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:
Vision for Credit Card Issuer Growth: Optimization Toolkit
European bank management boards typically view credit cards as a cash cow business with good returns on equity but challenging to invest in growth. Recent trends largely reinforce this skeptical view:
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 […]
Ant Group IPO Demonstrates the Power of Fintech
Ant Group, the parent company of Chinese digital payments and fintech giant Alipay, recently filed an IPO prospectus which demonstrates the value-creation potential of fintech: for shareholders, consumers, and partners. Ant’s 674-page prospectus makes for fascinating reading, and strikingly illustrates three key takeaways:
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)
Cracking the Code in Fintech SME Banking
The SME business segment has traditionally been profit-challenged for large commercial banks. Many fintechs love the segment however, due to general under-penetration and opportunities to differentiate with digital products and quick and easy user experiences. Despite the pandemic, fintechs continue to pile into the SME segment as illustrated by recent introductions of business banking services […]