Fintech

Worldpay is diving deep into crypto payments

The FIS unit is already a big player in helping consumers buy crypto with debit and credit cards. Worldpay’s next move could help replace plastic cards with crypto wallets.

Nabil Manji, head of Crypto and Emerging Business at Worldpay

Worldpay plans to let crypto-native businesses such as crypto exchanges accept fiat payments via Visa or Mastercard and convert the proceeds to stablecoins, said Nabil Manji, the company's head of Crypto and Emerging Business.

Photo: Luke MacGregor/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Worldpay is already processing billions of dollars of crypto purchases. Now the card-payments giant is diving deeper into crypto.

The unit of FIS has a network of more than 1 million merchants that it could use to mainstream crypto payments — a sector that’s been dominated to date by a handful of crypto-native companies. And it works with four large U.S. crypto exchanges: Binance, Coinbase, Crypto.com, OKEx.

It’s planning to leverage those relationships to move beyond allowing consumers to buy crypto with credit or debit cards, its primary crypto business at present. With a big bet on stablecoins, Worldpay is hoping to mainstream crypto payments with two new products it’s readying for release.

First, it plans to let crypto-native businesses such as crypto exchanges accept fiat payments via Visa or Mastercard and convert the proceeds to stablecoins, said Nabil Manji, head of Crypto and Emerging Business at Worldpay. This product, especially useful for companies that use stablecoins as their reserve currency and prefer not to touch fiat, is expected to launch by the end of June.

The second product, “pay by crypto,” would let any Worldpay merchant accept stablecoins and other cryptocurrencies as payment directly from consumers, online or in person. The merchant would have the option to immediately convert the payment to fiat if it wants. The product is still being developed but could be available later this year or early next year. Instead of paying with a card, consumers could use a crypto wallet — which is a notable move coming from a payment processor that built its business on cards.

This pay-by-crypto product would potentially provide consumers with many more merchants where they could spend their crypto, since Worldpay has more than 1 million merchants worldwide.

The company got its start in crypto in late 2018, building the tools and expertise it needed to process cryptocurrency transactions at scale over time, Manji said. Worldpay did about $15 billion in debit and credit card purchases of crypto in 2021.

Though cards are a big part of Worldpay’s business, it does offer a number of alternative payment methods, such as Alipay, PayPal and WeChat Pay, as well as direct bank transfers in a number of countries.

Worldpay hasn’t said what it will charge merchants yet. While they could bypass Visa's and Mastercard’s interchange rates and avoid chargebacks, crypto transactions carry their own fees, and merchants would have to figure out processes for refunds and disputes.

The move of a major card processor into crypto could magnify the threat crypto poses to Visa's and Mastercard’s payment rails. At the same time, the card networks are making their own moves to get into crypto. Mastercard has a deal with Coinbase on NFTs, as well as another with Bakkt to enable crypto-based debit and credit cards. Visa has cards with Coinbase and BlockFi among others and is testing settling in stablecoins.

It’s not clear if consumers will want to spend their crypto. Cards offer many advantages, such as airline miles, chargebacks and fraud protection and ease of use. Even those who are crypto-savvy are reluctant to spend crypto that fluctuates in value, since that could mean triggering taxes or foregoing a big run-up in price.

Worldpay’s emphasis on stablecoins could help address this, since those tokens are designed to hold a steady value against fiat currencies. And it’s positioning itself to be ready if and when consumers decide they’re willing to pay with crypto.

Fintech

Judge Zia Faruqui is trying to teach you crypto, one ‘SNL’ reference at a time

His decisions on major cryptocurrency cases have quoted "The Big Lebowski," "SNL," and "Dr. Strangelove." That’s because he wants you — yes, you — to read them.

The ways Zia Faruqui (right) has weighed on cases that have come before him can give lawyers clues as to what legal frameworks will pass muster.

Photo: Carolyn Van Houten/The Washington Post via Getty Images

“Cryptocurrency and related software analytics tools are ‘The wave of the future, Dude. One hundred percent electronic.’”

That’s not a quote from "The Big Lebowski" — at least, not directly. It’s a quote from a Washington, D.C., district court memorandum opinion on the role cryptocurrency analytics tools can play in government investigations. The author is Magistrate Judge Zia Faruqui.

