Global Payments’ Q1 results highlighted the remarkable impact of the Worldpay acquisition on the scale of its European business. The addition of Worldpay takes GP’s EMEA business to around €600m of quarterly net revenue – four times the level of three years ago. GP was generating just €150m per quarter in 2023. This roughly doubled following the EVO acquisition and has now doubled again. Global Payments’ European business is now larger than Nexi’s and only slightly smaller than Worldline’s.
The enlarged GP is now the largest acquirer in the UK (Worldpay’s heartland) and Poland (through eService, the JV with PKO BP inherited from EVO). It also has strong positions in Spain, Ireland and the Czech Republic, plus a toehold in Germany through its new JV with Commerzbank.
Integration between GP and Worldpay is well underway. The top four layers of the new organisation have now been defined, and the structure is explicitly global, with multinational teams organised around customer segments — SME (or SMB in American English), enterprise and platforms. Management says it remains on track to deliver $200m of additional sales and $600m of expense savings.
Genius, the POS software proposition, is central to GP’s SME strategy. Management believes that most small businesses will ultimately buy bundled payments and software, whether from GP or another provider. In the UK, the former Worldpay sales team, which previously lacked a POS software offering, is now selling Genius. Management sounded notably bullish:
“In the U.K. and Ireland, we are expanding the size of our successful mid-market and small corporate sales teams … early adoption has been encouraging, surpassing 500 locations in less than 60 days.”
Elsewhere:
“We continue to scale Genius across multiple markets such as Germany and Austria, with additional international launches planned later this year and next.”
In enterprise, there was a notable processing win at Morrisons, the large UK grocery chain, which has ended a long-standing relationship with Barclaycard. Transactions are already flowing and “we expect to have their full migration live this quarter.” GP has also won Aldi Süd’s processing business in both North America and Europe.
Other European wins announced included:
Decathlon — Spain
Lidl — Spain
ELZAB ECOPOWER, an electric vehicle charging station provider — Poland
DG Park, a car park app provider — Poland
Tescoma, a homeware retailer — Czechia
Sklavenitis, grocery — Greece
Finally, GP was also bullish about its indirect business in Europe:
“We recently expanded integrated and platforms into the U.K., where early results are exceeding expectations. Partner signings are nearly double our planned performance and feedback continues to validate a strong product-market fit.”
Worldline’s half-year results disappointed investors as its core merchant services division once again underperformed the broader European market. Net revenue in the division fell 7%, while EBITDA dropped 19%, prompting a colossal €4.1 billion impairment, a remarkable figure considering Worldline’s current market cap is just under €1 billion.
The bad news kept coming. Worldline took an additional €142 million write-down on its minority stake in Ingenico, S&P has downgraded its bonds and the Financial Times raises questions about whether the parent company has ready access to cash held in subsidiaries.
The sales slump in merchant services is blamed on a tough SMB environment, particularly in Germany and the Benelux, where Worldline is struggling against the “Tap Pack” of SumUp, Viva.com, myPOS, Flatpay as well as ISV’s offering payments bundled with their retail or restaurant software.
Still, there are some glimmers of hope. External auditors brought in following the “Dirty Payments” scandal reported no further issues. Worldline has successfully offloaded its mobility and e-ticketing unit for €410m, and there are signs of life in markets like Australia, Italy, and Greece. The company also reports solid progress in platform consolidation and has re-entered the UK acquiring market. Worldline’s new management team remains upbeat, targeting a return to growth in 2026, though that promise may sound familiar.
Adyen’s H1 results were quite a contrast. Worldwide revenues grew 20% while EBITDA margins remained above 50%. Very few companies can boast such strong financial results but the stock price fell 18% as the Amsterdam-based acquirer reduced H2 guidance citing the impact of Trump’s tariffs on its Asia-Pacific clients selling goods to the USA. This is thought relate to Shein and Temu suffering from the imposition of customs duties on small packages.S
Despite years of effort and tens of millions of dollars in incentive payments to PSP’s, Discover’s global acceptance network had made little progress in attracting volume. Capital One, Discover’s new owner, is now looking to create a rival to American Express. The CEO said “there are only 2 banks in the world with their own network, and we are one of them. We are moving to capitalize on this rare and valuable opportunity. We need to achieve greater international acceptance and then build a global network brand.”
Dojo has established itself as arguably the UK’s leading SME payments provider but 2024/25 results show growth is slowing – revenue up just 11% and merchant numbers flat. Successful launches in Italy and Spain are critical to the future of the group because, despite a new $190m equity injection, Dojo must run fast to escape the interest payments on its £649 million debt mountain. Read more on the Business of Payments blog.
Today’s CEO normally boasts about using AI to cut staff numbers but FlatPay, the fast growing Danish-HQ’d PF, is delighted to have reached 1000 employees. The hiring spree is linked to new market entry into France and Italy where it is signing 2,400 merchants a month and expects to capture 3% share within 12 months.
The German Sparkasse are some of the few incumbent banks making a success of payments today. Revenue at S-Payment – which provides merchant services to the 353 member banks – was up 17% in 2024, the terminal estate grew 5% and girocard transactions increased 12% – well ahead of the market. Read more on the Business of Payments blog.
Secupay is another German payment business producing good numbers. Based in Dresden, Secupay is the country’s largest remaining independent PSP and processes c.€2bn annually from over 300,000 merchants. 2024 sales almost doubled to €19m. Secupay has recently secured full scheme membership and has built an acquiring capability using Silverflow software.
Global Payments stock price improved after management reassured investors on the near-term outlook which included Q2 results showing European revenues up 6%, flattered by the weaker dollar.
Global is performing best in central Europe. NBG Pay, the joint-venture with National Bank of Greece inherited from the acquisition of EVO Payments, processed €14bn of in 2024, grew net revenues 25% to €40m and reported a maiden operating profit. Global has entered Croatia with the acquisition of the acquiring unit of Erste Card Club,through its existing Vienna-based JV with Erste Bank.
Although Global has reported positive progress with regulatory matters in the US relating to the acquisition of Worldpay, it’s not commented on the situation in the UK where the combined business will probably have a >40% share of the acquiring market. Competition authorities in London have not yet decided whether to mount a full investigation.
