Payments News Digest 23 June 2023

Europe: PayPal strengthens balance sheet on sale of regional BNPL book

PayPal has agreed with New York-headquartered KKR, a private-equity company, to sell up to $44bn of BNPL receivables on consumer accounts in Germany, France, Spain, Italy and Britain. The discount involved is unknown, but KKR will take on the risk while the seller will continue to handle customer-facing operations.

PayPal has been strikingly successful in the pay-later arena despite launching relatively late in the sector: by the end of last year it had loaned to more than 30 million customers in this way to reach $20 billion of total payment volume thanks to a 160 percent jump over the year before. By the end of the first quarter this year, the company's pay-later facilities were being offered through approximately three million merchants.

Global: Volt gains big investment on promise to minimise API headaches

Open Banking has been increasingly in the news this year, both for lessons learned in the keener markets of Britain and the European Union and the fact that the United States, as reported in this newsletter last week, is now planning to formalise the practice. This week, financial API-specialist Volt, which currently operates in the UK, Brazil and across the EU, raised $60 million for further cross-border expansion and product development.

"Altogether," reports TechCrunch, "there are some 70 countries that now have Open Banking, account-to-account structures in place, but there is little in the way of harmonisation in standards, giving companies like Volt an opportunity to build out international payments that work across those borders."

Announcement: Final issue next week

Next week's issue will be the last one of this Newsletter: we hope you have found it a reliable and useful guide in a time of great change. My name is Fin Keegan, and it has been my pleasure to write most of the last 200+ issues, with the layout and delivery help of my colleague Sian Kenyon. Thank you for your attention and support over the last four years. For any queries on this please email research_enquiries@argusinformation.com.

Other stories of interest this week...

Middle East: Mastercard allies with SimpliFi to expand digital payment solutions
New Zealand: Bank profitability, competition investigation promised by govt
UK: Britcoin inches closer after Project Rosalind CBDC tests
US/Canada: Embedded paytech Fortis expands north, buys SmartPay