Keep ReadingShow less
Veronica Irwin

Veronica Irwin (@vronirwin) is a San Francisco-based reporter at Protocol covering fintech. Previously she was at the San Francisco Examiner, covering tech from a hyper-local angle. Before that, her byline was featured in SF Weekly, The Nation, Techworker, Ms. Magazine and The Frisc.

The financial technology transformation is driving competition, creating consumer choice, and shaping the future of finance. Hear from seven fintech leaders who are reshaping the future of finance, and join the inaugural Financial Technology Association Fintech Summit to learn more.

Keep ReadingShow less
FTA
The Financial Technology Association (FTA) represents industry leaders shaping the future of finance. We champion the power of technology-centered financial services and advocate for the modernization of financial regulation to support inclusion and responsible innovation.
Enterprise

AWS CEO: The cloud isn’t just about technology

As AWS preps for its annual re:Invent conference, Adam Selipsky talks product strategy, support for hybrid environments, and the value of the cloud in uncertain economic times.

Photo: Noah Berger/Getty Images for Amazon Web Services

AWS is gearing up for re:Invent, its annual cloud computing conference where announcements this year are expected to focus on its end-to-end data strategy and delivering new industry-specific services.

It will be the second re:Invent with CEO Adam Selipsky as leader of the industry’s largest cloud provider after his return last year to AWS from data visualization company Tableau Software.

Keep ReadingShow less
Donna Goodison

Donna Goodison (@dgoodison) is Protocol's senior reporter focusing on enterprise infrastructure technology, from the 'Big 3' cloud computing providers to data centers. She previously covered the public cloud at CRN after 15 years as a business reporter for the Boston Herald. Based in Massachusetts, she also has worked as a Boston Globe freelancer, business reporter at the Boston Business Journal and real estate reporter at Banker & Tradesman after toiling at weekly newspapers.

Image: Protocol

We launched Protocol in February 2020 to cover the evolving power center of tech. It is with deep sadness that just under three years later, we are winding down the publication.

As of today, we will not publish any more stories. All of our newsletters, apart from our flagship, Source Code, will no longer be sent. Source Code will be published and sent for the next few weeks, but it will also close down in December.

Keep ReadingShow less
Bennett Richardson

Bennett Richardson ( @bennettrich) is the president of Protocol. Prior to joining Protocol in 2019, Bennett was executive director of global strategic partnerships at POLITICO, where he led strategic growth efforts including POLITICO's European expansion in Brussels and POLITICO's creative agency POLITICO Focus during his six years with the company. Prior to POLITICO, Bennett was co-founder and CMO of Hinge, the mobile dating company recently acquired by Match Group. Bennett began his career in digital and social brand marketing working with major brands across tech, energy, and health care at leading marketing and communications agencies including Edelman and GMMB. Bennett is originally from Portland, Maine, and received his bachelor's degree from Colgate University.

Enterprise

Why large enterprises struggle to find suitable platforms for MLops

As companies expand their use of AI beyond running just a few machine learning models, and as larger enterprises go from deploying hundreds of models to thousands and even millions of models, ML practitioners say that they have yet to find what they need from prepackaged MLops systems.

As companies expand their use of AI beyond running just a few machine learning models, ML practitioners say that they have yet to find what they need from prepackaged MLops systems.

Photo: artpartner-images via Getty Images

On any given day, Lily AI runs hundreds of machine learning models using computer vision and natural language processing that are customized for its retail and ecommerce clients to make website product recommendations, forecast demand, and plan merchandising. But this spring when the company was in the market for a machine learning operations platform to manage its expanding model roster, it wasn’t easy to find a suitable off-the-shelf system that could handle such a large number of models in deployment while also meeting other criteria.

Some MLops platforms are not well-suited for maintaining even more than 10 machine learning models when it comes to keeping track of data, navigating their user interfaces, or reporting capabilities, Matthew Nokleby, machine learning manager for Lily AI’s product intelligence team, told Protocol earlier this year. “The duct tape starts to show,” he said.

Keep ReadingShow less
Kate Kaye

Kate Kaye is an award-winning multimedia reporter digging deep and telling print, digital and audio stories. She covers AI and data for Protocol. Her reporting on AI and tech ethics issues has been published in OneZero, Fast Company, MIT Technology Review, CityLab, Ad Age and Digiday and heard on NPR. Kate is the creator of RedTailMedia.org and is the author of "Campaign '08: A Turning Point for Digital Media," a book about how the 2008 presidential campaigns used digital media and data.

Latest Stories
Bulletins