Month: August 2018

After a delay, the phone phone was scheduled to arrive this month. And then it got delayed again until October/November. If and when RED’s Hydrogen One actually does arrive, however, odds are pretty good you’re not going actually buy the thing. After all, $1,295 is nearly half an Aibo. For most of us, these first official full pictures are the closest we’ll get to RED’s first smartphone, so enjoy them, I guess.

Say what you will about the excessiveness of it all (and there’s plenty to say on that front), but the high-end camera maker is certainly shaking things up here. In addition to the 5.7 inch “holographic display” and the fact that it can double as a viewfinder for one of the company’s upcoming cameras, the design definitely sets the handset apart. 

RED’s bucking the nearly industry-wide trend toward minimalistic design language with all sorts of chrome. The sides, as CNET notes, are serrated like a knife — ostensibly to make the thing easier to hold, but mostly just to make it look cool. It’s the kind of phone design that screams, “please ask me what kind of phone I’m using, strange person on the street.” Then prepare yourself for a five minute explanation of what “holographic display” means.

RED will start to seed a developers model of the phone in a small batch of users at the end of the month. Preorder customers will start receiving the phone on October 9, and it will arriving in carrier stores (AT&T, Telcel, Verizon) on November 2.

PayPal is revamping its mobile app. Again. In an effort to keep pace with newcomers like the bank-owned Zelle, PayPal says its new app will focus on making it easier to use its core features – that is, sending and requesting money. That means many of the app’s homescreen buttons – like Offers, Donate, Order Ahead and others are being tucked away underneath a new “More” menu to eliminate some of the clutter.

The PayPal homescreen had gotten a little too busy with all the extra features it has been promoting, which aren’t central to the PayPal experience. For example, it threw in a button suggesting “Invest with Acorns,” after taking a stake in the mobile investing app that rounds up purchases and automatically invests the extra change on your behalf. It has been pushing its Order Ahead functionality for years, even though no one thinks to launch a payments app when they’re hungry. Now these buttons no longer get top billing and valuable homescreen space.

Above: PayPal’s app today, before the update

However, even though PayPal is removing a lot of these extras from the homescreen, it’s not actually giving its “Send” and “Request” buttons more room. In fact, they’re getting a little less.

Today, those buttons are in the center of the homescreen, hosted in a big, greenish-blue banner. The updated app relocates them to a bottom bar.

However, it reverts the app’s color scheme to PayPals’ more familiar dark blue-and-white branding, so the relocated buttons are actually easier to see.

The homescreen instead dedicates most of its room to a new personalized notifications section.

Here, users will see alerts about money they’ve received or payment requests from others in big, blue cards you can swipe through horizontally. Below this, is a strip of profile icons and names of those you’ve recently paid – the theory being that PayPal is often used among the same set of family, friends or businesses. This makes it easier to make your next payment to one of your “regulars.”

Beneath this strip, your PayPal balance is displayed, while other notifications and settings are accessed through small buttons at the top of the screen, as before.

The overall design feels more in tune with PayPal’s brand than the last update. Though the prior big revamp, which was over two years ago, modernized things up a bit, it did so with too-light icons, small fonts and odd, off-brand color choices.

PayPal says the new app is rolling out now on Android to select markets, including Australia and Italy. It will then roll out to the U.S. and other markets worldwide, followed by a release on iOS.

T-Mobile has confirmed hackers breached its systems.

The cell giant, currently merging with Sprint, said in a statement that hackers customer stole names, billing zip codes, phone numbers, email addresses, account numbers, and account type — such as if an account was prepaid or postpaid — in what the company described as an “unauthorized capture of data.”

No customer financial or billing data was compromised, the company said.

It’s not known when the breach occurred but the unauthorized access was detected and shut down on Monday.

T-Mobile did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but Motherboard reported that a spokesperson said about 3 percent of the company’s 77 million users were affected — some 2 million accounts.

T-Mobile began notifying customers of the breach Friday morning with a text message sent to affected accounts. But that drew ire from some, who said the shortlink in the text message looked like phishing.

So @TMobile have been sending out a breach alert (a legit one) using a short URL and a number of people think it’s #phishing.

Why? BECAUSE IT LOOKS LIKE PHISHING! https://t.co/5fZJxaKszd

— ?????? ????? (@olihough86) August 24, 2018

This is the latest in a string of security incidents at T-Mobile in the past year.

In May, a security researcher found a security weakness in a T-Mobile subdomain used by staff, which returned customer data without requiring a password. It was similar to a vulnerability found in another T-Mobile system reported by Motherboard some months prior, which exposed customers’ email addresses, their billing account numbers, and the phone’s IMSI numbers.

