Digital Wallets And Ecommerce

Who are the biggest fintechs globally? And what are the success factors behind their rise? When PayPal (1998), Ant Group (2004) and Stripe (2010) launched, the financial world ran on monolithic core-banking systems, clunky gateways and brick-and-mortar branches. Smartphones were in their infancy, APIs weren’t standard, and regulators tightly guarded payment rails. These first pioneers tore down barriers - packaging payments, lending and banking into nimble, digital-first services. 𝗠𝗮𝗶𝗻 𝘁𝗿𝗶𝗴𝗴𝗲𝗿𝘀 𝗯𝗲𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗱 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗿𝗶𝘀𝗲 𝗼𝗳 𝗳𝗶𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗰𝗵𝘀: 1. The 2007-2008 financial crisis The 2007–2008 banking collapse eroded consumer trust and triggered massive layoffs. Venture capital saw nimble startups as an alternative, and displaced finance experts brought operational know-how to new ventures. 2. The decoupling Startups unbundled the user experience from core banking infrastructure. With cloud-based services and APIs, they built slick front-ends while outsourcing processing, payments, and compliance. 3. The mobile revolution Apple’s 2007 iPhone debut put full web browsers and app ecosystems into everyone’s pocket. Overnight, fintechs could launch banking, investing and payments interfaces without a single branch. 4. API-first architecture APIs turned complex financial functions into plug-and-play components. Businesses outside of finance could now offer payments, credit, or wallets as part of their core experience. 5. Regulation New e-money and payments licenses lowered entry barriers for non-banks. In Europe, Open Banking forced banks to open up customer information, while in the US  fintechs expanded nationally by securing state-by-state money transmitter licenses. 𝗟𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗼𝗻𝘀 𝗹𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗻𝗲𝗱: 1. Payments remain fintech’s backbone - high frequency, large volume, and predictable revenue at scale. 2. Coinbase and Binance reached billion-dollar status quickly, driven by retail crypto demand. However, market swings and regulatory uncertainty are key topics. 3. Mobile-first, low-cost digital banking models with instant onboarding scaled rapidly and efficiently across regions. 4. Stripe and Adyen highlight the value of infrastructure models - plug-and-play B2B financial tools driving sticky revenue at scale. 5. Ant Group and Nubank illustrate how bundling payments, credit, and savings into a single app works best in markets underserved by traditional banks. 6. Early unicorns may have grown fast, but long-term success hinges on balancing growth with profitability - especially in sectors like lending and crypto that face tighter regulation. 7. Resilient fintechs diversify revenue - blending interchange, subscriptions, lending, and trading.   Opinions and graphics: Panagiotis Kriaris 𝐒𝐮𝐛𝐬𝐜𝐫𝐢𝐛𝐞 𝐭𝐨 𝐦𝐲 𝐧𝐞𝐰𝐬𝐥𝐞𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐫: https://lnkd.in/dkqhnxdg

Make UPI payments with your thumb. India’s next big leap is here. India’s digital payments story just entered its next chapter. Delhi-based startup Proxgy has launched ThumbPay, a biometric payment device that lets users make UPI payments using only their thumbprint. No smartphone. No QR code. No card. Just identity. This innovation brings simplicity and dignity together, especially for people who were left behind in the digital wave. ✅ A new era of digital access UPI changed how India transacts, but not everyone could join the journey. ThumbPay now bridges that gap. With Aadhaar-linked biometric verification, anyone can make a payment by placing their thumb on a small device. It works instantly, securely, and without dependence on a smartphone. ✅ Designed for real India ThumbPay costs under ₹2,000 and is built for small shopkeepers, daily wage earners, farmers, and the elderly. It takes digital payments to villages and semi-urban towns where connectivity, literacy, and devices often remain barriers. ✅ How it works You place your thumb on the device. It verifies your Aadhaar identity securely, connects to UPI, and completes the transaction in real time. The device has a soundbox and works through 4G, Wi-Fi, or LoRaWAN, ensuring reliability even in low-network areas. ✅ Security and privacy first Proxgy has assured that biometrics are never stored on the device. Authentication happens through Aadhaar’s secure system. It follows NPCI and UIDAI guidelines, keeping both security and privacy intact. ✅ Impact beyond cities For many Indians, digital finance still feels distant. ThumbPay changes that. • Farmers and workers can now get paid instantly. • Elderly citizens can transact without needing a smartphone. • Merchants can save time and avoid failed QR scans. ✅ Innovation from the ground up While major players like Paytm, Google Pay, and PhonePe built digital apps, Proxgy has built a physical solution for digital inclusion. It shows how true progress comes not just from new software, but from solving everyday barriers. ✅ Challenges ahead Like every big idea, ThumbPay will face its test in the real world, cost, adoption, and awareness. Educating users and ensuring consistent connectivity will determine its long-term success. ✅ The bigger picture ThumbPay could soon connect with Jan Dhan accounts, Direct Benefit Transfers, and ration systems, making welfare payments direct and transparent. It could even become a model for global biometric payment systems. A simple thumb impression now carries the power to move money, earn trust, and open opportunity. When technology touches the ground, it stops being innovation; it becomes inclusion. ThumbPay is proof that the future of finance is not just digital, it is human.

