Today In Payments: Walmart’s Flipkart Planning To Spin Out PhonePe; Starboard Urges ACI To Put Itself Up For Sale

In today’s top news, Flipkart is planning to sell a percentage of its payments arm PhonePe, and Starboard wants to see ACI Worldwide put itself up for sale. Plus, Ant Group is reportedly looking to sell its stake in India’s Paytm.

Walmart’s Flipkart Planning To Spin Out Mobile Payments Arm PhonePe

Walmart-owned Indian eCommerce business Flipkart is planning to sell off a percentage of its digital payments division PhonePe in an effort to facilitate funding. The sale will give the startup access to “long-term capital,” to support expansion plans.

Activist Shareholder Starboard Urges ACI Worldwide To Put Itself Up For Sale

Starboard Value, an activist investor and significant shareholder of ACI Worldwide, is urging ACI’s board to consider putting the company up for sale. Starboard Managing Member Jeff Smith said in a letter that the financial targets in place are “almost impossible for management to miss,” which in turn implies that the company may not be realizing its full potential.

Ant Group Reportedly Eyes Sale Of 30 Pct Stake In India’s Paytm

Sources say China’s Ant Group, which owns the widely used Alipay payments app, is looking at selling its 30 percent stake in India’s Paytm as friction between the two countries grows. However, both companies deny that such a move is underway.

Grab And Gojek Reportedly Closing In On Mega-Merger

Executives from both Grab Holdings and Gojek are involved in merger talks, according to sources, in what would be the biggest tie-up of online firms in Southeast Asia. Sources say that “substantial progress” has been made toward a possible merger.

Got $25 Million? Six Payments Execs Share Their Post-Pandemic Startup Ideas

It’s a startup boom! The pandemic is still raging, but vaccines appear close, VC funding rose by one-third year over year in Q3 and requests for employer identification numbers are at their highest level in 16 years. Six successful innovators, investors and serial entrepreneurs tell Karen Webster what post-pandemic business they’d start if they had a cool $25 million to put to work.

Digital-First App Usage Spells Future Of The Connected Economy

Six in 10 bridge millennials and superconnected consumers use marketplace apps such as Amazon and Walmart more often now than they did before the pandemic began. The first installment of the How We Will Pay report series examines how these consumers’ mobile shopping habits serve as canaries in the coal mine for what’s to come next in the connected economy.

Cloud-Based Platform Gives Shape (And Wheels) To German Data-Sharing Alliance

A cloud based platform is taking shape on the Continent to help solve automakers’ supply chain issues. The joint efforts of BMW, SAP and others speak to larger concerns about industrial data — and how it is collected and shared.