Year: 2018

A UK government backed drone innovation project that’s exploring how unmanned aerial vehicles could benefit cities — including for use-cases such as medical delivery, traffic incident response, fire response and construction and regeneration — has reported early learnings from the first phase of the project.

Five city regions are being used as drone test-beds as part of Nesta’s Flying High Challenge — namely London, the West Midlands, Southampton, Preston and Bradford.

While five socially beneficial use-cases for drone technology have been analyzed as part of the project so far, including considering technical, social and economic implications of the tech.

The project has been ongoing since December.

Nesta, the innovation-focused charity behind the project and the report, wants the UK to become a global leader in shaping drone systems that place people’s needs first, and writes in the report that: “Cities must shape the future of drones: Drones must not shape the future of cities.”

In the report it outlines some of the challenges facing urban implementations of drone technology and also makes some policy recommendations.

It also says that socially beneficial use-cases have come out as an early winner over of cities to the potential of the tech — over and above “commercial or speculative” applications such as drone delivery or for carrying people in flying taxis.

The five use-cases explored thus far via the project are:

• Medical delivery within London — a drone delivery network for carrying urgent medical products between NHS facilities, which would routinely carry products such as pathology samples, blood products and equipment over relatively short distances between hospitals in a network
• Traffic incident response in the West Midlands — responding to traffic incidents in the West Midlands to support the emergency services prior to their arrival and while they are on-site, allowing them to allocate the right resources and respond more effectively
• Fire response in Bradford — emergency response drones for West Yorkshire Fire and Rescue service. Drones would provide high-quality information to support emergency call handlers and fire ground commanders, arriving on the scene faster than is currently possible and helping staff plan an appropriate response for the seriousness of the incident
• Construction and regeneration in Preston — drone services supporting construction work for urban projects. This would involve routine use of drones prior to and during construction, in order to survey sites and gather real-time information on the progress of works
• Medical delivery across the Solent — linking Southampton across the Solent to the Isle of Wight using a delivery drone. Drones could carry light payloads of up to a few kilos over distances of around 20 miles, with medical deliveries of products being a key benefit

Flagging up technical and regulatory challenges to scaling the use of drones beyond a few interesting experiments, Nest writes: “In complex environments, flight beyond the operator’s visual line of sight, autonomy and precision flight are key, as is the development of an unmanned traffic management (UTM) system to safely manage airspace. In isolation these are close to being solved — but making these work at large scale in a complex urban environment is not.”

“While there is demand for all of the use cases that were investigated, the economics of the different use cases vary: Some bring clear cost savings; others bring broader social benefits. Alongside technological development, regulation needs to evolve to allow these use cases to operate. And infrastructure like communications networks and UTM systems will need to be built,” it adds.

The report also emphasizes the importance of public confidence, writing that: “Cities are excited about the possibilities that drones can bring, particularly in terms of critical public services, but are also wary of tech-led buzz that can gloss over concerns of privacy, safety and nuisance. Cities want to seize the opportunity behind drones but do it in a way that responds to what their citizens demand.”

And the charity makes an urgent call for the public to be brought into discussions about the future of drones.

“So far the general public has played very little role,” it warns. “There is support for the use of drones for public benefit such as for the emergency services. In the first instance, the focus on drone development should be on publicly beneficial use cases.”

Giving the combined (and intertwined) complexity of regulatory, technical and infrastructure challenges standing in the way of developing viable drone service implementations, Nesta is also recommending the creation of testbeds in which drone services can be developed with the “facilities and regulatory approvals to support them”.

“Regulation will also need to change: Routine granting of permission must be possible, blanket prohibitions in some types of airspace must be relaxed, and an automated system of permissions — linked to an unmanned traffic management system — needs to be put in place for all but the most challenging uses. And we will need a learning system to share progress on regulation and governance of the technology, within the UK and beyond, for instance with Eurocontrol,” it adds.

“Finally, the UK will need to invest in infrastructure, whether this is done by the public or private sector, to develop the communications and UTM infrastructure required for widespread drone operation.”

