Biggest winner of the COVID-19? e-commerce!
Fintech is not a binary operation. We help you to understand all of its dimensions.
Hi,
I’m Maciej Wróblewski from Nextrope Insights, which mainly deals with consulting in our Nextrope family. I’m responsible for research of the fintech sector. Besides, I’ll serve as your weekly mailman, bringing what’s hot, what’s new and what’s inspiring the fintech-enthusiasts community.
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Every week we’ll engage in a different topic - this week’s theme is e-commerce. We'll guide you through the latest news, trends and stories on fintech solutions for online commerce.
You’ll be hearing from us every week with a new issue of Nextrope Insights. Once again, thanks for reading the first release of Nextrope Insights, first fintech-oriented weekly newsletter.
Mastercard invests in Polish fintech Verestro
Polish fintech Verestro, previously known as uPaid, has been cooperating with Mastercard for over 10 years. Now, the time has come for the next step in their partnership. Mastercard, in addition to financial investment, offered Verestro help with reaching new business contacts. Mastercard hopes it’ll lead to quick development of the fintech. Verestro announced a plan of further expansion, including UAE’s and Singaporean markets. The plan convinced Mastercard to begin the next stage of their tie-up. By now, Verestro has opened offices in Warsaw, New York, Sofia and São Paulo and is present on more than 20 markets (85% of its revenue is generated outside Poland). Verestro, specializing in software solutions for cashless payments and creating environment for apps to co-op with each other, can have a crucial value in e-commerce and modern solutions for shopping, both online and stationary. By dint of Mastercard’s assist, Verestro can become one of the fastest-growing companies in cashless solutions in the region.
https://www.finextra.com/newsarticle/36162/mastercard-invests-in-polands-verestro
Source: https://sifted.eu/articles/mastercard-tink-investment-fintech/
One of the most active institutional investors acting vigorously on the market is Mastercard. After series of effective financial takeovers and even bigger number of new partnerships between startups and Mastercard, it took up a position of a multi-directionally developing company on the market of modern finance. Even though lately investors haven’t been very eager to invest in startups, Mastercard decided on cooperation with Verestro, which mainly handles payment solutions including NFC, API, mobile wallet, receipt storing, loyalty cards storing and beyond. Recent drop in numbers of fintech investments was caused by (surprise, surprise) COVID-19. This huge slow down is shown on the graph below.
Source: https://altar.io/ultimate-list-active-150-fintech-investors/
Monese and PayPal - cashless solution entered new markets
Monese is a British fintech, somehow resembling the Russian Revolut. It allows its clients to manage their multi-currencies account similarly to the Russia-originated fintech. But a great advantage of Monese over Revolut is its new partner - PayPal. Thus, Monese’s clients can directly transfer money to over 325 million PayPal users (including 25M sellers), doing e-shopping all over the world and managing finance on PayPal account from Monese app. As Norris Koppel, the CEO and founder of Monese wrote on his LinkedIn: “We are delighted to make it easier for our customers to connect to PayPal, wherever they may be in the world. We serve a fast-growing and incredibly international audience who travel the world for study, work, family, or retirement, and are avid PayPal users. These customers increasingly expect the financial freedom to thrive anywhere. Through our partnership with PayPal, our customers will have greater choice and more access to doing business around the world.” PayPal’s cooperation with Monese might be an enormous advantage, especially when it comes to shopping online. A huge community of shoppers use PayPal on a daily basis, so a possibility to manage PayPal’s wallet from a bank account is more than practical. Monese is now fortifying their position on the market and becoming an interesting rival for Revolut, offering new possibilities.
https://www.businesscloud.co.uk/news/london-fintech-monese-announces-paypal-integration/
Alibaba’s fintech IPO in Hong Kong is going to be huge
Ant Group, formerly known as Alipay, is one of the most precious Chinese e-finance companies, which offers a broad spectrum of finance managing via apps. It’s controlled by Alibaba Group, Jack Ma’s success. Ant Group have been looking for an opportunity to sell part of their shares to the public, both in mainland China and Hong Kong. Finally, HK’s exchange is believed to offer a smoother listing process for the world’s most valuable tech unicorn. Ant Group advised that Reuter’s information about their IPO was incorrect, however, Alibaba hasn’t commented on the article yet. Their lack of comments is giving some investors sleepless nights. Ant’s IPO would be one of the biggest stock market launches this year. Although, Ant Group’s main product - Alipay isn’t broadly used in Europe, it’s starting to enter the European market. So far, it’s available in the UK, Italy, Iceland and Norway - it became available for clients via partnership with some European banks, e.i. Barclays. After overtaking PayPal already in 2013 (!), it is the largest mobile payment platform, having roughly 870 million users worldwide. Now, everybody awaits the next move of the big ant.
The Biggest winner of COVID-19 outbreak - e-commerce!
In those horrific times, someone must be a winner. It’s definitely e-commerce. Many restrictions, including total lockdown, implemented in many countries forced many people to rely on online shopping. Especially revolutionary was it in MENA countries. I don’t know if you’re aware of the fact that spending time in the malls is one of the most favourite activities in the Middle East. No wonder, how big difference on lifestyles made the whole lockdown thing. It made thousands of people, especially in the rich Arab countries, change their day plans. Because of the fact, that offline shopping is so popular in those countries, the region is a rough terrain for e-commerce market. But the pandemic made over the previous situation. Now, e-commerce is flowering in the Gulf - even though, several months ago nothing pointed that out. I don’t want to make any crypto-advertising, but you can get a deeper insight into that topic gives article in the middle-eastern Forbes written by Nextrope’s CEO Mateusz Mach. You’ll not regret reading it!
https://www.forbesmiddleeast.com/consumer/retail/new-winner-of-the-corona-crisis-e-commerce-in-mena