David Penn, Author at Finovate

Acquisitions, E-commerce and the Latest in Australian Fintech

By David Penn Posted on December 11, 2020
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, Finovate Global

Some of the hottest headlines in international fintech in recent days involved industry innovators from the Land Down Under. Late in the week, financial consultancy firm Synechron announced that it had agreed to acquire Australian payments provider Attra. Headquartered in Melbourne, Attra is notable for being one of pure play payments solution providers in Australia, with reach throughout the region as well as into North America, Europe, and MENA. Attra will retain its brand identity post-acquisition.

Meanwhile, National Australia Bank (NAB) unveiled a new smart receipt solution developed in collaboration with Australian fintech Slyp. The offering, Slyp Smart Receipts, are available via the NAB mobile app, and enable NAB customers to automatically get itemized smart receipts from participating retailers.

“Receipts are a burden for customers, create unnecessary cost for businesses and have a negative impact to our environment,” Slyp CEO and co-founder Paul Weingarth said. “The introduction of smart receipts allows businesses to offer a seamless and frictionless customer experience far beyond what we know it as today.”

On the e-commerce front, the buy now pay later revolution rolls on. Zip, a BNPL company based in Australia, inked a deal with Facebook this week that will enable small businesses to use its installment payment service to pay for Facebook ads.

Zip’s partnership with Facebook is its second big, e-commerce collaboration in recent months. In August, the company teamed up with eBay, bringing its buy now pay later offering to the online marketplace.

Looking to learn more about fintech in Australia? Check out KPMG Australia’s report on the country’s fintech industry from last fall. And for a more recent snapshot, take a look at FintechNews Singapore’s “9 Hottest Aussie Fintech Startups” from earlier this year.

We’ve covered a healthy amount of international fintech news on the blog this week. Here’s a quick digest of what you might have missed.

Tink Lands $103 Million in Funding, Boosts Valuation to $824 Million – The new round for the Swedish fintech was co-led by new investor Eurazeo Growth and existing investor Dawn Capital.

Xoom Adds Money Transfer Capabilities to 12 African Countries – The expansion focuses on facilitating remittances to underbanked consumers in 12 African nations.

How to Manage and Exceed Evolving Customer Expectations – Our interview with the co-founder of Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada-based FI.SPAN.

Here is our look at fintech around the world.

Asia-Pacific

Risk decisioning leader Provenir announces data integration partnership with Philippines-based alternative credit scoring company FinScore.
South Korean payments firm CHAI scores $60 million in Series B funding.
Mastercard and Pine Labs to bring their integrated buy now pay later solution to five markets in Southeast Asia early in 2021.

Sub-Saharan Africa

The Banker looks at how Nigeria’s fintech industry is thriving in the face of economic challenges.
TechFinancial reviews the growth of fintech in South Africa through the lens of the country’s Financial Sector Conduct Authority.
Convergence Partners, a South African technology investment management company, announces $5 million investment in sub-Saharan mobile money services company Channel VAS.

Central and Eastern Europe

German digital asset custody technology provider Bitbond partners with Bankhaus von Der Heydt to issue a Euro stablecoin on the Stellar network.
Hungary’s Magyar Nemzeti Bank (MNB) inks cooperation agreement with the Monetary Authority of Singapore to boost collaboration in fintech innovation between Hungary and Singapore.
Berlin-based plug and play, European securities API provider Upvest raises additional €five million to boost its Series A to €12 million.

Middle East and Northern Africa

Egyptian fintech Zeal Rewards secures “six-figure” seed investment from an unnamed angel investor.
Israeli entrepreneur Uri Levine predicts that the next unicorn from the MENA region will come from the UAE.
SME10x looks at how the buy now pay later movement is transforming ecommerce in the Middle East.

Central and Southern Asia

IBS Intelligence features five top digital lenders in India.
Bangalore-based i-exceed reports gains in digital onboarding adoption rates in corporate banking.
SafePay, a company that enables B2C payments, secures funding from new Pakistan-based VC firm backed by Gobi Ventures.

Latin America and the Caribbean

Bitso, a cryptocurrency platform based in Mexico, raises $62 million in Series B.
Cross border B2B paytech provider TransferMate announces licensing approvals in Brazil and Chile.
Mexican challenger bank albo secures $45 million in funding.