In a busy month for payments-related fundraising, here are some highlights:
Bumper, based in Sheffield in the UK, secured an additional £8m from the venture arms of Jaguar Land Rover, Suzuki, Porsche and others to expand its car repair software and payments platform to new European markets including Germany, Ireland, Netherlands and Spain. Bumper bought Cocoon Payments, an open banking specialist earlier this year.
Appcharge, a Tel Aviv based merchant-of-record specialising in helping mobile games publishers take money directly from consumers (avoiding app store charges) has raised $58m, bringing total financing to $89m. Appcharge claims $500m annual payment volume and growing quickly.
Reckon.ai, from Porto, has raised a further €5.1m (total of €8.5m) to grow its business selling autonomous smart cabinets – best thought of as walk-in vending machines where shoppers pay via an app or by tapping a payment card before entering.
Handwave, based in Latvia has raised $4.2m for its biometric payment products – hardware and software. You first must link your card credential to your palm print and then you can pay by putting your hand on a special reader. Palm payments make sense for saunas and swimming pools but, otherwise may be a solution looking for a problem.
Papercut, based in Sofia and led by ex-SumUp execs, has raised €2m for its BNPL aggregation service for SMEs. Embed is providing the payment infrastructure and money movement.
Turning to corporate activity, Payroc, a highly acquisitive US acquirer/processor, has bought Bluesnap, an online PSP and payment gateway based in Dublin and Boston. Payroc processes $115bn from 190,000 merchants and the deal gives it significant reach into Europe for the first time.
PayRetailers, a Barcelona-based PSP specialising in cross-border sales into Latin America, has acquired Celeris, an Amsterdam-based payment orchestrator. The deal should help PayRetailers improve authorisation rates.
Finally, Nexi has retained its partnership deal with Crédit Agricole in Italy, despite the bank’s French parent having bought a 7% stake in Worldline in 2024. This will come as a relief to Nexi’s management as it has been under pressure from Worldline for bank partnership in Italy. The Crédit Agricole deals covers processing for 100,000 POS terminals and 3m payment cards.
Scheming
Q2 2025 was another storming quarter for the schemes in Europe. Combined Visa and Mastercard payment volume rose 18% although the headline figure was flattered by the weak dollar. But 12% in Euro terms is still very impressive and reflects 10% growth in transactions and 2% uplift in ATV.
Mastercard and Visa have been neck and neck for a while but in Q2 Mastercard processed (marginally) more volume in Europe than Visa for the first time. This will be cause for a small celebration in Waterloo although Visa still managed a slightly higher number of transactions.
Cross‑border volumes remain robust for both networks; despite Adyen’s issues, neither reports geopolitics hurting demand with Visa’s CEO saying: “We see no meaningful impact from tariffs.”
Europe’s reliance on Visa/Mastercard – 13 of 20 eurozone countries use them for most POS payments – is spurring work on the digital euro (see below) and the European Payment Initiative’s wero wallet.
In Germany, the savings banks, which have integrated wero into the Sparkasse app, now claim 1m active users. For now, wero only works for P2P payments but eCommerce is coming later this year and merchants will certainly like the pricing. S-Payment is proposing 0.77% + gateway charges: rather cheaper than cards or PayPal. And, unlike open banking payments, wero comes with a payment guarantee.
Wero is also live in France although pitched as something rather cooler and cosmopolitan.
Turning to domestic schemes: Poland’s Blik, which has Mastercard as a key shareholder, posted standout 2024 results with revenue up 93% to €98m (~€0.06/tx) and profit at €48m.
Growth continued in H1 2025: total transactions were up 24% including almost €2bn of POS volume, managed through a virtual Mastercard which also allows Poles to use Blik at terminals abroad. Feel the chemistry as Mme Curie buys supplies in Paris.
Customers of Caixa Bank, BBVA and Santander can use Bizum, the fast-growing Spanish mobile payment wallet at POS for the first time. In contrast to Blik, the Bizum user experience is clunky – shoppers need to type their phone number into terminal to be sent a payment link.
Brazil’s Pix mobile wallet has attracted global attention for its stratospheric growth but seems to be taking share from cash, not cards. Since Pix launched in 2020, card transactions have been growing faster than ever – an annual growth rate of 20% compared to 14% in the previous years. Despite this, Donald Trump has launched an investigation into Brazil’s unfair trade practices including Pix which he says discriminates against Visa and Mastercard. Brazil’s President responded: “PIX is Brazil’s. We will not accept attacks on PIX, which is the patrimony of our people.”
ISV
The shift in payments distribution from banks to software vendors (ISVs) is one the biggest disruptions in the industry and is delivering big numbers to processors that have invested in building the right relationships.
Shopify, which provides websites for over 5m merchants worldwide, has aggressively shifted volume from 3rd party gateways (chosen by the merchant) to its in-house product – Shopify Payments. Processed via Stripe, Shopify Payments’ volume was up 38% in Q2 to $41bn and accounts for two-thirds of all sales made by Shopify merchants.
Stripe tends to be the partner of choice for eCommerce ISVs but Adyen’s platforms business is the go-to acquirer for vendors serving online and store-based channels. Latest results show Adyen’s payment volume from platforms up 80% to €27bn in H1 2025 from 255,000 terminals. 31 of its partners now process over €1bn each annually.
Adyen’s deployment capability in multiple countries and across channels is very attractive to retail software specialists that need a single solution for their multi-national clients. Sitoo from Sweden is a great example. From Sitoo’s perspective the key USP of partnering with Adyen is an increase in first-time help desk resolutions and reduction in time taken to troubleshoot faults.
Other payment processors want a piece of the action. Worldpay is finally taking the European ISV market seriously with some strong marketing support for the launch of Worldpay for Platforms. The proposition is based on the acquisition of Payrix in 2022
Electronic Payments, has bought Handpoint the Iceland-based mPOS vendor. Handpoint, which claims 100 ISV partners, processes $2bn annually from 18,000 devices in Europe and the USA. Electronic Payments is known for giving generous commercial terms to its partners (URL = www.residuals.com) and could be a disruptive new entrant to many European markets.
New shopping
Agentic commerce has potential to transform online shopping; replacing the established online commerce journey which begins with a Google search and ends at a finely honed checkout page with a chat-based conversation between you and an agent that has delegated authority to spend money with your payment card.
