Klarna Valued at $31 Billion; ETA Details Fintech Impact on Financial Inclusion: News Roundup

PaymentFacilitator’s News Roundup is a curated mix of the past week’s news and articles from around the web, including company announcements, global payments news, and other coverage and analysis of topics relevant to payment facilitators.

Global Growth

Swedish payments provider Klarna was valued at $31 billion after raising $1 billion in new funding. That means the company, which specializes in the buy now, pay later (BNPL) space and also operates as a payment facilitator, is still the highest-valued private fintech company in Europe. The company is reportedly considering an IPO. From TechCrunch.

Buenos Aires-based ecommerce company and payment facilitator MercadoLibre plans to invest $1.8 billion in Brazil during 2021. This is the same amount it spent in the country over the past four years. The funds will be used to expand the company’s logistics network there, it said. From Bloomberg.

Digital India

Indian conglomerate Reliance Industries is teaming with payment facilitator Infibeam as well as tech giants Facebook and Google to build a national digital payment network in India. The Reserve Bank of India has invited companies to develop what it calls new umbrella entities (NUEs) to build payments networks with a goal of increasing competition there. The RBI is accepting applications until March 31. From Reuters.

Indian PF Paytm is in the payments volume lead there, processing 1.2 billion transactions in February. The company enables all kinds of digital payments including cards but also digital wallets and UPI transactions. From The Hindu BusinessLine