A new report published today projects that establishing financial identities for the world’s financially excluded – or “unbanked” – population would add an extra USD $250 billion to global gross domestic product (GDP), mainly from developing nations in Asia and Latin America. This is the equivalent of bringing the productive potential of a country the size of Vietnam - a country of 95 million people - into the formal global economy.

FPL Technologies, a fintech startup focused on re-imagining credit and payments in India today announced its partnership with Visa to launch a mobile-first credit card in India. FPL will issue credit cards in partnership with banks and leverage Visa’s brand, technology and global acceptance footprint to make its credit card available for a wide range of use cases. The company recently raised US $4.5M from Matrix Partners, Sequoia Capital and other reputed angel investors.

SteelEye, the compliance technology and data analytics firm, has taken the next step in its international expansion plan with the opening of a new office in Paris.

Since its inception in 2017, SteelEye has acquired over 40 clients across 7 countries. This new office supports SteelEye’s rapid growth and positions the company closer to the regulated financial markets in France. The Paris location also brings SteelEye closer to the Benelux region, Switzerland and many of its existing clients.

Visa (NYSE: V) and the pan-African fintech leader MFS Africa today announced a partnership that will help bridge the gap between the rapidly growing mobile money ecosystem in Africa and the world of online digital payments, significantly expanding Visa’s reach and its ability to open up ecommerce to the region.

Consultants with cyber security provider F-Secure have discovered an exploitable design flaw with a smart lock that attackers can use to easily pick the device. The lock’s inability to receive firmware updates means the flaw cannot be fully fixed, highlighting the difficulties faced by manufacturers and consumers with securing the new internet-connected devices hitting the market.

Ingenico Group, the global leader in seamless payment, saw a significant increase in online transactions throughout Europe as a result of this year’s Black Friday shopping period – sales came from a range of industries, not just the retail sector.

 2019 ONLINE TRANSACTION DATA

Flywire, a provider of vertical payment and receivables solutions for businesses and institutions, today announced a new integration partnership with iSAMS, a 100% web-based school management and integrated accounting solution.

Wirecard, the global innovation leader for digital financial technology, and Orange Bank are expanding their successful cooperation and now offering all Android users in France convenient mobile payment with Google Pay. Thanks to Wirecard, Orange Bank has already established itself as the market leader for mobile payments in France – 17% of such payments were made via the Orange Bank App in 2018. The addition of Google Pay should increase this figure enormously.

FSS (Financial Software and Systems), a global payments products and solutions provider and payment processor, and Arab Financial Services (AFS), the leading payment solutions provider and FinTech enabler in the Middle East and Africa, have entered into an agreement to bring omni-channel payment acceptance solutions to banks in the region. The partnership combines FSS’ technology expertise in acquiring and payments, with AFS’ payments processing and hosted services capabilities to aid acquiring banks rapidly grow their merchant acceptance business.