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Less than a week ago, Finextra's News section ran a press release by Emu who promised a Holy Grail alternative to Square and iZettle - no dongles, and (almost) no charges (Emu's Web site does prominently display "0% per sale"). That news article mentioned "no charges for the first £1,000 of sales and a flat fee of £4.99 a month after this". Emu's T&C state that the merchant's annual turnover is not to exceed US$100K (let's say £60K). A merchant fee of £5 per month on the basis of a monthly turnover of £5,000 translates to... 0.1% of sale amount.
Anyone even remotely familiar with the interchange fee knows that Visa/MasterCard charge much more than that. Hence, Emu would be losing money on every transaction.
Now, Google can afford a loss-making business model when it comes to payments. Does Emu (operated by emu Retail Network Ltd) has similarly deep pockets or high-volume advertising arm to leverage transaction flow of payments? Or is it the case of "Emu is a flightless bird"? Or are they a new stealth start-up similar to the likes of Tappmo (which is yet to soar)?
Can anyone at Finextra cast a "reliably informed" light on this enigma?..
This content is provided by an external author without editing by Finextra. It expresses the views and opinions of the author.
Ritesh Jain Founder at Infynit / Former COO HSBC
08 January
Steve Haley Director of Market Development and Partnerships at Mojaloop Foundation
07 January
Nkahiseng Ralepeli VP of Product: Digital Assets at Absa Bank, CIB.
Sergiy Fitsak Managing Director, Fintech Expert at Softjourn
06 January
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