#socialpaymentresearch

Bundle comes as a zero-fee solution for Africa’s emerging digital economy. After closing a prior financing round with Binance, the blockchain company behind one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges, Bundle quickly brought to market its Venmo-like cash and crypto social payments app.

“We believe Africa has several characteristics that make it a prime geographical location for the realization of the full potential of digital currencies, blockchain, and its applications. Currently, only 1.4 million people out of 1.2 billion people in Africa use crypto today. This is a worthwhile mission because making the blockchain ecosystem more accessible unlocks economic opportunity on and for the continent,” said Bundle Chief Technical Officer, Taiwo Orilogbon.

Crypto.com has launched “Pay Your Friends,” which will allow for no-fee, direct crypto payments and offers a $50 equivalent in rewards for getting friends to use the Crypto.com Chain (CRO), according to reports.

“What we want to achieve with ‘Pay Your Friends’ is to give our users a reason to bring all their friends into cryptocurrency. The user experience is instantaneous and free — the more users get a chance to experience it, the closer we get to global adoption,” the company said in a blog post.

Crypto.com wants to make its digital assets more popular, and its pushing innovation with the new direct in-app payment, which is an addition to its debit card business. The move will put the company in direct competition with other social payment platforms, like Venmo, Revolut, Circle and Square.

CRO was trading in the area of $0.045 with its volumes up a little, but still down after a latest round of sell-offs. The coin that’s associated with Crypto.com, MCO, was trading around $3.44, which was near its lows.

However, the new social platform has the potential to help demand for CRO, because rewards are directly tied to how much is staked inside the system.

Juniper Research predicted the use of mobile cash transfer technology in emerging markets and increased adoption of payments through social networks in the US would help drive a rapid increase in digital remittances.

In its latest report into the digital money transfer business, the analyst company predicted at least $3.5 trillion would be transferred digitally between users in the same country in 2024, up from $1.8 trillion expected in 2019. Of the 2024 figure, 86 per cent is expected to be sent through mobile transactions.

Much of this growth, the company said, would be due to the popularity and prevalence of mobile money services in emerging markets. It noted mobile money services were expected to reach 84 per cent of the population of Middle East and Africa by the end of its forecast period.

Elsewhere, Juniper Research identified the continued rise of social payments in the US, where transaction values are expected to rise by 280 per cent within its forecast period.

The company noted although PayPal’s Venmo had a strong position in the US social payment market, Facebook would attempt to capitalise on its assets with the launch of the Facebook Pay brand, which will integrate its existing and forthcoming payment services.

Banks may tout the simplicity and speed of peer-to-peer payments service Zelle, but compared to PayPal-owned Venmo, the experience can seem impersonal. The Venmo social feed, with its ubiquitous beer and pizza emojis, is promoted as a customer loyalty driver and an outreach tool for brands.

While most banks have shied away from social aspects of payment transactions, Toronto-based Vouchr is working to equip them with the tools to compete with Venmo and other social payment platforms. The five-year-old company has been working with the Royal Bank of Canada since 2017, along with another major Canadian bank it wouldn’t name. It will also soon launch with three U.S. banks and one European financial institution, founder Robert Balahura told Bank Innovation. He did not offer specifics on the dates of the upcoming launches.

“It delivers context — it’s like ‘Hey, I really appreciate you doing this job for me,’ rather than an impersonal money transfer,” he said.

Vouchr is a platform that can integrate with any payment transaction, noted Balahura. It involves adding rich media, videos, gifs and sounds to create a payment experience that resembles Snapchat. In some cases, Vouchr’s capabilities are embedded into mobile payments. However, when the receiving bank is not integrated with Vouchr, recipients receive a link through email that takes them to the experience.

Making it easier for users to buy stuff straight from Facebook or Instagram is a challenge Facebook is working to solve. Earlier this year, it introduced Instagram Checkout, which enables users to buy products on Instagram instead of redirecting consumers to a merchant's website.

Facebook Pay represents another way to reduce friction in the social shopping experience. If a user sets up Facebook Pay after they find an item with Instagram Checkout, for example, they may be more likely to complete a purchase through Facebook Marketplace by sending money through Messenger. It could also enable businesses, using Messenger and WhatsApp to communicate with customers and potential customers, to increase their sales through those channels.

If Facebook can effectively increase sales for businesses on its various apps with Facebook Pay, it doesn't need to worry about monetizing the service directly. In effect, it increases the value for merchants to establish a presence across its apps and spend more money on advertising.

New data from Juniper Research has shown that revenue from payment platforms that enables merchants to process payments will grow from $106 billion in 2019 to $158 billion by 2024.

It forecasts over half of global revenue will be generated in China by 2024; primarily owing to its increasing affluence and vast usage of social payments such as WeChat Pay.

The new research, Mobile & Online Remote Payments for Digital & Physical Goods: Opportunities, Pain Points & Competition 2019-2024 forecasts losses from payment fraud will grow by 70% over the next five years. Juniper Research urges payment platform providers to leverage the efficiency of emerging technologies to fight this increasingly sophisticated threat.

Facebook is making a foray into online payments with its new Facebook Pay service, the company announced Tuesday — and could be poised to take a big bite out of PayPal’s and Apple Pay’s business.

The new service rolls out in the U.S. starting this week on the flagship Facebook app and Messenger, and will become available on Instagram and WhatsApp down the road. The service can be used for fundraisers, in-game purchases, event tickets, payments between individual users on Messenger, and purchases from Pages and businesses on Facebook Marketplace.

IT-Harvest Chief Research Analyst Richard Stiennon said Facebook’s huge market penetration gives the Menlo Park-based social media giant the ability to dominate in markets, especially if Facebook Pay winds up being offered globally.

Stiennon said PayPal is “on the defensive” and may find that its transaction fees are a liability. The San Jose-based payments giant, which owns social payments service Venmo, made its own announcement on Tuesday — that its Xoom product would now allow users in the U.S. to send money domestically to family and friends for cash pickup at almost 5,000 locations nationwide.

RBC Capital sees Facebook’s stock climbing more than 40% in the year ahead, especially now that the technology giant unveiled a cross-platform payments service that can unlock “impulse shopping” on social media.

Facebook announced its new Facebook Pay service on Tuesday, saying it will allow uses to securely send payments to each other. While Facebook users had been able to send money through the Messenger app, this links a single system for all four of the company’s social media and messaging apps. Facebook Pay will accept most major credit and debit cards, as well as PayPal.

The company has more than 1.6 billion daily active users on Facebook and over 500 million daily active users on Instagram.