In conclusion Nesta argues there is “clear evidence that drones are an opportunity for the UK” — pointing to the “hundreds” of companies already operating in the sector; and to UK universities with research strengths in the area; as well as suggesting public authorities could save money or provide “new and better services thanks to drones”.

At the same time it warns that UK policy responses to drones are lagging those of “leading countries” — suggesting the country could squander the chance to properly develop some early promise.

“The US, EU, China, Switzerland and Singapore in particular have taken bigger steps towards reforming regulations, creating testbeds and supporting businesses with innovative ideas. The prize, if we get this right, is that we shape this new technology for good — and that Britain gets its share of the economic spoils.”

You can read the full report here.

Ola, Uber’s chief rival in India, is planning to go public potentially as soon as in three years time, according to its CEO.

Co-founder and chief executive officer Bhavish Aggarwal told the audience at an event in Bengaluru last week that seven-year-old Ola is poised to become a cash flow positive business — having recently hit operational profitability — and that’s a key driver towards a listing. That’s despite intense rumors of a tie-up with Uber following a spree of global exits from the U.S. firm, most recently in Southeast Asia where it struck a deal with local player Grab.

“The ambition for both me and [fellow co-founder] Ankiti [Bhati] has always been to build a sustainable, long-term independent institution,” Aggarwal said. “In that direction, we are definitely going to IPO. Our goal is to aim for an IPO in about three to four years. We are on that path, our focus on building a sustainable business model [and] a profitable business builds into that ambition.”

Notably, he didn’t specify where a listing might take place for Ola, which was most recently valued at $7 billion following an investment last year.

Doubling down on his belief in building a sustainable and independent business, Aggarwal made a sly dig at Uber in suggesting that the U.S. company is preoccupied with short-term strategies in India.

“The Indian market, which I believe many internet companies don’t fully appreciate, especially the ones who are not Indian, if you give consumers a lot of free things they’ll take it. But the focus has to be to build a long-term sustainable business model… consumers are not price-conscience in India, consumers are value-conscious,” he said.

Despite that, he did acknowledge the role of a strong rival in building Ola’s business over the years. There’s no clear metric to judge which company is ahead, but with its coverage of more than 100 cities and towns in India, Ola’s numbers are higher than Uber, which has stuck to tier-one and -two locations. Although, anecdotally, the gap is slim in urban areas of the country.

“Competition makes you stronger, we don’t fear competition,” Aggarwal claimed. “We have a much stronger business, strong market position and we’re getting to a place where we can list the company.”

A deal with Uber has been consistently mooted as part of Uber’s global exits that seemed aimed at cleaning up its balance sheet in preparation for a public listing of its own, which CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said is likely in 2019. Then, of course, there’s the SoftBank factor. The Japanese firm is a shareholder in both companies, as was the case with Grab, where it is believed to have pushed for a deal with Uber.

While there have been talks, sources on both sides have confirmed to TechCrunch, Aggarwal said, somewhat tongue-in-cheek, that “so far nobody’s made an [acquisition] offer I can’t refuse.”

Uber, on its side, has said it has no interest in more minority deals — which see it leave a market in exchange for equity in the local rival — but that could be gamesmanship or a hint that, in the event of a deal in India, Uber intends to make Ola the minority partner.

Is Ola genuinely aiming for an IPO in three to four years, or are these tactics aimed at dissuading Uber, SoftBank and others from forcing a union with its big rival? That’s unclear. Aggarwal reiterated that Softbank is merely an investor, one of many Ola investors, but the questions are sure to continue either way. We’re all just going to have to get used to the speculation.

Latin America faces a unique opportunity to develop the next generation of tech startup stars. Market conditions such as Internet and mobile Internet user growth outpace the US. And a GDP of 9.5T is bigger than India and almost the same as China. Also, banks and industrial complexes still dominate the market, leaving plenty of space to conquer the future. We could argue that these are obvious assumptions and that not much has changed. But something has changed.