Instead, Shopify has given each of its 5m merchants a “chatbot accessible storefront API”and launched Shopify Catalog which aggregates products across all Shopify merchants to enable AI agents to search, recommend and (in the near future) transact. Shopify claims 12.3% conversion on AI-assisted shopping compared to 3.1% the old-fashioned way.
The payment industry has begun to launch product. Worldpay has introduced a Know Your Agent (KYA) framework to help merchants determine whether an agent is good (working for a genuine shopper with funds to complete the purchase) or bad (working for a scammer). Trulioo, the global ID vendor, is behind the product and has a helpful white paper here.
Open banking
Industry commentators have focused on the positive aspects of the UK’s National Payment Vision, notably a commitment to form a new delivery company, create a payment guarantee and find a commercial model that rewards all market participants. These all may take some time. Meanwhile, investors worry whether the open banking industry – suffering from low volumes and lower margins – can remain solvent long enough to see the fruits of these endeavours.
One example is Ordo, a high profile open banking startup which featured in last year’s Fintech 40. Ordo was bought by Neonomics of Norway in 2023 but the new owners have given up on UK open banking and Ordo has ceased trading. Writing on LinkedIn, Neonomics CEO said VRP (the open banking equivalent to direct debit) had been too slow to arrive resulting in a UK market size of just c.30m transactions/month. This is not enough to sustain an industry.
Thanks to partnerships with FIS and Visa, and backed by blue-chip investors including NAB, Citi and Rapyd, Banked – another high profile open banking start-up – will be well positioned if/when A2A merchant payments become mainstream. Meanwhile, 2024 accounts show that Banked generated just £700K revenue and will likely need yet more capital to supplement the £55m already raised.
On the positive side, it’s increasingly common to see open banking offered at checkout. Ryanair, working with TrueLayer, has started putting “pay by bank” first on its payment page as you can see below.
Open banking’s current lack of consumer protection will aways be an issue in travel payments. Meagan Johnson gives an example of an A2A transaction for which neither Air France, Trustly or Monzo will take responsibility. Next time, she says she will use a card.
It’s clear that open banking needs “scheme rules” that give clear guidelines for managing disputes. Following two recent product launches, it’s increasingly likely these will be card scheme rules. Following the announcement of Visa Protect earlier this year, Mastercard has followed suit with A2A Protect. Early adopters include NatWest, Santander and Monzo in the UK.
Crypto corner
Plans for the digital euro are accelerating. Regulators already worried about European over-dependence on American payment schemes are now equally concerned about a possible tsunami of dollar denominated stablecoins arriving from the USA.
However, Central Bank Digital Currencies, like the digital euro, are a very different proposition to commercial stablecoins. CBDC’s are designed as cash-substitutes that bring direct benefits to citizens rather than as infrastructure-level plumbing to facilitate international trade. The European Central Bank hopes to have a political deal on the digital euro by early next year.
The commercial banks aren’t happy and paid PwC to write a study that put the cost of digital euro adoption at €30bn if the digital euro sucks deposits out of current accounts leading to banks making fewer loans.
There are still few signs of crypto (stable or unstable) being used for retail payments. Undeterred, SpacePay, based in London, is raising $1.1m from the sale of its $SPY tokens, to promote crypto currency acceptance on its Android payment terminals. SpacePay says it charges just 0.5% and settles in fiat currency.
Coinbase, a platform that allows people to buy/sell crypto, is running adverts in the UK suggesting that investing gambling in crypto is the solution to inflation, stagnating wages, crumbling infrastructure and a withering welfare system. This won’t end well.
In other news
Numia won the merchant acquiring business of Banco BPM from Nexi last year. One of the first deliverables is “100 kiosks in 100 churches” allowing the faithful to make contactless donations.
Netherlands Railways has blocked virtual cards issued by Revolut, Paysafe and Vividfollowing discovery of a loophole that allowed passengers to travel for free. People would create a virtual card, take a trip, and then delete the card before the overnight settlement run.
Pedro Carvalho, sales director at Primer, which supplies payment infrastructure to large merchants, has spent the summer posting checkout crimes on LinkedIn. Here’s my favourite – the merchant asking shoppers to choose the processor. Why?
Shopify’s head of engineering gives advice on how to use AI. He says get your lawyers to default to “yes” and don’t skimp on letting your staff subscribe to the best tools. “If your engineers are spending $1,000 per month more because of LLMs and they are 10% more productive, that’s too cheap. Anyone would kill for a 10% increase in productivity for only $1,000 per month.”
Sam Altman says AI will kill KYC as we know it. Risk systems need to be “always on” to cope with the growing wave of deepfakes, spoofing and voice-cloning, he says.
How does a Shift4 logo get on an Adyen terminal? An Adyen exec responds: “What you’re seeing is an odd choice of background image, which is fully customizable on any of our terminals.”
Photo credit: James Lloyd
Where to find me
I’ll be at the Checkout.com’s conference in Venice 7-9 October, at the ESPM meeting in London on 23 October, at the ePay Summit in London on 28 October and MPE in Berlin next March.
Worldline’s management responded to last month’s fraud allegations concerning its German business by commissioning two independent reviews. One will assess the remaining high-risk portfolio “to confirm its clean-up,” while the other, led by Oliver Wyman, will deliver a “comprehensive assessment” of Worldline’s compliance and risk framework. Initial findings are expected within weeks.
Despite a plunging share price and market cap now under €1bn, analysts aren’t calling Worldline a buy. The bonds are trading at less than 90 cents to the dollar. Rebuilding investor trust will require time, stable results and no more nasty surprises.
GTCR might want to hold off booking that profit just yet.
JP Morgan paid $800m for 48.5% of Greek fintech Viva Wallet in 2022 and announced a 50-person “payments innovation lab” in Athens. But the deal quickly soured and is now tied up in litigation in both Athens and London. In the latest twist, both sides are claiming victory. Despite the uncertainty, Viva seems to be doing well in the marketplace and has started calling itself the First Fintech Bank in Europe.
Figure 1 Photo credit Viva.com
Viva is part of a fast-growing group of well-funded, POS-focused European payment start-ups including SumUp, Flatpay, myPOS World and Dojo – some acquirers, some payment facilitators (PF). Let’s call them the Tap Pack.
SumUp, the Anglo-German PF that reported €1bn revenue and a maiden operating profit in 2024, has postponed its IPO to 2026. Valued at €8bn in its last funding round, analysts doubt that figure will hold in today’s market.
