PAYMENTS
Bit.Store | May 31, 2022
Asia's leading SocialFi crypto investment platform, Bit.Store (STORE) has deepened its partnership with crypto payment provider Alchemy Pay (ACH). Further to the current credit card and paypal connections, Alchemy Pay will add popular alternative payment methods to Bit.Store including mobile wallets and domestic instant transfer services.
Furthermore, Alchemy Pay will provide Bit.Store with off-ramp capabilities, meaning their users can convert their crypto funds into over 100 local fiat currencies and have them deposited directly into their bank accounts.
These new capabilities once again highlight Alchemy Pay's impressive service within the industry and will elevate Bit.Store's app, which has already become very popular in Southeast Asia and Europe. In Indonesia, in particular, Bit.Store has become one of the top social cryptocurrency investment platforms for retail investors. The platform was launched in 2021 and has seen rapid growth. The number of users has grown 30% to 700k since the partners' first collaborated in November 2021.
With its simple and intuitive design, Bit.Store has positioned itself as a beginner-friendly investment service that allows everyday people to access crypto conveniently and securely. The simplicity of design and functionality overcomes the barrier to entry for many and the app outshines competition by cleverly leveraging social elements and exploring a new 'SocialFi' model.
Bit.Store educates inexperienced investors so they can make smarter investment decisions. It embraces the web3.0 era by allowing users to create decentralized communities for the sharing of information alongside experienced and professional investors. The app has multiple groups and forums for trading discussions, as well as up-to-date news and educational items.
It is a big step forward to offer the flexibility of Alchemy Pay's easy, secure payments to our users. Acceptance of mobile wallets are crucial, in particular, to our Asian users where so-called alternative payments are now becoming the dominant method. Additionally, the ability to pay-out from our platform via Alchemy Pay puts us way ahead of many of our competitors."
Bit.Store's co-founder, Carl Moss.
Our focus right now is on our ramps that are integrated onto crypto and web3 services. The ability to onboard users to platforms directly via global and local fiat payments, and then offer the chance to cash out again makes for a seamless, user-friendly experience. We are expecting to make a huge impact on the web3 movement with these ramps."
John Tan, CEO of Alchemy Pay.
About Bit.Store
Bit.Store (STORE) is a SocialFi investment platform designed with beginner investors in mind. The platform gives its users access to global digital currency markets quickly and easily by supporting different money transfer methods via cooperations with a wide network of regional payment providers. The app provides a variety of features, including social trading, following, and copy trading strategies published by seasoned experts in the space, and allows experts to monetize their contribution to the platform.
About Alchemy Pay
Founded in Singapore in 2018, Alchemy Pay (ACH) is a payment solutions provider that seamlessly connects fiat and crypto economies for global consumers, merchants, and developers. It provides merchants with convenient acceptance of crypto, enables easy onboarding to blockchain ecosystems, and makes web3 services highly accessible. Today, Alchemy Pay is supported in over 70 countries with 300 payment channels, has touchpoints with more than 2 million merchants through partnerships with industry leaders such as Binance, Shopify, NIUM, and QFPay. Alchemy Pay's token, ACH, is an ERC20 native to the Ethereum blockchain.
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PAYMENTS
EVODeFi | March 21, 2022
EVODeFi cross-chain solution just unveiled its new product – EVODeFi.Pay. This is a powerful tool for making crypto payments, allowing sellers to accept and bill cryptocurrency to customers with minimal time and effort. The product will be especially valuable for users who want to perform their money transactions in cryptocurrency without using complicated schemes.
The high-tech system of EVODeFi provides numerous crypto services including business tools to increase crypto payments, a bridge between networks, and a high-tech system to work with crypto exchange and crypto-salaries. A professional team that has already launched one of the top 5 bridges created EVODeFi.Pay that facilitates the process of exchanging cryptocurrency between sellers and buyers.
EVODeFi.Pay is a product that performs fast crypto-transactions between vendors and customers. The process of using the service is extremely simple: a buyer chooses the cryptocurrency which he or she wants and pays for the purchase. EVODeFi.Pay converts one cryptocurrency into another and sends the payment to a seller in the crypto that has been chosen. Since many have refused to use BTC/ETH in favor of faster networks, EVODeFi.Pay can offer several popular networks, such as BSC, Fantom, Avax, Polygon, which already have a large number of users. In addition, the development team uses a powerful security system to protect transactions at all stages. Moreover, convenient localization and the ability to use the service on any device will greatly facilitate integration.
