Month: July 2018

In November 2017, PayPal announced it had agreed to sell $5.8 billion in consumer credit receivables to Synchrony Financial, as a part of an expanded relationship between the two companies. That deal has now closed, with Synchrony actually acquiring $7.6 billion in receivables, including PayPal’s U.S. consumer credit portfolio, totaling $6.8 billion at the close, as well as around $0.8 billion in participation interests held by unaffiliated third parties.

PayPal received approximately $6.9 billion in total consideration at the time of closing.

Both companies’ stocks were up this morning in pre-market trading as a result of the news, with PayPal up 0.7% and Synchrony up .06%.

The two companies have been partners since 2004 to offer PayPal-branded credit cards that allow PayPal users to shop online and in stores. As part of the deal to sell the consumer credit receivables business, the companies have extended their credit card program agreement involving the PayPal Extras Mastercard and the PayPal Cashback Mastercard through 2028.

In addition, Synchrony will now be the exclusive issuer of the PayPal Credit online consumer financing program in the U.S, also through 2028.

While the sale means PayPal loses the interest the loans could generate, it was part of the company’s strategy to free up billions in cash it could use in other ways to grow the business, including in ways that could produce higher returns.

It could use the cash to make acquisitions, for example – something it’s already done, in fact, with the $2.2 billion all-cash acquisition of iZettle in May, and the $400 million in cash acquisition of Hyperwallet in June.

“We’re pleased that we’ve completed the sale of our U.S. consumer credit receivables portfolio,” said Dan Schulman, President and CEO of PayPal, in a statement. “Our agreement with Synchrony accomplishes every goal we set out for our asset light strategy. We look forward to working with Synchrony to double down on our innovative consumer credit experiences for our customers and profitably grow the portfolio over time.”

Synchrony will update the financial impact of the transaction in its second quarter 2018 earnings call.

Light, the company behind the wild L16 camera, is building a smartphone equipped with multiple cameras. According to The Washington Post, the company is prototyping a smartphone with five to nine cameras that’s capable of capturing a 64 megapixel shot.

The entire package is not much thicker than an iPhone X, the Post reports. The additional sensors are said to increase the phone’s low-light performance and depth effects and uses internal processing to stick the image together.

This is the logical end-point for Light. The company introduced the $1,950 L16 camera back in 2015 and starting shipping it in 2017. The camera uses sixteen lenses to capture 52 megapixel imagery. The results are impressive especially when the size of the camera is considered. It’s truly pocketable. Yet in the end, consumers want the convenience of a phone with the power of a dedicated camera.

Light is not alone in building a super cameraphone. Camera maker RED is nearing the release of its smartphone that rocks a modular lens system and can be used as a viewfinder for RED’s cinema cameras. Huawei also just released the P21 Pro that uses three lenses to give the user the best possible option for color, monochrome and zoom. Years ago, Nokia played with high megapixel phones, stuffing a 41 MP sensor in the Lumia 1020 and PureView 808.

Unfortunately addtional details about the Light phone are unavailable. It’s unclear when this phone will be released. We reached out to Light for comment and will update this report with its response.

When we last met UDOO the team was building a powerful Raspberry Pi-based DIY board with a bunch of impressive features including more ports and a better processor. Now the team behind the first units has released the UDOO BOLT, a DIY board that can run “AAA games” thanks to a built-in AMD Ryzen Embedded V1202B 3.2 GHz SoC processor and a Radeon Vega 3 graphics card. The system is also Arduino compatible so you can connect it to your robotics and other electronics projects.

The BOLT, when outfitted with a chunk of RAM, is, according to the creators, “almost twice as powerful as a MacBook Pro 13-inch equipped with an Intel i5 and three times more powerful than a Mac Mini.” Because it is nearly a fully-fledged computer you can stick it into a case and treat it like a mini-workstation with a USB keyboard and mouse and HDMI out to a monitor. The BOLT can drive four monitors at once, two via 4K HDMI and two via USB-C. It runs Linux or Windows.

The team plans on shipping in December 2018. The starter kit costs $298 on Kickstarter and includes a power supply and 4GB of RAM. The 8GB unit with SATA and Wireless costs $409.

