Headlines

Fragmented payments - Time to count

• UNITED STATES – PayPal's split payment offer is a success
• UNITED KINGDOM – Klarna will report credit scores
• FRANCE – LCL takes its turn in instant loans

While split payments aka "Buy Now Pay Later" are undoubtedly the strong trend of recent years, as shown by the figures posted by heavyweights such as Paypal, which rely on this practice to serve their ambition of centralising financial services. The authorities, who were sounding the alarm about the lack of regulation of this new practice, have sounded the alarm and are beginning to tighten up prudential requirements, following the example of Ireland which was the first government to legislate. In the UK, Klarna, which is trying to comply, has also announced that it will report the credit scores of its customers to the public rating agencies. However, the recession currently affecting the tech sector poses new threats to these young players whose model is still largely unprofitable and adjustments, notably through massive layoffs, have been announced. The traditional players are taking advantage of this to structure their offer, like La Banque Postale with Django, or even to come out of the woodwork like LCL, which is launching a new offer of instant loans as much to take advantage of the commercial opportunity that these new forms of credit represent as to stick to their customers' expectations.

Open Banking - A true revolution for companies

• UNITED STATES – Stripe becomes an open-banking player with Stripe Financial Connections
• FRANCE– Circit adapts open banking to the audit world
• UNITED KINGDOM – Token.io wants to offer account-to-account payments
• UNITED STATES – Stripe unveils its marketplace

As innovations and uses related to open banking develop, it becomes clear that only part of the iceberg is revealed today, and that this regulation will profoundly transform many sectors in the wake of banking and financial activities. Indeed, banking affects all areas, and these will progressively adopt new data sharing practices that will open potential new business, at least, a new organisation around these activities. And it is in B2B that this fact is particularly relevant, since wherever the retrieval of strategic information can be automated, it is possible to integrate processes and simplify the work of companies. This is what the payment champion Stripe understood when it announced its intention to embark on open banking and unveiled its services marketplace a few days later. This strategy is not new, as it has been implemented by other players, but it requires a strong pull (the winner takes all), and Stripe can carry this ambition of a super app dedicated to B2B. In another register, open banking allows Circit to disrupt auditing by monitoring in real time the accounting operations of its clients and by proposing an integration of the various services related to the auditing of its clients.