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Tag: Stripe

  • Stripe and Advent Propose $53 Billion Deal to Acquire PayPal: A Giant Leap in Payments Industry

    Stripe and Advent Propose $53 Billion Deal to Acquire PayPal: A Giant Leap in Payments Industry

    In significant financial news, payment giant PayPal Holdings Inc has reportedly received a joint acquisition bid from payments provider Stripe and private equity powerhouse Advent International. The offer, which values PayPal at a staggering $53 billion USD, was allegedly initiated earlier this month.

    The proposed offer places PayPal’s share value at $60.50, marking an impressive increase of around 28% on PayPal’s closing share price last Tuesday. This proposal leverages approximately $50 billion in committed financing from banking institutions, according to insiders.

    Under the proposed agreement, Stripe and Advent International would retain co-ownership of PayPal, with each party securing an equal share. This arrangement ensures that PayPal would continue operating as a unified entity instead of facing potential fragmentation.

    However, it’s important to note that these discussions remain in the early stages, and there is no assurance that this preliminary approach will actualize into an official transaction. The individuals providing the information have chosen to remain anonymous due to the confidential nature of these ongoing negotiations. Official representatives from Advent, PayPal, and Stripe have yet to issue public comments on the subject.

    PayPal’s first-quarter performance reported a promising 7% increase in revenue, amounting to around $8.35 billion. This figure comfortably surpasses analysts’ predicted average of $8.05 billion. Furthermore, on a currency-neutral basis, total payment volumes experienced an 8% rise over the past year, totaling about $464 billion.

    Questions & Answers

    What is the proposed offer for PayPal’s shares?
    The joint acquisition bid by Stripe and Advent International is proposing a value of $60.50 per PayPal share.

    How is the proposed acquisition to be financed?
    The proposed acquisition is backed by approximately $50 billion in committed financing from banking institutions.

    What were PayPal’s first-quarter performance figures?
    PayPal reported a 7% increase in revenue in the first quarter, amounting to $8.35 billion. On a currency-neutral basis, total payment volumes saw an 8% rise over the past year, reaching approximately $464 billion.

  • 7-Eleven Takes Nike to Court over Air Max Design: The Battle of the Tri-Color Stripe

    7-Eleven Takes Nike to Court over Air Max Design: The Battle of the Tri-Color Stripe

    The popular convenience store chain, 7-Eleven, has filed a lawsuit against sportswear behemoth Nike, alleging that their upcoming sneaker design infringes upon 7-Eleven’s iconic tri-color branding. This legal action comes in response to the striking resemblance between the orange, green, and red stripe pattern of Nike’s soon-to-be-launched Air Max 95 shoe and 7-Eleven’s company branding.

    Accusations of Brand Infringement

    The lawsuit, lodged in a federal court in Dallas, accuses Nike of creating a “confusingly similar imitation” of 7-Eleven’s tri-color stripe motif. 7-Eleven argues that this design is integral to its brand identity, and is universally recognized as being representative of their stores. Nike’s decision to schedule the shoe release for July 11, a date known for 7-Eleven’s annual “7-Eleven Day” celebration and Free Slurpee Day, further aggravated the dispute.

    The lawsuit alleges that Nike has shown a “callous and malicious disregard” for 7-Eleven’s brand rights. The convenience store chain has expressed concern that the unauthorized use of their brand, coupled with the shoe’s launch on their company’s “birthday”, necessitated this legal action to safeguard their brand identity.

    7-Eleven asserts that they made numerous attempts to amicably resolve the issue prior to filing the lawsuit, but were met with Nike’s resolve to proceed with the shoe’s launch and continued promotion.

    Seeking Resolution and Retribution

    The chain contends it has used the orange, green, and red color scheme for many years across various platforms including store signage, advertising, merchandise, and footwear. It claims ownership of multiple trademark registrations for this design.

    The lawsuit argues that Nike deliberately designed the shoe to conjure associations with 7-Eleven, thus profiting from their established brand recognition. The suit suggests that consumers are likely to incorrectly presume an endorsement or sponsorship from 7-Eleven, even though no such partnership exists.