70% shoppers leave if they struggle to find the price. Hidden prices lead to: • Frustration • Loss of trust • Delayed decisions You might not have an intention to hide it. And you might show it in the add-to-cart CTA. But the ideal placement is by the product name. This is using the proximity principle. When the price is NOT close to the product name (the usual placement), it will cause them to think. And that’s when visitors would leave. In this post, using Rue Sophie’s PDP, I’ve made 9 changes that tackle such challenges and improve the shopping experience + conversions. 1. Highlight the video of your product. Especially if you're in fashion as that's a competitive space. 2. Have the images with a slider with prominent arrows. Show the sneak peek so the swiping experience looks intuitive. 3. Highlight the model's dress size. This helps shoppers to visualize the best size for them. And imagine the fit better. 4. Place the price next to the product name, instead of in the options of in the add-to-cart CTA. 5. Highlight key features in bullets. Avoid paragraphs. 6. Show the color options when you have 2 or more. If only 1 color, best to hide this section. Make the color prominent and highlight the selected state clearly. 7. Optimize the area around the add-to-cart CTA. Show the delivery time and free delivery or return policy. 8. Have accordions instead of tabs or rich content. This helps shopper read more about what they're most interested in quickly. 9. Lastly, upsell. Complete your look section is a must. You can show matching accessories or other clothing products that go well here. Found this helpful? Let me know in the comments! P.S. If you want to optimize your site,  think about your shopping habits. When you can’t find the price, do you stick around? Probably not. Your customers are no different. Make it easy for them to browse. And you’ll see the benefits in your conversions. #cro #uxdesign

🚨The greatest drop-off is from Product Details Page To Cart Page, so we must improve our Product Details Page! Not so fast ✋ In today's age of data obsession, almost every company has an analytics infrastructure that pumps out a tonne of numbers. But rarely do teams invest time, discipline & curiosity to interpret numbers meaningfully. I will illustrate with an example. Let's take a simple e-commerce funnel. Home Page ~ 100 users List Page ~ 90 users Product Display Page ~ 70 users Cart Page ~ 20 users Address Page ~ 15 users Payments Page ~12 users Order Confirmation Page ~ 9 users A team that just "looks" at data will immediately conclude that the drop-off is most steep between Product Details Page & Cart Page. As a consequence they will start putting in a lot of fire power into solving user problems on Product Display Page. But if the team were data "curious", would frame hypothesis such as "do certain types of users reach cart page more effectively than others?" and go on to look at users by purchase buckets, geography, category etc and look at the entire funnel end to end to observe patterns. In the above scenario, it's likely that the 20 cart users were power users whilst new & early purchasers don't make it to this stage. The reason could be poor recommendations on the list page or customers are only visiting the product display page to see a larger close up of the product. So how should one go about looking at data ? Do ✅ Start with an open & curious mind ✅ Start with hypothesis ✅ Identify metrics & counter metrics that will help prove/disprove hypothesis ✅ Identify the various dimensions that could influence behaviours - user type, geography, category, device type, gender, price point, day, time etc. The dimensions will be specific to your line of business. ✅ Check for data quality and consistency ✅ Look at upstream and downstream behaviour to see how the behaviour is influenced upstream and what happens to the behaviour downstream. ✅ Check for historical evidence of causality Dont ❌ Look at data to satisfy your bias ❌ Rush to conclude your interpretation ❌ Look at data in isolation - - - TLDR - Be curious. Not confirmed. #metrics #analytics #productmanagement #productmanager #productcraft #deepdiveswithdsk

