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.
Most Read Flagship Insights of 2023
In 2023, Flagship published insights across a wide range of payment and fintech topics. The scope and scale of Apple’s fintech ecosystem, in parallel with our analysis of fintech’s efficiency, generated the most traction amongst our readers. Other topics that gathered attention were our definition of the widely used catchphrase ‘embedded finance’, KKR’s failed investment […]
Infographic: 6 Years after the EU Launch of Apple Pay, over 44% of Europeans use Mobile Wallets
General Commentary & Highlights A mobile wallet is a payment tool that stores the user’s payment credentials on a mobile device, which can be used to pay in stores and/or remotely (incl. person-to-person and C2B mobile commerce The prevalence of mobile wallets has risen in Europe, stemming from tech advancements in acceptance, heavy presence of […]
The Rise and Fall of the Apple-Goldman Sachs Consumer Finance Partnership
The Wall Street Journal’s reporting on Nov. 28 that “Apple is pulling the plug on its credit-card partnership with Goldman Sachs” caps off months of highly public news about the dissolution of Goldman’s entry into consumer financial services. In this article, Flagship estimates the profitability of the Apple Card program, which we believe is the […]
Fintech M&A in Europe Hits New Low In the Second Half of 2023
General Commentary & Highlights Investments in the European fintech sector have slowed down in the second half of 2023 but have started to show signs of recovery recently Challenging macro-economic conditions and concerns of depressed asset valuations have been acting as key obstacles in the recuperation of fintech M&A activity in Europe Feedback from investors […]
European Office of CFO SaaS: New Battleground for Embedded Fintech
The European office of CFO SaaS is a new battleground for embedded fintech. Leading SaaS platforms are increasingly embedding fintech solutions with software workflows and creating a winning formula of success. In this article, we analyze this space and present our key takeaways.
Executive Interview Series: Ram Sundaram, co-Founder & COO, TerraPay
Flagship Advisory Partners’ Executive Interview Series provides readers with exclusive insights from thought leaders in the payments and fintech industry. This edition puts the spotlight on TerraPay, a leading fintech that serves businesses and fintechs in the B2B cross-border payments space. Flagship Advisory Partners met with Ram Sundaram, Co-Founder and COO of TerraPay to learn […]