Visa Launches Transit Program, Klarna and Nets Bring Pay Later Options into Stores: News Roundup

Visa Europe streamlines commuter payment acceptance and Shopify offers business owners the ability to view online customer commerce in real time. Klarna partners with Nets to offer a pay later solution for offline storefronts and Ayden partners with Yandex.checkout to enhance online commerce in Russia.

 Here’s your weekly news roundup.

 Visa Europe introduces Ready for Transit – an innovative, worldwide program that utilizes contactless technology for a more seamless commute. This new offering enables commuters to tap and go as they make their way through the fare gates, which adds more speed and efficiency to the pay-for-transit process, according to the press release.

Also offered as an option on bus readers, Visa’s global program (launched in London as part of a partnership with Transport for London) offers a hands-on, end-to-end experience when it comes to the implementation process. The same press release highlights the following offerings:

  • A team that will consult and assist worldwide in the implementation process.
  • A back-office system designed to manage contactless payments.
  • Compliance tools and certification requirements that ensure mass transit operators are meeting Visa’s highest standard of security.
  • A forward-thinking vision that aims to streamline all aspects of the travel process.

Ayden partners with Yandex.Checkout to offer Russian and Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) customers the latest options when it comes to online commerce. This includes e-wallets, online banking and cash via mobile retailers and payment kiosks, according to the press release.

Not only does this enable merchants to offer the most popular payment options via one simple integration, Anna Kuzmina, Yandex.Money Deputy CCO, also explains (via the same press release) that “Russia has been one of the fastest growing ecommerce markets.”

Kuzmina said that, in the first half of this year, transaction volume in Russia grew by 22% over the same time last year. “There are more than 87 million active internet users, it’s vital for global retailers to be able to adjust to people’s needs,” she said.

The leading merchant acquirer in Singapore, Nets, aims to enable cross-border payment links with the National Payment Corporation of India (NPCI). What does this mean for Singapore? According to OpenGov, it’s another push in the right direction towards their fintech initiative to promote e-payments interconnectivity.

The same article reports that, effective second/third quarter of 2018, anyone who holds a Nets card in Singapore can make online purchases at any NPCI ecommerce merchant website in India. As part of the same initiative, Nets payments will also be enabled at 2.8 million RuPay (an Indian domestic card brand) point-of-sale terminals in India. And RuPay customers can also use their card or RuPay-enrolled mobile device to transact at any Nets payment acceptance point in Singapore.

Shopify offers business owners the ability to track their operations in real time. With Live View, Shopify’s newest real-time online reporting offering, companies can get a live, global view of what’s occurring in their online stores at any given moment. According to the company’s blog post, this includes the number of visitors (across multiple locations) accessing the site at that moment, real-time sales totals, the number of orders placed so far that day and overall site activity with up-to-the-minute accuracy. It’s a real-time play-by-play of daily customer commerce.

Just in time for Black Friday Cyber Monday (BFCM), this new feature allows business owners to tune in from anywhere and literally watch new customer relationships form as they happen. And according to the same post, Live View is also good for tracking marketing performance. Business owners can now see direct market response the moment they launch their ad. Full dashboard analytics are also available for comprehensive data analysis.

Trouva, an online marketplace for U.K. brick-and-mortar businesses, raised $10 million in a recent funding venture. Set to establish a steady phase of growth for the budding online company, Trouva (founded in London originally as Streethub in 2015) targets smaller, independent merchants with an offline storefront looking to tap the online market. And all without having to create their own infrastructure, according to a VentureBeat article.

As for future plans for their recently acquired funds, the same article quotes Mandeep Singh, Trouva cofounder, as saying: “We want Trouva to become the global destination for the best independent shops in the greatest cities in the world … the greatest independents will be united on our global platform.”

Klarna partners with Nets to offer a new payment solution for offline storefronts. Targeting the Nordics specifically and beginning with select stores in Sweden, Pay Later enables brick-and-mortar merchants to offer later payment options to their customers, according to the press release.

Aimed at increasing sales for merchants, Pay Later requires no interaction with the in-store staff and no additional process. As outlined in the same release, the customer will simply select the “pay later by invoice” option on the Nets terminal and enter their mobile phone number. They will then receive a SMS link to the Klarna checkout page where they can complete their transaction.

Improving the average in-store-financing time from approximately six minutes to less than one, Patrick Hoijer, Senior Vice President at Nets in Sweden, explains via the same release that Pay Later “exemplifies how payment terminals can act as a node for various services and not just to receive card payments.”