Payments

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.

Companies in Europe should expect far higher levels in card-not-present fraud after the United States adopts EMV technology on October 1. That's what technology company Global Risk Technologies says. In EMV-adopted countries counterfeit fraud decreases, but card-not-present fraud rises as fraudsters move online. As the US is the last major global market to adopt EMV technology, criminals will likely turn to ecommerce companies in Europe.

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.

Payolution, an Austrian provider of invoicing and payment by instalment, has partnered with the German website Travador.com to offer the first "pay on account" option in the online travel industry. With purchase invoices, travelers don't have to pay for their holiday beforehand, they only get the bill after they have returned.

Swedish payments company Klarna is valued at 2.04 billion euros in a secondary offering, which means the company's valuation has increased by 60 percent in one year's time. Back in 2014, Klarna was valued at about 1.27 billion euros when it raised roughly 91 million euros from existing investors.

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.

Klarna continues to be a European success story. The Swedish ecommerce payment provider saw its revenue grow by almost 40 percent to hit 2.2 billion Swedish kronor, or 233 million euros. Meanwhile, profits also increased by 39 percent and are now worth 75 million Swedish kronor, which corresponds with 8 million euros.

After the launch of One Touch for Web in the US, PayPal's payment feature will now expand to the United Kingdom as well as Canada. With One Touch, consumers can pay on the Web with a single click after their first login.

Shoper has launched a new solution for online shop owners called Shoper Payments. The Polish ecommerce platform now has its own online payment system, which is available to everybody that has an online store running on Shoper's software.