Is a DIY board with a massive processor and graphics card a bit of overkill? Absolutely. However, because the system is designed for experimentation and on-the-fly design, you can easily repurpose a board like this for a kiosk, store display, or workstation. Because it is so portable you could slap a few of these on school desks and give the kids powerful computers that run nearly everything you can throw at them. Plus it’s pretty cool to be able to play VR games on a machine the size of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

UDOO has been adding onto the traditional Raspberry Pi/Arduino stack for so long that they’ve become experts at making basic boards much more powerful. Given their earlier models could run drones and control multi-legged robots all while running Android, this new product should be a real treat.

PlayStation Vue, welcome to the price hike party. Sony’s over-the-top TV streaming service is the latest to raise the price of its subscription service, which will now cost $5 more per month across all four tiers. That means Vue’s cheapest plan will now cost $44.99 per month instead of $39.99 per month. The most expensive plan will climb to $79.99 per month.

Remember when we thought streaming TV was a cheaper way to watch? No?

Above: PlayStation Vue’s current prices, before the price increases 

The pricing changes arrived on the same day that AT&T raised the cost of its streaming TV service, DirecTV Now, also by $5 per month.

And both changes follow similar moves by competitors, including the $5 per month increase announced by Sling TV only days ago, and the $5 per month increase announced by YouTube TV in March. That made Sling TV’s core package $25 per month and YouTube TV $40 per month.

According to the PlayStation Vue blog post, the decision to raise prices was attributed to the need to “keep pace with rising business costs and enable us to continue offering a better way to watch the best in live sports, entertainment, and news,” it says.

In reality, it’s clear that the whole market is shifting to a slightly higher price point for streaming TV, especially as the services expand their channel lineups to offer more broadcast stations and networks. However, for consumers, it may make these services a tougher sell – many customers signed up to avoid being nickel-and-dimed by cable TV providers with fees and lineups including channels they didn’t watch, and this is starting to feel the same.

In addition, there is a world of content out there on services like Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and Hulu’s on-demand service that’s far more affordable – and without requiring users to record shows with a “cloud” DVR that sometimes doesn’t even let you fast-forward through the commercials. For those who don’t care about sports or tracking particular shows, the streaming TV services may look less compelling as they become more expensive.

In its announcement, Sony vowed to continue to improve its service with the planned addition of more broadcast stations, content, and other feature enhancements.

PlayStation Vue is one of the older services on the market, but is also one of the smallest with an estimated 670,000 subscribers, far behind Sling TV’s 2.21 million or DirecTV Now’s 1.2 million. Likely, consumers believe – because of its name – a PlayStation is required to use it. But the service can be accessed from almost any device, including mobile phones and tablets, the web, Chromecast, Android TV, Apple TV, Fire TV and Roku.

It offers four different channel lineups, all of which include networks like AMC, CNBC, CNN, Discovery, Disney, ESPN, HGTV, Food Network FX, TLC, TNT, and others. In some areas, broadcasts stations including ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC are also available.

The pricing changes will go into effect starting on July 24, 2018, Sony says, and will impact both new and existing subscribers. Current subscribers will see the change reflected on their billing cycle after July 31, 2018. Vue’s standalone channels and add-ons are not affected by the price increases.

Airbnb is testing a new payments feature for hosts, letting them get partially paid out at the time of booking.

This feature isn’t rolling out to everyone just yet, as Airbnb says that this is just a preliminary test to gauge interest. Invited hosts simply opt-in to payout splitting to check out the feature.

Here’s how it works:

Normally, Airbnb hosts are paid 24 hours after their guest’s scheduled check-in time. With the new payouts test, hosts who have been invited and opt in will receive 50 percent of their cash three days after the guest has booked their stay, and the other half will be received 24 hours after check-in time.

For their trouble, Airbnb is taking a 1 percent fee of the booking subtotal for early payouts.

As per usual, hosts can opt out of early payouts at any time by making the change in their Payout Preferences.

If a booking is cancelled after an early payout has been received, the amount will be deducted from the host’s next booking.