Photo by Ethan Brooke from Pexels

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API Security Innovator Salt Security Locks in $30 Million

By David Penn Posted on December 10, 2020
Categories: Daily news, Funding

Courtesy of a Series B funding round led by Sequoia Capital, API protection platform company Salt Security has doubled its total equity capital. The company, which is based in Palo Alto, California, picked up $30 million in new funding this week. Existing investors Tenaya Capital, S Capital VC, and Y Combinator also participated in the investment.

“APIs have become a fundamental unit of software,” Sequoia Partner Carl Eschenbach explained. “Salt Security enables organizations to discover APIs, prevent real-time attacks, and facilitate remediation, so customers can continue to operate and innovate in an increasingly digitized world.”

Salt Security’s Series B comes only a few months after the company completed a $20 million Series A round in June. The firm said that the new capital will help the company invest in product development, sales and marketing, and customer acquisition in 2021. As part of the deal, Eschenbach, as well as representatives from Tenaya Capital and S Capital, will join Salt Security’s board of directors.

“Raising both Series A and B, growing our customer base 200%, and building unmatched technical capabilities – all during this tumultuous year – gives us a formidable lead in the market we created and defined,” Salt Security co-founder and CEO Roey Eliyahu said. “Having someone of Carl’s caliber and experience guiding us will simply accelerate our success in the API security market.”

Salt Security notes that its API Protection Platform is the only patented API security solution designed for each stage of the API lifecycle. The technology learns the behavior of company APIs at a granular level, and uses machine learning and AI to automatically identify and block API attacks. The technology can be deployed in minutes with no configuration or customization required.

Salt’s platform was named a 2020 Cool Vendor in API Strategy by Gartner and a SINET 16 Innovator Winner for 2020. This fall, the company has announced partnerships with Carrefour, a French multi-national retail corporation, and U.S.-based, global colocation data center company Equinix.

Founded in 2016, Salt Security is headquartered in Silicon Valley, California; and in Israel. Forbes featured company co-founder Eliyahu in its 30 Under 30 roster earlier this month.

Photo by Castorly Stock from Pexels

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Bill.com Buddies Up with Wells Fargo for Bill Manager

By David Penn Posted on December 10, 2020
Categories: Bill.com

Bill.com and Wells Fargo have announced a new solution to help small and medium-sized businesses automate and simplify their accounts payable and receivables processes. The new joint offering – Bill Manager – integrates Bill.com’s cloud-based financial operations software with Commercial Electronic Office, Wells Fargo’s digital banking service, and gives SMEs a simple, transparent way to pay bills and get paid.

Bill Manager enables customers to capture paper bills and invoices electronically and have them digitally routed through a straightforward review and approval workflow. The technology allows businesses to track invoices in real-time, review and approve invoices from any device, store documents online, and automatically sync transactions with their accounting system to support fast data entry and easy account reconciliation. Customers can also use Bill.com’s Intelligent Virtual Assistant to make invoice capture and data entry process automatic, accelerating the bill creation process further. Bill Manager can also be used to request payments by building and sending electronic invoices and payment reminders.

“We are thrilled to bring our long-standing relationship with Wells Fargo to fruition through Bill Manager to accelerate small and midsize businesses’ shift to the cloud,” Bill.com SVP of Strategic Partnerships and Business Development Josh Goines said. “With Bill Manager, SMBs can go live with digitally automating their accounts payable processes in a matter of hours, helping them to put their back office in their back pocket.”

Bill Manager is powered by Bill.com Connect, the company’s business payments platform. Introduced four years ago, Bill.com Connect provides banks with a single platform for business payments that scales as their business customers do. The platform offers bill pay and invoicing functionality, increases client engagement, and gives customers access to a business payment network with more than 1.4 million members.

“Collaborating with a leading fintech like Bill.com solves a critical customer need – managing and paying bills in a consistent way,” Wells Fargo SVP and head of Treasury Management Product Innovation and Partnerships Chris Noe said. “Our customers access this technology directly through the digital banking experience they use every day, supported by their familiar Wells Fargo treasury management consultant and customer service team. Meeting our customers where they already spend their time is a priority as we innovate new solutions to help make managing finances convenient and simple.”

A Finovate alum since 2010, Bill.com was founded in 2006 and is headquartered in Palo Alto, California. Going public in 2019, the company has a market capitalization of over $10 billion. René Lacerte is founder and CEO.

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Fighting Financial Crime in the COVID-19 Era

By David Penn Posted on December 9, 2020
Categories: Feedzai, List series, Report series

What are the biggest fraud challenges to emerge during the COVID-19 era? According to a new report from Feedzai, card cloning tops the list of major indicators for fraud in both financial services and e-commerce.