VC funding records in the region

We’re currently going through the maturity phase of the Internet technological revolution. According to Carlota Perez’ work, this is the moment when core markets become saturated and the set of technologies and financial capital moves towards the periphery: towards the less advanced countries.

The UK government has set out a package of measures it’s hoping will futureproof domestic networks and boost international competitiveness by supporting a nationwide rollout of full fiber broadband and 5G mobile technology.

The Future Telecoms Infrastructure Review, published today, follows the announcement of a market review last year as part of the government’s Industrial Strategy as it seeks to chart a technology-enabled course for growth and competitiveness.

Yet, at the same time, the UK seriously lags several European competitors on the fiber broadband front — so the strategy is also intended to try to reboot current poor performance.

The government says its telecoms plan emphasizes greater consumer choice and initiatives to promote quicker rollout — and an eventual full switch over — from copper to fiber.

It wants full fibre broadband to reach 15 million premises (up from the ’10M over the next decade’ set out in the Conservative party manifesto) by 2025, and also 5G mobile network coverage to reach the majority of the population.

By 2033, it wants full fiber broadband coverage to reach across all of the UK.

Currently the UK only has 4% full fiber connections, which compares dismally to 71% in Spain and 89% in Portugal. While France has around 28% — which the government notes is “increasing quickly”.

Included in the government’s strategy is public investment in full fiber for rural areas; and new legislation to guarantee full fiber connections in new build developments; as well as a series of regulatory reforms intended to drive investment and competition — which it says will be tailored to different local market conditions.

It’s also planning for an industry-led switch over from copper to full fiber — to avoid businesses being saddled with the expense and burden of running copper and fiber networks in parallel.

There’s no fixed timing for this, as the government says it will depend on the pace of fiber rollouts and take-up, but it suggests it’s “realistic to assume that switchover could happen in the majority of the country by 2030”.

To boost competition to drive commercial fiber rollouts, the government is proposing regulatory reform to allow for “unrestricted access” to BT Openreach ducts and poles — i.e. the company’s own physical infrastructure where fiber can be laid — for both residential and business broadband use, including for essential mobile infrastructure.

It also wants to open up other avenues for laying broadband fiber, saying other existing infrastructure (including pipes and sewers) owned by other utilities such as power, gas and water, should be “easy to access, and available for both fixed and mobile use”. 

And it says it will shortly publish consultations on the proposed legislative changes to streamline wayleaves and mandate fiber connections in new builds.

Another key recommendation in the review, given that the expense of digs to lay fiber remains one of the biggest barriers to broadband upgrades, is for a new nationwide framework aimed at reducing the costs, time and disruption caused by street-works by standardising the approach across the country.

With its planned regulatory tweaks, the government reckons that market competition will be able to deliver full fiber networks across the majority of the UK (~80%) — leaving around ~20% which it’s expecting will require “bespoke solutions to ensure rollout of networks”. And for around half of that fifth it also expects taxpayer funding will be needed to deliver a fiber/5G upgrade.

It estimates that nationwide availability of ‘full fiber’ is likely to require additional (public) funding of around £3BN to £5BN to support commercial investment in the final ~10% of areas that would otherwise be overlooked — stressing that these “often rural areas must not be forced to wait until the rest of the country has connectivity before they can access gigabit-capable networks”.

So it’s planning to pursue an “outside-in” strategy, allowing network competition to serves commercially viable areas while laying down government support investment in parallel on what it describes as “the most difficult to reach areas”.

“We have already identified around £200M within the existing Superfast broadband programme that can further the delivery of full fibre networks immediately,” it notes on that.

Although it’s not clear at this stage how the government intends to fund the full proposals for a taxpayer-funded broadband bill running to multiple billions.

On the mobile connectivity front, it’s proposing increased access to spectrum for “innovative 5G services”, and says it will allow mobile network operators to make far greater use of government buildings to boost coverage across the UK.