This comes on the heels of Airbnb’s announcement in February to add new tiers and types of lodging to the platform, including boutique hotels and B&Bs. Airbnb classifies hosts with more than six listings on the platform as Professional Hosts, and early payouts are one way that Airbnb can help these hosts grow their business.

However, in certain housing-constrained markets like NYC, professional hosts aren’t necessarily welcome. In May, NYC Comptroller Scott Stringer released a report saying that Airbnb’s presence in NYC is driving up the cost of rent for full-time residents. The company and the Comptroller’s office went back and forth over the veracity of the report, but NYC isn’t the only market worried about the folks who make Airbnb their full-time job.

In 2017, the WSJ reported on a study surveying 100 of the largest metro areas in the U.S. which found that a 10 percent increase in Airbnb listings leads to a 0.39 percent increase in rent and a 0.64 percent increase in house prices. That may sound small, but rental prices typically climbed by 2.2% per year without Airbnb, according to one of the survey’s authors. So Airbnb is accelerating the rate at which rental prices rise.

This very argument and the ensuing spats have led Airbnb to cut SF listings (almost in half) following the city’s kick-off of new short term rental laws. And new, stricter laws may be coming to NYC.

Airbnb says that it works with its communities to stay on the right side of the law, but that professionally managed properties are integral in markets where tourism is a huge part of the economy.

“For decades, vacation rentals and professionally managed properties have been the backbone of the economy in vacation destinations like beach and ski towns and we welcome these types of listings in these types of communities,” said an Airbnb spokesperson. “Trials like these are one way we work to support our community. In some places, usually urban destinations, there can be rules around hosting multiple listings. We always want Airbnb to be a positive force in local communities and we make it clear to hosts that they need to follow these rules.”

The payouts test is geared towards professional hosts, but is being spread via an invite basis to both pro hosts and regular hosts.

Trov, the on-demand personal property insurance service, is launching in the U.S., the company announced today.

Trov’s first port of call in the U.S. will be Arizona. The service is already available to customers in the UK and Australia who have signed up to insure items one million times since the company first launched its business.

A spokesperson for the company declined to comment on how many individuals have signed up for the service or how much they’ve spent on the policies.

Munich Re is serving as Trov’s underwriting partner in the U.S. (and the rest of the world) and the company said it would look to roll out across the rest of the country over the course of the year.

As part of the rollout, Trov is introducing a new service that will cut a customer’s premium payment as the object they’re insuring depreciates in value. The insurer makes these adjustments by comparing the item insured with the retail replacement value of a similar, newer item.

In addition to its geographic expansion, the company is also expanding the types of items it’ll insure, from consumer electronics and photography gear to sports and musical equipment.

Trov’s insurance policy is already approved in 44 states and the personal property product is actually the company’s second service for the U.S. market.

Earlier this year the company launched Trov Mobility in partnership with Waymo, the autonomous vehicle subsidiary of Alphabet (which owns Google). That product protects passengers in Waymo’s self-driving car service — which is preparing for launch later this year.

Insurance has been a hot business for startup investors with companies like Cover launching with a similar, on-demand offering already operating in the U.S. Other competitors include companies like Lemonade and Hippo, which both offer homeowners or renters insurance for a modern home — including insurance for electronics, photography equipment and other possessions.

If you’re looking for a way to launch your pre-Series A startup to the world, there’s no better platform for that than TechCrunch’s premier startup-pitch competition, Startup Battlefield. And now, for the first time ever, founders of early-stage startups across the Middle East and North Africa can take advantage of that awesome launch pad.

You read that right. Thanks to our sponsor, Facebook, we’ll be in Beirut on October 3 for TechCrunch Startup Battlefield MENA 2018. Think your startup has what it takes to win it all? Applications are now open, so apply today for your chance to join us in Lebanon at the Beirut Digital District.

Here’s what you need to know about competing in Startup Battlefield MENA. Before we can consider your startup, it must meet certain eligibility requirements. Let’s get these pesky details out of the way and then move on to what Battlefield competitors will experience.