A client came to us frustrated. They had thousands of website visitors per day, yet their sales were flat. No matter how much they spent on ads or SEO, the revenue just wasn’t growing. The problem? Traffic isn’t the goal - conversions are. After diving into their analytics, we found several hidden conversion killers: A complicated checkout process – Too many steps and unnecessary fields were causing visitors to abandon their carts. Lack of trust signals – Customer reviews missing on cart page, unclear shipping and return policies, and missing security badges made potential buyers hesitate. Slow site speeds – A few-second delay was enough to make mobile users bounce before even seeing a product page. Weak calls to action – Generic "Buy Now" buttons weren’t compelling enough to drive action. Instead of just driving more traffic, we optimized their Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) strategy: ✔ Simplified the checkout process - fewer clicks, faster transactions. ✔ Improved customer testimonials and trust badges for credibility. ✔ Improved page load speeds, cutting bounce rates by 30%. ✔ Revamped CTAs with urgency and clear value propositions. The result? A 28% increase in sales - without spending a dollar more on traffic. More visitors don’t mean more revenue. Better user experience and conversion-focused strategies do. Does your ecommerce site have a traffic problem - or a conversion problem? #EcommerceGrowth #CRO #DigitalMarketing #ConversionOptimization #WebsiteOptimization #AbsoluteWeb

🇪🇬Egypt: Turning into a Booming Payments Market Let's dive into Egypt’s Payments Ecosystem: First, some info about the Payments Ecosystem in Africa: As one of the earliest innovators and adopters of Mobile Money technology, Africa has witnessed a transformation in its delivery of financial services. Key Drivers: 𝗣𝗿𝗶𝘃𝗮𝘁𝗶𝘇𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗧𝗲𝗹𝗲𝗰𝗼𝗺 𝗦𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗼𝗿 ► Due to the surge in mobile phone ownership brought on by telecommunications privatization, the percentage of people with landlines is now only about 2% 𝗠𝗼𝗯𝗶𝗹𝗲 𝗣𝗵𝗼𝗻𝗲 & 𝗦𝗺𝗮𝗿𝘁𝗽𝗵𝗼𝗻𝗲 𝗔𝗱𝗼𝗽𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 ► In Sub-Saharan Africa, smartphone adoption stood at 51% as of 2022, while it is anticipated to reach 87% by 2030 𝗥𝗲𝗴𝘂𝗹𝗮𝘁𝗼𝗿𝘆 𝗙𝗿𝗮𝗺𝗲𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗸 𝘁𝗼 𝗦𝘂𝗽𝗽𝗼𝗿𝘁 𝗙𝗶𝗻𝗮𝗻𝗰𝗶𝗮𝗹 𝗜𝗻𝗰𝗹𝘂𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻 ► Testing grounds for FinTech innovation include the Bank of Mauritius, the National Bank of Rwanda, the Reserve Bank of South Africa, and the Bank of Nigeria 𝗟𝗼𝘄 𝗣𝗲𝗻𝗲𝘁𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗣𝗿𝗼𝘃𝗶𝗱𝗲𝘀 𝗥𝗼𝗼𝗺 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗚𝗿𝗼𝘄𝘁𝗵 ► Although mobile money is becoming more and more popular, there is still a lot of opportunity for growth due to the prevalence of cash payments in many African countries ► Additionally, point-of-sale payments are still not widely used throughout the continent Now, over to Egypt🇪🇬 Egypt’s relatively young and tech-savvy population (~50 million people under 30 years) presents a significant FinTech opportunity. However, due to low levels of financial inclusion, cash still dominates the country’s payments split. While the merchant payments segment across Africa remains largely underserved, players such as Fawry have capitalized on the opportunity by creating value for merchants through digital payments and cash management services. In 2022, the adoption of a broader range of digital payment methods have accelerated; according to Mastercard’s New Payment Index 2022, 88% of people in Egypt have used at least one emerging payment method in 2022, 35% of which used tappable smartphone mobile wallets while 27% used a digital money transfer app, and the remaining 24% used QR codes. There is also high awareness of Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) installments as a budgeting instrument among users. The Central Bank of Egypt (CBE) said that as of June 2023, the number of e-wallets on the Egyptian market reached 34 million, up 20% Y-o-Y, with the number of monthly transactions reaching 85 million, representing 130% annual growth. I highly recommend downloading and reading the complete "Fintech in Africa" report by Financial Technology Partners / FT Partners for more interesting info and stats: https://lnkd.in/ewdJqv_i Find this helpful? [ 𝗿𝗲𝗽𝗼𝘀𝘁 ] Anything to add about this subject? [ 𝗶𝗻𝘃𝗶𝘁𝗲𝗱 𝘁𝗼 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁 ] Nice story, Marcel. Next! [ 𝗹𝗶𝗸𝗲 ] 

