Silicon Valley Funding News - Week of November 30, 2020. Gatik Raised $25M Series A

Most people in China pay using their mobile phones to scan QR codes — a type of barcode system. In China, payment methods using QR codes have replaced cash and cards in just five years.

China’s mobile payment business is dominated by Alipay whose market share expanded in each quarterly period in 2019 to reach 55.1% in the fourth quarter, boosted by the November 11 Singles’ Day online shopping festival.  Tencent’s mobile apps WeChat Pay and QQ wallet, also known as Tenpay, held a combined 38.9% share in the fourth quarter, while Ping An Group’s Yiqianbao was in third with 1.5%



If a business can get a printout of a QR code, it can get paid by apps. They don’t need special machines like businesses do to accept credit cards or many mobile payments like Apple Pay, which are essentially digital wallets of bank cards, while Alipay and WeChat are more pure digital payments.
Many predicted that 2020 would be the year that such payments would finally see broad U.S. adoption. In May, PayPal announced that QR code payments would be available through its app in 28 markets, making it much easier for 25 million PayPal merchants to accept QR payments without additional hardware costs.

In September, UberEats launched contactless ordering and QR code payments to eliminate the need for paper bills and signatures. While more merchants are adapting their infrastructure to enable QR payments, it’s still far from widespread.

To compare the difference between the US vs China fintech industry, my partner Chris and I had a fun conversation with Wharton Fintech club. Check out our full interview >

• Spotify -> https://spoti.fi/35Ha2xR
• Apple -> https://apple.co/2Tuy1un
• Soundcloud -> https://bit.ly/3e2hQ13

This week a total of 4 startups raised $37.5M in funding, 2 M&As:

• $2.1M goes to 1 Enterprise startup
• $2.4M goes to 1 FinTech startup
• $8M goes to 1 Video startup
• $25M goes to 1 Logistics startup