WePay and Chase Partnership; First Data and BluePay Acquisition Finalized and Airbnb Launches Split Payments: News Roundup

WePay officially becomes a Chase company while First Data and Bluepay solidify their partnership as well.

Square empowers growing restaurants and Airbnb simplifies split payments.

Here’s your weekly news roundup!

WePay and Chase have made it official. WePay has joined forces with Chase in a prolific partnership, according to a recent press release.

As reported in the release, WePay will continue to operate as a stand-alone entity – benefiting from the Chase brand and facilitating payments for the firm while Chase.com will enhance their one-stop-shop offerings by featuring software partners on their site.

Together, the two brands will support Austin-based ecommerce leader Volusion in their new payments service called Volusion Payments. As part of this new service, Volusion merchants “will now be able to get up and running instantly, with next-day settlement, competitive rates and all of their payment processing tightly integrated within the software they’ve already chosen for managing their online stores,” according to Volusion Founder and CEO Kevin Sproles via the same release.

Square aims to empower select Caviar restaurants with Square Capital. Qualifying Caviar restaurants (select establishments in partnership with Square’s food delivery in-app service) will now be eligible for funding from Square Capital (Square’s solution to small business financing) to help them grow their restaurant.

Eligible restaurants will receive their loan offers via email and according to a recent post by Square covering the collaboration, a survey conducted by the company reports funds most commonly being spent on everything from inventory (31%) and equipment (30%) to day-to-day expenses (17%), refinancing (9%) and marketing (6%).

The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) works to integrate non-bank mobile wallets with the United Payments Interface (UPI) platform. Slated for completion in first quarter 2018, the integration is in response to a directive from the Reserve Bank of India for bank and non-bank entities to make all know-your-customer (KYC)-compliant prepaid payment instruments (PPIs), such as mobile wallets, interoperable amongst themselves through UPI, according to livemint.com.

Sunil Kulkarni, joint managing director at e-wallet and payment solutions company Oxigen Services (India), explains via the same article that a UPI-based handle for non-bank wallet users will enable them to “easily transfer the money from their wallet to the merchant.” He goes on to say that “reading of unified Bharat QR code on merchant location and making payments using it will not be possible for wallet users unless they are integrated with UPI.”

MasterCard’s Start Path program company lineup includes payment facilitators Flutterwave and NetPlusDotCom. According to the card brand’s press release, 11 select companies across five countries are initiating the “largest array of innovations the program has seen to date.”

Launched in early 2014, MasterCard’s proprietary program aims to mentor select startup companies to ensure their long-term success. NetPlusDotCom, one of the companies that joined the program last year, set out to enhance confidence among Nigerians when it comes to online shopping. They collaborated with MasterCard to design a solution that will only process payments once validation of customer satisfaction has been received post-delivery, according to the same release.

Now joining the lineup as part of the latest class is payment facilitator Flutterwave. In partnership with MasterCard, the same release states Flutterwave’s initiative is to enable digital payment acceptance and infrastructure for businesses and banks across Africa.

First Data and BluePay are officially an item. According to the company’s press release, the global payments processor has announced the completion of its acquisition of BluePay Holdings, Inc (recently reported on here). BluePay, one of First Data’s largest distribution partners, touts a strong emphasis on both software-enabled and card-not-present payments and offers software integration functionality that collaborates well with First Data’s CardConnect platform, according to the same release.

First Data Chairman and CEO Frank Bisignano is quoted via the same release as explaining that “the addition of BluePay’s integrated Card-Not-Present solutions to CardConnect’s cutting-edge ISV product suite affords First Data a unique and comprehensive offering in the high-growth integrated payments space.”

Airbnb simplifies group travel with split payments functionality. Recently tested with more than 80,000 groups in nearly 175 countries with more than 44 currencies, this new functionality has proven to be both popular and successful amongst Airbnb travelers, according to a recent post by the company.

In response to popular demand, the split payments functionality enables the organizer to hold a reservation for up to 72 hours until all parties have paid their portion. And according to the same post, group travel has seen a boost in 2016 with 15.5 million group trips booked through Airbnb alone. The split payments feature also provides access to more options that would otherwise be unavailable to many organizers who would normally have had to front the cost of the total bill in order to book the reservation.