T-Mobile and other carriers earlier this year were also forced to stop sharing customer location data with third-parties, after Democratic senator Ron Wyden criticized the cell giants for the practice.

 

T-Mobile has confirmed hackers breached its systems.

The cell giant, currently merging with Sprint, said in a statement that hackers customer stole names, billing zip codes, phone numbers, email addresses, account numbers, and account type — such as if an account was prepaid or postpaid — in what the company described as an “unauthorized capture of data.”

No customer financial or billing data was compromised, the company said.

It’s not known when the breach occurred but the unauthorized access was detected and shut down on Monday.

T-Mobile did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but Motherboard reported that a spokesperson said about 3 percent of the company’s 77 million users were affected — some 2 million accounts.

T-Mobile began notifying customers of the breach Friday morning with a text message sent to affected accounts. But that drew ire from some, who said the shortlink in the text message looked like phishing.

So @TMobile have been sending out a breach alert (a legit one) using a short URL and a number of people think it’s #phishing.

Why? BECAUSE IT LOOKS LIKE PHISHING! https://t.co/5fZJxaKszd

— ?????? ????? (@olihough86) August 24, 2018

This is the latest in a string of security incidents at T-Mobile in the past year.

In May, a security researcher found a security weakness in a T-Mobile subdomain used by staff, which returned customer data without requiring a password. It was similar to a vulnerability found in another T-Mobile system reported by Motherboard some months prior, which exposed customers’ email addresses, their billing account numbers, and the phone’s IMSI numbers.

T-Mobile and other carriers earlier this year were also forced to stop sharing customer location data with third-parties, after Democratic senator Ron Wyden criticized the cell giants for the practice.

 

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.

This week we had a full house which was super great. TechCrunch’s Connie Loizos and Sarah Buhr held down the fort in San Francisco along with our guest, Susan Mac Cormac, a partner at Morrison Foerster where she works on some of the most interesting deals in the private capital space. I dialed in from the home office in Providence.

It was good that we had eight hands on deck as there was more than enough news to go around. We started with the recent executive changes at Zoox, an autonomous car company that came up on the show a few weeks back when it raised $500 million.

The firm is now down its CEO after he was ousted after the round. In the founder-friendly era that we find ourselves in at the moment, this is High Drama.

Next up was the #breakingnews concerning Eventbrite, which filed to go public just before we recorded. My initial notes are here, but we’re still far from knowing where the unicorn will price. That means it’s hard to say much today, aside from the fact that the company appears to be in more than rude enough health for a flotation.

And then, the megarounds. There were three:

• Slack is richer and more valuable than ever after raising over $400 million at a valuation of more than $7 billion. The news surprised precisely no one, but it’s again amazing to see how the enterprise chat app and budding productivity platform can raise as much as it wants, whenever it wants. The new round, of course, came after Slack put $250 million in its pockets last year. (Here’s some quick math on its new valuation, just for fun.)
• One Medical picked up $350 million of its own, though the company doesn’t get all the money. It’s $220 million for One Medical itself, and $130 million for extant shareholders in the premium medical service.
• Getaround raised $300 million led by SoftBank (which also invested in Slack, of course). SoftBank’s 2017 and 2018 investment cadence are already the stuff of legend. How the firm will do when returns are tallied isn’t settled, though some early wagers are bearing fruit as we noted on the show. Getaround faces competition from rival peer-to-peer car sharing service Turo, which also raised this year.

All that and we managed 1.7 jokes and 2.3 puns.

We’ll be back in a week, and don’t forget that we are coming to you live at Disrupt in about two week’s time. Stay cool!

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.

This week we had a full house which was super great. TechCrunch’s Connie Loizos and Sarah Buhr held down the fort in San Francisco along with our guest, Susan Mac Cormac, a partner at Morrison Foerster where she works on some of the most interesting deals in the private capital space. I dialed in from the home office in Providence.

It was good that we had eight hands on deck as there was more than enough news to go around. We started with the recent executive changes at Zoox, an autonomous car company that came up on the show a few weeks back when it raised $500 million.

The firm is now down its CEO after he was ousted after the round. In the founder-friendly era that we find ourselves in at the moment, this is High Drama.

Next up was the #breakingnews concerning Eventbrite, which filed to go public just before we recorded. My initial notes are here, but we’re still far from knowing where the unicorn will price. That means it’s hard to say much today, aside from the fact that the company appears to be in more than rude enough health for a flotation.

