NEW REPORT: How Airbnb Does Payments

It can be a long road from startup to unicorn, with more than a few speed bumps on the way. But when the road to business empire is paved with payments, it may just be a smoother ride.

The June PYMNTS Payments Powering Platforms Tracker™, powered by WePay, features a roundup of the last month’s headlines on how payments are powering new businesses in a wide variety of industries. 

Around the Platform World

But processing online payments can be only half the battle — companies also need to protect those payments from fraudsters and other bad actors. As the fraud fight continues, it should perhaps come as no surprise that, in the past month, payments-powered platforms from around the space looked to fortify their defenses against cybercrime.

International FinTech solution provider Fiserv announced last month the debut of the new real-time cybersecurity platform, designed specifically for digital financial service providers. Known as SecureNow, the platform detects and warns financial institutions of suspicious behavior. 

Fiserv decided to build a new security solution in-house, but other companies relied on collaboration to up their protection. Elavon, for one, recently debuted a partnership with cybersecurity and compliance solution provider Sysnet Global Solutions to develop Secured Pro, a managed PCI compliance validation and cybersecurity service for businesses in the European Union. Similarly, Handpoint recently added new secure processing options for merchants on its platform-as-a-service offering, as a result of a new certification from Vantiv.

To see the rest of the headlines from around the Payments Powering Platforms space, check out the Tracker. 

Payments as the Core of a Meteoric Rise

Airbnb has built its reputation as a new kind of hospitality business in the sharing economy, but maybe it should get recognition for payments innovation as well. The company has changed the way many consumers book their travel accommodations, but it’s actually built its infrastructure around payments. 

Unlike many other platforms, the company decided to process its own payments in-house shortly after opening for business. In a recent interview, Kapil Mokhat, the company’s director of payments and partnerships, told PYMNTS that having a customized payments processing engine has helped the company’s rapid expansion.

“From 2008 to now, the growth at Airbnb has been incredible, and it hasn’t been a market-by-market approach — it’s really grown and spread in every direction. With that challenge in front of us, we needed to be able to rethink how to approach payments in a way that worked for us,” he said. “That doesn’t mean we haven’t partnered with others to make it work, but having that control has been key.” 

To read the rest of this month’s Feature Story, download the Tracker below.

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To download the June edition of the PYMNTS Payments Powering Platforms Tracker™, powered by WePay, click the button below.

About the Tracker 

The PYMNTS Payments Powering Platforms Tracker™, powered by WePay, serves as a monthly framework for the space, providing coverage of the most recent news and trends along with a provider directory highlighting the key players contributing across the segments that comprise the payments-integrated platform ecosystem.