“We should consider whether more flexible, shared spectrum models can maintain network competition between MNOs while also increasing access to spectrum to support new investment models, spurring innovation in industrial internet of things, wireless automation and robotics, and improving rural coverage,” it writes on that.

Over the longer term it says is expecting to see a more converged telecoms sector — so it’s leaving itself some ‘last mile’ wiggle room on the ‘full fiber’ push, for example by pointing out that: “Fixed fibre networks and 5G are complementary technologies, and 5G will require dense fibre networks. In some places, 5G may provide a more cost-effective way of providing ultra-fast connectivity to homes and businesses.”

“We want everyone in the UK to benefit from world-class connectivity no matter where they live, work or travel,” said the new Secretary of State for digital, culture, media and sport, Jeremy Wright, commenting on the review in a statement, and dubbing it a “radical new blueprint for the future of telecommunications in this country”.

“[The strategy] will increase competition and investment in full fiber broadband, create more commercial opportunities and make it easier and cheaper to roll out infrastructure for 5G,” he added.

The UK’s incumbent telco, BT, which owns and operates the country’s largest broadband network, has long pursued the opposite strategy to the one the government is here pursuing: i.e. by seeking to eke out its own ex-monopoly copper infrastructure, such as by applying technologies that speed up fiber to the cabinet technology, instead of making the major financial commitment to invest in substantially expanding full fiber to the home coverage (and thereby futureproof national network infrastructure).

For years competitors (and, indeed, frustrated consumers) have also accused the company of foot-dragging on providing access to its network — thereby undermining other commercial players’ ability to fund and build out next-gen network coverage.

Last year BT agreed with telecoms watchdog Ofcom to legally separate its network division Openreach — around a decade after a functional separation has been imposed by the regulator. Albeit, it’s still not the full structural separation some have called for.

“It is too early to determine whether legal separation will be sufficient to deliver positive changes on investment in full fibre infrastructure,” writes the government in its review, adding that it will “closely monitor legal separation, including Ofcom’s reports on the effectiveness of the new arrangements”.

“The Government will consider all additional measures if BT Group fails to deliver its commitments and regulatory obligations, and if Openreach does not deliver on its purpose of investing in ways that respond to the needs of its downstream customers,” it adds.

One aspect of the strategy the government is not trumpeting quite so loudly in its PR around the announcement is an intent to promote what it describes as “stable and long-term regulation” as part of its strategy to drive increased competition and unlock business investments.

On this it writes that the overarching strategic priority to “promote efficient competition and investment in world-class digital networks” should be “prioritised over interventions to further reduce retail prices in the near term, recognising these longer-term benefits”.

In the review it suggests moving to longer, five year review periods, for instance — saying this “could provide greater regulatory stability and promote investment”. It also writes that it wants Ofcom to publish guidance that “clearly sets out the approach and information it will use in determining a ‘fair bet’ return”.

It’s therefore possible that UK consumers could end up paying twice over to help fund national fiber broadband infrastructure upgrades; i.e. not just via direct subsidies to fund rural rollouts but also, potentially, via higher broadband prices too. Albeit, the government says that in its view “the interests of consumers are safeguarded as fiber markets become more competitive”.

Though in less commercially attractive areas, where there could be a greater risk of price inflation, the government’s small print does include the recognition that regulatory interventions — such as price controls — may indeed be required. Though of course any such controls would only come in after consumers had been being stung…

“For areas where there is actual or prospective effective competition between networks, Government would not anticipate the need for regulation,” it writes. “For other areas, we would expect the regulatory model for to evolve over time as networks are established. If market power emerges, regulated access (including price controls) may be needed to address competition concerns. These detailed regulatory decisions will be for Ofcom to take.”

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 with China’s Didi Chuxing and now it is developing a mobile payment service, too.

Bloomberg reports that Softbank is working with India’s Paytm — a startup that counts long-time SoftBank ally Alibaba as its main investor — to introduce a payment service before the end of this year. A source close to the companies confirmed the plans to TechCrunch, adding that an official announcement is expected very soon.