    7-Eleven is pursuing a court order to halt Nike’s sales of the shoe, as well as a recall of any distributed products. The company is also seeking financial compensation and all profits from the sales of the controversial footwear.

    Questions & Answers

    What is the cause of the dispute between 7-Eleven and Nike?
    7-Eleven has accused Nike of infringing upon their tri-color stripe branding in their upcoming Air Max 95 shoe design.

    What resolution is 7-Eleven seeking in the lawsuit?
    7-Eleven is seeking a court order to stop the sale of the shoe, a recall of any distributed products, financial compensation, and all profits from the sales of the footwear.

    Did 7-Eleven attempt to resolve the dispute before filing the lawsuit?
    According to their statements, 7-Eleven tried multiple times to resolve the issue amicably but were met with Nike’s insistence on proceeding with the launch, leading them to take legal action.

  • Afterpay and Stripe Partner to Offer ‘Buy Now, Pay Later’ Payments for Merchants

    Afterpay and Stripe Partner to Offer ‘Buy Now, Pay Later’ Payments for Merchants

    Afterpay the leader in “Buy Now, Pay Later,” today announced a partnership with Stripe, the technology company building economic infrastructure for the internet. The two companies are joining forces to offer Afterpay’s payment service to Stripe merchants through an easy and seamless integration.

    The partnership allows both new and existing Stripe merchants to easily offer Afterpay – giving their shoppers the opportunity to receive their items immediately and pay in four installments, without the need to take out a traditional loan or pay upfront fees or interest. Businesses on Stripe can start accepting Afterpay in minutes—there’s no application, onboarding, or underwriting process to get started.

    “Stripe is delighted to partner with Afterpay to make it easy and fast for online businesses to offer their customers Buy Now, Pay Later. We’ve seen strong demand from users around the world for flexible payment options, and this partnership gives businesses on Stripe an effective tool for capturing more sales and reaching new customers,” said Noah Pepper, Stripe’s Business Lead for APAC.

    Afterpay and Stripe are also extending the payment service to top e-commerce platforms, with Squarespace — the all-in-one website building platform — being the first platform to leverage the partnership and offer Afterpay to its customers.

    By offering Afterpay, Squarespace enables merchants to build a fully integrated checkout experience with ease, while maintaining the look and feel of their brand. Merchants will also experience the benefits of offering customers a flexible payment option, which is proven to attract new customers and deliver higher conversions and average order values.

    “Afterpay has been a top requested feature from our customers,” said Paul Gubbay, Chief Product Officer at Squarespace. “Through this partnership, we’re glad to be able to offer our merchants even more flexibility in how they transact with their customers and increase topline sales without having to sacrifice the design elements that are unique to their brand.”

    “Millennial and Gen Z consumers are demonstrating a clear preference for flexible payment options that allow them to budget and spend responsibly,” said Ben Presseley, Afterpay’s SVP of Global Sales Strategy and Operations. “By partnering with Stripe and Squarespace, we’re equipping retailers with the tools to meet this consumer demand – offering the younger generation a way to use their own money and pay over time, always free of interest.”

    Stripe merchants in Australia, New Zealand and the US can now integrate Afterpay, and will be available to merchants in the UK and Canada soon. Squarespace offers the combined integration of Stripe and Afterpay to their Commerce customers in Australia, New Zealand and the US, and will be available to Canadian customers soon.

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  • Visa expands acceptance of B2B payments using Stripe Connect

    Visa expands acceptance of B2B payments using Stripe Connect

    Visa, the world’s leading digital payments technology company, has teamed up with Stripe, a technology company that builds the economic infrastructure for the internet, to introduce a new set of solutions to help businesses pay and be paid on time.

    The new solutions will be on the Visa Payables Automation platform, which allows buyers to enroll, manage and pay suppliers digitally with a Visa commercial card. This new feature, which is powered by Stripe Connect, the technology company’s solution for multi-sided marketplaces and platforms, enables buyers on Visa Payables Automation to pay suppliers who are unable to accept digital payments easily and securely through the use of a virtual Visa card. This helps bring suppliers who are not plugged into the traditional banking infrastructure into the digital economy.

