Dear Subscriber,

We’re back in business after the Easter break with a bumper issue of PaymentEye, exploring the top stories and sharpest insights from the industry. The top story today is Samsung Pay launching in China, less than a month after Apple Pay set up shop in the region as the rivals prepare to compete for the country’s massive (and growing) online customer base. There’s more than each other to contend with, however, as the companies will face a formidable rival in the shape of Alipay, which currently dominates electronic payments in China. Sticking with that theme we hear from FuturePay, asking whether we’ve hit the tipping point for mobile payments, Western Union on the marriage of social media plus mobile and talk to The Bancorp about European versus US payments. Meanwhile, we take a look at Square launching bank loans as it expands beyond its core payments business and how one of Slovenia’s biggest banks is courting millennials.

Financial exclusion is a term seldom associated with Europe. Here Lucinda Beeman explores the extent of the problem in Europe, and how to bring the continent’s 165m unbanked into the financial system.

Adoption of digital financial technology continues to accelerate in Europe with markets like the UK and Sweden leading the push from cash and cheque to contactless, mobile and online payments.

In this guest article, Bobbi Leach, the CEO of FuturePay, discusses the future of mobile payments. He considers why the technology failed to set the world alight when the first mobile wallet was released in 2011 and whether 2016 is the year mobile payment adoption actually reaches the “tipping point”.

In this guest post, Massimiliano Alvisini, the regional vice president Northern Europe and Iberia at Western Union, explores the rise of social networks and messaging applications incorporating cross border payments services and covers three different aspects of social money movement.

US mobile payments giant Square is moving deeper into traditional finance territory as it builds out its lending division, Square Capital, with the launch of bank loans for merchant customers. The firm initially started offering cash advances for merchants in 2014 in a bid to diversify its revenue model and push closer to profitability.

Slovenian bank Nova Ljubljanska Banka (NLB) is teaming up with UK e-money firm Prepaid Financial Services (PFS) to launch a prepaid contactless card programme as it targets younger customers.