SumUp has also agreed, at long last to support Girocard payments. The move responds to two issues: Mastercard’s phase out of Maestro, and the German savings banks’ launch of S-Cube, a SumUp rival with Girocard bundled in.
Flatpay says it will sign 5,000 new merchants this month, boosted by its French expansion which claims 40 staff and 1,000 merchants already. Pricing is very keen – a free PAX A920 and all transactions at just 1.29%. The Danish PF is entering the UK next with the radical innovation of recruiting an in-house sales team in place of the usual network of self-employed agents.
The Tap Pack have been gaining ground at the expense of incumbents like Worldline and Barclaycard. But they now face pressure from a new wave of capital-light, unregulated startups offering a slick user experience on Adyen’s rails. Examples include Yetipay, Kody, and MyPOS Connect (not to be confused with MyPOS World).
London-based Yetipay just raised £3.5m in debt and equity for its hospitality payments platform. It claims to process £500m annually and generate £5m in revenue. The Adyen integration has enabled fast expansion into Spain and Italy. Here’s a photo of founder Oliver Pugh with what the press release questionably describes as a pink yeti.
Turning to SoftPOS, Rubean, listed on the Munich Stock Exchange, is finally seeing real growth. First-half 2025 revenues jumped to €2.54m, up from €0.84m a year earlier. Analysts expect full-year sales to double, and the stock has surged 35% to an all-time high of €8.75.
Rubean’s key selling points include Girocard support and integration with Redsys in Spain. Deichmann, the German shoe retailer, uses Rubean’s technology on Zebra handhelds into payment terminals. It’s a great example how SoftPOS can be transformational for enterprise retail.
In fundraising news:
Modern World Business Solutions (UK) raised £9m to scale from 60 to 200 staff. MWBS offers a white-label ISO-as-a-service platform and a comparison tool for SMEs seeking better payment deals.
Ontik, a London-based startup automating cash collection for the building trades, raised $3.7m. Payments are processed via Stripe or Yapily for open banking.
Paddle, the merchant-of-record platform for SaaS vendors, shrugged off a recent $5m US regulatory fine with a $25m debt raise. Its 2023 accounts showed a £46m operating loss on £57m revenue.Germany’s savings banks remain rare incumbent winners. S-Payment, their merchant services arm, grew revenue 13% to €292m in 2024, with mobile payments (Apple/Google Pay at POS) especially strong. Girocard transactions rose 12%, double the national average. And no red flags were raised in PayOne, the group’s JV with Worldline—which will reassure its beleaguered shareholders.
Scheming
Visa and Mastercard are facing mounting legal pressure in Europe. In a landmark UK ruling, a court found that commercial and inter-regional interchange fees breach competition law. Crucially, the court ruled interchange is anti-competitive “by object” – a first which could trigger a wave of merchant damages claims. Both networks plan to appeal.
Visa and Mastercard justify their fees by highlighting innovations such as tokenisation, now covering nearly half of Mastercard’s European transactions and Click to Pay, their long-delayed answer to PayPal. This is finally getting some serious marketing dollars although these don’t seem to have reached Poland.
With European payment sovereignty high on the political agenda, much depends on wero, the wallet backed by the European Payments Initiative (EPI). According to Finanz-Szene, EPI has raised an impressive €450m from shareholders including Worldline and Nexi. To succeed wero needs wide distribution through mobile banking apps and broad acceptance from merchants.
The distribution side is going well with five new Belgian banks added and Austria reportedly in talks. Wero claims 42 million users across Belgium, France, and Germany and processed €5bn in P2P volume in its first three months. eCommerce support is due this year, with in-store payments in 2026.
Wero hopes to link with Europe’s domestic mobile wallets, including Blik (Poland), Bancomat (Italy), Bizum (Spain), Vipps (Norway), IRIS (Greece), and MB Way (Portugal). Greece’s IRIS is likely to gain momentum thanks to a new law mandating acceptance both online and in-store.
The convergence of software and payments, pioneered in the USA, is now accelerating across Europe. A new report from Flagship Consulting highlights the extent to which PSPs are acquiring European software firms to gain distribution in key verticals like restaurants and retail. Let me know if you spot any they’ve missed.
American software vendors realised years ago they could double their margins by integrating payments. As Jim Roddy from the Retail Solution Providers Association puts it: “ISVs are the new ISOs.“I visited an RSPA member once, and the CEO didn’t show me new software. He shut the door, plugged in a TV, and pulled up a spreadsheet showing how much he made monthly from payments. The numbers were huge.”
Not all customers are thrilled. American restaurateurs are increasingly frustrated at being locked into inflexible, expensive payment setups bundled with their POS software. While competition authorities haven’t stepped in yet, scrutiny may not be far off, especially if merchants are barred from choosing their processor.
Acquirers hoping to partner with ISVs need to fully embed their offer within the software vendor’s customer proposition. That means API-based onboarding, access to management info, smooth customer service, transparent pricing, and generous commissions for the software partner.
Where does it go wrong? A Dutch restaurant shared on LinkedIn its experience of switching from Worldline to Viva. Integrating Viva’s terminals with its Odoo ECR software took less than two minutes. Worldline supports Odoo too but only via a special IoT box costing €35/month. The restaurant chose Viva despite higher transaction fees, citing better support and a simpler setup.
ChatGPT’s prototype shopping agent is slow and error-prone today, but it’s easy to see how it could soon become ubiquitous and render traditional eCommerce websites obsolete. If the AI already knows your shipping and payment info, what’s the point of a checkout page? Simon Taylor explores the implications. Startups like Ogment are already offering tools for merchants to adopt.
Shopify, the world’s leading eCommerce platform, is pushing back, posting a robots.txt file that directs agent developers to its official checkout SDK. Amazon is doing the same. As this LinkedIn discussion shows, Shopify’s move may upset tech purists but will please merchants already overwhelmed by bot traffic.
It’s still early days, and AI can’t yet be trusted. In one test, an AI managing an office vending machine lost money by over-discounting snacks and inexplicably stocking unsellable metal cubes.
