Today In Payments: Grab’s Earnings Bouncing Back; PayPal Hops On Crypto Bandwagon

In today’s top news, Grab celebrated solid recovery in its third quarter earnings report, and PayPal has introduced wallet services for cryptocurrencies. And resale marketplace ThredUp filed for an IPO.

Grab’s Earnings Bouncing Back To Pre-COVID Numbers

Singapore’s mobile tech giant Grab is seeing solid recovery, with revenue bouncing back to 95 percent of pre-pandemic levels, thanks largely to a rebounding consumer demand for food delivery services.

PayPal Hops On The Crypto Bandwagon

PayPal has announced that it is jumping into the wild world of cryptocurrency, making it possible for wallet holders to buy, sell and hold cryptocurrencies like bitcoin, ethereum, bitcoin cash and litecoin in their PayPal accounts. Starting in 2021, users will be able to spend their crypto caches with any of the 26 million merchants currently accepting PayPal.

Clothing Reseller ThredUp Files For IPO

Online clothing retailer thredUP has filed confidentially for an initial public offering (IPO) in the U.S. Despite concerns in the market about the COVID-19 pandemic affecting purchases of used clothes, the digital resale market is poised to spike in growth by 27 percent this year, and thredUP says it’s added customers this year.

Jony Ive Joins Airbnb To Drive Product Design

Former Apple chief design officer Jony Ive is set to consult with Airbnb on hiring and future products, alongside his independent design firm LoveFrom. He will aid Airbnb in the next few years on designing new products and services and will hire designers for an internal team.

Report: Overcoming Cross-Border Invoice Complexities

Doing business cross-border also means having billing processes that comply with the unique standards and regulations in each market, and asking accounts receivable teams to modify their invoicing approaches accordingly, says Jeff Edwards, CEO of energy and power solutions provider Energy Control Systems. In the Optimizing The Back-Office Playbook, Edwards explains how invoice automation and management solutions can help AR departments power past cross-border invoicing complexities.

Investors Say FinTech Valuations Are High, But Not Overheated

There’s heavy interest even amid the pandemic in investing in financial services and payments tech across all manner of verticals, but valuations might be getting stretched. Top investment execs from Hudson Executive Capital, Great Hill Partners, Accel and Vulcan Capital join Paul Purcell, partner at Continental Advisors, to discuss where the money has been flowing from private equity, public markets and SPACs.

VTEX Expects More Companies To ‘Go The Nike Route’ And Build Up D2C

Thanks to a surge in digitalization brought on by the pandemic, more companies are looking to follow in Nike’s footsteps and go it alone through D2C sales.