Apple has landed a big new partner for Apple Pay in the U.S. after Costco began accepting the mobile payment service across 750 stores. The retailer plans to include support at its gas stations, but that isn’t yet complete. The rollout — first reported by MacRumors — follows limited trials at selected Costco outlets, including […]
View More Costco now supports Apple Pay across all of its US storesCategory: online payments
SoftBank’s Vision Fund to help Chinese online insurance giant ZhongAn go international
SoftBank’s Vision Fund is backing Chinese online insurance giant ZhongAn through its latest investment, which could take the company — which has struggled for stability following a monster IPO last year — into international markets. The Vision Fund announced today it has made an undisclosed investment in ZhongAn International, the global arm of the five-year-old company created by $200 […]
View More SoftBank’s Vision Fund to help Chinese online insurance giant ZhongAn go internationalFast-growing Chinese media startup ByteDance is raising $2.5B-$3B more
Fast-growing Chinese media startup ByteDance is looking to raise as much as $3 billion to continue growth for its empire of mobile-based entertainment apps, which include news aggregator Toutiao and video platform Tiktok. The Beijing-based startup is in early-stage talks with investors to raise $2.5 billion to $3 billion, according to a source with knowledge […]
View More Fast-growing Chinese media startup ByteDance is raising $2.5B-$3B moreSoftBank’s move into new services continues with plan for a payment service in Japan
SoftBank is best known in Japan as a mobile operator but the company, which is behind the near-$100 billion Vision Fund, is increasingly getting into other types of consumer services in its homeland. The Japanese firm last month launched a parking app, it is in the midst of rolling out a taxi-hailing service in conjunction […]
View More SoftBank’s move into new services continues with plan for a payment service in JapanEBay paid $573M to buy Japanese e-commerce platform Qoo10, filing reveals
EBay is a very distant second behind Amazon when it comes to e-commerce sales in the U.S., but abroad — and in particular in Asia — it is willing to invest to grow its footprint in a targeted way. In February, eBay paid a total of $573 million to acquire Qoo10, a Japanese sales platform, […]
View More EBay paid $573M to buy Japanese e-commerce platform Qoo10, filing revealsA new $124 million for Brazil’s Movile proves that investors still see promise in Latin American tech
Brazil’s macroeconomic picture may be gloomy, but technology investors still see hope in the nation’s burgeoning technology sector — and a recent $124 million financing for the mobile conglomerate Movile is the latest proof that that the pace of investment isn’t slowing down. Brazil was already the hottest spot for technology investment throughout Latin America […]
View More A new $124 million for Brazil’s Movile proves that investors still see promise in Latin American techOpera adds a crypto wallet to its mobile browser
The Opera Android browser will soon be able to hold your cryptocurrencies. The system, now in beta, lets you store crypto and ERC20 tokens in your browser, send and receive crypto on the fly, and secures your wallet with your phone’s biometric security or passcode. You can sign up to try the beta here. The […]
View More Opera adds a crypto wallet to its mobile browserAspire Capital offers fast finance for SMEs in Southeast Asia
Southeast Asia’s digital economy is tipped to grow more than six-fold to reach more than $200 billion per year, according to a report co-authored by Google, with e-commerce accounting for the dominant share. The emergence of e-commerce platforms like Alibaba’s Lazada and U.S.-listed Shopee have enabled online entrepreneurship across the region, but still financial support for […]
View More Aspire Capital offers fast finance for SMEs in Southeast AsiaNaspers is in talks to invest in Southeast Asia’s Carousell
Naspers, the South Africa-based firm that famously backed Chinese giant Tencent in its infancy, is in talks to invest in Singapore-based startup Carousell, according to two sources with knowledge of discussions. Carousell offers a mobile app that combines listings with peer-to-peer selling across Southeast Asia, Taiwan and Hong Kong. That makes it well-aligned with Naspers’ portfolio, […]
View More Naspers is in talks to invest in Southeast Asia’s CarousellEquity podcast: More funding for scooters, Cruise gets a boost, and Chinese IPOs
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. This week was fun. Back in the studio, Connie Loizos, Matthew Lynley, your humble servant, and Ramneek Gupta, managing director of Citi Ventures was with us to provide the venture perspective. As you can probably guess, we got […]
View More Equity podcast: More funding for scooters, Cruise gets a boost, and Chinese IPOsPayPal and Singapore’s Temasek invest $125M in Indian payment startup Pine Labs
Fresh from agreeing its largest acquisition to date with a deal to buy European payment firm iZettle for $2.2 billion, PayPal is on the investment hunt once again after it backed India’s Pine Labs with a $125 million round. The financing jointly comes from PayPal and Temasek, the sovereign investment fund from the Singaporean government […]
View More PayPal and Singapore’s Temasek invest $125M in Indian payment startup Pine Labs