With card cloning, criminals copy stolen credit or debit card information and transfer it to a new card. Also known as “skimming,” card cloning is a big business on the dark web, where fraudsters – “carders” – buy and sell stolen payment card data.

But card cloning is not the only danger highlighted in the report. High speed ordering with bot attacks that move quickly and can last for hours is another fraud threat in financial services, as is what Feedzai refers to as “High risk merchant category code (MCC).” Businesses that earn this designation from their bank are typically those with above average chargebacks, as well as a higher risk of fraud potential.

Within ecommerce, the report found that in addition to card cloning, both account takeover (ATO) and suspicious email are among the top three indicators for fraud. With an ATO attack, the criminal uses bots to access an unsuspecting individual’s bank or e-commerce account. This enables a bad actor to access that account and make fraudulent and unauthorized transactions from it. Suspicious email is a broader category that includes common but effective tactics like phishing, and as well as fake emails and email domains.

“It wasn’t just consumers who met the call to digitally transform,” Feedzai’s Quarterly Financial Crime Report reads. “Fraudsters, ever technologically savvy and opportunistic, made the most of the shift.”

Feedzai’s report on financial crime puts current trends in the context of a society that is embracing digital channels at a rapid pace. It notes significant increases in the dollar amounts and value, as well as the number of ecommerce transactions processed between May and September of 2020 compared to the same period last year. Unfortunately, the report also noted a dramatic increase in network fraud this year. “The realignment of holiday shopping trends was also an early gift for fraudsters,” the report reads.

What can financial institutions do to help fight financial crime?

Monitor Card Behavior: Multiple transactions in a short period of time, unusually high dollar amounts per transaction, and a sizable number of merchant codes within a relatively short period time are all potentially indicative of payment card fraud. Leveraging machine learning and AI-powered algorithms to accurately identify these patterns is an optimal way for businesses to keep up pace with the speed and complexity of this kind of fraud.

Track Suspicious Email Domains: High-risk domains, invalid emails, and unconfirmed email addresses are all potential sources of fraudulent activity. Companies can use both software and the services of security specialists who maintain up-to-date information on domains and email addresses that may be used by fraudsters.

Know Your Customer: Knowing what “normal” looks like is the first step to identifying abnormal behavior. By developing an accurate customer profile that takes into account such factors as a customer’s typical log-in times, devices, and time spent on different platforms, businesses can more readily spot behavior that is exceptional, and take further steps to determine whether or not that fraudulent activity is taking place. Feedzai refers to these as “hypergranular risk profiles.”

“COVID has created a big disruption in the banking, payments, and e-commerce sectors with multiple impacts all over the world,” Feedzai Senior Director of Global Data Science Jaime Ferreira said. “Feedzai is in a good position to add clarity to this debate and help financial institutions to understand these complex shifts and how to better protect their customers.”

Feedzai’s Quarterly Financial Crime Report for Q4 2020 leverages Feedzai’s data from more than four billion global transactions from March 20 through September of this year. The report also features information from consumer research surveys of “nearly 2,200 account-holding U.S. consumers.”

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How to Manage and Exceed Evolving Customer Expectations

By David Penn Posted on December 8, 2020
Categories: CEO Interview, FI.SPAN, Interview

Is open banking key to enabling banks and other financial institutions to keep up with ever-evolving customer needs and expectations? With trend drivers as unpredictable as technological innovation on one hand and a once-in-a-generation pandemic on the other, what strategies and tactics can financial institutions embrace in order to best serve their customers now and in the future?

We caught up with Clayton Weir, co-founder of business banking solution provider FI.SPAN, to answer these questions and more. Based in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, and founded in 2016, FI.SPAN turns banking services into branded banking experiences that are embedded within the ERP and accounting systems of the bank’s business customers.

A recent report indicated that almost 90% of innovation managers fear that integration challenges themselves are an obstacle to digital transformation. Are they right?

Clayton Weir: Yes, I believe they have a valid argument for considering this an obstacle to digital transformation. Forrester and Avoka published a great study on how many large IT projects at enterprise banking and financial services firms get delayed, overrun, and even more disappointingly fail to deliver all of the business value promised.

When you look at the biggest drivers of a failed software project, a disproportionate amount of blame tends to fall on some failure to properly scope the mission in terms of vision, customer needs, and potential constraints.