Despite Amazon’s recent U-turn, checkout-free tech is gaining traction in high-traffic locations like stadiums. In Europe, we’re seeing rollouts in small grocery formats. Coca-Cola HBC plans 15 checkout-free stores in Hungary using low-cost Chinese AI from Cloudpick, integrated by Kende Retail and with payments by myPOS. This price is said to be just €40,000 for each shop.
Old fashioned vending is also rising as a payments channel. This 72-lane Boxbar drink dispenser in Manchester uses Adyen, Global Payments, and Viva for processing.
Having failed to commercialise virtual reality, Meta is now focusing on augmented reality via glasses and recently acquired a 3% stake in EssilorLuxottica, makers of Ray-Ban. It looks less ridiculous than a VR headset and you can imagine the power of AI seeing what you’re seeing and whispering helpful advice in your ear. Or maybe not. Matt Jones explains what it means for payments.
In Hong Kong, Alipay has launched smart glasses that let users pay by looking at a QR code and speaking the amount out loud. Rokid powers the app. Meizu has a similar product, with a dash of dystopia. People using these glasses don’t make eye contact and it’s very disconcerting as you can see from the video.
Product
Here’s a novel but quite risky idea. Better, based in Tel Aviv, is offering to step in to honour transactions where the card is declined due to insufficient funds. This start-up will “save the sale” by settling the merchant (less 10-15% commission) and waiting until after pay-day to put the transaction through. Better says it has already run a proof of concept with PayU. Similar products are available including Bounce.
Many subscription payment providers are struggling to keep up with the move by software vendors away from per seat or tiered pricing to models focused on how much data you crunch. Stripe reports that this “usage-based” billing is up 145% year to date.
Payments and loyalty
Rewe, the German supermarket giant with 3,800 stores, has launched Rewe Pay, a QR code wallet built by its in-house processor, Paymenttools. Setup is a bit clunky: shoppers register their Girocard, then complete a SEPA direct debit mandate via the app and sign their name on an in-store tablet. After that, payments are easy, made by scanning a QR code at checkout.
Commentators see Rewe Pay as a response to rising processing costs, especially as shoppers increasingly use Apple Pay linked to Visa and Mastercard, but the automatic incorporation of Rewe Bonus points on all purchases is equally interesting.
In a controlled, single-merchant environment like Rewe, the model should work. But I’ve long been sceptical of open-loop, card-linked loyalty. That idea has been around for years but has stumbled on technical barriers, unreliable merchant category code (MCC) data, and the difficulty of building profitable loyalty economics. Plus, card-linking offers benefits after the transaction, not before, making it hard for merchants to recognise high-value customers at the point of sale.
Paylead, based in Bordeaux, takes a bank-centric model, linking consumer ccounts to retail deals at the largest merchants such as Auchan and Decathlon. Paylead raised $6m in 2020. And Loyyo (Netherlands) replaces stamp cards with payment-linked rewards, is available via Adyen and CCV also recently secured new funding.
Fraud update
Chargebacks continue to rise. Ethoca projects global dispute volumes will hit 324 million by 2028, driven mainly by post-sale issues like slow refunds, unclear billing, and delivery friction, rather than outright fraud. The real pain is operational which has pushed merchants to look beyond traditional fraud tools. Visa’s Rapid Dispute Resolution (RDR) is gaining traction and is claimed to cut chargebacks by 20–30% for participating merchants.
So much for the carrot, here’s the stick. Visa’s updated Acquirer Monitoring Program(VAMP) is raising the stakes. Acquirers now face stricter thresholds, tighter enforcement, and the risk of fines, or even losing their membership if chargeback rates across their merchant portfolios climb too high. TrustPay (not to be confused with Trust Payments) has a solid explainer on the changes.
VAMP and Mastercard’s counterpart, the Excessive Fraud Merchant (EFM) programme, put pressure on acquirers and PSPs to take a more proactive role in policing their portfolios. In recent weeks, both Worldline and Paddle have shown the consequences of inattention. But for merchants, the message is equally clear: chargebacks are no longer just a cost of doing business, they’re a serious reputational and commercial risk that could jeopardise access to processing altogether
Car Commerce
The global auto industry is scrambling for new revenue and wants to pivot to a service-led model where drivers pay for parking, charging, or fuel directly through the vehicle’s OS. Naturally, the car brands want a cut. That’s why many are now resisting Apple’s “CarPlay Ultra”, which sidelines in-car payment systems. The problem? Motorists prefer to dock their phones and control everything from there. Top Gear takes a detailed look in this video.
Under pressure from government, the UK industry has agreed to roll out a National Parking Platformwhich allows any participating app to work across all publicly owned car parks. It’s already live at 476 locations, handling 550,000 transactions a month. There’s not that much money in parking payments. I calculate the three leaders in the UK market – Ringo, JustPark and Paybyphone – generate annual sales of c.£60m between them.
Open banking
UK open banking payments have stalled, with volumes flat at around 28 million transactions per month since early 2025. This reinforces the urgent need for a proper open banking scheme—with an acceptance mark, rulebook, consumer protection, and a business model that gives banks a reason to maintain high-quality APIs.
TrueLayer underscored the slow pace of adoption across Europe with new figures from France and Germany Despite claiming a 60% market share in France, it processes just €2bn annually; in Germany, it holds 30% with €1.4bn in volume. Nobody is getting rich soon. A new Stripe partnership may help, but patchy bank APIs continue to limit growth.
Meanwhile, Trustly appears to be the only open banking player making real money. In 2024, volumes rose 54% to $85bn, and net revenue grew 32% to $239m. “Adjusted”EBITDA was up 50% to $73m. Business remains strong in North America and Europe, where Trustly retained its UK Government tax contract. Note: these results come from a press release, not audited accounts.
Trustly’s profit engine is widely believed to be US gaming, so others are following. London-based Yaspa, which offers open banking payments with integrated KYC, has raised $12m to target US iGaming, through a new office in Atlanta.
In a completely different vertical, Bumper, a UK car finance company, has acquired Cocoon, an open banking payment vendor which says its product is used by 20% of car dealers.
Stable coins
There’s been an explosion of commentary on stablecoins following the approval of Trump’s Genius Act, which for the first time sets out a regulatory framework. Jason Mikula has the details. Genius has triggered a rush among banks, fintechs and retailers to launch their own digital dollars which will be backed 1:1 by US Treasuries, although, unlike dollars in a bank account, there is no deposit insurance.