To be considered for Startup Battlefield MENA 2018, you must:

• Have an early-stage company in “launch” stage
• Be headquartered in one of these eligible countries: Algeria, Armenia, Bahrain, Egypt, Georgia, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Oman, Palestinian Territories, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, Turkey, UAE, Yemen
• Have a fully working product/beta reasonably close to, or in, production
• Have received limited press or publicity to date
• Have no known intellectual property conflicts
• Apply by July 17, 2018, at 5 p.m. PST

Now then, let’s get on with the exciting stuff.

TechCrunch editors, highly experienced in all things related to Startup Battlefield, will vet the applications and choose 15 pre-Series A startups to compete. Each competing team receives top-notch pitch coaching from our editors — at no charge — so they’ll be primed and ready come the big day.

Teams have six minutes to pitch their company and present a product demo to the Startup Battlefield judges, who then follow up with hard-hitting questions. All of this nerve-wracking action takes place in front of a live, enthusiastic audience filled with startup fans, investors, tech founders and media outlets. Out of these teams, they’ll select five to go onto present in a finals round.

A new panel of fresh judges will confer on these final five startups and then select one to become “The Middle East and North Africa’s Most Promising Startup,” whose founders will take home a US$25,000 no-equity cash prize. They also win an expense-paid trip for two to compete in the Startup Battlefield at TechCrunch Disrupt in 2019 (assuming the company still qualifies to compete at the time).

Even teams that don’t win the big prize will still benefit from participating. You can’t find better media and investor exposure, and each team automatically becomes part of the Startup Battlefield alumni network — nearly 750 companies that have collectively raised more than $8 billion in funding and produced more than 100 exits. Talk about a networking opportunity.

TechCrunch Startup Battlefield MENA 2018 takes place on October 3, at the Beirut Digital District Nassif Yazigi, Lebanon. The July 17 deadline’s approaching, and it’ll be here before you know it, so apply today. We can’t wait to see you there!

Airwallex, a three-year-old fintech startup focused on international payments for SMEs and businesses, is putting itself on the map after it raised an $80 million Series B round.

Based of out of Melbourne, but with six offices in Asia and other parts of the world, Airwallex’s new funding round is the second largest financing deal for an Australian startup in history. The round was led by existing investors Tencent, the $500 billion Chinese internet giant, and Sequoia China. Other participants included China’s Hillhouse, Horizons Ventures — the fund from Hong Kong’s richest man Li Ka-Shing — Indonesia-based Central Capital Ventura (BCA) and Australia’s Square Peg, a firm from Paul Bassat who took recruitment firm Seek to IPO and is one of Australia’s highest-profile founders.

The financing takes Airwallex to $102 million raised. Tencent led a $13 million Series A in May 2017, while Square Peg added $6 million more via a Series A+ in December. Mastercard is also a backer; the finance giant uses Airwallex to handle its “Send” product while Tencent uses the service to power an overseas remittance service for its WeChat app.

Airwallex handles cross-border transactions for companies that do business in multiple countries using international currencies. So it’s not unlike a Transferwise-style service for SMEs that lack the capital to develop a sophisticated (and expensive) international banking system of their own.

The service uses wholesale FX rates to route overseas payments back to a client’s domestic bank and is capable of processing “thousands of transactions per second,” according to the company. A use case example might include helping a China-based seller return money earned in the U.S. or Europe via Amazon or other e-commerce services, or route sales revenue back directly from their own website.

Airwallex CEO Jack Zhang (far right) on stage at TechCrunch Shenzhen in 2017

China is a key market for Airwallex — which was started by four Australian-Chinese founders — as well as the wider Asian region, and in particular Australia, Hong Kong and Southeast Asia. With this new capital, Airwallex co-founder and CEO Jack Zhang said the company will increase its focus on Hong Kong and Southeast Asia, whilst also extending its business in Europe (where it has a London-based office) and pushing into North America.

Product R&D is shared across Melbourne and Shanghai, while Hong Kong accounts for business development, compliance and more, Zhang explained. However, Airwallex’s locations in London and San Francisco are likely to account for most of the upcoming headcount growth planned following this funding. Right now, Airwallex has around 100 staff, according to Zhang.

