JPMorgan Chase and Temasek Fuel Bill.com’s Expansion Plans
Under the leadership of JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Temasek Holdings, a multinational investment company headquartered in Singapore, investors just injected $100 million into digital payments company Bill.com. This move highlights the growing trend of large financial institutions taking young fintechs under their wings. The former provides a wide customer base, while the latter brings cutting edge technology to the table.
This huge capital infusion will expand Bill.com’s ability to help businesses adopt digital payments. The company currently boasts 100,000 customers in the US (over 1 percent of all US businesses) and processes $50 billion worth of payments annually. But there’s plenty more room for growth, given that US businesses have been rather slow on the uptake when it comes to modern payment technology. Last year, more than half of B2B payments from US organizations still arrived by paper check. In addition to grabbing a bigger share of the home market, René Lacerte, Bill.com’s founder and CEO, said that his sights are now set on the international payments market.
Continued Growth for Ripple’s Cross-Border Payment Network
The blockchain startup Ripple just announced the addition of 9 financial institutions and payment providers to its international money transfer network, which boosts the member count to more than 100. The new members include Credit Agricole, Currencies Direct (read our review), TransferGo, and Cuallix, a non-bank financial services institution with operations in the US and Mexico that caters to the underserved consumer.
Cuallix stands out as the first Ripple partner to adopt its digital currency, XRP, which streamlines the process of sending money online and minimizes liquidity costs. According to Cuallix, “Our business — and our customer’s livelihood — depends on our ability to send micro-payments easily and quickly to Mexico. With xRapid, we can source liquidity through XRP and complete the cross-border payments in seconds.”
Arab Countries Want Better International Money Transfers
A recent report issued by Payfort, an Amazon-owned provider of payment solutions to the Arab world, reveals a dramatic increase in online transactions in this region. The State of Payments in the Arab World report covers seven Arab countries: Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE, pictured above). It claims that consumers in these countries purchased over $30 billion worth of products and services online last year, representing a 22 percent increase compared to 2015. Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and the UAE experienced the highest growth rates. When analyzed by sector, online payments made the fastest advancements in events and entertainment with 33 percent growth between 2015 and 2016.
Payfort also captured consumer attitudes towards fintech services and found a substantial need for better money transfer solutions. For example, 17 percent of respondents in the UAE want a better way to send money online to other countries, and almost half of them still haven’t tried mobile wallets. One reason for this reluctance is concern over security. Of the cash-on-delivery customers surveyed by Payfort, most of whom live in Egypt and Lebanon, over 50 percent indicated that they’d need to be completely convinced of the security of online transfers before adopting that technology.
