Every month we round up the biggest stories and news headlines in the payments space to keep our readers informed about what’s happening. February had big partnership announcements, rate increases, and earnings results from major players in the industry.
Visa and X (Formerly Twitter) Partner For New P2P Wallet
Visa is partnering with Elon Musk’s X to provide a new P2P (peer-to-peer) digital wallet through X’s social media platform.
With an “X Money Account” users can send funds to each other instantly, similar to how Venmo and Zelle operate.
This new feature is expected to be available in Q1 of 2025.
Priority Payments Rate Increase
Priority Payments sent a notice to their customers informing them of a rate change. The notice explains that for some merchants, PIN debit network switch fees from the card networks were not passed through correctly.
Merchants will see the PIN debit network switch fees on their Priority Payments statements moving forward.
Olo Partners With FreedomPay to Extend Capabilities For Enterprise-Level Restaurants
Olo, a restaurant technology provider, just announced a new partnership with FreedomPay in an effort to enhance restaurant payments across the country. Olo already has a partnership with Stripe, and this new partnership will deepen that relationship as well.
By leveraging FreedomPay’s gateway, Olo Pay will now be able to work with Stripe’s in-person POS solutions for over 700 enterprise-level restaurants.
These restaurants will also have more choices in how in-person payment acceptance is integrated with Olo. Plus, the new integration will consolidate omnichannel processing to a single provider.
Peach Finance Will Power Square’s New Credit Card Program
Square announced that they will be using Peach Finance to power its new credit card offering.
This partnership is allowing Square to rapidly scale its new card program. Peach’s API, webhooks, and ledger features will eliminate complexities for things like interest calculations, statement generation, compliance, and real-time frontend data.
All of this is key infrastructure that Square needs to scale its credit card program.
Major Processors Release Their Latest Earnings Results
February was a big month for earrings results in the payment space. Some of the largest providers in the industry released earnings, and I’ve summarized the key numbers for each one below.
PayPal 4Q 24 Highlights
- Total revenue increased 4% (vs. 5.8% previous quarter)
- Transaction margins increased 47% (up from 128 basis points previous quarter)
- Total payment volume increased 7% (vs 9% previous quarter)
- Over 1.5 million PayPal debit card users were added this quarter
- Total active accounts increased 2.1% bringing total monthly active accounts to 434 million
Fiserv 4Q 24 Highlights
- Merchant services revenue increased 23% (vs. 24% previous quarter)
- Merchant services revenue is projected to grow 12% to 15% in 2025
- Clover revenue increased 29% (vs. 28% previous quarter)
- Fiserv is on track to hit $3.5 billion in Clover revenue for 2025
- CommerceHub API now has over 250 clients
FIS 4Q 24 Highlights
- Revenue increased 4% (same as previous quarter but below expectations)
- Adjusted EBITDA margins increased 42.9% (103 basis points) vs. 120 basis points previous quarter
- FIS is projecting 4.6% to 5.2% adjusted revenue growth for fiscal year 2025
- Worldpay contributed $34 million in Q4
- FIS investor day highlighted the importance of expanding its portfolio by targeting M&A opportunities
Toast 4Q 24 Highlights
- Revenue grew 29% (vs. 27% previous quarter)
- Subscription revenue grew 41% (vs. 44% previous quarter)
- Q1 adjusted EBITDA projected $100 million to $110 million
- Added about 7,000 new net locations in Q4 and 28,000 locations in the year (for a grand total over roughly 134,000 locations)
- Toast is still planning to make small, gradual rate increases moving forward (aligned with what I’ve mentioned previously in my Toast review)
Adyen 2H 24 Highlights
- New revenue increased 22% in 2H (vs. 24% in 1H)
- 4Q net revenue grew 23% (vs. 20% 3Q)
- Processing volume grew 22% in 2H (vs. 30% in 1H)
- Digital processing volume increased 13% (vs. 49% previous period)
- Unified commerce volume increased 35% (vs. 29% previous period)
Shift4 4Q 24 Highlights
- Payment volume increased 49% YoY (vs. 56% previous quarter)
- Adjusted EBITDA was $205.9 million (vs. $187.4 million previous quarter)
- Fiscal year 2025 projecting 21% to 33% YoY growth ($200 billion to $220 billion)
- Adjusted EBITDA projection for 2025 is $830 million to $855 million
- Plans to scale SkyTab, restaurant, hospitality, sports and entertainment, and international verticals
Block 4Q 24 Highlights
- Total revenue (excluding Bitcoin) grew 11%
- Square revenue increased 8.7% (vs. 8% previous quarter)
- Projecting 11% growth in 1Q25 ($2.32 billion gross profit)
- Projecting 15% growth in 2025 ($10.2 billion gross profit)
- Cash App revenue increased 14% (vs. 16% previous quarter)
Subscribe to our newsletter to get all the biggest payment news delivered straight to your inbox. In case you missed it, here’s a link to last month’s stories.