Today in the Connected Economy: Binance Reopens SEPA Payments; Blue Apron Teams With Panasonic on Oven Meals

Today in the connected economy, a partnership between crypto exchange Binance and payments company Paysafe ends a months-long euro deposit freeze, Google helps AARP train seniors for the digital shift and Blue Apron offers Panasonic customers more meal options for the company’s 4-in-1 oven.

Binance Ending Halt on SEPA Payments

A partnership with payments company Paysafe has allowed cryptocurrency exchange Binance to begin allowing deposits from the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA), ending a months-long freeze.

As Bloomberg News reported, transfers from EU countries to Binance were set to resume sometime Wednesday (Jan. 26), beginning with customers in Belgium and Bulgaria before moving onto other nations over the next few weeks.

SEPA lets users make cashless euro payments to people in the European Union along with multiple nations outside the EU. In July, Binance said it was suspending euro bank deposits from the SEPA network, due to “events beyond our control.”

Blue Apron, Panasonic Partner on 4-in-1 Oven Meals

Meal kit provider Blue Apron has begun crafting recipes for the Panasonic 4-in-1 Multi-Oven, a combination convection bake oven, air fryer, inverter microwave and a broiler.

Dani Simpson, Blue Apron’s chief marketing officer, said Panasonic’s commitment to innovative products and solutions complements his company’s goal of widening menu options and offering more versatility.

“We continue to look for ways to sustainably grow customer engagement and retention rates, and we believe this partnership is yet another piece that will help us do so,” Simpson said.

FinTech WEX, Bestpass Launch Toll Management Tool

Toll management solutions company Bestpass is working with FinTech service provide WEX to make it easier for fleets deal with paying tolls.

“WEX Fleet Tolls powered by Bestpass gives WEX’s over-the-road (OTR) customers the option to pay with their existing WEX card instead of pre-paying into tolling accounts,” and therefore simplifying the toll process, the companies said in a news release.

“Partnering with Bestpass offers our customers the opportunity to utilize cutting-edge payment technology to improve toll management strategy,” said Tim Hampton, senior vice president and general manager of WEX’s OTR business. “Paying only for accrued tolls frees up valuable capital to reallocate elsewhere within a fleet.”

Europe’s Worldline Joins Spreedly’s PSP Partnership Program

European payments company Worldline has joining Spreedly’s Payment Service Provider Program, the two companies announced.

Spreedly’s Partnership Program was developed to create a more inclusive payments ecosystem, and helps to make customer acquisition faster and bolster revenue growth for participants, providing better value for merchants, platforms and others.

The companies say the program has the “Preferred Partner” tier, of which Worldline will be part.

The One Thing: Removing Pain Points Builds Trust, Helps Companies Scale

Trust has become more important than ever in the B2B payments process, but fostering that trust is sometimes easier said than done.

As he thinks about the idea of building payments confidence, Routable Co-founder and CEO Omri Mor tells PYMNTS’ Karen Webster the one thing on his mind as the year opens is what his company and his industry can do to make users feel more confident.

Noting that the standard B2B payment now takes 14 steps involving three or more people, Mor said, “Creating one payment time, you can have confidence. Creating 10,000 payments at a time, that confidence per payment drops significantly. Bump that up to 100,000, and you actually have no idea what’s happening. It’s way too difficult to make a decision.”

Stripe Helps Creators Boost ‘Internet GDP’ With Help of Platforms, Payments and Subscriptions

The combined forces of the platform and creator economies is positioned to help artists, musicians and podcasters make money doing what they love.

As Lily Q. Jolly, product lead for Stripe Express, said in an interview with PYMNTS making it easy to pay creators — in the way they want to be paid, and using subscriptions — will go a long way to boosting the “GDP of the Internet.”

That’s why Spotify said this week that it is expanding its podcast subscription offerings, backed by Stripe’s payment infrastructure, to include paid monthly content. Podcast Subscriptions, now part of Stripe Connect, supports currencies and payments across 34 countries.