    “When a buyer needs to pay a supplier, the enhanced Visa Payables Automation platform allows seamless digital payments experience. The supplier will be prompted to register with Stripe Connect, provide a bank account number, and start accepting payments,” said Chavi Jafa, Head of Business Solutions, Asia Pacific, Visa. “Migrating to digital payments benefits both buyers and suppliers, as it eliminates manual processing and enhances reconciliation. This improves productivity while reducing errors and fraud. It also allows buyers and suppliers to better manage their working capital, utilizing a Visa Commercial Card.”

    “We’re excited to see Visa leverage the power of Stripe Connect to facilitate complex payments flows,” said Noah Pepper, Stripe’s Business Lead for APAC. “Less than 10 percent of commerce is online today, and that number is much lower in the B2B space. And when you consider the web has been around for over a quarter of a century, it’s clear that we’ve barely scratched the surface! We are always excited to work with forward-thinking companies in developing better tooling for businesses wanting to accelerate their shift to online.”

    Citi client, Jebhealth is the first user of the integrated Visa Payables and Stripe Connect solution.

    As an online marketplace for healthcare services, Jebhealth uses the solution to facilitate payments for its clients to healthcare service providers on its platform. By using the solution, health service providers are onboarded, just once, via Stripe Connect to become card-accepting merchants. This novel solution is now rolled out in phases and will benefit individuals, corporates and healthcare providers, and ecosystem partners in a virtual integrated pay-out network

    “The Jebhealth team believes strongly in value creation, innovation, and social good. In the backdrop of COVID-19 pandemic, the whole solution was conceptualized, developed, and launched with the help of Citi, Visa, and Stripe, while working from home,” said Jimmy Boey, Founder & CEO, Jebhealth. “With this integrated digital payment method, employees, students, and domestic helpers no longer need to bring a medical chit or cash to pay at the clinic desk whenever they visit the clinics for check-ups. This ensures every clinic visit is shorter and smoother and less exposure from the community.”

    When Jebhealth initiates a payment, a single-use virtual Citi-Visa commercial card is generated. The virtual card is then sent to the receiving healthcare service provider, after which the provider ‘charges’ the virtual card to accept and complete payment through their Stripe Connect account.

    By using a Citi-Visa virtual card, in addition to enabling digital payments, the solution ensures added safety and security. Jebhealth is able to set transaction limits on the virtual cards, including permitted current and merchant types.

    This new service is now available in 30 markets around the world.

    Tarun Minglani, Asia Pacific Head of Commercial Cards, Treasury and Trade Solutions, Citi, said, “Citi is committed to offering our clients innovative B2B payment solutions, enabling them to operate more efficiently in an increasingly digitized business environment. Our Commercial Cards business is active across 14 markets in Asia Pacific. Underpinned by digital solutions and tools, we offer our clients best-in-class products and services through our proprietary solutions as well as through our partnerships in the region. The Visa Payables Automation platform optimizes the payments process while reducing points of friction that are traditionally associated with B2B payments.”

    In 2019, Visa’s commercial card solutions generated more than US$1 trillion in payment volume, making Visa the largest card payment network for B2B payments in the world[1]. As payments migrate away from traditional plastic cards, Visa is working with its partners around the world to enable new experiences that are based on virtual cards and extending its network to collaborate with new players.

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  • Stripe buys Vietnam fashion chain Vascara

    Stripe buys Vietnam fashion chain Vascara

    Japanese clothing firm Stripe International has purchased a majority stakeholding in Vietnamese firm Global Fashion.

    The 70-per-cent shareholding will give Stripe a controlling interest in Vietnamese brand Vascara. It is the second Vietnamese apparel company to be acquired by the firm since its purchase of Nem Group two years ago.

    “We see the potential of the Vietnamese fashion market, especially the footwear and bags industry,” said Stripe Saigon general director and CEO Harigae Tsutomu.