Why would businesses want in? For one, they keep the interest on Treasury bonds. And for retailers, stablecoin wallets could cut card fees if shoppers preload value. But it’s unclear why everyday users, especially in European democracies with easy access to banking services, would hold a private currency with no consumer protection. “Unless you’re a criminal, there’s no use case,” says Ryan Cummings, former White House advisor.
Business of Payments readers likely have two questions:
When will stablecoins be used for retail payments?
As for profitability: probably not. If stablecoins are fungible, meaning a “Walmart dollar” is interchangeable with a “JPMorgan dollar” then margins may collapse to 10bps, in line with money market funds. Coinbase is already offering 4.1% on USDC, and as Andrew Dresdner notes, that leaves little room for profit.
In other news
The latest UK government payments strategy includes the formation of several new committees: a Payments Vision Delivery Committee, a Vision Engagement Group, and a Retail Payments Infrastructure Board. Undoubtedly good news for those who make a living sitting on industry panels.
In Denmark, NETS went down on Saturday 19 July, leaving Danes unable to use ATMs or POS terminals at home and abroad across Dankort, Visa, and Mastercard. One group of Danes stranded in Cyprus wrote: “Our plan for now is to try a live performance that includes both singing and dancing, but we are crossing our fingers that the problem is resolved before they refuse to serve us any more beers.”
Figure 2: Danes struggling to come to terms with the NETS outage
Global Payments European merchant revenue growth dropped to 7% in Q2 as the effect of the EVO acquisition dropped out of the year-on-year comparisons. The Atlanta based acquirer/processor reported “notable strength across our faster-growth geographies, including Poland and Greece” and said it was “pleased to see trends start to stabilize in the United Kingdom.”
The integration of EVO’s European businesses has enhanced Global Payment’s existing strong footprint in the UK (where Global inherited a decent merchant portfolio from its 2009 acquisition of HSBC merchant services), Spain (80/20 JV with Caixa Bank) and Czech Republic (partnering with Erste Bank). EVO also brought two extra joint-ventures with local banks – PKO BP in Poland and National Bank of Greece.
Starting with the UK, management says that, after several years of weaknesss, business is showing “some signs of stability” and Global Payments now has a “strong pipeline of new business.” Hospitality and unattended are the bright spots and Cameron Bready, CEO, highlighted winning Virgin’s hotel business.
Although Global Payments has spent heavily in the US on buying a number of vertically focused ISVs, most of these businesses do not actively market their products in Europe. However, Global did buy a UK software business called Bleep which provides an ePOS solution for high-capacity retail such as stadiums. Rebranded as Global Payments, it is winning deals at a number of UK football clubs such as Birmingham City.
Commerz Global Pay, the joint venture with Commerz Bank in Germany, went live and is “off to a fantastic start.” Bready said he was “already seeing strong lead generation” and confident of building “a scale business in this attractive market.” Management says it will launch its POS software in Germany later this month and will bring it to Ireland, Poland, Austria and Romania over the next 12 months.
Global also reported the acquisition of “an early-stage technology development company” which it did not name. This is Yazara, a SoftPOS vendor originally from Turkey, which was already supplying Global in a number of markets. Bready said it was “strategically important for us to bring this technology in-house to unify our offerings globally and to control the entire value stack enabling our solutions.” This is a good move although Yazara’s other customers may not be so happy with a key competitor controlling the business.
Looking ahead, management recognises that a business built primarily from acquisitions needs rationalising. Bready said “we remain committed to sharpening our strategic focus and simplifying our business.” Global has begun a “thoughtful and methodical assessment of our assets” and promises to give more details at an investor day in September. Analysts expect the sale of a number of under-performing US software businesses.
It’s obvious why Klarna is selling. KCO competed with key distribution partners such as Stripe and Adyen and the very generous sale proceeds will bolster Klarna’s balance sheet and help grow its lending business.
But it’s less clear how KCO’s new owners will make a return on their investment. Stand-alone gateways have been under considerable pricing pressure in recent years, and many have ended up vertically integrated into the larger merchant acquirers.
In banking news, BNP Paribas and BPCE, which together handle c.30% of card payments in France, will invest €100m each and pool their payment capabilities to create a joint-venture with the scale to compete with Worldline and Nexi. Technology will be “home grown” and most likely a continuation of Partecis, an in-house platform based on ACI products. While there’s plenty of scope for synergy in France, the JV will find its hoped for international expansion rather more challenging as PagoNxt, Santander’s payment unit, demonstrated when it recently closed its German operations.
IDC, a London-based research firm, has published vendor evaluations for online and omni-channel retail payments. The full reports cost $20,000 each but the top ranked firms have helpfully made their sections available free of charge. Stripe comes top for online payments although is marked down for being expensive. Adyen is first for omni-channel but customers are warned that its all-in-one solution may lack flexibility.
Viva Wallet’s lawsuit with JP Morgan ended in a London courtroom with both sides claiming victory. JPM paid an eye-popping $800m for 48.5% of Viva in 2022, primarily to gain access to SME customer onboarding tools for European markets. Haris Karonis, Viva’s founder, claimed that JPM then deliberately blocked his company’s launch in the US so that the giant American bank could buy the rest of Viva on the cheap. JPM counter-claimed that Karonis failed to understand how far Fintech valuations had fallen.
It’s taken four years and 14 of the original 31 banks have exited the consortium but the European Payment Initiative (EPI) has finally launched wero, the long-long-awaited domestic European payment champion. Wero, a combination of “we” and “euro”, is live for person-to-person money transfer, initially for customers of co-operative and savings banks in Germany and KBC in Belgium. French banks come on stream in the autumn.
Shoppers will be able to make eCommerce payments with wero from early 2025 and Computop, the German PSP, has already begun asking merchants to register to be part of a pilot. In-store payments will follow in 2026.
The consensus from payment experts is that for wero to succeed the EPI needs to focus ruthlessly on user experience and keep the member banks firmly in the background. And “I need a wero” is the only song that will do as you can hear in this short commercial.
Even though wero is at least six months away from being ready for eCommerce, its launch sparked the unexpectedly early closure of Paydirekt/Giropay, a domestic competitor to PayPal launched by the German banks in 2016.
Insiders tell me that the service termination was badly handled. Giropay switched off its old integration interface at the end of June even though many acquirers had not yet migrated to the new version.