And then, the megarounds. There were three:

• Slack is richer and more valuable than ever after raising over $400 million at a valuation of more than $7 billion. The news surprised precisely no one, but it’s again amazing to see how the enterprise chat app and budding productivity platform can raise as much as it wants, whenever it wants. The new round, of course, came after Slack put $250 million in its pockets last year. (Here’s some quick math on its new valuation, just for fun.)
• One Medical picked up $350 million of its own, though the company doesn’t get all the money. It’s $220 million for One Medical itself, and $130 million for extant shareholders in the premium medical service.
• Getaround raised $300 million led by SoftBank (which also invested in Slack, of course). SoftBank’s 2017 and 2018 investment cadence are already the stuff of legend. How the firm will do when returns are tallied isn’t settled, though some early wagers are bearing fruit as we noted on the show. Getaround faces competition from rival peer-to-peer car sharing service Turo, which also raised this year.

All that and we managed 1.7 jokes and 2.3 puns.

We’ll be back in a week, and don’t forget that we are coming to you live at Disrupt in about two week’s time. Stay cool!

A month after announcing its $55 million Series C, Japanese fintech startup Paidy has snagged a strategic investment from payment giant Visa.

Paidy didn’t disclose how much Visa put into its business, which has raised over $80 million to date, but it did say that it will work with the credit card giant to develop “new digital payment experiences” in Japan.

For those in need of a refresher, the Paidy service is aimed at making it easier to shop online in Japan, where credit card penetration is high but many consumers still opt for cash on delivery.

The startup asserts that cash accounts for some 40 percent of the country’s 16.5 trillion yen ($150 billion) annual e-commerce spend because credit card payments are cumbersome and cash is just more simple. It’s certainly true that whipping out your card and keying in digits is a pain, while Japanese systems layer on other security checks that make the process more tedious.

Paidy’s answer is an account tied to a customer’s phone number or email address that sits as a payment option at e-commerce checkouts. Payment itself requires entry of a confirmation code, and that’s it. Added to the simplicity, Paidy also offers various payback options to effectively give users the features of a credit card.

The company claims there are 1.5 million active Paidy accounts and it is aiming to grow that figure to 11 million by 2020. The main rocket for reaching that ambitious target is onboarding large retailers who integrate the service into their online sales process. That’s a tactic that has worked well for Paidy so far, but it’s also clearly an area where Visa’s network can be massively beneficial, especially if they are joint products on offer.

With Paidy operating like a virtual credit card system that rivals plastic cards, Visa has seen enough to warrant coming on board the project, according to Chris Clark, Visa’s Asia Pacific regional president.

“We have been following Paidy’s progress and the enhanced shopping experience they provide at the time of purchase. In Japan there is enormous opportunity to bring consumers more options to pay, whether all at once or in instalments, especially when shopping across multiple channels,” Clark said in a statement.

Paidy counts Itochu Corporation, Goldman Sachs, Eight Roads — the investment arm of Fidelity — SBI Holdings, SBI’s FinTech Business Innovation LPS, Arbor Ventures and SIG Asia as existing investors.

Alibaba’s Lazada is introducing new credit options for SMEs as it aims to boost the number of retailers in Southeast Asia, the region with 650 million consumers.

The firm announced a partnership with Finaxar that will see the fintech offers its services to Lazada sellers in Singapore. There are plans to expand the arrangement to cover other parts of Southeast Asia in the future.

Two-year-old Finaxar offers a range of financial products in Southeast Asia but now it has teamed up with the e-commerce company to provide a credit line option for Lazada sellers, as opposed to more structured financing such as loans. The credit line can last for up to six months, with up to SG$5,000-SG$1 million ($3,650-$730,000) on offer, the companies said.

The service is priced at 0.7-1.5 percent every 30 days and at a rate that is pro-rated. Finaxar said all fees are shown transparently in the service to avoid the unwanted surprise of hidden add-ons.

Finaxar founders Vihang Patel and Sian Tan told TechCrunch that a credit line gives companies the flexibility to dip into additional cash when needed, for example during peak season to buy more product, and also pay parts back when significant payment volumes come in, without the commitment of more formalized lending.

The financial assessment, they explained, comes via a one-click integration with Lazada seller dashboard. When clicked, that sends the merchant to the Finaxar where they are asked to provide information; a credit assessment is delivered in under five minutes.

Patel said Finaxar is currently assessing expansion to two undisclosed markets, which he said would include launches in collaboration with Lazada and potentially as soon as before the end of this year. That’s pretty crucial for the partnership to make an impact for Lazada, since most of its 300,000 retailers are located outside of Singapore.