    “Vascara is a brand that has great potential for development, so we believe that the experience and technology accumulated from many markets around the world will accompany and support Vascara to accelerate development, expand the system of stores and serve millions of Vietnamese consumers.”

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  • Stripe readies local merchants selling to Europe fornew payment regulation

    Stripe readies local merchants selling to Europe fornew payment regulation

    Today payments infrastructure company Stripe announced a series of updates to its product stack for businesses operating in Europe, and acquired a Dublin-based tech company called Touchtech Payments.

    Strong Customer Authentication (SCA) is coming

    On September 14, 2019, SCA will come into force in Europe, radically changing the way people buy and sell online. More than 300 million European consumers will need to confirm their identity for the majority of their online purchases, using two of the following: something they know (e.g., a password), possess (e.g., a phone), or are (e.g., their fingerprint).

    Hundreds of thousands of online merchants in Europe —from retailers, to ridesharing companies, to crowdfunding services— will have to upgrade their payments set-up to prepare for the upcoming regulation. If they don’t, their transactions will be declined outright. When similar regulation was enforced in India in 2014, some businesses reported an overnight conversion drop of over 25%, due to the extra step in the payments experience. And while European regulators created a number of SCA exemptions for low-risk transactions (e.g., low value transactions, white-listing by end customers…), most merchants will simply not be able to leverage them on their own.

    “SCA is a ticking time bomb for the European payments industry. Merchants must deal with a complex set of changes to the payment flow that can have a disruptive impact on the customer experience. Yet, awareness among merchants is low”, said Ron van Wezel, Senior analyst at Aite Group. “Payment service providers are at a turning point. SCA is simply too complex for any merchant to manage on its own, including for large online businesses. Payments providers who can abstract away SCA complexity will have a significant advantage over their competitors.”

    New Stripe products to make SCA as seamless as possible for online businesses

    Today, Stripe is announcing new products and updates to help merchants implement the best SCA-ready authentication methods to their checkout page and dynamically trigger SCA when required:

    • The Payment Intents API: a new dynamic payments API that lets businesses design their own SCA-ready payment forms, and accept the best authentication methods (e.g. 3D Secure 2, Apple Pay, Google Pay) through a single integration.
    • Checkout: a pre-built payments page optimized for SCA, that merchants can integrate with just a few lines of code.
    • Billing: a suite of tools for subscription businesses, that identify which charges require SCA and send customizable emails to subscribers when additional authentication is needed.
    • Dynamic support for SCA exemptions on low-risk transactions (e.g., whitelisting, recurring transactions, low amount): behind the scenes, Stripe dynamically scans every transaction to trigger SCA only when required, protecting both users’ safety and merchants’ revenue.

    Stripe’s products are built with an uncertain future in mind. When new authentication requirements arise in Europe and elsewhere, Stripe will update its logic to protect merchants’ revenue against all odds, with few to no changes needed to their integration. To help merchants navigate the complexity of SCA, in addition to the new and updated integration products, Stripe is launching SCA guides, SCA-ready payments flow designs, SCA-ready API documentation, and SCA webinars, all of which can be found on the new SCA web page.

    An acquisition – Touchtech Payments – to accelerate SCA readiness for financial institutions

    Stripe also announced it has acquired Dublin-based Touchtech Payments—a software company that provides advanced SCA-ready authentication technology for some of Europe’s leading fintechs and challenger banks, like N26, Transferwise, and many others. By providing advanced authentication technology for credit card issuers, Touchtech Payments helps them offer better payments experiences for their customers, without having to choose between security and user experience.

    “On the modern internet, payments should be everything you’d expect: easy, secure, and fully compliant with the latest regulations. Unfortunately, these three attributes are often at odds with one another, making it nearly impossible for an individual business to keep pace with regulatory changes and build a great payments product experience for their customers,” said Will Gaybrick, Stripe’s Chief Product Officer. “Touchtech adds yet another layer to the economic infrastructure Stripe is building for the internet, which is designed to help businesses comply not only with SCA but also with the entire next generation of regional payment regulations.”