In addition to the inability to properly staff the program with the right skill mix, I believe those risks become heightened in a domain area like embedded/ERP banking. A team has to understand the nuances of client ERP systems, bank legacy systems, treasury banking, accounting workflows, banking workflows and deliver a program that can exist and add value within all of those different constraints. Not only will most banks and contracted build partners be unlikely to have some of those perspectives sitting on the bench, it also will be hard to deploy the right mix of people to the initiative concurrently.

Technology has moved too far too fast for the banks to build those capabilities themselves. Buying companies that can bring those services to market is not impossible, but well outside the purview of most commercial banks. The best way to go for B2B banks to manage the impact of rapidly evolving customer expectations is to partner with agile, innovative fintech services that not simply meet expectations, but exceed them.

Why do you believe that open banking is the missing link in helping banks make digital transformations?

Weir: Over the next few years, it’s likely that governments will force financial institutions to become more transparent with their data and share information of the client’s choosing with their peers because of open banking. By having a freer flow of information between these parties, both banks and fintechs could develop new apps and services to better serve the needs of their customers. Open banking will make it easier for customers to access fintech products or even open accounts with other financial institutions, but they’ll transact with others through their main bank’s platforms. Rather than getting frustrated with their bank’s limitations, customers will be grateful for how much easier it is to work with their institution.

What do you see when you look at the prospects for open banking in the U.S.? What will drive it forward?

Weir: Many businesses are feeling neglected by banks, when we look into some of the niches that are cropping up; fintechs can come in and support this happening, starting to find ways to serve small niches across the board.

Open banking is a big part of this conversation, and there is market-based momentum around open banking. Open banking is showing up as a direct response to the market opportunity. Meaning, the demand from consumers to use third party apps is increasing. If your bank doesn’t work with those apps, it’s a massive disadvantage for you. If a customer can’t use a certain app because you don’t offer it, they’re going to find a different bank that can offer them a better experience.

Effectively, there is going to be more and more momentum in the marketplace, so as the European and Australian open banking regimes mature, the scope will go above and and beyond what the U.S. has done. As multinational banks, fintechs and developers start to develop other offerings around open banking infrastructure in those other markets, it’s going to dial up the customer expectations in North America. Even if open banking is slow to adopt in the U.S. and Canada, the best things that come out of open banking will undoubtedly surface North America. Multinational banks are going to bring the best of their open banking infrastructure to their North American banks and use it in competitive and interesting ways.

What is the environment for open banking in Canada – where FI.SPAN is based?

Weir: Canada is lagging somewhat behind some other countries, such as Europe and Australia, where governments have mandated open banking and the sharing of customer information. However, adoption in these locales has been slow, while technical issues have made open banking difficult to implement. At some point, the Canadian government will follow suit and mandate open banking, but the sooner banks come on board – and some may get ahead of legislation and create better user experiences now – the better. Everyone should want to see open banking succeed, as it will make it easier for a bank’s business clients to operate, which then further increases economic innovation and competitiveness.

If Canada’s banks are going to become global financial innovators, they need to be more open-minded when it comes to working with fintechs and embrace key trends which include open banking, authentication and digital identification, payments modernization, and embedding financial services within other applications.

Why does the global health crisis – and its economic fallout – represent a special opportunity to embrace open banking? Has COVID-19 made it harder in some ways to advance open banking?

Weir: Quite the opposite, we see it as having brought about digitization and innovation at a quicker pace than pre-pandemic. I think what has essentially happened was that businesses suddenly needed to eliminate manual and paper-based processes, they looked to their banks for help implementing digital solutions quickly. This has pushed banks to start rethinking their innovation goals, and they’ve started asking what efforts will have an immediate impact on the client experience. The fact that embedded banking has suddenly become ubiquitous means that FI.SPAN is now positioned to bring about a huge shift in how businesses consume banking products.

How does FI.SPAN fit into this effort with regard to open banking? How is your company making a difference?

Weir: We make it easy for banks to extend their service offering to their business clients by embedding commercial banking applications within the organization’s ERP or accounting software. The most innovative banks are partnering with fintechs to deliver better payment services they believe will make their customers happier, their relationships stronger, and drive revenue.

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Financial Education Specialist gohenry Raises $40 Million in New Funding

By David Penn Posted on December 8, 2020
Categories: Daily news, Funding

Yesterday we shared news that EVERFI and Sallie Mae were teaming up to promote financial literacy for high school kids in California. Today we share news on another youth finance-related front. gohenry, which specializes in providing financial education for youth and their families, has secured $40 million in financing. The round was led by Edison Partners, and featured participation from Gaia Capital Partners, Citi Ventures, and Muse Capital.