The plan is to start out with payments before moving into financial services, such as loans and insurance. The Japan launch would then be a springboard to expand to other global markets in the future, according to the Bloomberg report. Although it isn’t clear how the service would compete with offerings from Ant Financial, the Alibaba fintech affiliate that has local operations spread across numerous countries in Asia.

Paytm was the first mobile payment service to reach meaningful scale in India. Today it claims over 100 million registered users, thanks to a surge in adoption following the Indian government’s 2016 demonetization campaign which removed 500 INR and 1,000 INR notes in a bid to crack down on illicit usage and counterfeit cash.

The company recently claimed to have hit an annual run rate of five billion transactions, and reached $50 million in gross transaction value over the past twelve months, but Paytm has plenty of competitors waiting in the wings. Google’s Tez app has now passed 50 million downloads, while rivals such as MobiKwik hope Paytm’s focus on services like shopping will present a window to out-perform it on payments.

Japan will be Paytm’s first major international expansion — it has a modest service in Canada, where it has an R&D team — but even then there’s plenty of others in the market. Those include the likes of Line, Japan’s top chat app, and e-commerce giant Rakuten.

The model of building vertical market-specific accelerators is now well known, but in the UK, Founders Factory, which has emerged from Lastminute founder Brent Hoberman’s stable of projects, is poised to take it to another level.

Today it launches Founders Factory Retail, a joint venture with UK retail giant Marks & Spencer’s, focused on investing and growing start-ups. M&S will become Founders Factory’s exclusive UK & European partner, and invest in a number of start-ups, sourced through Founders Factory’s network, which will expose the retail business to new “technologies, business models and entrepreneurial thinking”.

M&S famously admitted it had a ‘burning platform’ recently, so it’s to be hoped this startup DNA will re-energise the company. M&S will become the majority shareholder within the JV.

Steve Rowe, Chief Executive said: “Partnering with Founders Factory as their exclusive retail partner gives M&S access to a global network of start-ups and entrepreneurs which will provide disruptive thinking and questioning to the way we work at a time of critical transformation within the business. Founders Factory have a great track record in creating successful businesses and by investing in new innovative technologies and products we hope to change the way we work and operate.”

Brent Hoberman, Co-Founder and Executive Chairman, Founders Factory: “We are excited to partner with M&S as our exclusive retail investor in the UK and combine the company’s scale and experience to support early-stage founders. After over 60 investments in the last two years we have seen the huge potential of combining startup innovation with corporate scale and expertise, and so we are excited by this new chapter in a sector that is changing rapidly through technology.”

Started by Brent Hoberman and Henry Lane Fox, Founders Factory has received investment from L’Oreal, easyJet, Guardian Media Group, Aviva, Holtzbrinck, CSC.

The ideas is that as well as accelerating companies it also incubates them, thus creating, from scratch, around 13 new startups every year. It also invests in 35 startups every year, investing cash, six months of support and provides commercial opportunities with their investors. To date, it’s backed and built over 60 companies and is aiming for 220 within five years.

In an interview with TechCrunch Hoberman added: “This deal with M&S is a new model for us. We expect to expand to more sectors in this way. M&S is an iconic British brand so it’s a really good next step for us. We think we’re succeeding because of the sheer nature of the ambition we have for the project. Just funding an accelerator would not be as successful as this combination of best ideas from the cross-fertilization of sectors, big corporate partners and the network of experience we can tap into.”

“This is a bespoke program with a full-time team of 60 operational people to help. It’s a very different model from the likes of Techstars or Startup Bootcamp, for instance. It has full-time employees and multiple corporates. We have seven corporate backers with shared equity, then on top have WPP’s Wunderman agency. I think this is a globally innovative model. We didn’t copy this from the US.”

WARR Hyperloop has done it again. The engineering students from the Technical University of Munich won SpaceX’s hyperloop pod competition on Sunday for the third time.

