paybis.com’s Post

“The two businesses currently operate in a similar space but are on diverging paths in terms of strategy, financial sustainability and outlook.” - Vinod Nair, founder and chief executive of MoneySmart. 💵 MoneyHero has made an unsolicited offer to acquire its competitor, MoneySmart, but the offer has been rejected. This signals a potential for consolidation in the fintech market, with companies seeking to gain a stronger foothold in the personal finance space. 🔍 Will the consolidation of players in Southeast Asia's fintech market continue, leading to larger, more integrated platforms, or will a diverse landscape with multiple players competing on different strategies ultimately prevail?

For former PayPal Co-founder and CTO Max Levchin, building in the payments space is nothing new. What is new is the continued pace of fintech innovation since he co-founded Affirm in 2012. 💡 Notable for: Providing a flexible and transparent way for consumers to pay over time without charging late fees Partners since: Dec. 2017 when we led Affirm’s Series E. (After Hans Tung first met Max in 2009, the pair kept in touch. Hans, who always thought Max should do a fintech startup one day, saw potential in embedding consumer lending at checkout to catalyze e-commerce purchases. Thanks to a tip from Brian Singerman from Founders Fund, Hans re-engaged with Max—and the rest is history. Today, Affirm has processed more than 17 million purchases using its Buy Now, Pay Later model.) June 2019: Max joins this Founder Real Talk podcast with Glenn Solomon and Hans to explain how chasing HVF—hard, valuable, and fun—led him to start Affirm, which doesn’t penalize shoppers “for being a day late or a dollar short.” https://lnkd.in/gRbTyt3e 🔔 IPO: June 2021 (NASDAQ: AFRM) #BeNotable #Notable #NotableFounders

If you're looking at the Discover price tag and thinking that $35 billion seems steep, consider it in relation to Block's acquisition of Afterpay in 2021 Block paid $29 billion for Afterpay, and at the time Afterpay had an annual gross merchandise value of $19.7 billion worldwide Discover, on the other hand, had a total network volume of $550 billion in the US alone in 2023 Pic 1: Afterpay results in Block's FY 2022 earnings report Pic 2: Discover metrics in Capital One's investor presentation (released yesterday) https://lnkd.in/eDAhBf48 https://lnkd.in/eZAqf5iJ

The newest Embedded Finance Review edition just went out to 1,048 subscribers, which means I have crossed the 1,000 subscriber mark. Thanks for your support! 🙏 The top story is about Stripe's changes to their platform and what it means for embedded finance. In the brand section, I highlight PrestaShop partnership with Mastercard, vertical fintech FilmChain's fundraising, Apple's decision to open their NFC interface, and JET Tankstellen Deutschland GmbH new mobile payment options. In the world of infrastructure providers, I covered finmid's fundraise and partnership with Wolt, Monese's potential breakup, Mastercard's new fintech program rules, and The Bank of London's new API product. And in the insightful section, we can learn from Thredd's CEO, Team8 and understand embedded finance use cases in the gig economy. You can find the link for this edition in the comment sections. Make sure to subscribe 👇

Angela Strange famously said, “every company will be a fintech company.”  To which I responded, “Not if they need to learn payments.  It’s just too complex.”  That’s how we first started talking and led to her joining my board. I pitched a16z on a new model: We operate all the payments, leveraging specialized technology built from the payment primitives up, payment expertise, and scale, and split the revenue back with the SaaS company. Revenue-wise, it’s the same or better than if they owned their own payments stack, just without the headaches. If every company will be a fintech - payments need to be an easy-to-add feature to every product.

#OpenViews24 is happening next week! 🚨 We wanted to share the incredible speakers who are joining us on this edition 👀 We have prepared an exciting two-day lineup with representatives from companies like Citibanamex, Inter, PicPay, Kueski, Stori, Valor Capital Group, iFood and many others! With their help, we'll understand how open finance has evolved from a vision into a strategic reality for financial innovators across the market, discussing topics like: ➡️ Emerging trends transforming A2A payments ➡️ The value of alternative data to improve credit processes ➡️ The regulatory evolution of the ecosystem 🎟️ And the best news is you can still register here: https://lnkd.in/enG7XTZb 

MoneyHero’s $8m gambit: bold move or blunder? 👉 Read more: https://buff.ly/4d5Sf4f Nasdaq-listed MoneyHero Group made an unconventional US$8 million offer to acquire competitor MoneySmart, raising eyebrows in the finance industry. 🔎 MoneyHero's public offer, without initial shareholder discussions, broke typical M&A norms, causing controversy. 📈 MoneySmart, net profitable in 2023, rejected the offer, finding it undervalued compared to its market performance. 📝 Ongoing informal discussions and public disclosure aim to rekindle potential acquisition talks despite tense relations.

There’s a lot to unpack in Capital One's potential $35 billion acquisition of Discover Financial Services (watching how it navigates the regulatory approval gauntlet will definitely be intriguing), but one element of the deal that caught my attention is what adding Discover’s payment rails signifies about Capital One’s strategy. A lot of headlines have focused, not surprisingly, on how this could create a challenger to Visa and Mastercard (and also AmEx, whose business it would most closely resemble). But as Hugh Son at CNBC notes, buying Discover can also be read as a defensive play: “By creating an end-to-end ecosystem that is more of a closed loop between shoppers and merchants, it could fend off competition from rapidly mutating fintech players like Block and PayPal, as well as buy now, pay later firms like Affirm and Klarna, who have made inroads with both businesses and consumers." This makes sense according to AnnaMaria Andriotis, recent guest on The Wall Street Journal podcast, when you also consider that Discover had previously been approached by a number of tech companies who were aiming to create their own payment networks and were interested in acquiring its rails (link in comments). The payments space is only going to get more competitive, with everyone from banks to fintech to crypto vying for market share. By obtaining one of the most desired assets in finance — payment rails are the ‘Holy Grail,’ per Capital One’s CEO — Capital One could end up re-shaping more than just the credit card landscape in the years to come. How are others seeing the contours of this deal? #fintech #paymentrails

🚀 Instant Transactions, Real-Time Control: Unlock The Power of PayTo 💙 We've been very excited about the development of PayTo in the past months and how this could apply to e-commerce business case. Being the first fintech to transact PayTo in Australia, we'd like to share with you the incredible benefits of our game-changing PayTo feature that can be plugged and played seamlessly into any financial ecosystem.💡✨ Our plug-and-play payment gateway ensures a smooth integration process, allowing businesses to harness the power of real-time transactions without the hassle of complex setups while enjoying the built-in cashback features. To find out more about PayTo powered by Hello Clever and how we're different, get in touch with us 👉🏻 https://lnkd.in/gSDYK_xz #PayTo #FintechInnovation #RealTimeTransactions #loyaltyrewards

Excited to meet #crossborder entrepreneurs and deepdiving into #paymentchallenges in their #globalexpansion journey. If you are : - Looking to incorporate and set up bank accounts outside of India for your business in countries like #US, #UK, #UAE, #Singapore - Are a growing #multientity business with geographical presence in many countries already but juggling between multiple solutions from local banks and fintechs for different collection and payout needs - Have #offshoreaccounts with traditional banks but struggle with lack of local customer support, costs, convinience or compliances We should definitely chat !🙂