TRENDING: Brewers Turn To Platform Commerce

Whether it’s helping brewers source the key ingredients for their latest recipes or making it easier to bring modern payment methods to foreign markets, platforms are making international commerce happen.

The November edition of the PYMNTS Payments Powering Platforms Tracker , powered by WePay, features the latest headlines and news on how payment platforms are helping to simplify cross-border commerce.

Around the Payments Powering Platforms world

Platforms designed to make commerce simpler are competing in an incjreasingly crowded space. As such, many providers have recently collaborated with other companies to develop new features and solutions to stand out from that crowd and provide the most attractive platform possible.

Google, for one, recently announced it would collaborate with Brazil-based payments company EBANX on an application program interface (API) to provide local payment methods to global merchants. The platform will enable these businesses to sell to Latin American consumers.

Similarly, IBM partnered with the United Nations-funded, Pacific-region financial services company KlickEx Group and blockchain network nonprofit Stellar.org to build an international monetary exchange based on IBM’s blockchain electronic ledger. The network will use the IBM Blockchain Platform to transfer money between 12 different currencies across the Pacific Islands, Australia, New Zealand and the U.K.

For all the latest notable headlines from the Payments Powering Platforms space, check out the Tracker’s News and Trends section.

A platform to help keep the suds flowing

When a hops shortage hit in the early 2010s, independent brewers in North America struggled to find their most important ingredient.

Out of that crisis emerged the Lupulin Exchange, an online, international platform through which brewers could buy and sell hops to one another. The platform aims to help those in need of hops restock, and help those with a hops surplus to sell off the extra for an additional revenue stream.

In a recent interview with PYMNTS for the November Tracker’s feature story, Shane Kunkle, co-founder of the Lupulin Exchange, explained that while the idea was born to help brewers handle the hops scarcity, the market has since rebounded. Now that the shortage is over, though, the platform continues to connect brewers with surplus hops and those looking to fill a need or experiment with new varieties.

“We knew this was an issue, but when we pushed the site live, we were really surprised by how many people from around the industry were putting up listings and how much of a problem this really was,” Kunkle said. “Now there are people sitting on older hops that they need to get rid of, and now there is an overabundance that some brewers want to sell off, so this has been something that’s effective during both shortage and surplus.”

To read the story, download the Tracker.

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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, and a provider directory highlighting the key players contributing across the segments of the payments-integrated platform ecosystem.