Новости за 19.04.2021

Indian FinTech Startup Razorpay, a digital payments facilitator for businesses, is notching $160 million in a Series E funding round that values the firm at $3 billion, three times its October 2020 valuation of about $1 billion. The funding round is being co-led by GIC and Sequoia, with participation from Ribbit Capital and Matrix Partners.  […]

Philip Drury has been selected by Citigroup Inc. to head up a new investment banking group that has a concentration on firms in telecom, data, entertainment, media and tech, Bloomberg reported. Drury will move to California for his global head of the technology and communications group position. As it stands, Drury heads up the banking, […]

The payments processing service Stripe has launched its Stripe Issuing service in 20 European countries, the FinTech startup announced on Monday (April 19). Available in Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain and the U.K., Stripe Issuing lets users “create, manage and […]

Mastercard has inked a partnership agreement with the Central Bank of Iraq to digitize payments in that country. The aim is to make this largely cash-driven society a more cashless place, while also hoping to “boost financial inclusion, encourage socio-economic development” and “mitigate the risks of a shadow economy,” Trade Arabia reported Monday (April 19). […]

China launched a digital yuan trial last year in cities including Suzhou, Shenzhen, Chengdu and Xiong’an. Now, China may trot out the central bank digital currency (CBDC) pilot for the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics by giving foreign athletes and visitors a chance to use it. As reported by CNN, Li Bo, a deputy governor of […]

Shocking but true are the facts that 95 percent of fraudulent synthetic identities are missed by legacy security measures when remotely onboarding new accounts, and the price tag for charge-offs resulting from successful synth ID attacks hovers around $15,000 per incident. Synthetic identity fraud thrives in part because Big Fraud itself is now a massive […]

Octopus, a smart card operator in Hong Kong, is introducing transit cards for public transportation users in more than 300 Chinese cities, the South China Morning Post (SCMP) reported. Under the company’s offshore expansion plan, Octopus transit card users will be able to cover payments for public transportation on buses, rails, and ferries in mainland China […]

The “over the top” U.K. buy now, pay later (BNPL) startup Zilch has raised $80 million in funding, bringing its value to more than $500 million as it prepares to expand to the U.S. That’s according to TechCrunch, which reported Monday (April 19) that Zilch had raised that funding in an all-equity series B led […]

The Chinese delivery leader Meituan is aiming to raise roughly $10 billion to compete with companies like Alibaba. According to Bloomberg, Meituan is looking to raise this revenue by selling stock and convertible bonds, the largest-ever sale of new shares by a company listed on the Hong Kong exchange. The sale would involve 187 million […]

The Indian government’s Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC) has chosen local payments startup Paytm out of 17 competitors to facilitate digital payments for the country’s largest insurance company, according to Times of India, citing sources. LIC had previously teamed with another payments business, but since most of the firm’s payments are digital, the state-owned […]

When Microsoft spends $19.7 billion on a company whose specialties included voice recognition and artificial intelligence (AI) as part of its health sector strategy, you know that AI in the medical field is here to stay. It only makes sense, then, that regulations regarding the technology would not be far behind. Thanks to a leaked […]

The Bank of England is setting up a task force focused on exploring the design and launch of a digital version of the pound. As reported by The Guardian, the Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak announced the formation of a task force on Monday (April 19), comprised of the Bank of England and the […]

Proving that customers are who they claim to be is one of the big challenges for payments providers as eCommerce sales surge. To “advance its identity verification efforts,” Mastercard will acquire identity verification firm Ekata for $850 million, the company announced in a Monday (April 19) press release. Purchase, N.Y.-based Mastercard said that “together, Mastercard and Ekata […]

“When you are finished changing, you are finished,” founding father Benjamin Franklin said long before being immortalized on the $100 bill. Two hundred years later, Nike’s newly released sustainability and carbon footprint reduction strategy appears to be embracing that sentiment. “We’re changing our approach,” the athletic footwear and apparel giant’s Chief Sustainability Officer Noel Kinder […]

Bed Bath & Beyond has rolled out the second of eight owned brands that it plans to debut or revamp in fiscal 2021. Haven, a collection of bath essentials, is available exclusively at the retailer beginning on Monday (April 19), according to a company announcement. The new brand offers a collection of organic cotton bath […]

Oil giant Saudi Arabian Oil Co., often referred to as Saudi Aramco, a shortened version of its former name, is trying to set up a supply chain finance network, The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported. The move to arrange financing for billions of dollars a month in payments to suppliers would serve as a form […]

U.K. bank NatWest Group, which shifted its accelerator program to a virtual model in response to the pandemic, is restoring the network of incubators for small- to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) in a hybrid setup, according to a press release. In its new iteration, the program will focus especially on SMBs considered poised to grow quickly […]