Paytech market updates: Paypal, Afterpay and Stripe lead innovations

On April 19, payments platform Stripe launched its Stripe Issuing service in 20 European countries allowing businesses to design, create and manage their own cards. The service is popular among US business customers and will give European business users more control in how and where their money is spent.

On April 9, the Inter-American Development Bank and Citi Innovation Labs announced the success of its blockchain cross-border payments trial. The concept involved using blockchain and tokenised money to make payments from the US to Latin America and the Caribbean, providing full trackability of the transactions, exchange rates and fees.

Payments provider Mastercard, on April 8, launched its Request to Pay application solution to offer an end user application service within Pay.UK’s Request to Pay framework.

On April 5, social media audio platform Clubhouse announced it had partnered with Stripe for the first monetisation feature in its app. Users on the platform are now about to send payments to each other but will be expected to pay a small processing fee on top.

Paypal, on March 30, launched a new feature Checkout with Crypto allowing customers with cryptocurrency holdings in the US to checkout seamlessly. The new feature will convert the holdings into fiat currency at checkout and will appear in the wallet when customers have sufficient holdings to cover an eligible purchase.

Afterpay, on March 29, launched a new virtual card bringing its buy now pay later services to in-store purchases. The card will allow customers to pay in four instalment payments and will sit in users’ mobile wallets.

If you’re in paytech and have a recent update the market should know about, email aoife.morgan@contentive.com

• Read more under:
• Digital Wallets