Alibaba has pumped billions into Lazada since it took a majority investment in 2016. Most recently it injected $2 billion in March in a move which also saw Alibaba install Lucy Peng, one of its original 12 founders and the former Chairwoman of Lazada and ex-executive chairman of Ant Financial, as Lazada CEO.

Lazada is in a dogfight with Shopee, the e-commerce firm of U.S.-listed Sea, to become the dominant e-commerce platform in Southeast Asia. Sea recently pumped $500 million of newly-raised capital into Shopee, while this week its latest earnings revealed that the service’s quarterly revenue has grown to $58.8 million. Alibaba doesn’t reveal comparable figures for Lazada.

Lazada’s collaboration with Finaxar comes after Aspire Capital, an SME financing startup founded by an ex-Lazada executive, announced it had raised $9 million.

The Russian weapons manufacturer Kalahsnikov, best known for making the AK-47 machine gun, has unveiled a fleet of electric and hybrid cars, buggies and motorcycles this week — including an electric vehicle that the company says will rival Tesla.

While it’s a noble goal to take competitive aim at the world’s most famous electric vehicle brand, the retro-styled concept car, dubbed the CV-1, bears a closer resemblance to another, more infamous car from the soviet era… the Trabant.

That’s a vehicle, by the way, whose Fahrvergnügen is best illustrated by the Conan O’Brien’s demonstration below.

The CV-1 is based on the retro-IZH-21252 model known as the “Combi” and is a test bed for Kalashnikov’s electric drive train, which the company said was developed in-house. The Combi has a cruising range of 350 kilometers and can go from 0 to 100 kilometers in roughly 6 seconds, so says the company.

Batteries for the new electric vehicle from Kalashnikov have a capacity of 90 kilowatts per hour.

At the same gun show where the new EV was unveiled, Kalashnikov also showed off a hybrid buggy and an electric motorcycle to complete its hattrick.

The four-seat buggy can purportedly achieve speeds of up to 100 kilometers-per-hour and has separate electric engines for its front and rear wheels, along with hydraulic shock absorbers. According to Russian news agency RT, the vehicles are a relatively recent addition to the Russian military’s mobility arsenal.

Kalashnikov may have Tesla in its sights, but the car company likely has more to fear from U.S. regulators than it does from a Russian competitor. At this point, the weapons manufacturer might find more of a market for another machine it debuted at the Russian military trade show — its golden, metal-plated killer robot (!!).

Here’s a selection of images below, courtesy of Kalashnikov, of the new electric vehicle.

[gallery ids="1698553,1698555,1698556,1698557,1698558,1698559,1698554"]

With assistance from Jon Russell

Let’s talk a bit about security.

Most internet users around the world are pretty crap at it, but there are basic tools that companies have, and users can enable, to make their accounts, and lives, a little bit more hacker-proof.

One of these — two-factor authentication — just got a big boost from Epic Games, the maker of what is currently The Most Popular Game In The World: Fortnite.

Epic is already getting a ton of great press for what amounts to very little effort.

The company is giving users a new emote (the victory dance you’ve seen emulated in airports, playgrounds and parks by kids and tweens around the world) to anyone who turns on two-factor authentication. It’s one small (dance) step for Epic, but one giant leap for securing their users’ accounts.

The thing is any big company could do this (looking at you Microsoft, Apple, Alphabet and any other company with a huge user base).

Apparently the perk of not getting hacked isn’t enough for most users, but if you give anyone the equivalent of a free dance, they’ll likely flock to turn on the feature.

It’s not that two-factor authentication is a panacea for all security woes, but it does make life harder for hackers. Two-factor authentication works on codes, basically tokens, that are either sent via text or through an over-the-air authenticator (OTA). Text messaging is a pretty crap way to secure things, because the codes can be intercepted, but OTAs — like Google Authenticator or Authy — are sent via https (pretty much bulletproof, but requiring an app to use).

So using SMS-based two-factor authentication is better than nothing, but it’s not Fort Knox (however, these days, even Fort Knox probably isn’t Fort Knox when it comes to security).

Still, anything that makes things harder for crimes of opportunity can help ease the security burden for companies large and small, and the consumers and customers that love them (or at least are forced to pay and use them).

I’m not sure what form the perk could or should take. Maybe it’s the promise of a free e-book or a free download or an opportunity to have a live chat with the celebrity, influencer or athlete of a user’s choice. Whatever it is, there’re clearly something that businesses could do to encourage greater adoption.

Self-preservation isn’t cutting it. Maybe an emote will do the trick.