Europe

ACCEPTANCE & PROCESSING

WooCommerce has partnered with Mastercard to enhance digital checkout for its merchants in EMEA. The integration gives WooCommerce merchants access to Mastercard Merchant Cloud, a unified gateway that offers broad payment processing capabilities and fraud prevention. Merchants will be able to accept a wide array of digital payments – from major card brands to alternative payment methods – quickly and securely. By tapping into Mastercard’s network of over 200 acquiring banks, the collaboration aims to extend simple and secure payment options to more e-commerce merchants, boosting customer choice and convenience.

BNPL

The European Investment Bank (EIB) is providing a €70 million scale-up loan to Scalapay, an Italian Buy Now, Pay Later provider. It marks the first time the EIB has directly financed an Italian fintech unicorn and is expected to accelerate Scalapay’s technological innovation in digital payments. The funding will help Scalapay expand its product range and consolidate its position in Europe’s BNPL market, enabling shoppers to split payments online and in-store with greater flexibility. EIB Vice-President Gelsomina Vigliotti said the investment will strengthen Europe’s digital payment ecosystem by supporting a fast-growing company focused on technology, security and service quality.

Klarna’s flexible payment options are now available via Apple Pay in France and Italy. The fintech has integrated its Buy Now, Pay Later services into Apple Pay, allowing millions of iPhone users in those countries to split purchases into instalments directly at checkout in apps, online, or in-store. With this expansion, Klarna’s Apple Pay feature is live in eight markets, following successful rollouts in the US, UK, Canada, Nordics, and Spain. Klarna says the move offers French and Italian consumers more flexibility and convenience and continues its mission to be available at every checkout by embedding instalment payments into widely-used digital wallets.

DIGITAL & eCOMMERCE

AMGI Studios, ClickZero, and PayOS have teamed up to launch a retail commerce platform powered by animated AI agents. Customers interact with brand avatars during product discovery, purchase decisions and checkout, and payments are completed within the same experience using PayOS’s card acceptance API. The system supports tokenised card payments and enables conversational checkout with voice commands or on-screen gestures. The companies say branded AI agents can guide users through personal shopping journeys and execute payments, offering merchants a new UX layer for engagement, conversion, and retention in web or metaverse environments.

Rest of the World

CROSS-BORDER

Mumbai-based Airpay Payment Services has secured approval from the Reserve Bank of India to operate as a cross-border payment aggregator. This authorization completes Airpay’s set of licenses under the RBI’s unified payment aggregator framework, allowing it to serve as a regulated payment provider for online, physical, and international transactions. The company says the milestone positions it as a full-stack payments provider for Indian businesses expanding globally. Airpay expects the license to boost its processing volumes by 30–40% over the next year as it onboards over 50,000 merchants, with cross-border flows projected to contribute more than 20% of revenue in that period.

OPEN BANKING

PayAdmit has partnered with UK-based Yaspa to integrate Pay by Bank account-to-account payments into its platform. This collaboration enables merchants using PayAdmit’s payment gateway to accept instant bank transfers authorized via customers’ own banking apps, providing real-time payment confirmation with lower fees and fraud risk than card payments. By adding Yaspa’s Open Banking solution, PayAdmit expands its offering of alternative payment methods across online retail, gaming, and digital services. Executives say the partnership will improve checkout conversion and speed for merchants, as Pay by Bank delivers a mobile-friendly, secure way for users to pay directly from their bank accounts with funds settling immediately.