The information you need to start your day, from PaymentsSource and around the web:
Soda of the month
Coca-cola has launched a $25 monthly subscription service that allows consumers to get one beverage per day from a network of 340,000 vending machines, reports
Based on drinking one Coke per day, the $25 monthly fee is about $10 less than the cost of buying the sodas individually at the normal price in Japan.
Looking at ATMs
Singapore bank OCBC has deployed its initial group of ATMs that are accessed when the user scans his or her face at the machine.
There's only 8 ATMs at launch and only account balance inquiries are available, though the bank plans to add withdrawals and facial biometric access for its entire fleet of 550 ATMs starting in June, reports
OCBC's ATM demand remains high despite the move to digital banking, with the bank reporting an average of two million withdrawals monthly over the past year. It's hoping to maintain that momentum while embracing the move toward contactless transactions by removing the need for cards at the ATM.
Tweet-to-tweet payments
Digital payments company Bottlepay has introduced a feature that allows users to send and receive bitcoin and traditional currency via Twitter in an attempt to compete with established transfer firms.
A user can type "@bottlepay send 1,000 sats (a unit of bitcoin) to @twitteruser," which sends the bitcoin from the first user's account to the other person, explains
Bottlepay plans to add integrations with Reddit, Discord, Twitch, Telegram and Mastodon in the next few months. It also plans to add more traditional currencies, such as the euro.
Business deal
A group of U.S. VCs including Homebrew, Susa Ventures, Haystack and J Ventures has made a $3.3 million seed investment in Higo, which has built a P2P-style app for business payments in Latin America.
Higo hopes to be an alternative to banks in the region, and address a relative lack of e-invoicing for supply chains within Latin America compared to the U.S., according to
Higo claims it has signed up hundreds of small businesses and is on track to have thousands on its platform by the end of the year.
From the Web
REUTERS | Friday, March 19, 2021
WhatsApp has hired a top Amazon executive to head its payments business in India, two sources told Reuters, as the messenger service gears up to expand in the booming sector.
TECHCRUNCH | Friday, March 19, 2021
For small and mid-sized restaurants in Nigeria and most of Africa, food procurement can be a complex process to manage. The system is such that a business can easily run out of money or have considerable savings. Most restaurants don’t have access to deal directly with farms to get better deals because they lack the staffing to chase them. Besides, they also don’t have the aggregation pull as single entities to directly get good value from the farms.
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL | March 18, 2021
The number of subscriptions to online video streaming services around the world reached 1.1 billion in 2020, according to data released by the Motion Picture Association on Thursday—a new milestone marked amid the Covid-19 pandemic that kept people locked down, seeking their entertainment at home.
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The deal can potentially boost payments on both sides, but also open new avenues such as merchandising and related content, says Kunai's Tarun Bhasin.
The rise in contactless payment options will not only encourage consumers to return to offices and stores, but also enable them to change their payment habits.
TomoCredit, a San Francisco challenger bank for immigrants and young people, is rolling out a credit card that ditches the FICO score.
Potential central bank digital currencies would need to be integrated into existing payment systems alongside cash and other forms of money, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said.
Some of the biggest names in fintech — including Plaid, Varo and LendingClub — are joining forces to raise their industry’s profile among lawmakers.
Even for well-positioned business innovators, with the best of hands at their disposal, the COVID-19 pandemic arrived to destructive effect. In payments, financial services and other industries, new channels have arrived quickly, opening new opportunities for a different kind of social interaction.
As the fintech industry matures and takes stock of how it has disrupted the banking industry for good, it’s critical we continue placing value on specialization to create a better, customer centric experience for all, says Moorwand's Luc Gueriane.
The scrutiny on installment lenders could prompt them to fine-tune their offerings and diversify into new markets.
In the space of a few weeks, Payoneer announced it would go public through a special purpose acquisition (SPAC) firm, then collaborated with Mastercard on a suite of services for B2B payments.
Despite digital payment advancements and the availability of mobile wallets in most countries, cash remains a prominent payment form — especially in Romania, where 78% of transactions are still made with cash.
Technology safety assessor UL will test EMV specifications on consumer mobile devices as part of standards body EMVCo's early adopter program.
True Name, which launched on Mastercards issued by Citi, allows members of the transgender community to have their chosen first name appear on their payment card.
Visa and Mastercard are postponing plans to boost the fees U.S. merchants pay when consumers use credit cards online, pushing back the changes another year to April 2022 because of the pandemic.
After postponing enforcement for years, the card brands are implementing an EMV liability shift at fuel stations, which still struggle to make the upgrades necessary for chip-card acceptance.
