Apple Opening Up iOS NFC in Europe – Will it Change the Game for In-Store Payments?
Gaining access to the physical POS (‘Point-of-Sale’) has been a pain point for local wallets and APMs (‘Alternative Payment Methods’) in several European markets. Apple Pay, Google Pay, and contactless cards have excellent customer experiences and broad acceptance, and APMs have struggled to match these card-centric form factors in terms of ease of use. European […]
Webinar: Demystifying CBDCs and the Digital Euro
Discover the future of finance with our webinar unpacking CBDCs (Central Bank Digital Currencies) and the ECB (European Central Bank) ambitions for the Digital Euro. CBDCs have emerged as a pivotal topic, intersecting finance, technology, and policy. In this session, we delve into definitions, characteristics, use cases, and potential impact CBDCs have on stakeholders in […]
The U.S. Land-Based Gaming Payments Opportunity
Land-based Gaming is a Unique Fintech Vertical, Now With IGT + Everi at its Core Land-based gaming is a unique payments opportunity with specific product requirements, an attractive revenue profile, and specialized set of providers. The proposed merger combines Everi’s market-leading set of verticalized payments products with a leading CMS and games proposition (IGT). The […]
Comparing North American and European PayFacs in 2024
General Commentary & Highlights In North America, 16% of the payfacs registered today are new since Mar ’23. However, 5% of the payfacs from Mar ’23 were unregistered by Jan ’24, a 6% annual attrition rate. In the EU & UK, 14% of the payfacs registered today are new since Mar ’23, on the other […]
Mastering Omnichannel Payments
PayPal Challenged by Growth Headwinds
General Commentary & Highlights PayPal’s stock dropped 9% after PayPal issued low guidance and warned of a transition year. PayPal’s account numbers fell for the first time while net revenue remained disappointingly flat, in part due to ongoing price pressure (net take rate declined by more than 50 bps since 2019). PayPal’s recent strategy to […]
Global Card Scheme Performance FY 2023
General Commentary & Highlights Visa and Mastercard both had another year of strong performance on the back of healthy growth in consumer spending and cross-border volumes. Cross-border continues to drive volume growth, though growth slowed from 22% to 16% for Visa and 31% to 18% for Mastercard between Dec.’22-23 and Dec.’21-22, respectively.Visa and Mastercard card […]
Still Work to Be Done for Next-Gen Issuer Processors Seeking to Capture the Embedded Finance Opportunity
Regardless of the wide variance in definitions for the term “embedded finance” (which Flagship defines in detail in an article here), most market participants can agree on the need to quantify how big embedded finance actually is today, and what its trajectory is towards obtaining its (typically huge) theoretical market size. This article seeks to […]
Digital Euro: Digitalizing the Eurozone Payment Ecosystem
This article is part II of our Central Bank Digital Currencies series. For more insights, please refer to Part I: Demystifying CBDC (Central Bank Digital Currencies) here.
Press Release: Ben Brown Joins Flagship Advisory Partners to Strengthen Growth & Innovation Capabilities
Annapolis, MD – Flagship Advisory Partners, the leading global boutique strategy consulting and M&A advisory firm focused on payments and fintech, is pleased to announce the addition of Ben Brown as a Partner, based in our Annapolis, MD office.