ADN’co Payments Insight – July 2018

Players’ Strategy – FinTech Gems Attracting Investors

• FRANCE – Lemon Way –start-up which focuses on managing payments for third parties on marketplaces– just raised €10 million to further aim for European reach. Read more
• JAPAN – Paidy, a Japanese e-payment start-up, closed a $55 million funding round from Osaka and Goldman Sachs. Read more
• INTERNATIONAL – Naspers Group acquires the Israel-based FinTech, Zooz. The amount of this transaction hasn’t been disclosed. Read more

FinTech gems have raised record amounts this year, with more than 383 transactions worldwide in Q2 only. In France, this investment trend has been gaining momentum since May. And, in July another two digit-level funding round by the French company Lemon Way hit the headlines.

In Asia, FinTechs whose core business consists in addressing the e-payment sector are particularly successful: Paidy and Zooz are outstanding examples. However, the record is still held by Ant Financial, with more than $14 billion…

Payment – SMEs as Choice Targets

• UNITED STATES – Stripe expands their set of offers through introducing a card issuing platform for businesses. Read more
• FRANCE – Banque Populaire and Caisse d’Épargne are enhancing their customer loyalty-dedicated solution, FID PRO, for SMEs. Read more

Several start-ups are now trying to attract small and medium businesses, which used to be poorly addressed by conventional banking institutions. Various SME-dedicated services including payment solutions, payroll or accounting management tools, etc. have seen the day. One of the latest examples to date: Stripe designed a card issuing platform for these companies. As they are well aware of the risk posed by these new entrants, some banking groups are fighting back to win SMEs, too. BPCE, for instance, now relies on Big Data and payment data analytics to make their loyalty-focused services as easy to use as possible.