    As part of Stripe, Touchtech will continue to grow its products, working from Dublin.

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  • Stripe enlists Alibaba for ‘smart store’

    Stripe enlists Alibaba for ‘smart store’

    Japanese clothing chain Stripe is partnering with online retail giant Alibaba to open a “smart store”.

    The 60sqm physical store, stocked with Stripe’s Earth Music & Ecology branded garments, will feature enhanced technologies to use pooled customer data collected from online stores to equip staffers with information about shop visitors. The data, which could potentially include a store visitor’s online purchasing history, could help device-wielding workers make product recommendations and assist a customer in finding garments they are more likely to prefer. Purchases will be made via digital payment services.

    Data collected from the store could influence Stripe’s future product lineup, including information from “smart hangers” that can detect when an item is purchased or just shown interest in. Smart mirrors allow customers to see garments in alternative colours while facial recognition systems will be parsing for gender and age.

    Alibaba’s Tmall digital storefront, combined with its mobile payment platform Alipay, serves 550 million customers annually. The provision of the technology will allow Alibaba a unique opportunity to gather data from the physical retail realm.

    Stripe International, which runs 1400 stores worldwide, is predicting total sales this year of around RMB100 million (US$15 million) from the 20 stores it operates in China.

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  • More e-commerce fraud, customers to be careful

    More e-commerce fraud, customers to be careful

    E-commerce fraud is becoming more prevalent, says US internet payments technology company Stripe in a new report.

    Fraudsters repeat online purchases at the same businesses 10 times more quickly than actual cardholders, says the report, which reveals new patterns to help e-commerce companies combat fraudulent activity during the holiday shopping season.

    With chip-enabled credit cards making brick-and-mortar shopping safer, criminals are turning their attention to online stores. Unlike physical stores, online businesses have to pay the associated costs of fraudulent orders. On average, every $1 of fraudulent orders costs an online business an extra $2.62.

    Stripe looked across a year’s worth of data to seek out fraudulent behaviour patterns by country, time of day, industry and other factors. Insights to emerge include:

    • Fraud rates based on the country where the credit card is issued vary dramatically, by a factor of two or three
    • In Singapore, fraudulent transactions are significantly larger than normal transactions
    • The highest online fraud rates occur during days and times when many people are not shopping, such as Christmas Day or late at night (for example, for US businesses, fraud rates as a percentage of overall traffic increase in the summer and in late December, but not on heavy shopping days like Black Friday)
    • Fraudsters give themselves away by making rapid additional charges at the same businesses on the same credit card, initiating repeat purchases 10 times more quickly than actual cardholders
      • Fraudsters prefer products that can be delivered to locations like public buildings or parks and can be obtained quickly before transactions are invalidated, which explains the prevalence of fraud among on-demand services as well as low-end consumer goods.

    “While there are some consistent patterns to fraudster behaviour, such as their high-purchase velocity, their propensity to work late at night and their preference for cheap or immediately deliverable goods, we have found that the predictive strength of these patterns varies widely depending on the location of the business and the fraudster,” says Stripe engineering manager for payments intelligence Michael Manapat.

    “Because of this, we recommend using anti-fraud tools based on machine learning from large amounts of data.”

    Principal analyst Jordan McKee of 451 Research says it is crucial for online businesses to have robust fraud defences, especially during the busiest shopping season of the year.

    “Because online fraud is highly complex and increasingly global, merchants should consider outsourcing fraud tooling to trusted third-party providers that have access to large, robust data sources. The most effective providers draw on global data sets from hundreds of thousands of other businesses to train their machine-learning algorithms and identify even subtle fraud patterns.”

    For its report, Stripe examined transaction data across hundreds of thousands of its customers across 25 countries. Stripe works in more than 25 countries to allow both individuals and businesses to accept payments over the internet.

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  • Stripe launches in Hong Kong to lift e-commerce

    Stripe launches in Hong Kong to lift e-commerce

    Online payment solution provider Stripe has launched services in Hong Kong, and announced the formation of new global partnerships with Alipay and WeChat Pay.

