PayPal CFO Says Pandemic Shift Online May Be Permanent; Shopify Partners with Walmart: News Roundup

PaymentFacilitator’s News Roundup is a curated mix of the past week’s news and articles from around the web, including company announcements, global payments news, and other coverage and analysis of topics relevant to payment facilitators.

COVID-19 Impacts

Some pandemic shifts in consumer behavior are likely to be permanent. According to PayPal CFO John Rainey, the company has seen changes in demographics and engagement as consumers have accelerated the shift to shopping online during the COVID-19 pandemic. In this interview, he suggests that a better experience will keep them online post-pandemic. From Barron’s.

Growing Digital Payment Markets

The Reserve Bank of India has released a new oversight framework for the payment system in India. The document lays out how the central bank intends to increase its supervision of the participants involved, including the National Payments Corporation of India. From The Economic Times.

Nigerian fintech companies are moving beyond payments to offer other financial services, including lending and wealth management. This is according to a new report from The Economist Intelligence Unit, sponsored by Mastercard and MTN Group, which looks at trends and challenges the industry faces. Payments and remittances are the most developed sector as new entrants strive to offer access to the financially excluded. From The Economist.

Big Brands in Big Markets

U.S.-based tech companies and retailers dominate India’s Unified Payments Interface (UPI) digital payments platform. The latest transaction volume numbers show that Google Pay, PhonePe (owned by Walmart) and Amazon Pay together have 85% of the UPI market. Domestic payment facilitator Paytm still has more market share on the platform than Amazon Pay by itself, however. From The Times of India.

After months of wrangling over regulatory issues in India, WhatsApp has launched its payments service…in Brazil. Users will be able to send payments to local businesses within the app without leaving their chat. The Facebook-owned company has been testing its service in India for months. From TechCrunch.