The European Union has accepted an offer by Visa and Mastercard to cut fees on payments made by tourists using cards issued outside the region to stave off fines and end an EU antitrust investigation.  The European Commission, says that "interchange fees" in which the merchant’s bank pays a charge to the cardholder’s bank, result in higher prices for consumers. “This, together with our January 2019 decision on Mastercard’s cross-border card payment services, will lead to lower prices for European retailers to do business, ultimately to the benefit of all consumers,” Europe’s antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager said in a statement.

Capital One first quarter earnings surpassed expectations. The bank holding company raked in adjusted earnings of $2.90 per share during the quarter, thereby substantially beating analysts' expectations of $2.68.Adjusted revenue of $7.08 billion also came in higher compared to the Street's $7.01 billion expectations.   Revenue, pre-provision earnings, and earnings per share all climbed from the year-ago quarter, as indicated by Capital One founder, chairman and CEO Richard D. Fairbank.

Total payment volume increased to $161 billion, compared to analysts’ expectations of $163 billion. Reporting for its Venmo peer-to-peer digital payment service, PayPal said that around 40 million people used it for at least one transaction in the last 12 months, contributing up to $21 billion in total payment volume in the first quarter. Looking ahead, PayPal expects revenue to range between $4.3 billion and $4.34 billion for the current quarter.For the full year, the company bumped up its earnings per share outlook to between $2.94 and $3.01.

SoftBank will invest 900 million euros ($1 billion) into German fintech firm Wirecard, as part of a strategic partnership on digital payments. Read More...

Credit card company American Express said its quarterly profit fell 5%, as it spent more on its rewards program. The company said net income fell to $1.55 billion, or $1.80 per share, in the first quarter ended March 31, from $1.63 billion, or $1.86 per share, a year earlier. The results surpassed Wall Street expectations.The average estimate was for earnings of $2 per share. Total revenue, excluding interest expense, rose 7% to $10.36 billion. American Express expects full-year earnings in the range of $7.85 to $8.35 per share.

French advertising giant, Publicis, is finalizing its deal to pay about $4.4 billion to Alliance Data Systems Corporation’s (ADS) Epsilon business to boost its digital marketing strategies and to help clients better personalize their advertising. According to the terms of the deal, Publicis would acquire ADS’s Epsilon business for a net purchase price of $3.95 billion after a tax step-up, with a total cash consideration of $4.4 billion.Publicis would continue to form a strategic partnership with Alliance Data’s remaining business. The deal is in response to huge growth of the digital advertising industry in recent times, as well as increasing dominance of players like Facebook (FB) and Google (GOOG, GOOGL).

PayPal (PYPL +0.4%) introduces a service that allows customers to move money more quickly into their bank using their PayPal account. Read More...

PayPal Holdings witnessed impressive growth in its user base in 2018, with a reach of 254 million active accounts as reported in its 2018 third quarter earnings. What enabled this compelling growth? Paypal's increasing customer base indicates a growing network effect: the more value it has for existing customers, the more new users join in.This rising network effect is evident in the company's third quarter earnings report, in which the average account that had used PayPal is 36.5 times over the last year, a 9.5% year-over-year increase. This rapid growth in PayPal’s users and sales reflect the company’s unique positioning in digital payments.

The company has won approval to clear card payments in that country, which is expected to be the world's biggest card market by 2020. Other companies such as Visa and MasterCard have applied for licenses as well but are still waiting to see if approvals will be granted.The preliminary approval for AmEx allows it to process and settle payment in the domestic currency and has set up a network with Chinese joint venture partner LianLian Group. The approval is a "significant step toward opening up China's bank card market to foreign investors", said China's Central Bank, in a statement.

PayPal beat earnings estimates, on the back of solid growth in overall transactions volume including traction in its app Venmo. The online payment processing company raked in adjusted earnings-per-share of 58 cents in Q3, higher than analysts’ estimates of 54 cents.Revenues surged +14% to $3.68 billion, compared to analysts’ average projection of $3.67 billion. PayPal’s Chief Executive Officer Dan Schulman has emphasized on the recent success of its mobile payment app Venmo, which is popular among millenials.

Over the last eight months, American Express (NYSE: AXP) has been trending higher with a trend channel defining the peaks and valleys.That is a move of approximately 8% in just over a month. In addition to the technical picture, American Express has great fundamentals.

American Express Co. is increasing reward points for its premium credit card customers. AmEx Gold Card holders will now earn 4 points per dollar spent at U.S. restaurants and supermarkets, up from 2 points previously.Additionally, they get a yearly $120 credit by using their cards to make payments to the Cheesecake Factory, Ruth’s Chris Steak House, certain Shake Shack locations, GrubHub and Seamless.

Google might have struck a ‘secret’ deal with Mastercard to track consumers’ offline purchases. A Bloomberg report indicates that according to some people familiar with the matter, Google paid Mastercard millions of dollars in exchange for insights into whether the  online ads run by the search engine led to consumers buying things from physical stores for the past year.The data, if indeed accessed by Google, is likely to have helped the tech giant in its advertising business strategies as it got to know consumers’ purchase habits and history beyond online platforms. These reports could potentially raise concerns about how far consumer credit/debit card data is protected from third parties.

There was acquisition buzz over the weekend, with Chinese e-commerce behemoth Alibaba and Tencent involved in talks to buy an approximately 20% stake in the Chinese unit of WPP, the world's largest advertising group.This acquisition would value WPP at roughly $2.5 billion. Meanwhile, in Europe, French technology services company Atos has agreed to acquire Syntel in a $3.7 billion all-cash transaction.

Mastercard got a patent that will allow them to conduct blockchain payments on their credit cards.This would provide a major inconvenience to everyone. 

This decentralized, public transaction ledger has been embraced by financial institutions for its transparency, speed, and security (as well as its potential to cut costs), and creative uses are being regularly implemented in different sectors.Now, JPMorgan has announced potential plans to spin-off its blockchain network, Quorum, into an independent company. Quorum, which shares 95 percent of its software with cryptocurrency Ethereum’s blockchain, is an “enterprise-focused version of Ethereum…ideal for any application requiring high speed and high throughput processing of private transactions within a permissioned group of known participants” aimed at addressing “specific challenges to blockchain technology adoption within the financial industry, and beyond.” The open-source project began in 2016, becoming part of the Ethereum Enterprise Alliance (EEA) in February of 2017.