    The launch will provide Hong Kong online businesses with access to Stripe’s entire portfolio, including online marketplace platform Stripe Connect, fraud blocking platform Radar and analytics platform Sigma.

    With the local launch, Stripe is rolling out US dollar settlements in Hong Kong to allow businesses to accept payments in US dollars without currency conversion into US dollar denominated bank accounts.

    The partnerships with Alipay and WeChat Pay will meanwhile allow Stripe customers around the world to accept Alipay and WeChat Pay on their websites by simply activating support for the platforms from their online dashboards.

    The Alipay integration will also support recurring payments for subscription-based services. Alipay one-time payments are available to businesses worldwide, but recurring payments and WeChat payments are initially launching in private beta.

    Stripe has been testing services in Hong Kong for a year prior to the launch, and has already attracted two-thirds of venture-backed startups in the market as customers. These include online fashion company Grana, fashion and lifestyle company HBX, as well as travel technology startups Tink Labs and Klook.

    Besides Alipay and WeChat Pay, Stripe supports all major credit and debit cards, bitcoin and mobile payment technologies including Apple Pay and Android Pay.

    “Hong Kong has long been a launchpad for thousands of globally-minded Asian entrepreneurs and a gateway to Asia for businesses around the world,” Stripe president and co-founder John Collison said.

    He noted that despite Hong Kong’s large proportion of connected consumers only around 4% of consumer spending happens online, but a new wave of internet-first retail businesses are emerging to change this, and Stripe intends to help support these companies.

    “Whether in the Eastern or Western hemisphere, we’re focused on arming more businesses with the tools and infrastructure they need to thrive in the modern economy,” Collison said.

    US-based Stripe launched in 2011, and has attracted around $450 million in funding to date from investors includeing Sequoia Capital, Visa, American Express, Peter Thiel and Elon Musk.

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  • Stripe strikes global partnerships with China’s Alipay, WeChat Pay

    Stripe strikes global partnerships with China’s Alipay, WeChat Pay

    Silicon Valley startup Stripe has partnered with digital payment providers Alipay and WeChat Pay to enable merchants using its platform globally to accept payments from hundreds of millions of Chinese consumers.

    Starting Sunday, the partnerships will allow online merchants using Stripe to integrate the ability for Chinese users to pay with Alipay and WeChat Pay on their websites, the company said.

    Stripe hopes the integration will help boost its revenues by allowing clients to tap China’s vast consumer market, where credit cards account for only a fraction of online spending, the company said.

    Alipay is the flagship payment service of Ant Financial, the financial affiliate of major Chinese ecommerce company Alibaba Group and has over 520 million users. WeChat Pay has more than 600 million users and is the payment app of entertainment and social network firm Tencent Holdings.

    “If you are an internet business this unlocks a new vast customer base,” John Collison, Stripe’s president and co-founder, said in an interview. In turn, Chinese consumers will have expanded choice as to which international online merchants they can purchase products and services from, he added.

    Founded by brothers John and Patrick Collison in 2010, Stripe provides technology that enables merchants in 25 countries to accept payments online. It charges a fee on each payments transactions processed through its platform.

    “If we can help a business double their sales, then it doubles our revenue from that business,” Collison said.

    The partnership coincides with the company’s launch in Hong Kong.

    One of the most valuable venture-backed financial technology companies globally, Stripe has risen in popularity among software developers and online merchants because of its ease of use.

    It is among the cohort of young fintech companies seeking to reinvent the payments landscape by taking better advantage of digital technologies to offer more user-friendly financial services and products.

    It had previously partnered with Alipay to enable only the U.S. merchants on its platform to integrate the Chinese payment service. The new global partnership builds on that experience.

    “Demand for services from Chinese consumers is at all-time high,” Souheil Badran, president of Alipay for North America, said in an interview. The new partnerships will connect them to hundreds of thousands of Stripe-powered businesses around the world, he added.

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