Banking Vice: The ultimate A2A use case

Vendors know that helping banks deliver A2A services will be big business.

• Finextra: FIS unveils A2A real-time payments platform

Moral implications aside, banking emerging regulatory environments like gaming, cannabis, and crypto accelerates the adoption of A2A payments.

• “Sports betting will be a big use case for real-time payments” Pymnts: Online Gaming Places Its Bets On Real Time Payments

• Mazooma: Mazooma and Fifth Third Bank are the First to Bring Instant Withdrawals to the $150B+ U.S. Sports Wagering and iGaming Markets

• Cannabis Science and Technology: US Congress Passes Cannabis SAFE Banking Act

• Yahoo: Silvergate Took Nearly $3B in Deposits From Digital Currency Customers in Q4 2020

Quote of the Week: “hyper-efficient non-banks are just killing the banks.”

• USANews: Bank Of America’s Mortgage Bankers Are Frustrated By Call Quotas, Cross-Selling Mandates, And A New Compensation Scheme That Shortchanges Top Producers

Don’t think for a second it’s limited to the mortgage business:

• Forbes: In The War Between Square, PayPal And Shopify, Banks Are Collateral Damage

• Yahoo Finance: Square Partners with Plaid on ACH Payment for Merchants

• Banking Dive: Fintechs attack cross-border business payments as banks, legacy players rush to innovate

• Bloomberg: Square Takes Aim at JPMorgan With Checking, Savings Accounts

• Finextra: Revolut adds invoices to Business account

Case Study: Standard Chartered’s exploration of embedded finance for eCommerce

Banks that rely on traditional credit scoring keep ceding business to fintechs and marketplaces doing embedded finance for eCommerce merchants. Standard Chartered is one of a handful of banks that have been investing to carve out a role in the skyrocketing digital commerce space.

• SCVentures: SC Ventures backs SOLV in enabling seamless trade and access to finance for small businesses in post-COVID world. The marketplace offers SolvScore, based on transaction, bank, and other data, to bank and non-bank financial services partners.

• Standard Chartered: We’ve set up a new venture in next generation payments with Assembly Payments

• DigFin: StanChart partners with Indonesia’s Bukalapak

[Disclosure: I’m an advisor to Standard Chartered’s corporate venture fund]

Funding, M&A and IPOs

BNPL:

• CNBC: SoftBank is backing buy-now-pay-later firm Klarna in funding round that values it at over $40 billion

• TechCrunch: Affirm spinout Resolve raises $60M for its B2B ‘buy now, pay later’ platform

• Crowdfund Insider: Unicorn: Buy Now Pay Later Tech Sunbit Secures $130 Million Through Series D Funding Round Led By Group 11

Payments:

• Finextra: Mastercard joins $25 million round in Australia's mx51

• Boston Globe: Boston payments firm Flywire raises $250 million in IPO

• Startup Lanes: Paytm to launch India’s biggest IPO ever at $3B

• Skynews: Revolut founder plots path to $10bn valuation with new fundraising

• Techcrunch: UK’s Paysend raises $125M at a $700M+ valuation to expand its all-in-one payments platform

SMB:

• TechCrunch: Agicap raises $100 million for its cashflow management service

Extras 

• PRNewswire: Volante Technologies and Deloitte Enter Into Strategic Alliance Agreement To Accelerate Payments Modernization

• PYMNTS: Apple Job Posting Hints At Move Into Crypto Payments

• American Banker: Why U.S. is getting on board with global standard for payments

Shameless Self Promotion: 

I’ll be leading a panel on “Value of Data > Value of Moving Money” of payments entrepreneurs and VCs at Payments Summit on June 3rd:

In the last year, the market value of innovative payments platforms like PayPal, Square, and Stripe skyrocketed past traditional players, and in Q1 2021 alone $6B of venture capital was invested in upstarts intent on reshaping the payment industry. This conversation with entrepreneurs and VCs will highlight why data, automation, and embedded finance are the keys to the next trillion-dollar opportunity in payments. 

Register with a $250 discount.