Square Grows Revenue 140%; DOJ Sues to Block Visa Acquisition of Plaid: 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.

PF Earnings

Square reported total net revenue growth of 140% year over year, to $3.03 billion, during the third quarter. The company processed $31.7 billion in gross payments volume during the quarter, an increase of 12% from last year. “While the macroeconomic environment remains uncertain, we continue to believe that our Seller and Cash App ecosystems are well-positioned to benefit from the acceleration of secular shifts, such as omnichannel commerce, contactless payments, and digital wallets for consumers. We intend to invest in the business to drive attractive returns,” Square said in its letter to shareholders. From Square.

Self-service retail PF USA Technologies reported revenue of $36.9 million, up 13% from the previous quarter while a decrease of 15% year over year. “While our revenue decreased year over year, mostly due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we experienced solid sequential growth trends during the quarter. Our overall revenue was up over the fourth quarter of 2020, mostly driven by the increase in license fees. We are also pleased to have generated a $5.0 million increase in operating cash flow in the current quarter over the prior year quarter,” said Wayne Jackson, chief financial officer. From USA Technologies.

RealPage, a PF serving the real estate industry, announced it had earned total revenue of $298.1 million during the last quarter, up 17% year over year. “In the third quarter, we continued to exceed expectations and delivered the strongest quarter in RealPage history. We believe our continued performance underscores the strength of our model and the importance of the solutions we are providing to customers. We achieved this performance despite significant uncertainty in many sectors of the economy – further evidence that technology transformation remains a top priority for owners and operators throughout the country,” said Steve Winn, chairman and CEO. From RealPage.

Restaurant PF PAR Technology reported a 20.7% increase in revenue year over year to $54.8 million during the third quarter. “Our results in Q3 highlight the resiliency of the restaurant industry and importantly the acceleration in cloud adoption. Q3 bookings were the most we’ve seen in almost three years and highlights how quickly enterprise restaurants are reacting during the Covid-19 pandemic. As the world stabilizes, we expect activations and bookings to continue to grow,” said Savneet Singh, CEO and president. From PAR Technology.

Competitive Moves

The long-anticipated entry of messaging platform WhatsApp into the payments realm was made real last week when the National Payments Corporation of India gave the app its approval. This article compares WhatsApp to its competitors in the space, including PFs PhonePe and Paytm as well as big tech company offerings like Google Pay, outlining its competitive strengths as well as the places where it might need to catch up. From The Quint.

The U.S. Department of Justice sued last week to stop Visa from going through with its planned $5.3 billion acquisition of fintech company Plaid. The DOJ maintains that the deal is anti-competitive, claiming it would eliminate a competitor that would otherwise be likely to deliver “more innovative online debit services for merchants and consumers.” From Banking Dive.