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Author: Joel Van Arsdale

Scope and Scale of the Apple Fintech Ecosystem

Apple effectively discloses no data on its fintech business, forcing us to speculate on the size and substance of this franchise. There are plenty of wacky numbers floating around as to Apple’s scale in fintech, including one widely quoted data point that Apple processes $6 trillion of payments volume annually (claiming to be more than […]

SoftPOS is Ready for Prime Time in 2023

SoftPOS, otherwise known as ‘tap to pay’ or ‘pin on glass’ was first conceptualized a decade ago. Since then, SoftPOS progressed slowly but steadily towards mass market readiness, and that time is now, or at least visible on the 2023 horizon. Several key events in 2022 catalyzed the momentum of SoftPOS, which is now clearly […]

European A2A Schemes Thriving, Not Yet Open Banking Payments

While the European market waits for open banking payments to find a foundation, alternative payment schemes built on account-to-account (A2A) banking rails continue to thrive. In this article we examine the European landscape for A2A payment schemes and open banking A2A payments. Catalyzed By Mobile Commerce, A2A Schemes Thrive Across the EU   As shown […]

M&A No Longer the Key Driver of Consolidation in U.S. Merchant Payments

Conventional wisdom suggests that consolidation within merchant payments is principally driven by M&A. From c.1995 to 2015, this conventional wisdom was indeed accurate. As the U.S. market matured over the last five years, the dynamics of market consolidation shifted. From 2016 to 2021, our analysis suggests that organic share movement was more impactful than M&A […]

Fintech Executives Facing Potentially Painful Lessons on Inflation, Recession

It is a fool’s errand to forecast inflation under the uncertainty of today. But we will go out on a limb and predict that elevated inflation is going to persist for quite some time and likely will contribute to a recession. Payments and fintech executives are in for a crash course on the challenges of […]

Will U.S. Cost of Payments Ever Be Disrupted?

Technology breeds efficiency, at least under normal circumstances. U.S. card acceptance falls into the unusual circumstances category. Despite having the world’s second largest digital economy (behind China), the U.S. has the highest costs of payments (as shown in Figure 1) among developed global markets driven primarily by the high cost of cards. There is a […]

Stock Valuation Crunch Will Impact Broader Fintech Market

The fintech equity markets, public and private, have been sellers’ markets for years. Particularly during the pandemic, the premium placed on high growth fintechs reached stratospheric levels. Those days could be ending. The sunset of the pandemic, rise of inflation, and war in Ukraine have public investors shifting towards alternative asset classes and away from […]