In today’s top payments news, Walmart CEO Doug McMillon said eCommerce isn’t quite where it needs to be revenue-wise, but that it will be one day. Also, Grab CEO Anthony Tan said his company won’t go public until it’s profitable.
Adyen Adds Card Issuing By Merchant Demand
Dutch global payments platform Adyen announced that it’s launching card-issuing services to its customers. Adyen Issuing will allow clients to provide their customers with virtual and/or physical cards that can be used online, in-app or in-store. The cards can also be integrated into mobile wallets.
“Adyen Issuing gives our clients the ultimate in flexibility,” said Adyen Co-Founder and CEO Pieter van der Does in a press release. “It combines issuing and acquiring in a way that helps them create new and better experiences for their customers.”
Walmart CEO: eCommerce Isn’t Living Up To Its Potential (Yet)
Sales at Walmart were slightly below expectations, coming in at $127.99 billion vs. $128.65 billion expected, though most analysts agreed the miss was balanced out by Walmart’s higher than expected eCommerce growth of 41 percent during the third quarter of the year.
“Our strength is being driven by food, which is good, but we need even more progress on Walmart.com with general merchandise,” Walmart CEO Doug McMillon said. “We’re mixing the business out better to achieve better margin rates, but there is more work to do. We’re committed to progress and building a larger, healthier eCommerce business. Our customers want that, our marketplace sellers want that, and so do we.”
Amazon Echo Smart Speakers Outselling Google Home
The Amazon Echo smart home speaker is outselling Google Home by a wide margin.
Amazon is the sales leader in the smart speaker market, capturing 36.6 percent of the smart speaker market with 10.4 million in Echo sales and 65.9 percent annual growth. China’s Alibaba ranked second, capturing 13.6 percent of the market. Chinese smart speaker manufacturer Baidu was third, with 13.1 percent and Google came in next, with 12.3 percent. Xaomi was fifth, with 12 percent of the market share, the report showed.
Grab CEO: No IPO Until Business Shows Profits
Grab Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder Anthony Tan said the Southeast Asia ride-hailing platform will not launch an initial public offering (IPO) until the company is profitable.
Tan said he anticipates additional markets will turn a profit in the next 12 months and some are already making money.
“Once we’re profitable, then we can clearly go to public when we want to,” Tan said. “We continue to see more markets getting … more profitable in many other cities, across the next 12 months.”
Can Real-Time Data Render Credit Scores Obsolete?
The rise of faster peer-to-peer (P2P) payment services has had an unintentional ripple effect for businesses, banks and merchants. With customers able to send money to family and friends with a few taps of their smartphone, frustrations can arise when businesses are unable to deliver similar speed. As a result, firms that are lagging behind in faster payments investments could miss out on the full opportunities available in the global business-to-consumer (B2C) solutions market.
The new Faster Payments Tracker highlights the latest faster payments developments from several global markets.
TCH Gives Banks An Open Banking Template
Against the backdrop of Open Banking, and in an effort to compete, financial institutions (FIs) must give consumers the ability to share their data with third parties, including FinTech firms. FIs, in turn, must also protect the security and integrity of that data, while giving consumers a sense of control over how and where it’s being used.
That’s been a tough line for most FIs to walk, Dave Fortney, executive vice president of product management and strategy at The Clearing House (TCH), told Karen Webster in a recent interview.
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