What Are Payments Players And Commerce Shakers Thankful For?

What are Payments Players And Commerce Shakers Thankful For?’Tis the season to be thankful — even in payments and commerce.

And, it’s been a year like no other for the players that keep the payments and commerce ecosystem buzzing with breakthrough announcements, innovations that shape how consumers and merchants actually think about payments, and launches of products that have changed the way those consumers and business conduct their daily lives.

2015 has been the year of seismic change — and it has only scratched the surface. The push for faster payments propelled forward, the mobile pay player table got even more crowded, EMV migration hit the U.S., companies went public, companies went under, and FinTech and chatter about blockchain technology took the financial services industry by storm.

Regardless of what’s happened and what’s to come, in the spirit of Thanksgiving, we’ve put together our own list of what some of the major movers and shakers across the payments, tech, commerce and retail industries just might be thankful for this holiday season.

To kick off our cornucopia of payments thankfulness, we’ll start with one company whose year has been interesting to say the least: Square.

But that doesn’t mean they don’t have things to give thanks for.

After coming off a lackluster IPO pricing of $9 a share, it seemed all hope was lost for Jack Dorsey’s FinTech mobile payments baby. And somehow, its shares shot up 50 percent on the first day of trading. With 47 million shares trading hands in that first day as a publicly traded company, Square’s dim beginning ended on a much sharper note.

Thanks, public markets. Or a really smart team of investment bankers.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

PayPal also has a ton to be thankful for this year. To Carl Icahn, for one, who insisted that PayPal and eBay really weren’t better together and PayPal now has a market cap of ~$44 billion. And a pile of cash. It’s used some of it to acquire Xoom, the international money transfer provider, for $890 million — another arrow in their cross-border quiver and shot across the bow at Western Union. Xoom’s last quarter results showed those customers sent $7.1 billion to people in 40 countries.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Speaking of cross-border, Alibaba is most thankful for three things: mobile phones, people who like to shop with them and the person who invented Singles’ Day. Singles’ Day, held on 11/11 each year, is the biggest single shopping day ever. This year, Singles’ Day shoppers spent $9.3 billion in the first 12 hours of the day. By the end of the 24-hour period, shoppers from 232 countries had placed more than 467 million orders, most of them on mobile.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Amazon is probably thankful for Prime customers. Not only do those shoppers spend a ton more money than your average Joe ($1,500 each year, versus $625 for non-Prime members) on Amazon, but they start their shopping journey on Amazon, at the expense of other retail options, and even search engines. Amazon Prime, many say, has transformed Amazon. Research from Millward Brown Digital shows that Amazon’s Prime customers are converting on purchases on Amazon.com 74 percent of the time (22 times higher than the typical eCommerce conversion rate in the U.S.).

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Apple will be giving thanks to the iPhone and China. The iPhone since it’s the cash cow that’s minting money for it. And China for its smartphone-loving population for whom iPhones are a status symbol. CEO Tim Cook reveled in its latest quarterly results that Greater China remained the company’s second-largest market after the U.S. — bringing in 24 percent of sales in the quarter (a big jump from 13.7 percent a year ago). Chinese revenue has doubled since last year and Apple’s footprint in mainland China is set to expand to 40 by year’s end. Other big numbers out of China: $12.5 billion in total revenue, and iPhone sales were up 120 percent. And rumor has it, China is next for Apple Pay.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Twitter is thankful to have Jack back. While not all of the board members, or investors, may be so hot about having its founder Jack Dorsey serve as the CEO of two publicly traded companies, the reaction from the greater Twitter community when Dorsey took the reins back at his first child was overwhelmingly positive — signaling that sometimes when old meets new, change can come.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Whether SMBs give thanks to Facebook for helping them market to their fan base remains to be seen. So far, some 45 million SMBs are using Facebook Pages (those free, local business pages that promote their businesses) along with Facebook’s video feature that is prided as being cheap to make and easy to use. SMBs are definitely into the video part — in one month alone, 1.5 million SMB videos were posted. But whether those smiles turn into frowns will be determined by whether Facebook is using these Pages as bait to hook pricey Facebook advertising.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Starbucks is thankful for caffeine-obsessed in-a-hurry Mobile Order & Pay customers, who are driving mobile app downloads and now more than a quarter of all transaction volume. Overall, Starbucks mobile users were up 32 percent year on year in the latest quarter across the United States and Canada. Since Starbucks introduced Mobile Order & Pay in the U.S., mobile ordering and payments has spread quickly, recently accounting for more than 20 percent of transactions in the U.S. in October, with increased spend per ticket. Driven by its customers’ loyalty to its mobile app, Starbucks has seen a 100 percent increase in unique visitor trend in a two-year period.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Target and Walmart are, ironically, thankful for what they can’t fit in on their bricks-and-mortar: eCommerce/omnicommerce. While Target’s most recent quarter showed eCommerce growth had tempered below what they thought they might do, its quarterly growth remains strong. The same goes for Walmart, whose stock suffered its steepest decline in more than 27 years and needs all the good news it can muster. ECommerce/omnicommerce is also helping these two give consumers what they really like: the ability to buy online and pick up in stores that get those feet off the street and into their aisles.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

And where would we be with EMV? So many players are so very thankful for EMV and all of the sales and new opportunities that it has created for just about everyone. Issuers, networks, terminal manufacturers, acquirers, innovators, security companies – you name it! It’s hard to find one part of the ecosystem that wont be giving thanks for EMV this season, well maybe except for lots of SMBs and consumers, but still.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

And sometimes you’re just ready to give thanks that 2015 is almost over. That’s gotta be the case for American Express. It lost the Costco branded deal in both Canada and the U.S., gotten caught up in a ton of antitrust legal battles, being sued by everyone including now the city of San Francisco and has watched its shares and market share tumble. We’re sure they’re hoping for a fresh start in 2016.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

And we, at PYMNTS, are thankful for each of you who open our newsletters, visit our website, engage with us at events and inspire us with your stories of innovation. Without you, our work wouldn’t be interesting, fun or even remotely worth doing.

We thank you today – and every day!

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .