Paypal and Skype partner for mobile payments
PayPal seems to show no signs of slowing down when it comes to forming new partnerships. This week, the online payments giant has struck a partnership with Skype that allows users in 22 countries worldwide to send payments to other Skype users through the updated mobile app.
This extends PayPal’s reach to a new wave of consumers, with recent statistics showing that Skype’s app has been downloaded over a billion times to date. The move extends PayPal’s reach for peer-to-peer payments across a multitude of popular messaging channels.
Royal Bank of Canada enables payments using Siri
The new update in RBC’s mobile app now enables customers to connect to Siri to pay their bills via voice commands. Once users give their voice commands, Siri confirms the name from their payee list and the RBC app automatically sends the amount into their account.
Sean Amato-Gauci, Executive Vice Present of Cards, Payments and Banking at RBC said: “We’re one of the leading voices on artificial intelligence in Canada, and our integration of Siri into bill payments and P2P transfers are an example of how our clients are already benefitting from these advancements in AI.”
Digital bank Revolut breaks crowdfunding records with Seedrs campaign
More than 38,000 Revolut users pre-registered to take part in a crowdfunding campaign to raise money for the digital bank. Combined, they pledged to invest more than £17m, however, investments were capped at £1,000 each and no more than £4m collectively.
According to Seedrs, the crowdfunding site where the cash is being raised is the largest ever pre-registration for an equity fundraise. The fintech start-up currently has 750,000 customers.
Revolut founder and chief executive Nikolay Storonsky said: “Word of mouth by our loyal customer base is the reason that Revolut has achieved so much in just two years. As a token of our appreciation we are offering them the chance to play a longer term role in the fintech revolution by owning equity in a fast scaling fintech as we embark on our global mission.”
SoftBank invests $250m in Kabbage
Today, Kabbage Inc., a financial services and data platform that serves small businesses globally, announced the agreement of a $250m equity investment from Softbank in Kabbage. The funding brings Kabbage’s total equity raised to almost $500m.
With the new investment, Kabbage plans to expand its lending products for small businesses as well as accelerate its SaaS platform business that powers online SMB lending for global banks.
“Our partnership with SoftBank accelerates our goal of providing a suite of services to small businesses globally that is centered on real-time and persistent access to a wide variety of data,” said Rob Frohwein, co-founder and CEO of Kabbage. “SoftBank’s scale, global reach, relationships and unparalleled expertise in building transformative industry leaders make them an ideal partner for Kabbage.”
After reading the latest headlines from this week, we’d love to know your opinion of the biggest story of this week. Share your vote using our Twitter poll below:
It’s news round-up day! What’s the biggest payments story you’ve seen this week? #fintech
— PaymentEye (@PaymentEye) August 3, 2017
Read last week’s payments round-up here.
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