Payments

Visa will make its online payment service Visa Checkout available to merchants and consumers in the United Kingdom, France, Ireland, Poland and Spain this year. With Visa Checkout, users have the security and convenience of the Visa card, but then in the digital world.

Ingenico Payment Services' ecommerce division is merging with GlobalCollect, and as a result it will be transforming into Ingenico ePayments. Together, the companies hope to have a wider reach and stronger offering for their customers and partners.

PayU, a payment service provider in Turkey, will close this year with a growth of 40 to 80 percent in each of its markets. This success is due to an emerging middle class, the rise of mobile technology and evolving ecommerce environments in developing markets, the company says.

In Sweden, digital payments via card or a mobile app have become widely accepted. As a matter of fact, there are few Swedes who carry any cash at all. Even children often pay with their debit cards. Sweden is the uncrowned king of cashless trading.

Payment system WebMoney is now licensed to issue electronic money within the European Union. The company was granted a Financial Conduct Authority License and as a result, its Euro purses are now considered e-money and are in full compliance with EU legislation.

Fonq.nl, a popular online department store from the Netherlands, is now accepting bitcoins as a payment method. Aside from iDeal, credit card, pay after delivery, PayPal and bank transfer, the online retailer's consumers can now also pay with the digital currency.

Prestashop, an open-source ecommerce solution from France, has announced it agreed to a partnership with Alipay, Alibaba's leading online payment solution from China. The partnership applies to PrestaShop's customers in the United Kingdom, Germany and the Netherlands and enables retailers to sell their products more easily in China.

German banks have launched Paydirekt, which aims to be a competitor to PayPal. The online payment system is an initiative of several major banks in Germany. Paydirekt follows after many banks complained about the dominance of PayPal and were struggling to come up with a German answer to it.

Swish will become an integral part of Klarna's Checkout solution. As a result it will be possible to pay for ecommerce purchases with Swish. The app, which is owned by six Swedish banks, gets an update next month so it can be used for ecommerce transactions.

Alibaba has launched its own online payment system, AliPay, in Europe. Its 400 million customers can now use this payment method when they are shopping at the Frankfurt airport. But it doesn't stop here, Alipay says. Expansion to more countries in Europe will follow as soon as possible.

Dutch payment company Adyen closes another round of funding and is now valuated to be worth 2 billion euros. The latest funding comes from Iconiq Capital, which has invested in several tech companies on behalf of clients such as Mark Zuckerberg, Sheryl Sandberg and Jack Dorsey.

E-authorization firm MyBank is calling PSPs, service providers and other financial companies to join a pilot for its identity verification service. It wants to launch a pan-European service that protects the consumer's privacy while enabling business to verify or request information regarding the identity of their counterparties in any online transaction.

PayPal's new payment feature One Touch is now available in the most important markets in Europe. After its quick payment system launched in the United Kingdom earlier this year, One Touch is now also available in Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland.

In Europe, more and more consumers like to pay using their smartphone or tablet. In share of mobile device owners who already have experience with mobile payments, Turkey is the absolute leader in Europe. This is apparent from the latest report by yStats.com, called "Europe Online Payment Methods: First Half 2015".

iDeal, by far the most popular payment method in the Netherlands, keeps on growing. It was being used 103.9 million times during the first six months of this year. This is an increase of over 26% compared to the same period last year.