Stripe will be the first company to enable contactless payments acceptance on merchant customers’ iPhones.

The payfac model has catapulted into the mainstream, thanks to payments disruptors like PayPal, Square, and Stripe. The growth in the number of payfacs, and in the payment volume passing through them, is reshaping key relationships within the payments ecosystem. But the model bears some drawbacks for the diverse swath of companies adopting it, as well as for the merchants that work with them.

Plaid feels betrayed: Financial Connections puts Stripe into direct competition with former partner Plaid. Plaid CEO Zachery Perret took a jab at Stripe on Twitter, questioning the firm’s “methods” and accusing it of using his company’s data to develop the new product. What this means: Launching Financial Connections gives Stripe another string to its bow of products.

An alliance of Big Tech companies including Google, Meta, Shopify, and Stripe announced last week that they’re collaborating with Stripe-owned company Frontier to collectively spend $925 million on carbon removal technologies over the next eight years, per The Atlantic.

A roster of big fintechs use its embedded services, which span crypto (Coinbase) to buy now, pay later (Affirm), and payments support (Stripe). Cross River pitches itself as a technology provider that shoulders compliance on its customers’ behalf. It offers BaaS for demand deposit accounts, savings accounts, and credit and debit cards.

Stripe. Synchrony Financial. The Nilson Report. US Census Bureau. US Federal Reserve Small Business. Veem. Venmo. Visa. Wells Fargo. WePay. Wise.

Stripe. TechCrunch. TrueLayer. Venmo. Visa. Voice of America. Zelle.

Stripe. SumUp. The Nilson Report. Toast. Venmo. Vision Labs. Waitr. The Wall Street Journal. Worldline.

Stripe. TechCrunch. The Block. The Federal Reserve. The White House. Time. Visa. Voyager Digital. Wells Fargo.

As larger players like Fiserv and Stripe pursue partnerships with crypto tech players or hire into the space, merchants will be able to integrate acceptance with one click. Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) Will Blossom Outside the US. CBDCs may be a more viable long-term crypto payment solution for merchants and payment providers, as they limit volatility while improving legitimacy.

Firms including Amex, PayPal, Splitit, and Stripe are working to enter China through partnerships with local companies. The duopoly’s dominance had previously forced these providers to pursue niche sectors, like debit and cross-border commerce, but its erosion could widen their window of opportunity.

Wix operates as a payfac in the US and Europe via Wix Payments, in partnership with Adyen and Stripe. Its processing and gateway offerings have found success in competing against third parties: Wix Payments accounted for more than 30% of all of Wix’s sales transactions in Q3 2020, president Nir Zohar said on the company’s earnings call.

Stripe reentered the digital currency space in March 2022 after dropping out in 2018, launching a crypto tool kit of APIs for merchants. It also partnered with crypto exchange FTX to provide onboarding and identity verification. The reentry marks a pivot from 2018, when it argued that Bitcoin was “better-suited to being an asset than being a means of exchange.”.

The plan would minimize Apple’s reliance on financial partners over time, like Goldman Sachs and CoreCard for the Apple Card and Stripe and Adyen for Tap to Pay on iPhone. Combined with Breakout, Apple’s recent Wallet and Apple Cash enhancements point to the tech giant’s ambitions to capture a larger share of the financial services market.

The network partnered with acquirer and paytech Worldline to expand UnionPay acceptance in the Nordic region and forged similar deals with Fiserv and Stripe to grow elsewhere. Last year, UnionPay said its global acceptance network has extended to 180 countries and regions and that as many as 55 million merchants worldwide accept UnionPay cards.

And Stripe-owned Paystack now accepts Apple Pay, connecting international shoppers to Africa-based merchants. These partnerships are just the beginning. Deals will ramp up further in 2022, focusing on large countries and small businesses. The focus of partnerships, mergers, and acquisitions will be on Nigeria, South Africa, and Kenya—sub-Saharan countries with the largest GDPs.

The small-business-centric point-of-sale solution can push PayPal further into in-store payments and help it court more small sellers—though it’ll face competition from players like Square and Stripe.

Payments service providers are building an array of financial services to compete with financial institutions (FIs). Lending, bank account products, issuing, and other services that have been FIs’ bread and butter are being challenged in a bid to add more revenue opportunities and engender greater loyalty. These payment disruptors, such as Square, Stripe, and Shopify, are using their existing relationships with small businesses to attract clients away from FIs and persuading them to use their own financial offerings.

Stripe. UK Finance. UK Parliament. UK Payment Systems Regulator. Which? Worldpay.

We’ve already seen powerhouses like Stripe, Zip, and Mastercard get involved in the region, and we predict that in 2022, multinational financial services companies will shift their focus from partnerships to acquisitions across the continent. With 1.4 billion inhabitants and a collective GDP of $2.7 trillion, Africa is a vast market ripe for payments digitization.

Firms like Zip and Stripe have taken a different approach by acquiring businesses to solidify their positions in the market—especially as financial infrastructure and consumer appetite for digital payments expand. We expect major players like Visa, Mastercard, Block, and PayPal will ramp up their presence in the region to stay competitive this year.