Acquisition News: Mastercard, Stripe and Flipkart Make Moves

A handful of big-name acquisitions have dominated headlines this week.

The U.K.’s Competition and Markets Authority cleared the way for Mastercard’s acquisition of VocaLink, announcing on Tuesday that the companies had adequately addressed competition concerns about the purchase.

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PF Leaders Square and Stripe Criticize Trump Immigration Order

President Trump’s executive order on Friday halting immigration from seven countries sparked a vocal reaction from many among the tech business community. The CEOs of Square and Stripe were among those expressing concern about the potential impact of the order, both in economic and human terms.

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News Roundup: Stripe Adds European Payment Methods

In our roundup of this week’s industry news, payment facilitators in the U.S. and in Europe are building out features and expanding their services.

Leading payment facilitator Stripe announced that it has added support for five local European payment methods: Bancontact, Giropay, iDEAL, SEPA Direct Debit, and SOFORT.

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Why Stripe Has Nearly Doubled Its Valuation

The news on Friday (Nov. 25) that Stripe had raised $150 million of new funding on a company valuation of $9 billion has been seen by many as a validation that this is a company at the top of the fintech game.

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Facebook Dives Deeper Into Payments Under David Marcus, Competing As A PF, Again

The only thing separating Facebook from being a true payment facilitator is it registering as one. The social media giant today announced users of its Messenger app can now send payments from within the app to make purchases from sites who interface with the app using bots.

Facebook is working with Stripe, Braintree and PayPal, but also appears to be directly enabling acceptance of Visa, Mastercard, and American Express to make this happen, and Messenger users can store their card info in Messenger for use at checkout. This can be combined with the ability of brands being able to buy ads that take clickers into Messenger where their card info is saved. David Marcus, Facebook’s vice president of messaging and a former payments executive, has raised the Messenger user base from 700 million monthly active users to 1 billion in a year.

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PF Flint Mobile Shuts Down, Turns Business Over To Stripe

Payment facilitator Flint Mobile’s payments business was effectively shuttered on Monday (Feb. 15), seemingly a victim of a payments player coming into an already-developed market too late and with insufficiently deep pockets. The beginning of the end happened on Feb. 5, when “Flint abruptly suspended all new signups and closed all card processing for current accounts. Users who tried to process cards were met with a message saying, ‘You have exceeded your processing limits.'”

A visit to the site late on Wednesday (Feb. 17) by PaymentFacilitator.com found a seemingly active homepage, but clicking on the Sign Up Now button delivered the note “New signups suspended. We are currently transitioning to a new platform. We appreciate your patience.” Alas, it seems that patience will serve no purpose. Although it appeared that company executives, between Feb. 5 and Feb. 17, were indeed trying to find a way to keep the business going, it didn’t work out.

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