About EVODeFi:
EVODeFi is a cross-chain solution providing a set of crypto products including a bridge between networks, business tools to increase crypto payments, and a high-tech system to work with crypto exchange and crypto-salaries projects, available in a single system. EVODeFi develops the following services: Bridge, Pay, Exchange, Payroll and App. Using the latest technologies and great experience, the EVODeFi system works at the international level, providing its services in regions around the world, for example in the USA, Europe, and South America.
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FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT
BearingPoint | December 18, 2021
Management and technology consultancy BearingPoint and the Swiss financial market infrastructure operator SIX are partnering to develop a fully integrated invoice-to-payment service. The service will digitalize the entire value-added chain from the issue of the invoice to its payment: invoice issuers will send invoices directly and securely to their customers’ online and mobile banking applications. Customers can verify all the information online and then approve payment of an invoice at the click of a button. This service will also support the SEPA Request-To-Pay (SRTP) functions.
The platform is based on the eBill processing infrastructure of SIX, as this is already well established in Switzerland and will be rolled out in Europe with BearingPoint’s industry experience. The goal is to offer banks in Europe a model that has been tested in Switzerland and that enables the receipt of invoices and the release of payments directly through those banks’ electronic banking platforms. A key advantage is the ease of integration into the banks’ environments, thereby enabling fast and cost-effective implementations. The timing for the rollout of the solution depends on the participation of banks and invoice issuers in the respective countries. BearingPoint and SIX are currently planning for the first applications in the European market by 2023.
“With eBill, SIX has established a successful solution for digital invoices in the Swiss market. It is used by around 100 financial institutions and already reaches more than half of Swiss households. In our next step, we want to implement this innovative solution across Europe in partnership with BearingPoint,” emphasizes Marco Menotti, Head of Banking Services and Member of the Executive Board of SIX.
“The role of the bank account in payment processing is undergoing a fundamental change. Banks need to address how they will position accounts with their customers in the future. Our joint solution offers banks a way to link accounts with additional services that are related to invoice receipts and payments, and creates an overall win-win-win situation for banks, consumers and businesses,” adds Thomas Steiner, Global Leader Banking & Capital Markets at BearingPoint, explaining the motivation for the initiative.
With our innovative solution, we can help invoice issuers achieve significant cost savings when processing transfers. It also massively improves the user experience for debtors, as they receive invoices and initiate payments in a single step and within the familiar digital environment of their own bank. For banks, this will result in a strengthening of their customer relationships and – through the reductions in paper invoices – also contribute to environmental protection”
Stefan Schütt, head of the RTP initiative at BearingPoint.
About SIX
SIX operates and develops infrastructure services for the Swiss and Spanish stock exchanges and for securities services, banking services and financial information with the aim of improving efficiency, quality and innovative capacity across the entire value chain of the Swiss and Spanish financial centers. The company is owned by its users (121 banks). With a workforce of around 3,500 employees (full-time equivalents) and a presence in 20 countries, it generated operating income of CHF 1.38 billion and Group net profit of CHF 439.6 million in 2020.
About BearingPoint
BearingPoint is an independent management and technology consultancy with European roots and a global reach. The company operates in three business units: The first unit covers the advisory business with a clear focus on selected business areas. The second unit provides IP-driven digital assets and managed services beyond SaaS. The third unit is designed to explore innovative business models with clients and partners by driving the financing and development of start-ups and leveraging ecosystems.
BearingPoint’s clients include many of the world’s leading companies and organizations. The firm has a global consulting network with more than 10,000 people and supports clients in over 70 countries, engaging with them to achieve measurable and sustainable success.
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FUNDING
Mastercard | December 23, 2021
Mastercard and McDonald’s today announced an agreement for Mastercard to acquire McDonald’s state-of-the-art personalization platform and decision engine company, Dynamic Yield. Dynamic Yield’s technology is a natural addition to Mastercard’s existing suite of services that help brands deliver more effective and trusted customer experiences across channels.
