What’s Trending Today? Oct. 15 Top 5 Stories

As the business week comes closer to a close, there’s still plenty of big news breaking across the payments and commerce world. Just to name a few — Square’s IPO, First Data’s public price plans, MasterCard’s mobile push, Uber SMB delivery, and Apple’s court troubles.

Catch up with the Top 5 trending stories on PYMNTS.

IPO Watch…Is Square A Bloated Unicorn?

Square officially announced the plans yesterday (Oct. 14) on its blog, which revealed that Square will trade on the NYSE as SQ.

The S-1 filed with the SEC works through a range of details, as S-1 filings usually do, with respect to the payment company’s financials, risk factors (generally general language but here a red flag as noted by the $5.7 million loss tied to fraud at a single customer).

At first glance he numbers show some promise.  While the revenues may be a bit, well, light compared to what some industry watchers might expect on absolute basis – at only $850 million in its latest full year, sales grew by more than 53 percent over 2013. No doubt observers will take the six month tally thus far in 2015, at $561 million, extrapolate it through the back-end, and say the revenue run rate is more than $1 billion.

But at a valuation last seen at $6 billion (admittedly before the end of 2014’s full term) and which is a 6x sales multiple on 2015 (projected), and more than 7x on 2014 (actual), the question must be asked if this is a bloated unicorn…[Read more]

First Data Goes Public — May Dial Back Share Price

First Data is coming to market, pricing its initial public offering on Wednesday (Oct. 14) at $16 per share and raising $2.6 billion, roughly speaking — a disappointment to many on Wall Street and likely to the company itself.

That’s because $16 a share represents a point beneath the $18 to $20 that each of the shares was widely expected to fetch, according to numerous sources.

Though the payments sector has, in addition to First Data, seen increased determination by other players to come public — most notably, and most recently, Square — it remains to be seen whether the First Data revised pricing represents general muted expectations for the sector or is company-specific. Initial reports as news surfaced over the summer that First Data would seek an IPO initially estimated that the valuation could top $40 billion…[Read more]

MasterCard Makes Corporate Cards Mobile

MasterCard has taken another step in helping businesses get their payment cards up to speed with the digital era.

MasterCard announced yesterday (Oct. 14) that it will provide its tokenization services to commercial card issuers in order for corporations and businesses to load payment cards onto digital wallets. This change, made possible because of the MasterCard Digital Enablement Service, will allow tokenization for consumer credit, debit and prepaid cards, as well as small business and commercial cards.

MasterCard Digital Enablement Service supports NFC payments made at the point of sale terminal, along with mobile app purchases. Transactions are secured using industry-standard EMV cryptography…[Read more]

Uber Secures Partners For SMB Same-Day Delivery

Uber is bolstering its same-day delivery service in its top performing U.S. markets — New York City, Chicago and San Francisco — through two new partnerships with Shopify and Bigcommerce.

The partnerships will essentially extend UberRUSH’s same-day delivery service, which runs through the Uber driver network, to the wide merchant base encompassed by the two eCommerce companies.

The partnerships will especially help small and medium-sized merchants, which do not have a standing infrastructure to support their customers’ delivery needs.

Whether customers choose a Shopify merchant or a Bigcommerce merchant, they will just need to choose UberRUSH as their preferred delivery method during the checkout process…[Read more]

Jury Says Apple Violated Patent Infringement

The judgment in a patent lawsuit could end up taking a financial bite out of Apple.

It was reported this week that the technology giant has come out on the losing side of a patent lawsuit filed by the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF) — the licensing arm of the University of Wisconsin-Madison — alleging that Apple had used WARF’s propriety technology in a number of its devices’ processors without permission.

The jury in Madison, Wisconsin, sided with WARF, finding the organization’s infringement claim valid and that its technology — patented in 1998 — is present in Apple’s A7, A8 and A8X processors, which Reuters notes are found in the iPhone 5s, 6 and 6 Plus, as well as several versions of the iPad. WARF filed the lawsuit in January 2014….[Read more]

To check out what else is HOT in the world of payments, click here.

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