The funding takes the company’s total capital to more than $56 million.

“For too long, kids have been locked out of the digital economy and parents lacked the tools to help their children gain confidence with money and finances,” gohenry CEO Alex Zivoder said. “gohenry was the first to respond to these needs in 2012 when we launched a groundbreaking financial education app and debit card that truly empowered children. In 2020, we’ve achieved three key milestones: becoming profitable which many B2C fintechs seek, raising $40 million during COVID, and partnering with world leading funds. All three will help us fuel our U.S. expansion.”

gohenry specializes in helping kids aged six to eighteen develop sound money and financial habits. Launched in the U.K. as a financial literacy app and debit card in 2012, the company has grown its offerings to include its Teen and Eco cards – both of which feature built-in parental controls. The company’s solutions enable youth to learn how to manage allowances and other earnings and give parents the opportunity to guide their children as they learn the basics of digital finance. The company noted that young customers on its platform earned “nearly $150 million in allowances” and “contributed more than $140 million back into the global economy.”

As part of the agreement, Edison Partners managing director Chris Sugden will join gohenry’s board of directors.

“gohenry is catering to millions of parents who are looking to raise smart, financially literate children but are currently underserved by existing solutions,” Sugden said. “We’re thrilled to partner with Alex and the gohenry management team on this next milestone in their growth journey and look forward to realizing their ambitions to improve the financial fitness of kids across the globe.”

Photo by August de Richelieu from Pexels

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EVERFI, Sallie Mae Bring Digital Financial Literacy to California Teens

By David Penn Posted on December 7, 2020
Categories: Alumni News, EVERFI

A new strategic partnership between social-impact education provider EVERFI and Sallie Mae will bring an interactive financial literacy program to high school age students in California.

The new curriculum, Sallie Mae’s Knowledge for College program, will be made available to high school juniors and seniors in California either in a classroom or virtually. The program is focused on helping provide students – and their families – with the information they need to know in order to finance their higher education goals. The partnership between EVERFI and Sallie Mae comes as research indicates that eight in ten families find affording college “challenging,” less than half of families have a plan to pay for college, and just over half (51%) of students have researched financial aid opportunities.

The two companies also noted that California is unique in that it does not require high school students to take coursework in personal finance before graduating.

“Students and families continue to value higher education, but there’s still a certain level of anxiety and angst about how to pay for it,” Ray Martinez, co-founder and president of EVERFI, said. “(This) is why it is crucial that we provide these students with necessary tools to become confident in their ability to make smart financial decisions well into adulthood. Ensuring students and their families fully understand not only the process by which to apply for student financial aid, but also the responsibilities it carries is of the utmost importance and will help set them up for financial success.”

Knowledge for College includes five interactive modules to help students develop strategies for financing their post-secondary education and, beyond that, building good financial habits for life. Saving and budgeting are among the topics included in the curriculum, as are more advanced topics such as student loans and consumer financing.

“Financial literacy provides students with a strong foundation of knowledge and confidence in making informed decisions about the future,” Sallie Mae SVP Jen O’Donald said. “That future includes planning and paying for higher education, which is one of the first major financial decisions for many students and families. We want families to make these decisions with eyes wide open and that means providing critical education and information early in the process through programs like Knowledge for College.”

Washington, D.C.-based EVERFI made its Finovate debut last year at FinovateSpring. Founded in 2008, the company has been busy making friends this fall: teaming up with Athletes First this month and the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) last month to help develop educational programs to boost African American history and fight anti-semitism, respectively. On the fintech front, EVERFI announced in November that it was working with Zelle to launch a free digital financial literacy course for high schools, and, in October, partnered with Citizens Financial Group to enhance the company’s existing College Bound Citizens education outreach initiative with a “robust digital component.”

We featured EVERFI in our look at the importance of financial literacy earlier this year. The company has raised more than $250 million in funding from investors including Jeff Bezos, Eric Schmidt, and the Rise Fund, among others.

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ReceiptHero Secures €2 Million Seed Investment

By David Penn Posted on December 4, 2020
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, Funding, ReceiptHero

It’s been a grand week for Finland’s ReceiptHero. The company announced a few days ago that it was teaming up with SEB Kort to have its digital receipt functionality integrated into SEB Kort’s corporate card, Eurocard. Then, we learned that ReceiptHero had inked a deal with fellow Finovate alum ETRONIKA that will enable the launch of the first e-receipt solution in the Baltic region. The new offering will allow ETRONIKA’s business customers to use their KASU retail network management system and ReceiptHero’s technology to issue digital receipts to their customers.

