Payments

Online payment provider Paypal is under investigation by the Federal Cartel Office (FCO) in Germany. The company has allegedly hindered market and price competition in its terms and conditions, the German watchdog says.

The Dutch government wants online liquor stores to stop offering ‘buy now, pay later’ as a payment method. If they do not find alternative payment methods, the government will come up with legal measures. The payment method lowers the threshold to buy alcohol.

Startup JUST, which enables a one-click checkout for online stores, raised 3 million euros in seed capital. The solution can increase conversion by nearly 20 percent, according to the company. The one-click checkout landscape is highly competitive.

Swedish fintech Klarna wants to raise 1 billion dollars (over 900 million euros) from investors. The company is the European market leader for ‘buy now, pay later’ services. However, it has been valued 30 percent lower and has since announced layoffs.

PayPal has launched its funding solution for SMEs, called PayPal Funding Pro, in two new European markets: France and the Netherlands. The solution gives SMEs quick and easy access to growth capital. Online sellers can find it in the PayPal Commerce Platform.

Leading ecommerce software BigCommerce named Mollie, a payment service provider from the Netherlands, as Preferred Technology Partner. The Dutch fintech offers most of the popular payment methods in Europe. The news follows BigCommerce’s recent expansion to the Netherlands, France and Germany.

A whopping 30 percent of Spanish customers now prefer to ‘buy now, pay later’. Paying in installments is especially popular for electronics and travel. Overall, credit card, debit card and PayPal are the biggest payment methods in Spain.

Dutch fintech company in3 has raised 10 million euros in funding. According to the company's announcement today, the growth capital is intended to drive product growth and improvement, as well as enable faster staff growth in merchant and customer service. The fintech has also announced a partnership with Worldline.

French fintech Alma has raised 210 million euros in funding. With the capital injection it wants to expand across Europe into Austria, Luxemburg, Portugal, Ireland and the Netherlands. The company is already internationally active in Belgium, Germany, Italy and Spain.

PayPal is expanding its 'Pay later' offer in Germany. This week, it has announced the launch of its new payment option 'Payment after 30 days'. Customers can select the new option for purchases up to 1.000 euros and pay for it after 30 days without additional costs.

Payment methods are an integral component to the success of ecommerce businesses. Knowing which payment methods are preferred by customers can increase conversion for online stores. Genome, a Lithuania-based financial platform, made a list of the current trends and most popular methods in Europe.

Ecommerce giant Amazon and credit card issuer Visa are continuing to try to solve their dispute over payment fees. This means that payments with millions of credit cards will still be accepted. The announcement came two days before previously announced ban on Visa credit cards.

Online payment method PayPal is well-known within Europe, but the usage of PayPal in online stores varies between countries. In Italy, 93 percent of online stores offer PayPal as a payment method. On the other end of the spectrum, PayPal is only offered in 1 percent of Serbian online stores.

Amazon customers from the United Kingdom can now pay later for their orders through a partnership with Barclays, the British bank. The new payment service called ‘Instalments’ was already introduced in Germany last year. ‘Buy now, pay later’ is becoming increasingly popular in Europe.

Online marketplace Joom has partnered with Worldline by implementing its Russian Payments Solution. Retailers and customers in Russia will now have more payment options. In doing so, Joom wants to solidify its position in the Russian market.