ADN’co Payments Insight – December 2017

Players’ strategy – Concentration on the cybersecurity market

• FRANCE – Thales is getting ready to buy out Gemalto for 4.8 billion euros.

This announcement, as well as prior mergers highlighted this year (especially in the field of payments processing), stresses a need for longstanding players to scale up, for the sake of maintaining their leadership. Gemalto’s assimilation by Thales should give rise to a cybersecurity giant, with a card industry activity and dematerialisation-related plans.

E-commerce – Online platforms making room for group purchases

• INTERNATIONAL – Airbnb introduces a service for group purchases in line with their buyout of Tilt.
• FRANCE – The French start-up Pledg just raised 1.2 million euros. This new entrant on the market of shared expenses intends to meet both merchants’ and end-users’ needs.

Shared expenses and group purchases have become prevailing trends, leading well-established players and new entrants to include them in their developments. Groups are now considered as “individual” targets, with specific expectations and needs.

Likewise, PayPal started proposing a free online money pot service called Money Pools a short while ago. These launches are highlighting an ongoing evolution towards including groups in the e-commerce industry.

Players’ strategy – Neo-banks and FinTechs structuring their offers

• FRANCE – N26 introduces a new upmarket offer for entrepreneurs with their N26 Metal payment card.
• FRANCE – Morning just reached the 100,000 users milestone, and gives hints as to their imminent launch of an aggregation service, and compatibility with the European Instant Payment infrastructure.
• EUROPE – Bankin’ presents Bridge: a BtoB-oriented brand enabling companies to rely on their white label account aggregation technology.

FinTech companies and neo-banking players are still in process of structuring their offers, and refining their business models. In many cases, they also turn to a BtoB approach featuring white label offers. This evolution should benefit from the Open-Banking trend, as well.