Are One-Time Passwords (OTPs) losing their edge? New avenues like passkeys and biometric authentication are going mainstream in the digital payments industry — with an expectation of a 2-3% point jump in transaction success rates, Pratik Bhakta and Ajay Rag report for The Economic Times (ET). While OTPs have been prone to delivery issues and transaction failures, these new authentication options, being tied to the connected device, lead to higher success rates, the report explains. “We expect biometric-based payment authentication to improve transaction rates,” says Girish Krishnan, payments rewards and merchant services at Amazon Pay. Biometrics authentication also solves the wrong Personal Identification Number (PIN) dilemma for users when using the Unified Payments Interface (UPI), he adds. Technical decline — wrong PIN or backend issues — is the second common reason for UPI transaction failures, data from the National Payments Corporation of India suggests. “The impact (of this move) will likely be most pronounced in card transactions, where a chunk of failures is because of friction points, which biometrics can effectively address,” says Mobikwik’s CEO Bipin Preet Singh. Companies like Visa are amplifying authentication with passkey as the second factor after biometrics. “This reduces dependency on telecom networks and renders phishing or credential replay attacks virtually impossible,” says Ramakrishnan Gopalan, head of products, India & South Asia, Visa. Passkeys also help reduce digital payments processing costs, he adds. Another benefit? Fraud prevention, industry experts share with ET. “With device tokenisation, which is already in place, it’s a much better user experience and also more secure, since an OTP can be shared but this can’t,” Cashfree’s Reeju Datta says. ➡️ How will new authentication methods impact India's digital payments landscape? Share your take in the comments section. Source: The Economic Times: https://lnkd.in/g5dF7hcF ✍: Dipal Desai 📸: Getty Images #digitalpayment

I've built payment systems for years. The dirty secret is that we knew OTPs were broken, but we kept using them anyway. Every time an OTP fails, a merchant business loses money and blames the customer for abandoning their cart. And customers blame the merchant for poor systems. When a customer makes a purchase with a card, the issuing bank is responsible for authenticating - via OTP - whether the card is actually being used by its rightful owner.  So even banks face liability for OTP failures. Money and trust lost, never to return. During my years building payment infrastructure, I've watched businesses optimise every millisecond of their checkout flow, A/B test button colours, reduce form fields, then lose a third of their transactions to a six-digit code that may or may not arrive in time. That's not a minor inconvenience. That's a fundamental breakdown in how digital payments work. But thankfully, now we finally have a landmark regulatory approval to patch this broken system with biometric-integrated 2-factor authentication.  Now you can simply pay with a face scan or a fingerprint. And leading that change is Razorpay with the launch of India's first biometric-ready ACS, within just a few days after RBI's future-ready mandate.  This is huge for a fintech - amidst all the regulatory and compliance storms in fintech, fast execution is the biggest competitive advantage. Kudos to Harshil Mathur, Shashank Kumar and their team.  https://lnkd.in/g34xbKRi? It shows that fixing broken systems is possible when teams prioritise user experience over maintaining legacy infrastructure. My take? Authentication shouldn't be a hurdle. It should be invisible. Card payments are finally built for how we actually shop online: seamless, secure, and here to stay. What's one checkout experience that made you abandon a purchase? I'm curious how often authentication friction shows up in those stories.

