News Round-ups

GoCardless has launched open banking payments

Worldline partners with IATA

Fiserv offers PayPal acceptance

Barclays US offers BNPL

Airbnb chooses Visa Direct

Amex prepares to launch a debit card in China

Viva Wallet launches merchant advance loans

Wellet launches softPOS in Germany

France’s Antitrust Authority warns of big tech’s sway over payment services

Stripe Issuing launches in Europe

HM Treasury and the Bank of England establish a Central Bank Digital Currency Taskforce

Venmo lets users buy, hold and sell cryptocurrency within its app

FCA will launch a regulatory ‘nursery’ for new fintechs

Curve jumps into BNPL

EBA Clearing issues user specifications for new RT1 functionality

NatWest shuns businesses who accept payment in cryptocurrencies

French regulator states that the term neobank must necessarily qualify a credit institution

BaFin faces criminal probe into how it oversaw Wirecard

Ant Group applies to become a financial holding company overseen by China’s central bank

Turkish central bank bans the use of cryptoassets for payments

Due to Brexit banks have moved or plan to move more than £900bn in assets to the EU

An additional US$900 billion was spent in online retail around the world in 2020

Visa has hit one billion additional contactless transactions less than a year since contactless limits increased across Europe

Mastercard launches Request to Pay application solution

KBC and equensWorldline launch the first co-badged wearable in Europe

Square starts operations in Ireland

Online deliveries from the EU to the UK have fallen by more than 50% since January

German Federal Court of Justice allows German merchants to charge an extra fee for online payments

Fintechs launch initiative to tackle IBAN discrimination in Europe

Payconiq becomes iDEAL’s technology provider in the Netherlands

Afterpay launches Afterpay Card in Australia

PSR issues a Statement of Objections that alleges that five companies engaged in anti-competitive behaviour

The OBIE introduces Variable Recurring Payments