The company is also aiming to expand its product range, too.

The firm is in the process of applying for a virtual banking license in Hong Kong, a third-party payment license in mainland China, and a cross-border Chinese yuan license. One goal, Zhang revealed, is to offer working capital loans to SMEs to help them to scale their businesses to the next level. Airwallex is working with an undisclosed partner to underwrite deals in the future. Zhang explained that the company sees a gap in the market since banks don’t have access to critical data on clients for loan assessments.

More generally, he’s bullish for the future despite Brexit and the ongoing trade war between the U.S. and China.

“The trade war gives the Chinese yuan a lot of vitality, and we’ve seen more demand in the market. China’s belt road initiative has really taken off, too, and we’re seeing the impact in many many of our payment corridors,” he explained. “Business has been booming, especially as traditional offline SMEs start to move online and go from domestic to global.”

“We want to be the backbone to support these new opportunities for businesses,” Zhang added.

Our TC Sessions: Blockchain event takes place in Zug, Switzerland, this coming Friday (July 6), but we are also excited to host the TechCrunch Ethereum Meetup the very next day.

We are putting on the Meetup with support from the Ethereum Foundation and other members of the Ethereum community, and now we can reveal the agenda for the follow-on event — which will run from 1-6 PM.

All tickets for the TC Sessions: Blockchain event are sold out, but we do have an allocation remaining for the TechCrunch Ethereum Meetup. However, attendees of the TC Sessions: Blockchain event who wish to attend the Ethereum Meetup will need to purchase a separate pass.

Tickets for the meetup can be purchased here — they are priced at 50 CHF plus VAT, that’s around $50 at current rates.

TechCrunch Ethereum Meetup, July 7

Agenda

1:00 PM — 1:05 PM
Opening Remarks
Ned Desmond (TechCrunch) and Aya Miyaguchi (Ethereum Foundation)

1:05 PM — 1:30 PM
Keynote
Vitalik Buterin (Ethereum Foundation)

1:30 PM — 1:55 PM
A Governance Discussion
Vlad Zamfir (Ethereum Foundation)

1:55 PM — 2:15 PM
Intro to Cryptoeconomics
Karl Floersch (Ethereum Foundation)

2:15 PM — 2:45 PM
Crypto-finance: Exchanges & DExs
Vansa Chatikavanij (OmiseGo), Aya Miyaguchi (Ethereum Foundation), Balaji Srinivasan (Coinbase) and Changpeng Zhao (Binance)

2:45 PM — 3:15 PM
Community and Funding
Joe Lubin (ConsenSys), Aya Miyaguchi (Ethereum Foundation), Cassandra Shi (Ethereum Community Fund), Vivek Singh (Gitcoin) and Jutta Steiner (Parity Technologies)

3:15 PM — 3:35 PM
BREAK

3:35 PM — 4:05 PM
DApp Panel: What does success look like?
Rune Christensen (MakerDAO), Mona El Isa (MelonPort), Roham Gharegozlou (Axiom Zen), Jarrad Hope (Status), Aleksandra Skrzypczak (Golem) and Jinglan Wang (Blockchain Education Network)

4:05 PM — 4:30 PM
Research and Sharding
Justin Drake (Ethereum Foundation)

4:30 PM — 4:55 PM
What’s at Stake? Decentralizing Consensus
David Knott (OmiseGo)

4:55 PM — 5:25 PM
Tackling Scalability
Vitalik Buterin (Ethereum Foundation), Karl Floersch (Ethereum Foundation),  Heiko Hees (Raiden), Liam Horne (L4) and Hsiao Wei Liam (Ethereum Foundation)

5:25 PM — 6:00 PM
Proof of Stake
Adrian Brink (Tendermint), Vitalik Buterin (Ethereum Foundation), Peter Czaban (Web3 Foundation), David Knott (OmiseGo) and Vlad Zamfir (Ethereum Foundation)

6:00 PM
FINISH

MeetFrank, aka a ‘secret’ recruitment app that uses machine learning plus a chatbot wrapper to take the strain out of passive job hunting and talent-to-vacancy matching, has closed a €1 million (~$1.1M) seed funding round to fuel market expansion in Europe.

