PayPal Deal, Connected Economy And Cyberwar Top Week’s News

The first full work week of the new decade brought a gusher of payments and commerce news, and this latest edition of the PYMNTS Weekender is here to make sure you don’t miss anything.

PayPal made a big acquisition, and Citigroup made a big appointment. The connected economy is coming into focus, and we looked at the potential for a cyberwar with Iran.

That and much more is in this week’s PYMNTS Weekender.

Top News

PayPal Finalizes $4B Honey Acquisition

Founded in 2012, Honey has grown from an eCommerce price-tracking tool to an expanded suite of services that includes a shopping assistant and rewards program. With roughly 17 million active users each month and 30,000 diverse online retailers, Honey has delivered some $1 billion in savings to shoppers in the past year.

Citigroup Names New Retail Banking Leader

Having held numerous strategic positions at the third-largest bank in the U.S., David Chubak will head all retail sectors — branches, mortgages, wealth, risk management and small business, according to a memo.

Alphabet-Backed Healthcare Startup, One Medical, To IPO

The San Francisco-headquartered startup runs membership-based healthcare clinics and was launched by internal medicine doctor Tom Lee, who served as the company’s CEO until 2017. Amir Rubin, a former UnitedHealth group executive, succeeded Lee. One Medical was valued at about $1.5 billion in a 2018 funding round.

Who Will Shape The Future Of The Connected Economy?

Ten years ago, the world of payments and commerce was in a very different place. independent sales organizations sold terminals and card processing, mostly to brick-and-mortar merchants. Square was a white dongle that turned a smartphone into a point of sale terminal for micro merchants. The Collison brothers had founded Stripe, but it would be a year before it would be in-market

Are Virtual Cards The Future Of B2B Travel Payments?

When Sabre and Visa announced a new partnership in April to pair Visa virtual commercial cards with the Sabre Virtual Payments gateway, the goals were fairly big: create a virtual B2B travel payments solution that was faster, more secure and more transparent for buyers and suppliers.

Trackers and Reports

Two Features That Win Subscription Subscribers

The video streaming landscape is swamped with providers. From Disney+ to HBO, Netflix, Amazon Prime and Hulu, consumers have never had as many companies from which to stream TV shows and movies as they do now. With so many streaming services competing for consumer attention, providing unique content might not be enough to earn subscribers. The pressure is on for providers to find new ways to gain an edge on their market rivals.

Why 64 Pct Of Merchant Services Providers Want A Payments Overhaul

Financial institutions are facing an all too familiar challenge: Customers and clients are increasingly demanding fast, data-rich products and services, yet their legacy core payment processing systems are often antiquated. These challenges are especially acute for merchant service providers (MSPs) and the clients they serve. After all, many businesses look first to their MSPs, including acquirers and independent sales organizations, to connect them to the vast and growing digital ecosystem.

How To Win The $1.4T Battle For Millennials

Airlines, hotels and homesharing platforms need strategies to satisfy the travel needs of four generations of jetsetters, each with different payment and booking preferences. This can be difficult, even for companies used to dealing with the whims of travelers, as they must support multiple payment types and channels to ensure they are appealing to the largest possible base of potential guests.

Fun, Cool and Otherwise Interesting

As Amazon Re-Enters High Fashion, New eChallenges Abound

It’s all the fashion these days to battle it out online for more market share when it comes to selling clothes to consumers. Excuse the bad pun, but the fashion game looks ready to gain new energy this year, thanks to recent news involving Amazon. Just in case you haven’t heard yet, Amazon is planning to launch a luxury fashion platform in the first half of this year.

Qatar Bans Crypto

For a country that is striving mightily to go digital when it comes to financial services, it may be a bit curious that Qatar has seemingly put the brakes on cryptocurrencies.

Alexa’s Expanding Ecosystem

When Alexa was first introduced in November 2014, it didn’t look much like the next big thing in user interfaces. There wasn’t very much like it in the market at the time — both in terms of design and function — and there was little in the way of guarantees that the product would mature into a hit.

What Iran Can – And Won’t – Do In A Cyberwar

In the potential cyberwar with Iran, the U.S. may get hit hard. Planes may fall out of the sky, the financial system may be crippled, the energy grid may go dark — actually, it’s likely that none of this will come to pass.

Hundreds Of FinTechs Move From UK To EU Ahead Of Brexit

No one knows just what Brexit will mean for commerce, for international trade, for currencies across the continent. The only certainty is that the effects will be far-reaching.