James’ Newsletter — 30 July

A collection of this week’s interesting articles and headlines in the payments industry. I work at PayPal but my views and opinions are my own.

💳 Cards have overtaken cash in Australia by quite a significant margin. But the most recent data is from 2016. And the last it was recorded prior to that was 2013. Cards were only just behind cash in 2013 so it’s likely that cards overtook cash some time ago, most likely in 2014 or 2015.
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Amazon could develop a wallet for merchants that rivals PayPal. Yes they could. But they’ve been trying for a number of years already.
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📚💰 Stripe has acquired Payable. This is interesting because Stripe states that it will be incorporating the tax reporting tools into its platform: an indication that Strip wants to offer a suite of tools beyond payments to support small businesses.
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🍎Apple has not just added PayPal as a funding option. They’ve also enabled carrier billing in Denmark, Sweden, and Hong Kong.
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🤖 Android Pay is now available in Spain. Apple Pay launched there in December last year.
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Alibaba is making it easier for US merchants to sell to Chinese consumers. This time via Taobao. Making it easier for Chinese to shop overseas continues to be a theme for Alibaba and WeChat.
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👶 What Millennials want in banking services: flexibility & transparency delivered efficiently & quickly. But when will we start talking more about Gen Z?
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📲 The industry council covering card security (PCI SSC) is looking at how PINs could be entered safely directly on mobile phones and tablets. Even if a safe standard is developed, will consumers perceive it to be safe?
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Interesting comment towards the end of this article on Mastercard’s Qkr: “In a few years’ time, the idea of going to a website to buy something actually might be out of date.” Makes you think…
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