SoftBank’s Vision Fund is taking a bet on China’s auto market after it agreed to pour $1.5 billion into online car trading group Chehaoduo, which literally means “many cars” in Chinese. The Beijing-based company operates two main sites — peer-to-peer online marketplace Guazi for used vehicles, and Maodou, which retails new sedans through direct sales […]
View More SoftBank’s Vision Fund invests $1.5B in Chinese second-hand car startup ChehaoduoCategory: peer to peer
GoTrendier raises $3.5 million to take on Spanish-language fashion marketplaces
Thanks to environmentally conscious young buyers, throwaway culture is dying not only in the U.S., but also in Latin America — and startups are poised to jump in with services to help people recycle used clothing. GoTrendier, a peer-to-peer fashion marketplace operative in Mexico and Colombia, has raised $3.5 million USD to do just that. […]
View More GoTrendier raises $3.5 million to take on Spanish-language fashion marketplacesKorean lending startup PeopleFund raises $11M led by chat app Kakao’s payment unit
South Korean peer-to-peer lending startup PeopleFund is in the money itself after it raised an $11 million Series B funding round that was led by Kakao Pay, the fintech division of Kakao, Korea’s top messaging firm. The deal comes as the country’s P2P marketplace continues to grow with a competitive field of players. A newer arrival […]
View More Korean lending startup PeopleFund raises $11M led by chat app Kakao’s payment unitLending platform Funding Circle raises £300M in London IPO, valuing it at £1.5B, as investor interest cools
Another fintech startup has made the leap into publicly-traded company: Funding Circle, the peer-to-peer lending platform for small and medium businesses that was originally founded in the UK, opened for trading today on the London Stock Exchange. It was a positive, if not stratospheric, debut. Trading under FNIG.L, its stock opened at 460 pence, only […]
View More Lending platform Funding Circle raises £300M in London IPO, valuing it at £1.5B, as investor interest coolsMeet the startups in the latest Alchemist class
Alchemist is the Valley’s premiere enterprise accelerator and every season they feature a group of promising startups. They are also trying something new this year: they’re putting a reserve button next to each company, allowing angels to express their interest in investing immediately. It’s a clever addition to the demo day model. You can watch […]
View More Meet the startups in the latest Alchemist classGoogle is supercharging its Tez payment service in India ahead of global expansion
Google launched its Tez paymen app in India a year ago, and now the company is giving the service major push into retail as it prepares to expand it to other parts of Asia and beyond. The app itself is being rebranded to Google Pay — bringing it in line with Google’s global payment service, […]
View More Google is supercharging its Tez payment service in India ahead of global expansionUber and Lyft race way ahead of car-sharing services
/https%3A%2F%2Fblueprint-api-production.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fuploads%2Fcard%2Fimage%2F832915%2Fd5e6b095-d620-4cb5-bb52-30c3b395cabf.jpg)
Hailing a Lyft or Uber has become so normal those companies pretty much have become verbs, kind of like “googling.” But no one is asking, “Wanna Getaround to dinner?” It’s clear car-sharing hasn’t become as popular as ride-hailing, and it may stay that way.
Car-sharing, which involves renting someone else’s car or borrowing a car from a fleet, has some major roadblocks. It’s inherently difficult to get people who already have cars to take someone else’s vehicle. For car-less folks, renting a car means driving yourself — and parking, not drinking, staying focused, following traffic rules, and more. Read more…
More about Uber, Lyft, Ride Hailing, Peer To Peer, and Car Sharing
View More Uber and Lyft race way ahead of car-sharing servicesSagewise pitches a service to verify claims and arbitrate disputes over blockchain transactions
Sometimes smart contracts can be pretty dumb. All of the benefits of a cryptographically secured, publicly verified, anonymized transaction system can be erased by errant code, malicious actors, or poorly defined parameters of an executable agreement. Hoping to beat back the tide of bad contracts, bad code and bad actors, Sagewise, a new Los Angeles-based startup […]
View More Sagewise pitches a service to verify claims and arbitrate disputes over blockchain transactionsThe dramatic rise and fall of online P2P lending in China
Editor’s note: This post originally appeared on TechNode, an editorial partner of TechCrunch based in China. When Emily Zhang was interning with a peer-to-peer (P2P) lending firm in the Summer of 2016, her main task was to carry out research on other P2P lending firms. She found the rates of return tempting and some underlying […]
View More The dramatic rise and fall of online P2P lending in ChinaSnapchat shuts down peer-to-peer payment service Snapcash
The days of Snapchat’s peer-to-peer payment service Snapcash are numbered.
Snapchat will officially end its mobile payment service on Aug. 30, according to buried code within the Android app uncovered by TechCrunch.
SEE ALSO: Snapchat and Amazo…
The quantum meltdown of encryption
Shlomi Dolev Contributor Shlomi Dolev is the Chair Professor and founder of the Computer Science department of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. He is the author of Self-Stabilization. Shlomi also is a cybersecurity entrepreneur and the co-founder and chief scientist of Secret Double Octopus. More posts by this contributor The quantum computing apocalypse is imminent […]
View More The quantum meltdown of encryptionGoogle Pay now lets you pay friends and store plane tickets
Welcome to 2018, Google Pay.
The payment platform announced today that people can finally pay friends with the app (lol), save concert tickets and boarding passes (yay!), and manage their payment information in one spot (wow).
These updates were anno…