Today In Data: Mexican eCommerce, Blockchain And VC Funding All See Growth

Today in PYMNTS data, Mexican eCommerce is on the rise despite 90 percent of its population preferring to make payments using cash, blockchain technologies are seeing bigger investments and more interest, small business lenders are reaching new funding capacities, venture capital (VC) is going to subscription services with new focuses and global industry leaders are weighing in on what the future of payments and commerce holds in 2018.

Here are the numbers:

$17 billion | Value of the Mexican eCommerce market. Players like Amazon and Walmart are working to cut themselves a larger chunk of that pie, and they are doing so by introducing “hybrid payment systems” that accommodate cash-based transactions for online purchases. After all, all told, roughly 90 percent of Mexico’s population prefers to make payments using cash, according to the Mexico of the PYMNTS Global Cash Index.

$9.2 billion | Total spending on blockchain technologies by 2021, according to International Data Corporation figures. It’s latest Worldwide Semiannual Blockchain Spending Guide also calculated a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of blockchain spend of 81.2 percent from 2016 to 2021.

$100 million | New funding capacity of small business lender OnDeck, according to its CEO Noah Breslow, and it is experiencing a decrease in quarterly operating expenses of $15 million year-over-year. Breslow said 2017 was a transformative year for the company and that, following a rough start to 2017, it managed to end the year with an effective interest yield up more than 200 basis points and a net charge off rate down more than 100 basis points.

$14.5 million | Amount of VC funding closed by Los Angeles, California-based experience gear subscription service Joymode in a Series A funding round, which was announced on Jan. 31. Before that round, the firm raised nearly $2.5 million in seed funding in a 2016 round and an undisclosed round in 2015. The latest round was led by Naspers through Naspers Ventures division, with participation from previous investors.

39 | Number of global payments and commerce industry leaders who added their responses to the question “What’s next for 2018?” for PYMNTS’ 2018 Forecast eBook. They were charged with explaining what they thought the next 365 days would hold and what would play out in payments and commerce. Peruse the eBook to find out what 2018 will be, particularly if 2017 was the year of industry disruption.