Success Stories: Fintech - April 2022
In success stories, we profile some of the key stories in fintech and payments this month, focusing on areas of growth, resilience and innovation.
This month we explore Stripe’s commitment to carbon capture, a truly futuristic contactless payment implant and the rapid growth forecast for digital wallet payments.
“Pay By Palm” Now A Commercial Reality
British-Polish firm Walletmor is offering a commercially-available microchip implant that lets you ‘pay by hand’. "The implant can be used to pay for a drink on the beach in Rio, a coffee in New York, a haircut in Paris - or at your local grocery store," says founder and chief executive Wojtek Paprota. "It can be used wherever contactless payments are accepted."
The implant requires a local anaesthetic, but according to one user only “hurts as much as when someone pinches your skin.” Adding to the futuristic vibe, the chip lights up from underneath the skin when used.
IBM’s New AI-Powered Chip Supercharges Fraud Detection
A new-generation IBM mainframe with on-chip AI will allow 100% of transactions to be fraud checked in real time. Without such technology, latency and throughput constraints have previously limited checks to around 10% of transactions.
Fraud has been on the rise, aggravated by Covid (which accelerated riskier ‘card-not-present’ payments.) Payments firms are concerned not only with minimising fraud, but also reducing erroneous declines. IBM’s new tool could reduce declines by 46% and losses by $105 million at a Tier 1 bank.
Stripe Leads Effort To Commit $925 Million To Carbon Capture
Payments giant Stripe is teaming up with major players including Alphabet, Meta, Shopify and McKinsey to offer a major cash injection for the carbon capture sector. In total $925 million will be committed to funding the technology, which removes carbon dioxide directly from the air and stores it underground.
Stripe will create Frontier, a subsidiary that will purchase carbon removal from companies deemed to be offering viable solutions over the next 9 years.
UK Digital Bank Starling Hits £2.5 Billion Valuation
Starling’s valuation has hit the dizzying heights of £2.5 billion following strong expansion over the pandemic period. The bank recently raised £130.5 million to build a “war chest” for acquisitions, and already has £400 million set aside for this purpose. It is thought to be considering an initial public offering (IPO) within a few years.
PayPal Among Winners As Wallet Value To Reach $12 Trillion
Digital wallet payments will reach a value of $12tn in 2026. Providers such as PayPal (the market leader), AliPay, WeChat Pay, Apple Pay and Google Pay all make it easy for consumers to deploy a range of payment methods.
The 2026 projection represents a 60% rise on 2022 levels. The rise will be fuelled by increasing adoption of wallet payments by merchants, coupled with a broader range of services – such as buy-now-pay-later – on offer to users.
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The Conexus Group: Services For Fintech Businesses
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