PayPal’s Paidy Deal Substantiates Pandemic-Led FinTech Boom

The US-based PayPal Holdings Inc confirms that it is taking over Paidy, a buy now, pay later platform, for $2.7 billion, Reuters reported on Tuesday.

Buying Paidy, PayPal is all set to expand its footprint in the US where online shopping has tripled during the last decade to roughly $ 200 billion. Even though two-thirds of purchases are still paid in cash, the FinTech company is optimistic about its continued growth in the US.

The PayPal-Paidy deal reflects how the pandemic-led boom continues to broaden its horizon. Besides FinTech, the ecommerce and manufacturing sectors have witnessed a major boom during the pandemic.

“I wouldn't view this (deal) as impacting the U.S. BNPL market but more as PayPal's route into the Japanese market,” Kunaal Malde, an analyst at Atlantic Equities, said.

Like Americans, the Japanese also prefer cash over online transactions. However, things have changed in the recent past as the FinTech industry continues to flourish.

“One of the notable things about Japan’s BNPL market compared to the United States or Europe is that most users clear their outstanding balance by the end of the month in one payment. In Japan accumulating debt is more frowned on.”

With all this said, PayPal is eyeing the top spot in an industry experiencing a boom led by the ongoing pandemic.

The quotes used in this piece were extracted from Reuters.

 

Shopee Becomes Brazil’s Most Downloadable Shopping App, Outrunning Big Players

Shopee, a Singapore-based eCommerce company, becomes the most downloadable shopping app in Brazil in just two years. The company’s game-changing approach has turned the tables around in the country in such a short time. Its approach to ecommerce is simple: in-app mini-games offering coupons to winning users, Reuters reported on Monday.

 

As the report confirms, in Singapore, Shopee just took five years to become Southeast Asia’s most popular ecommerce portal, outdoing two of the big players such as Lazada and Tokopedia. They are backed by Alibaba and SoftBank Group, respectively.

 

 “Shopee has a track record in Southeast Asia of coming into the market late, looking at how others have solved existing problems, and then building a system to leapfrog those issues,” said analyst Jianggan Li at advisory firm Momentum Works.

 

Mr. Li was quoted as saying by Reuters.

 

Apart from its game-changing approach, Shopee’s timing in Brazil was not less than perfect as Covid-19 hit worldwide immediately after the company’s launch in the country. Brazilians, like the rest of the world, resorted to online shopping, as a result. This shift greatly helped the company expand its offerings and win more users across the country. As mentioned above, Shopee offered coupons and so many relevant offers, to grab users’ attention. Now, after two years, the company is all set to lead the Brazilian ecommerce sector from the front.

 

 

Just Dial’s transformation will help Reliance Retail to scale unprecedently

Recently, Reliance Retail Ventures Ltd (RRVL) had made an announcement that it acquired controlling stakes in Just Dial (JD). According to reports from industry analysts, the retail giant is expected to make full use of JD’s B2B search engine specialization to gain access to various large merchants who can join the company’s ecommerce platform JioMart. The new move is also expected to allow RRVL to make use of JD’s venture into ticket booking for train, bus, and flight. Along with that, users can also pay bills, book hotels, and get cab services, among others.

Mukesh Ambani, managing director and chairman of Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL), had previously laid out a target to onboard more than 10 million merchants for his company’s ecommerce initiative. The target is expected to be achieved by the next three years, and this announcement came in RIL’s annual AGM, which was held last month. RRVL had bought 66.95 percent of stakes in JD, and the entire deal amounted to Rs 5,720 crore. So far, JD has continued to work in the marketplace model, and it has offered various services like logistics, chat, catalog management, and payment solutions. Along with that, JD also provided working capital loans and insurance to SMEs.