Today in the payments news roundup, PayPal officially pulled its support of Facebook’s Libra initiative after it no-showed at the Libra Association meeting in Washington, D.C last week. Also, OYO, an India-based hotel and booking startup, announced a $1.5 billion funding round, and Google is bolstering its vacation rental business with enhanced listings.
Ant Financial to Invest $600M in Zomato
Zomato is reportedly in discussions with Chinese payments firm Ant Financial to lead a $600 million funding round for the delivery company. Ant has its hands in other firms such as Paytm and Paytm Mall. Zomato could reportedly help Ant offer a service similar to Alipay in China, where users can order food or call a taxi from a single place.
Google Beefs Up Vacation Rental Search
Google is stepping up its vacation rental business with enhanced listings that will come with photos, reviews and more, which will appear before rivals on search. Vacation rental search results were part of Google Trips or Google Hotels in the past. With the new user interface, however, search keywords will display results from various vendors — Agoda, Red Awning, Hotels.com, Vrbo — but not from Airbnb.
India Lodging Startup OYO Raises $1.5B Led by Founder, SoftBank
OYO announced a $1.5 billion funding round led by Founder Ritesh Agarwal, SoftBank’s Vision Fund, Sequoia India and Lightspeed Venture Partners. Agarwal, who founded OYO in 2013, will triple his interest in the firm with a $700 million investment to purchase new shares, bringing its valuation to $10 billion.
News came Friday (Oct. 4) that PayPal has withdrawn from Facebook’s Libra Association. Until Friday, as reported in the past, the group was made up of the 28 companies that had been backing the development and ultimate deployment of the digital currency dubbed as Libra.
What has happened four months after the official launch of Libra was highly predictable, Karen Webster writes. She shares what was learned from the Libra experience that may be helpful to other innovators who have big ideas to change the world, and how everyone can use those lessons to reliably predict the failure of future payments efforts.
Trending: How EU Regulators Are Complicating SCA Compliance
Retailers are having a challenging time figuring out exactly how Strong Customer Authentication (SCA) is going to impact them, primarily because they have been unable to find clear answers on how to comply. Agencies such as the European Banking Authority (EBA) and national regulators should be able to work to figure out issues concerning SCA’s effect on mobile authentication, cross-border payment and other areas, says Nicolas Adolph, chairman of the European Association of Payment Service Providers for Merchants (EPSM).
We’re always on the lookout for opportunities to partner with innovators and disruptors.
Learn More