“ETRONIKA has built a truly modern retail chain management and POS product and we are thrilled to be partnering on a wider partnership that allows us the initial steps of building out the Baltic ecosystem.” ReceiptHero CEO Joel Ojala said.

Today comes more news from the Finland-based fintech. Courtesy of an investment from VC Lifeline Ventures, Superhero Capital, and Vidici Ventures of Sweden, ReceiptHero has picked up $2.43 million (€2 million) in seed funding.

“We’re making some real strides now with merchants and potential bank partners,” Ojala said. “We’ve hit an inflection point where banks understand the potential of digital receipts and value for their customers. For merchants they feel safe with ReceiptHero protecting their customer data and payment information.”

Growing interest in ReceiptHero’s technology, which transmits digital receipts from merchants directly to customer banking or account apps, comes as Finland’s government has decreed that digital receipts will be mandatory by 2025. Finland launched a digital receipt pilot project in 2019 that saw more than 50,000 state workers shopping exclusively with merchants using ReceiptHero’s platform.

ReceiptHero made its Finovate debut earlier this year at FinovateEurope in Berlin. Headquartered in Helsinki, the company is also partnered with Nordea, integrating its technology with the bank’s Nordea Wallet offering at the beginning of last year. Other recent ReceiptHero partners include SKJ Systems, Diebold Nixdorf, and global IT system integrator CGI.

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Envestnet Goes Aussie on Open Banking; BNPL Consolidates in the Americas

By David Penn Posted on December 4, 2020
Categories: Finovate Global

One of the more interesting questions during a recent FinovateWest Digital panel on challenger banks asked: how important are partnerships to these digital newcomers? This week, one answer to that question came in the form of an announcement from Australia’s self-described “smartbank” – 86 400 – that it was teaming up with one of the global leaders in data aggregation and insights: Envestnet | Yodlee.

“The average Australians’ financial world can be very complex, with numerous accounts for numerous products across different financial institutions,” 86 400 CIO Brian Parker explained. “By partnering with Envestnet | Yodlee, we’ve given our customers the ability to see all their accounts in one place, delivering a better view of their financial lives and helping them take control of their money.”

Founded in 2017 and backed by Cuscal, Australia’s largest independent payments company, 86 400 offers no fee banking; card, mobile, and smartwatch-based payments; and competitive interest rates for both savers and borrowers. Via mobile app, 86 400 customers can easily monitor and manage their finances, functionality that will be significantly enhanced via the smartbank’s new relationship with Envestnet | Yodlee.

“Consumers don’t have to wait for Open Banking to access and use their own data,” Envestnet | Yodlee ANZ Country Manager Tim Poskitt said. “Envestnet | Yodlee’s data aggregation enables consumers to link their financial accounts with tools and products that deliver better financial outcomes. That’s what 86 400’s products provide.”

86 400, which takes its name from the total number of seconds in a 24 hour day, has forged partnerships in recent months with mortgage brokers like Mortgage Choice and Connective. Headquartered in Sydney, New South Wales, 86 400 won Best in Class at Australia’s International Good Design Awards. Robert Bell is CEO.

Maybe it is true, as fintech observer and wit Ron Shevlin suggested on Twitter recently, that the credit card issuers have to be scratching their heads a bit with the sudden popularity of the Buy Now Pay Later ecommerce craze-turned-trend. But as Homer Simpson famously put it, “we’re not succumbing to mass hysteria. We’re just jumping on the bandwagon.”

The latest news from the BNPL bandwagon features U.S. buy now pay later company Affirm, which announced that it would acquire Canadian BNPL outfit PayBright for $264 million (C$340 million).

“We built PayBright with the mission of making the everyday commerce experience simply better for Canadians,” company President and CEO Wayne Pommen said. “Partnering with Affirm gives us the opportunity to deliver on that promise on a much larger scale.” Pommen added that he was “delighted” at the opportunity to take “Buy Now Pay Later to the next level in Canada.”

Just where is that next level? PayBright currently has more than 7,000 retailer partners around the world, including companies like Samsung, Wayfair, and Oakley. And competition in the Canadian BNPL space has intensified of late; Australian BNPL rival Afterpay announced its expansion to the country in August.

Here is our look at fintech around the world.