockbroking and investments after receiving a whopping $1 billion round of funding. 

The new round was led by T Rowe Price and also included an injection of $200 million by existing investor SoftBank and $400 million from China's Ant Financial. Discovery Capital also participated.

The new capital values Paytm at $16 billion. The firm has raised a total of $3.5 billion since inception, with SoftBank holding a 19% stake and Ant Financial and parent company Alibaba commanding 38%.

SoftBank, still smarting from is massive miscalculation with WeWork, is understood to have insisted on an IPO within five years in return for its participation in the current round.

Paytm says it will invest $1.4 billion over the next three years to export its brand into adjacent financial products.

Paytm Founder and Chief Executive Vijay Shekhar Sharma, said:

This new investment by our current and new investors is a reaffirmation of our commitment to serve Indians with new-age financial services.

Charles Schwab to Acquire TD Ameritrade for $26B

During the same week, Charles Schwab has agreed to acquire rival discount brokerage TD Ameritrade in an all-stock transaction valued at approximately $26 billion.

The acquisition will reshape the retail brokerage industry, creating a combined company serving 24 million client accounts with more than $5 trillion in client assets. Taken together, the two firms recently generated total annualized revenue and pre-tax profits of approximately $17 billion and $8 billion, respectively.

Schwab President and CEO Walt Bettinger said:

Together, we share a passion for breaking down barriers for investors and advisors through a combination of low cost, great service and technology. With this transaction, we will capitalise on the unique opportunity to build a firm with the soul of a challenger and the resources of a large financial services institution that will be uniquely positioned to serve the investment, trading and wealth management needs of investors across every phase of their financial journeys.

The integration of the two firms is expected to take between 18 and 36 months, following the close of the transaction. Schwab has named senior EVP and COO Joe Martinet to to oversee the merger, which will entail a relocation of the combined company's headquarter operations to Schwab’s new campus in Westlake, Texas. 

The business will be led by Stephen Boyle, TD Ameritrade EVP and CFO, who has been named as interim President and CEO.

“Partnering with Schwab on this transformative opportunity makes the right strategic and financial sense for TD Ameritrade,” he says. “We share a common history — a journey since 1975 that has made Wall Street more accessible. Now we look to join forces with a respected firm like Schwab to do more than we could do apart. Together, we can deliver the ultimate client experience for retail investors and independent registered investment advisors. We can continue to challenge the status quo, pooling our resources and expertise and deliver sustainable, long-term value to our many stakeholders.”

Amex Issues Card that Rewards Users for Physical Activity

Further, American Express has teamed up with life insurance and investment outfit Vitality to launch a credit card that rewards Brits for being physically active.

Members earn up to one per cent cashback on spending but can boost this to up to three per cent depending on how much physical activity they do in any given month.

To earn points, Vitality members track their activity on a compatible device, which then syncs with their Vitality app. Users earn points for activities such as completing 7000 steps in a day, visiting the gym or taking part in a run. The more activity they record, the more cashback they can earn.

Neville Koopowitz, CEO of Vitality, commented:

Working with American Express we are delighted to be introducing this Credit Card that uses this behavioural economic model and fuses it together with a person’s everyday spending, directly providing additional cashback linked to how active they are.

NatWest Launches Digital Challenger Bó

Finally, the month was closed with Bó, the digital challenger bank from NatWest, which is now live on the App Store and Google Play, featuring a bright yellow Visa card and a mobile app.

A retort to new app-based banks like Monzo and Starling, Bó has been built on new technology as a digital, cloud-based bank with its own Faster Payments connection.

In the works for 18 months and operating with ￡100 million budget, the new bank has copied the playbook of the challenger brands, offering an array of smart money management tools, including instant spend alerts, itemized spending breakdowns & budgeting.

NatWest says it has employed experts in behavior change and money management to help build the app after analyzing data from 2.6 million anonymized customers which showed that half spent everything they earned, while an additional quarter overspent every month. 

Bó has its own chief executive and management team piggy-backing off the RBS banking license.

CEO Mark Bailie, commented:

As we’re part of NatWest, people can rely on Bó to keep their money safe. But as a digital bank, built entirely on a separate cloud-based technology, Bó is also able to harness new technology and develop rapidly in line with our customers’ needs and expectations. 

With Bó we have an opportunity to help address a genuine societal need and to be a positive force in our customers’ lives. Our aim is to transform the nation’s attitudes and behaviour around money and I’m hugely excited to see what we can achieve.

Ironically, the launch of Bó comes as customers of NatWest's online business banking service BankLine take to Twitter to complain about intermittent outages following routine maintenance undertaken in the early hours of the morning.

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?? Uber Money, or All You Need to Know About Uber's New Quest into Finance

?? Here's Why WeWork Simply Couldn't Work

?? All You Need to Know About Apple's New Credit Card

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About: I am a business developer, sales professional, FinTech strategist, as well as Cryptocurrency and Blockchain enthusiast. I'm highly passionate about Financial Technology and Digital Innovation, and strongly believe that it will change the world for the better. Apart from my daily job at a global payments startup where I'm leading company's expansion into Europe , I'm an active member of FinTech community and a TechFin evangelist.

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