Hummingbird VC, Karma VC, and Change Ventures are the investors.

The Estonian startup was only founded last September but says it has ~125,000 active users in its first markets: Estonia, Finland, Sweden, Latvia, Lithuania, plus its most recent market addition, Germany, an expansion this seed has financed.

Around 2,000 companies are using the app to try to attract talent. In Germany employers on board with MeetFrank include Daimler, Eon, Delivery Hero, SumUp, Blinkist, High Mobility and MyTaxi.

“The average company profile we have at the moment is a start-up/scale-up company that develops their product in-house,” says co-founder Kaarel Holm.

“At the moment we are mainly focused on technology related companies — so positions you can find from average start-up or a scale-up,” he tells TechCrunch. “Around 50% of the position are engineering and other 50% is marketing, sales, customer support, legal, data science, product/project management etc.”

He names TransferWise, Taxify, Testlio, Smartly and High-Mobility as other early customers.

Here’s how MeetFrank works on the talent side: The person downloads the app and goes through a relatively quick onboarding chat with ‘Frank’ (the emoji-loving chatbot) where they are asked to specify their skills and experience — choosing from pre-set lists, rather than needing to type — plus to state their current job title and salary.

So while MeetFrank’s target is passive job seekers, these people do still need to actively download the app and input some data.

Hence the chatbot having a strong emoji + GIF game to convince talent that a little upfront effort will go a long way…

The bot also asks what would convince them to switch jobs — offering options to choose from such as a higher salary, more flexible or remote working working, relocation, a startup culture and so on.

The anonymous aspect comes in because there’s no requirement for users to provide their real name or any other identifying personal information in order to get matches with potential positions.

Talent is therefore assessed on its merits, at least at this stage of the job hunt.

And while people are asked up front to specify their current salary, which you might think puts them at a potential disadvantage during any pay negotiations, Holm says the aim of MeetFrank’s platform is also to encourage greater openness from employers and steer away from traditional pay negotiation situations.

“We use salary as one datapoint for matching and we try to make sure that offers we make to the user are match their preferences. In lot of cases the salary is the main deal breaker and we would like to present the information as early as possible,” he explains. “Companies on the other side of the marketplace disclose their salary for the users as well — in that case we can avoid the negotiating disadvantage.”

“The policy of MeetFrank platform is that companies have to be extremely open about the position they are trying to fill — this also includes the salary information,” he adds.

Employers are not at all anonymous on the platform. On the contrary, they have to write detailed job advertisements — including levels of pay for advertised roles.

And a pay range will be disclosed to applicants that the app deems potentially suitable — i.e. after its matching process — by displaying a percentage of how much more they could earn above their current salary.

So employers need to be comfortable showing their hand to people who may just be curious what’s out there.

For employers, MeetFrank takes over the ad placement process — using its machine learning to algorithmically match potential candidates to positions. So its proposition is automatic pre-selection across “thousands” of potential job applicants.

And also the possibility of reaching talent which might otherwise not realize that company is hiring. Or think about working for a certain brand.

The app is mainly focused on a “passive talent pool” — aka “currently or recently employed talent that is open for offers”, as Holm puts it. So it’s certainly cherrypicking easier types of jobs to match and fill.

“Entry level jobs is bit out of reach for us at the moment but we will launch a beta project with couple of universities in the autumn this year,” he adds when we ask if the app is open to matching people who don’t currently have a job or are looking for a first job.

Holm says MeetFrank is currently showing 50% MRR growth. It’s already out of the pre-revenue phase — so is charging employers to advertise (the service remains free for the talent side).

The main monetization model is a daily subscription, with employers being charged on a pay-as-you-go basis. Holm says the price per day for employers is €9, and MeetFrank lets them cancel at any time — with no minimum time commitment required to sign up.

“We believe that the new-aged classifieds will only monetize on that kind of on-demand model and should only pay when they find us useful. This also lowers the barrier of entry to most of the start-ups and allows them to vet the market and get visibility with low budgets,” he adds.