Meanwhile, Klarna has announced the closure of Sofort, the German online bank transfer service which it bought for $150m in 2013. Merchants will be migrated to Pay Now, Klarna’s open banking product. This includes buyer protection which is great for shoppers but less exciting for Sofort’s many merchants in the gambling and adult sectors. These customers will be looking for alternatives.
Klarna’s new wrapper doesn’t come cheap. In Germany, Adyen is charging 1.35% + €0.20 for Klarna Pay Now transactions. For UK merchants, Mollie is asking a punchy 4.99% + £0.30.
Blik, the wildly successful Polish mobile payment standard, continues its stunning growth with payment volume up 53% in 2023 to €29bn. Blik is jointly owned by Mastercard and a number of local banks who have suddenly woken up to the importance of their investment. From now on, the banks will send their CEO’s to Blik’s board meetings.
Bancomat, the Italian domestic debit scheme, is finally getting its act together. Milan-based investment fund FIS has made a €100m investment, the board has been slimmed down to speed decision making and a new CEO appointed from Mastercard. Nexi runs the technology for Bancomat and has put the card scheme live on Apple Pay and as a payment option on Amazon.
We’re taking a keen interest in the convergence of software and payments. Flagship Consulting’s latest report shows quite how dependent many American ISV’s have become on payment and other financial services revenue.
In response, payment processors know they need to partner with ISVs and some have gone further, buying or building an in-house range of vertical software.
Intriguingly, the stock market value of payment processors that offer software is rather lower than software vendors that offer payments processing. Jevgenijs Kazanins looks at why Toast (an ISV that offers payments) is valued more highly than Shift4 (a processor that offers software) even though Toast makes much less money. His conclusion is that ISV’s are better at securing recurring revenues under contract.
European ISV’s have now realised they too can make money from processing. The opportunity is smaller than in North America because payment margins in Europe are much lower. Nevertheless, a savvy commerce software vendor can still double profit margins by embedding payments in its core merchant offer.
With so many acquirers and PSP’s pivoting towards ISV’s as their primary distribution channel, a number of start-ups have begun offering key parts of the technology stack as-a-service. Here are a few that have caught my eye.
Shape Technologies is offering payments-platform-as-a-service to payment facilitators with capabilities including onboarding, KYC and billing. Shape is founded by alumni from Cardstream and is helping put Taunton, Somerset on the Fintech map.
Fung, in Amsterdam, offers a similar product set to Shape but is also a payment institution and can handle the money flow too.
Dublin/Vilnius based Paynt, goes one step further with a full acquiring-as-a-service proposition.Subscribe
New shopping
We’re keeping a close eye on the progress of autonomous stores as one possible driver of a seismic shift in grocery transactions from POS to the shopper’s phone.
Although sceptics point out that frictionless checkout often involves more manual intervention than the vendors let on, the use cases are multiplying. For example, in a village store in Switzerland a shipping container is transformed into an unmanned convenience store (or walk-in vending machine) using technology from FastaXs.
In Europe, Mastercard is backing PayEye, a Polish start-up which is piloting its iris/facial recognition product at five locations of Empik, a large retailer of books, toys and games.
A number of start-ups are trying to make it easier for merchants and consumers to move to digital receipts. Habits are hard to shift. Despite a new legal requirement in France that paper receipts should be opt-in only, Auchan, the grocery chain, reports 60% of shoppers still ask for paper.
In the UK, Slipp, which boasts JD Sports as an early client has raised £750K. Slipp integrates with the ePOS software to send the shopper a text or email. JD Sports says using Slipp’s SMS receipts to promote its loyalty programme is increasing the number of customer sign-ups.
Anybill, from Regensberg in Germany, asks customers to scan a QR code presented by the ePOS. Pricing ranges from €4.49 to €35.99 per month per outlet.
Yocuda, a French start-up acquired by Global Blue, claims to have delivered over 2m electronic receipts to over 200,000 identified shoppers. Clients include Halfords and Decathlon.
Receipt Hero, based in Helsinki, has raised additional funds to supplement the $5.7m already invested. Receipt Hero offers cardlinking as well as QR scans. Partners include PayOne.
Pi-xcels from Singapore has an elegantly simple product that delivers an e-receipt automatically when the shopper taps their phone on the payment terminal. The product integrates with the terminal not the ePOS software and is available on Ingenico and PAX.
There’s an open question whether digital receipts can establish themselves as product category in their own right or whether merchants would prefer to buy the capability as a feature of existing POS or CRM software.
This technology, which allows any off the shelf consumer device to accept contactless card payments, was originally touted as a micro-merchant proposition but is proving most popular with large enterprises.
LVMH is leading the innovation. Liberated from the need to locate the nearest payment terminal, sales associates at Christian Dior, an LVHM brand, each have their own iPhone to serve customers wherever they are in the store. Dior has worked with Adyen, Global Blue and Vo2 Group, a Paris HQ’d tech consultancy, to add instant VAT tax refunds to the proposition.
In vendor news, Rubean, based in Munich, has raised an additional €2m capital to finance its strong growth. Sales are forecast to rise to €2.2-€2.5m this year from €1m in 2023 on the back of new distribution deals.
Rubean’s partnership with Global Payments may be threatened by the Atlanta processor’s unpublicised purchase of Yazara. The Global/Yazara tie up is likely also to be bad news for MyPinPad which local sources suggest may be replaced as supplier to eService, Poland’s largest acquirer, which Global bought last year.
In better news for MyPinPad, Ur&Penn, a leading chain of jewellers in Norway, is using its SoftPOS application to take store payments on the associate’s Android phones. 2izii is the integrator and Elavon the acquirer.
Phos, acquired by Ingenico in 2023, is making good progress building out its distribution network, announcing a key partnership with Shift4, a US processor with big ambitions in Europe. Phos is also the technology partner for BORICA, which provides SoftPOS to the three largest banks in Bulgaria. BORICA claims 1,500 “terminals” live today.
In Italy, Ultroneo has implemented MarketPay’s PayWish SoftPOS application for its Get Your Cash merchant proposition. Volumes are growing swiftly (see below) but it’s not been plain sailing. Writing on LinkedIn, one Ultroneo director explained “For nearly 12 months now we have been struggling with the teething problems of this new technology. Bug after bug, incident after incident, we have managed to stabilize the SoftPos to the delight of our customers.”