Digital wallets: Creating the next generation of super apps There are three types of digital wallet technology, open loop, closed loop, and semi-closed loop. With closed-loop systems, digital wallet users can top up a specific spending account which is linked to a payment source, such as a credit card account. These sources are therefore linked to a specific merchant, meaning they are often used for in-store purchases. They can be used for online payments, however this is less common, as general multi-merchant payment systems are more common for online transactions. Due to this restriction to a single merchant, closed-loop digital wallets are primarily used for specific merchant offers, such as loyalty schemes, and discounts. Semi-closed loop digital wallets allow users to shop using digital wallets and transfer virtual funds to another user who has an account in the wallet network. Merchants need to enter into an agreement with the wallet issuer to accept payments, with interoperability permitted only for full-KYC (Know Your Customer) semi-closed wallets. This type of wallet is not widespread, due to the need for both the sender and the receiver of a payment needing to have the wallet to enable a transaction. This limits the number of potential transfers a user can make. Another issue that presents is the fact that until wallets become widespread, they have limited useability. However, they are unlikely to become widespread until they offer the ability to facilitate more of the potential users’ transactions. As a result, there are very few major semi-closed digital wallets, with primary examples being Paytm and Mobikwik in India. Open-loop digital wallets are where stored cards and funds can be used on any site or merchant accepting the wallet or tapping a mobile phone at an NFC-enabled payment terminal. The impact of this technology can be seen in the fact that many of the largest digital wallets have emerged from eCommerce platforms that had to facilitate payments to multiple merchants, such as PayPal or Alipay. There are reasons that can lead to the popularity of a digital wallet not necessarily leading to merchant acceptance. One is the issue of data ownership, with the ownership being transferred to wallet providers from merchants. This reduces the merchant’s ability to utilise this data to improve its own business. Another potential issue is the charging of transaction fees by the wallet provider. This would be of particular concern for small businesses where higher profit margins must be maintained to ensure the financial viability of the business. There can also be information gaps in the evaluation of potential advantages and costs of accepting digital wallets. It is also worth noting that these advantages and costs will vary regionally, based on consumer expectations, available infrastructure, and regulatory framework. Source Juniper Research #fintech #superapps #digitalwallets

Segmenting the World of Wallets💡 The term digital wallet is applied to a bewildering array of different solutions – from single-function wallets that do nothing more than enable a particular type of payment, to true super apps which bring together a wide range of capabilities and services, like taxi hailing, food delivery, cinema tickets, and even wealth management within one easy customer interface. So, to begin with, it’s worth segmenting the main wallet categories – or archetypes – and the business models that underpin them. The one thing that all wallets have in common is payments. Indeed, a typical definition of a digital wallet is “a storage place of secure information necessary to authenticate a customer and initiate an authorization process to make a transaction to purchase goods and services” There are two main funding mechanisms: 💳 Bank or card-connected wallets  This category includes simple pass-through wallets and more complex staged wallets, which store payment information relating to the customer’s connected payment card or bank account. When a transaction is initiated, funds are moved from the customer’s card or account to the seller. Because these wallets do not store any monetary value and instead act as a conduit to a customer’s pre-existing account details and/or payment credentials, they tend not to be heavily regulated. Providers only need to be licensed as a Money Transmitter, Payment Service Provider (PSP), Payment Institution, etc. 📱 Stored value wallets  This category operates in a similar way to a prepaid payment card, by assigning and maintaining a separate customer account. The customer needs to pre-load the funds in some way before they can transact. These wallets are widely chosen by customers who value a high-quality UI/UX with adjacent value-adding features. Because they store for bona fide funds, these wallets tend to be more heavily regulated. Providers are licensed as an Electronic Money Institution (EMI), Digital Bank, etc. The plethora of wallets operating globally can be categorized into 4 main types of consumer value proposition (CVP): 🔹 Financial inclusion Serve un/under-banked segments, acting as substitutes for bank accounts and enabling basic use cases. Examples include: easypaisa and Tala 🔹 Payment convenience Conveniently replicate a physical wallet, acting as an instrument to drive engagement and loyalty. Examples include: Apple Pay and PayPal 🔹 Digital enablement Serve un/under-banked segments, providing a fuller suite of quasi banking services. Examples include: M-PESA Africa and Paytm 🔹 Lifestyle enablement Act as a lifestyle enabler, with frictionless payment services integrated within key ecosytems (e.g. e-commerce, travel etc.). Examples include: WeChat and Alipay Source: Visa - https://bit.ly/3whgcWo #Innovation #Fintech #Banking #OpenBanking #SuperApps #FinancialServices #Cards #Payments #MobilePayments #DigitalPayments #Wallets #UX #CX