ADN’co Payments Insight – February 2017

Connected commerce / IoT – Google throws the dice

• UNITED STATES – Google adds a new feature for their personal assistant Google Home, enabling its users to make online purchases.

Google bets on the Internet of Things to head for the market of connected commerce. Google Home will be challenging Amazon Echo, as this other Web giant has been seeking to boost the development of their home assistant for several months.

Money transfer – Players placing their bets on chatbots

• INTERNATIONAL – PayPal launches a payment bot for Slack users, and confirms their interest in building bridges with instant messaging services.
• INTERNATIONAL – TransferWise launches an international money transfer service based on a Facebook Messenger-integrated chatbot.

These moves highlight payment companies’ focus on chatbots and P2P transactions. The war raging amongst messaging services sees Messenger take the lead, given the scale of their parent company and considerable user bases. For Facebook, this partnership with TransferWise, is a way to reach out for markets they haven’t yet managed to address when it comes to payments.

Financial services – Aggregators crafting scalable banking offers

• FRANCE – The account aggregator Linxo diversifies its range of offers through proposing a marketplace for financial services, Linxo Market.

Linxo proposes a platform designed to streamline accesses to financial services. This marketplace centralises various offers, including subscriptions and later accesses through their app. Linxo Market is meant for FinTech companies and new entrants, as well as for longstanding banking players. Just like Budget Insight and Bankin’, Linxo highlights French aggregators’ strategy as they keep walking their way between banks and their customers. 

Special Payment Vouchers – More investments for new entrants 

• FRANCE – Resto Flash raises 9 million euros and seeks to expand its range of services, while gaining new markets.
• FRANCE – Care Labs announces a 5.2 million euros investment, in an attempt to boost their acceptance network for Chèque Santé and reach out for international growth.

New entrants on the market of special payment vouchers are making room for themselves, with help from their investors’ support. These FinTech companies do have international ambitions, and intend to rely on other markets to secure their positions since their development pace in France remains quite slow.