Openbanking
The UK’s incoming Labour government is making very positive noises about fintech. Quoting from its manifesto: “Financial services are one of Britain’s greatest success stories. Labour will create the conditions to support innovation and growth in the sector, through supporting new technology, including Open Banking and Open Finance and ensuring a pro-innovation regulatory framework.”
There is much that a new regulatory approach could deliver, including an open banking acceptance mark, “scheme” rules to ensure common standards for authorisation codes, refunds etc, the introduction of consumer protection and a recognition that all this cannot be provided free of charge.
Positively, the number of open banking payments made in the UK rose c.50% year-on-year to 17m in May 2024. Variable Recurring Payments (VRPs), the open banking equivalent of direct debits, now account for 11% of the total.
The increase is encouraging but compared with the 2bn debit card transactions made in the UK in a typical month, volumes remain very small.
The slow take up of open banking has implications for the large number of vendors operating in this sector. There are twenty listed on the UK government’s procurement framework alone. If revenues don’t arrive soon, only the best capitalised will be able to keep trading until the product goes mainstream.
Truelayer, hopes to be one of the survivors, having raised a remarkable total of $271m from its investors. Truelayer’s CEO has given an interview to explain that he is playing a long game, saying “We are an infrastructure business. That means we are likely going to spend a lot of time and a lot of years building and spending money before actually earning,”Subscribe
Cash
Germany is often cited as the last hold-out of the cash economy but the latest Bundesbank payment survey shows a further decline in the use of paper money. The cash share of transactions fell 7% points in 2023 to 51% and its share of volume by 4% points to 26%.
It’s no surprise that policy-makers in many countries are grappling with the implications of the world going cashless. For example, Ireland has passed an “Access to Cash” law which gives the government powers to set minimum numbers of ATMs for each area. The local banks, and their customers, will bear the cost. Revolut, wildly popular in Ireland, will likely get a free ride.
Crypto currencies are assets not money, yet vendors persist in bringing forward payment acceptance solutions at POS.
“Few have heard of SpacePay, but give it a year, and it will likely be a household name” is the bold claim from this London based start-up which graduated from Barclays’ fintech accelerator. SpacePay, which has raised $750K, says it will allow people to spend crypto at “most existing point of sale card machines.” It’s not clear how this would work in practice.
If there is a user base for crypto at POS anywhere, it’s going to be in a cross-border market such as Luxembourg where some shoppers may not want their home country authorities to know what they are buying.
Done4You, an ISO based just across the border in Namur, Belgium, has implemented crypto at POS for a petrol station in the Grand Duchy using GoCrypto’s technology. Crypto transaction are 1.25% compared to interchange + 0.5% for credit cards.
Global Payments reported its “best quarter in four years” as management highlighted a positive underlying performance despite significant increases in corporate expenses and losses on disposals. Total Group revenue rose 6% to $2.29bn.
Recent corporate activity has sharpened Global’s focus on two propositions – merchant acquiring and issuer processing. It has sold its Gaming Solutions business for $415m and is about to close the sale of Netspend, a consumer-focused prepaid cards business for $1bn. The proceeds are set against the $4bn purchase of EVO, a multinational acquirer processor. The new refocused strategy sees Merchant Solutions as the largest division, accounting for three-quarters of future revenue.
Group operating expenses rose 26% to $2.23bn driven by significant increases in corporate costs – up from $160m to $283m – and a one-off loss of $245m booked on disposals. Corporate expense included $90m share-based compensation and $175m for costs related to acquisition, integration and separation.
Group operating income fell 85% to just $56m. After net interest expense of $111m, Global Payments swung to a pre-tax loss of $56m from a profit of $284m in the same quarter of 2022.
“Adjusted non-GAAP” operating income, which management believes gives a fairer reflection of the underlying health of the business, rose 10% to $883m.
Net revenue from the Merchant Solutions division was up 9% to $1.6bn with operating income risings a healthy 14% to $507m. Global Payments outgoing CEO, Jeff Sloan, spoke of this business as “highly resilient” and said that growth had accelerated across “a number of worldwide markets.” Payment volume was up 10% in Q1 although the cash value wasn’t disclosed. eCommerce and omni-channel are showing fastest growth, with volume increasing in the “high teens”.
In Europe, Global Payments sees “strong trends” in Spain and Central Europe, both markets where EVO brings additional scale, but the UK remains problematic “as the implications of Brexit really take hold, as well as sky high inflation in that market.”
Management sounds confident about the EVO acquisition. The two companies are both headquartered in Atlanta and many of EVO’s management were prepped in payments while working at Global.
Having plenty of time to prepare its plans since the announcement in August 2022, Global’s new CEO Cameron Bready said “we have made substantial progress on our integration and remain enthusiastic about the synergy opportunities available.” He has “executable plans” to realise at last $125m of synergies primarily from “aligning our business operations and go to market strategies, streamlining technology infrastructure, eliminating duplicative corporate and operational support structures, and realising scale efficiencies.”
Beyond cost cutting, Global Payments will need to realise revenue synergies too. The obvious one is to leverage EVO’s excellent B2B solutions in the US which are focused on SAP, Oracle and Microsoft ERP software. But Bready also believes he can cross-sell Global’s software to EVO’s European customers and this is likely to be more challenging in my view. Internationalising vertical software is tough and EVO’s diverse footprint means the work must be replicated for each national market which multiplies cost and risk. Also, no European acquirer has yet managed to sell business software at scale to its SME base. If successful, Global would be the first.
Although EVO is taking much of the focus, Sloan reported that, “Spring by Citi,” a new partnership with the giant American bank to provide payment acceptance to its corporate customers is progressing well. Live in the US, UK and continental Europe, Spring by Citi is running at $3bn annual processed volume and on-track to double by the end of 2023.
Overall, Merchant Solutions unadjusted operating margins expanded to 32% from 30% a year earlier although management cautioned that margins would likely contract in the near term, diluted by the the addition of less profitable revenues from EVO.
The much smaller Issuer Solutions business grew revenue 6% to $571m and operating income 20% to $83m. Unlike FIS, Global Payments remains committed to keeping issuer and merchant facing businesses under the same roof. Management is very positive about issuer processing and claims to have nine letters of intent from new bank customers.
