Comparing North American and European Payfacs
We recently analyzed and compared the composition of the MasterCard payment facilitator lists in North America and Europe1. The lists are similar in size, with 244 payfacs in North America and 232 in Europe2. However, the composition of the two payfac lists is quite different and we believe that this difference tells an interesting story […]
Hype vs. Reality of COVID-19’s Impact on Payments Industry – Part 3
(Part 3* – Channel and Form Factor Impacts)
Comparing Worldline/Ingenico and Nexi/Nets Groups, European Retail Payments Market Leaders
Worldline recently completed its merger with Ingenico. In parallel, Nexi and Nets have agreed in principle to merge. These two events culminate a decade of consolidation in the European retail payments market. These two groups (assuming completion of the Nexi/Nets merger) become clear market leaders for diversified processing and pan-European merchant services (noting that e-commerce […]
Riding the Next-gen POS Wave
Lost in the e-commerce hype of COVID-19 is the ongoing evolution of the physical point-of-sale (POS) towards next-generation product and service models. Mobile technologies and digital service models have reinvented POS solutions as affordable and easy to use (a major leap from legacy ePOS solutions which are expensive and challenging to deploy or adapt/integrate). We […]
B2B Payments a Greenfield for Fintech
B2B payments, long the bastion of commercial banks, remains fertile ground for fintech innovation and market penetration. While the pace of innovation and consolidation in B2C payments has been brisk, large cross-sections of B2B payments remains relatively traditional and undisrupted. B2B payments have lagged in digital innovation due to:
European Consolidation Continues Unabated with Nexi – SIA Acquisition and Nets Rumors
The race to scale in European Payments leapt forward yesterday with the news of Nexi’s acquisition of SIA and rumors of a sale of Nets, for which Nexi is also a rumored potential buyer. These announcements follow a pattern of furious consolidation in the last 5-7 years in a race to achieve preeminent scale in […]
The Great Convergence of Fintech and Business SaaS
The convergence between financial services and business services (delivered as Software as a Service) is accelerating, creating tremendous shareholder value along the way. Fintechs such as Square or PayPal are increasingly expanding their portfolio of both business and financial services. Meanwhile, SaaS providers such as Shopify and Lightspeed are rapidly expanding into payments with the […]
Hype vs. Reality of COVID-19’s Impact on the Payments Industry – Part 2
(Part 2* – Dramatic Sectorial Impacts) *This is the second in a series of blogposts in which we compare our original, bearish hypotheses related to COVID-19’s impact on the payments marketplace back in April versus the reality of where we are today. In this second part, we examine the impact of the pandemic on sectorial […]
Hype vs. Reality of COVID-19’s Impact on the Payments Industry – Part 1
(Part 1* – Impact on M&A)
2020 Darwinian Shakeout in European Fintech
(Adapted from original publication in The Paypers)