Sitting across online and offline channels to personalize a consumer’s experience with a brand, Dynamic Yield delivers individualized product recommendations, offers and content based on a range of factors, including past purchases, page views, time of day, current store traffic and trending products. The software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform uses advanced AI and other technologies to support 400+ brands across the retail, financial services, travel and restaurant industries, among others.
The notion of going into a store or opening a webpage to find an experience perfectly tailored to you is no longer farfetched. It’s a reality that more brands are deploying and more consumers expect. With Dynamic Yield’s expertise and our scale and relationships, we’ll be able to bring the connections between the end consumer and our customers to new heights.”
Raj Seshadri, President of Data & Services, Mastercard.
Mastercard plays a central role in enabling trusted digital commerce experiences, connecting billions of consumers with millions of merchants and banks around the world safely and securely. With Dynamic Yield’s technology, Mastercard will be able to help its customers and partners meet consumers’ growing demand for a more personalized experience, no matter where they shop or do business. The creation of a unified consumer engagement and loyalty hub will further extend the value of Mastercard’s network to deliver digital services for payments and beyond.
This builds on the company’s long track record of providing data-driven loyalty, analytics and marketing services, rooted in focused data responsibility principles. This includes the SessionM merchant loyalty platform and Test & Learn (APT) experimentation software.
McDonald’s purchased Dynamic Yield in 2019, becoming one of the first brands to integrate decision technology into its restaurants. Under McDonald’s ownership, Dynamic Yield doubled its revenue and expanded its customer base across verticals. To date, Dynamic Yield’s technology has been deployed to McDonald’s drive-thrus and ordering kiosks in several markets around the world.
The deployment and enhancement of this technology has been an important component of McDonald’s Accelerating the Arches growth strategy under which the brand has also prioritized improving ordering experiences, introduced a global loyalty program and expanded its delivery footprint. The acquisition by Mastercard will strengthen unique, existing synergies across McDonald’s digital engagement experiences currently powered by SessionM and Test & Learn. In addition, McDonald’s plans to further scale and integrate Dynamic Yield’s capabilities globally and across ordering channels.
“We’re delighted to continue working with McDonald’s, a longstanding client and proven innovator in this space,” Seshadri continued.
In addition to McDonald’s, a number of merchant and financial services brands already use both Dynamic Yield and existing Mastercard services. Synchrony has worked with both companies on digital customer engagement. “Synchrony works hard every day to deliver simple, tailored and relevant interactions to enhance the consumer experience,” said Jeff Brousseau, Senior Vice President, Performance Marketing, Synchrony. “With Dynamic Yield, we’ve been able to deliver contextual, personalized experiences across the consumer journey. Combining this with the power of Mastercard’s other digital services unlocks additional capabilities to further enrich consumer engagement.”
The transaction is anticipated to close in the first half of 2022, with the strength and talent of the extended Dynamic Yield team ensuring consistency for its customers throughout the process. Upon close, current chief technology officer Ori Bauer will take the helm as CEO. Liad Agmon, current CEO, will stay on in an advisory capacity.
The transaction is subject to customary closing conditions. Terms of the agreement were not disclosed.
About Mastercard
Mastercard is a global technology company in the payments industry. Our mission is to connect and power an inclusive, digital economy that benefits everyone, everywhere by making transactions safe, simple, smart, and accessible. Using secure data and networks, partnerships and passion, our innovations and solutions help individuals, financial institutions, governments, and businesses realize their greatest potential. Our decency quotient, or DQ, drives our culture and everything we do inside and outside of our company. With connections across more than 210 countries and territories, we are building a sustainable world that unlocks priceless possibilities for all.
About McDonald’s
McDonald’s is the world’s leading global foodservice retailer with nearly 40,000 locations in over 100 countries. 93% of McDonald’s restaurants worldwide are owned and operated by independent local business owners.
About Dynamic Yield
Dynamic Yield helps enterprise brands quickly deliver and test personalized, optimized, and synchronized digital customer interactions. Marketing, Product, Development, and eCommerce teams from more than 400 global brands are using Dynamic Yield’s Experience Optimization platform as the technology layer that works alongside existing CMS, Commerce, or ESP solutions to iterate faster and algorithmically match content, products, and offers to each individual for the acceleration of long-term business value.
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