PayU India Aims for Full-Service Financial Status; Alipay Expands into Europe: 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.
Big Brands Doing Big Things
PayU India’s lending arm aims for full-service financial status. PayU Finance India will now be a separate arm of PayU’s payments suite. The strategic move comes (following approval from the RBI for a non-banking financial company license) in an effort to position PayU Finance as a full-service financial player targeting credit business in the country. From Inc42.
Paytm uses a white label solution to test interoperable QR? Yes. The popular brand is using a white-label solution to test a UPI-compliant interoperable QR code payment option for Hyderabad and Bengaluru. But why go the white-label route? Sources confirm the payments brand “doesn’t want to hamper its wallet business.” From Entrackr.
Alipay set to launch expanded operations in Europe. After securing a license in Luxembourg, the global brand is slated to expand into mainland Europe. Already licensed in the UK and adopted by the local population there, Alipay has also secured a European passport with this new initiative – giving them the ability to operate freely within the EU. From Retail Gazette.
Regulatory Review
U.K. competition watchdog details possible PayPal and iZettle merger issues. As part of the investigation, panel members must decide whether a relevant manager situation has been created and if so, does this negatively impact competition within UK markets for goods and services. From CMA.
Fintech Forward
South Korea slated to launch regulatory sandbox this April. Pushing the nation’s fintech sector onward and upward, its Financial Services Commission (FSC) has initiated the sandbox to allow firms to test their products and services in an environment ripe with regulatory exemptions for an unspecified period of time. The FSC will begin accepting applications at the end of this month. From BankingTech.
Good Reads
Alipay Goes Behind Bars in China. Literally. Relatives and loved ones of Beijing prison inmates can now use the payments app to transfer money to inmates via their digital wallets, thanks to the local government’s “smart prison” initiative. But prisons aren’t the only newsworthy entity going cashless. From Techinasia.
“402 Payment Required” is still a thing of the future. Of the many error codes found on the World Wide Web, “access unauthorized” and “page not found” are among the most popular but, believe it or not, “payment required” was built in as an existing error code based on the assumption that micropayments would surely be a thing of the future. So why is error code 402 still “reserved for future use?” From Wired.
Industry News
Nets in Singapore Launches Same-day Settlement for Hawkers
Sixteen Leading Global Fintechs Join Spring Labs’ Founding Industry Program