Apple’s P2P payment, Square’s results, Paypal’s Business in a Box in Cards and Payments

by | May 4, 2017 | Payments

  • Apple is expected to launch its own mobile person-to-person payment service in 2017. According to a report in Recode, Apple has had discussions with Visa about creating its own prepaid cards which would run on the Visa debit network and would be tied to the new peer-to-peer service
  • Sage has confirmed that it plans to sell its US payments division, but has pledged to hold on to its UK business. Analysts estimate that the underperforming North American payments business could net around $500m (£390m).
  • Square has reported a 22% year-on-year increase in total net revenue to $462m for Q1 2017, with net losses amounting to $15m compared to $82m in Q1 2016. The payments company also reported that Square Capital facilitated over 40,000 business loans totalling $251m in the period
  • PayPal has unveiled a new service called Business in a Box, which brings together a package of tools designed to help small firms start and run their online operations. PayPal has recorded revenue growth for Q1 2017 of 17% to $2.975bn, with the number of active customer accounts increasing by 6m to 203m. Payment transactions rose 23% to 1.7bn and payment transactions per active account rose 12% to 32 on a trailing 12 month basis. Total payment volume was up 23%, or 25% on an FX-neutral basis, to $99bn.
  • Apexx, a fintech start-up founded by former staff from Zapp, Evo Payments and Xcordia, is launching in London. The fintech plans to launch a platform which allows merchants to compare the costs of different payments services and receive expert advice on the payment providers that will best suit their business needs. The founders claim the approach could save merchants more than 15% on the cost of processing credit or debit card payments and alternative payments
  • Azimo is planning to launch a new app feature that allows users to send and receive money using just a mobile phone number.