What Happened to PayPal?
The recent replacement of PayPal’s CEO after only two years in the role has sparked passionate discussion on what caused the decline of the original fintech unicorn. While, in retrospect, there have been some real missteps, we believe the more interesting question is what PayPal could yet become. Despite a decade of strategic drift, the […]
Middle East: An Upcoming Fintech Growth Engine
Fintech in the Middle East is no longer emerging – it is scaling. Strong capital inflows, rising consolidation, and regulatory tailwinds are accelerating growth across payments, wallets, lending, and digital banking. We advise viewing the slides via the “PDF” icon button. ‹ › Key Highlights: Fintech funding has accelerated and a new cohort of regional […]
Embedded Fintech Vertical Snapshot: Accommodation Property Management
As part of our ongoing vertical series on vertical SaaS and embedded finance, we profile the accommodation property management segment, which is relatively mature in embedded payments acceptance but offers significant growth opportunities across broader embedded finance.
Flagship’s Annual Visa & Mastercard Card Scheme Performance Snapshot, FY 2025
Visa and Mastercard delivered another strong year, with GDV up 7–9% and net revenue growing even faster (12–16%), increasingly driven by value-added services like tokenization.
Capital One Acquires Brex: A Strategic Pivot in Bank–Fintech Convergence
Introduction On January 22, 2026, Capital One (a top-10 U.S. bank) announced that it will acquire Brex, a corporate spend management and treasury platform, in a $5.15 billion 50/50 cash-and-stock transaction, expected to close by mid-2026. The deal is one of the largest ever fintech acquisitions by a bank and latest in an active B2B […]
BNPL Landscape & Credit Dynamics
Buy Now Pay Later has moved from being a checkout novelty to becoming one of the fastest-growing forms of consumer credit. In 2025, BNPL originations passed $60 billion in the U.S. and $500 billion globally – with sustained volume growth more than double the rate of credit cards. Retailers love the incremental sales, consumers love […]
Executive Interview with Rune Garborg, CEO, Vipps MobilePay: “We need to create a real FOMO beyond payments”
Flagship Advisory Partners’ Executive Interview Series provides readers with exclusive insights from thought leaders in the payments and fintech industry. This edition spotlights Vipps MobilePay, a leading payment method in Norway, Denmark, and Finland. Flagship Advisory Partners met with Rune Garborg, CEO of Vipps MobilePay, in Oslo to discuss the rollout of its NFC wallet, […]
Digital Wallets Drive the Next Phase of Growth in European e-Commerce
Europe’s e-commerce payments are at an inflection point. Card-based wallets are accelerating the fastest, while account-to-account (A2A) schemes are gaining traction in specific local markets. Buy now, pay later (BNPL) remains resilient, underscoring a broader shift toward frictionless, mobile-first payment experiences.
Flagship Market Tracker: Agentic Commerce January 2026
Major corporations have quickly woven AI into every aspect of their business in the pursuit of cost savings and revenue growth. The digital commerce journey is no exception and effectively all large merchants in the US, UK and Europe have implemented generative AI in some part of their customer experience. LLMs and other AI tools […]
Most Read Flagship Insights of 2025
Flagship Advisory Partners is a payments and fintech advisory firm dedicated to helping fintechs succeed in an increasingly complex and rapidly evolving payments landscape. Throughout 2025, we published a wide range of insights exploring topics around challenger wallets, AI in payments, ledger-as-a-service (LaaS), and notable M&A activity across the ecosystem. Below are our five most-read […]