This year, WARR Hyperloop pulled off the win when their self-propelled pod reached a top speed of more than 290 miles per hour, a new record for the competition. The pod traveled 50% faster than WARR Hyperloop’s winning entry in the previous SpaceX Hyperloop Pod Competition held in August 2017. In the first competition, held in January 2017, WARR’s winning pod traveled just 58 mph. That’s progress.

The event was hosted, as it has since the beginning, by SpaceX and its founder Elon Musk at the company’s Hawthorne, California headquarters. The Boring Company, another Musk business pursuit, provided additional support this year.

The competition this year illustrates the evolution and advancements in hyperloop technology. For instance, in the previous two Hyperloop Pod competitions, student teams had the option of accelerating
their pod down the test track with support from a SpaceX-made vehicle called a “pusher.” This year, all pods had to be self-propelled. SpaceX also added another sub-competition focused on levitation technology. In this challenge the pods had to maintain alignment with the test track while hovering above it for an extended period of time.

WARR Hyperloop was one of three teams to make it to the finals—a 1.25-kilometer Hyperloop test track adjacent to SpaceX’s headquarters. Delft University from the Netherlands and EPFLoop of Switzerland also made it to the finals. The competition accepted 20 student teams from more than 40 countries to showcase their pods at SpaceX’s third Hyperloop Pod Competition.

Student teams had to demonstrate their pod’s ability to pass key tests and safety inspections. Each team’s pod also had to undergo testing inside a 26-foot long vacuum chamber and along a 150-foot long external test track built by SpaceX.

SpaceX isn’t working on or connected to any of the startups currently pursuing Hyperloop technology. But Musk is still involved in supporting the idea of a system of reduced-pressure tubes that would theoretically hurtle people and packages long distances at super speeds that he proposed in a nearly 60-page public white paper back in 2013. 

Festicket, the U.K.-based online booking platform for festivals, has integrated with Spotify to help you discover music festivals based on the music you listen to.

Dubbed “Festival Finder,” the new feature requires you to connect your Spotify account to Festicket using Spotify login. After doing so, the platform pulls in data on your favourite artists and displays 10 upcoming festivals that it deems will match your music tastes.

“The Festival Finder benefits from Festicket’s extensive database of festivals, which, when paired with artist intelligence from Spotify, can be used to make a selection that is personalised just for you,” explains the startup.

Specifically, Festival Finder is designed to help Festicket solve the discoverability problem. That is, you know what music you like, but you may not be familiar with all of the various music festivals in operation around the world, and even if you are, it can be difficult to track their respective lineups.

Of course, once you discover a new or upcoming festival that takes your fancy, Festicket lets you book tickets and things like accommodation and travel. It also offers a waiting list feature so you’ll be alerted when tickets become available for festivals that are taking place up to a year away. The company’s broader pitch is to make attending a festival as easy as booking a package holiday.

“We now offer over 1,000 festivals on the platform, and we know first-hand how overwhelming it can be when trying to pick out the one to go to,” says Zack Sabban, CEO and co-founder of Festicket. “Our Festival Finder solves that problem by presenting a tailored list of festivals that best match your listening habits, including some under the radar gems that could soon become your new favourite festival destination”.

Meanwhile, Festicket says that its use of Spotify artist data is just the start. Longer term, the startup wants to transform its festival catalogue and expertise into an “intelligent engine” for festival discovery — and in doing so, presumably push more festival bookings across the line.

The Detroit Auto Show—otherwise known as the North American International Auto Show—is moving its annual event out of the cold confines of January and into the warm embrace of June starting in 2020. The move aims to reverse an exodus of automakers that have opted to showcase their upcoming products at tech-forward shows like CES held in Las Vegas.

Organizers expect the shift to June, which industry experts, analysts, and weary automotive journalists have recommended for years, will save money for exhibitors. By eliminating November, December and January holidays from the move-in equation, exhibitors will see reduced overtime labor costs for builds, organizers said in a statement Sunday.  The show will also have a shorter move-in schedule of three weeks, significantly reduced from the average eight weeks that it takes now. The show is run by the Detroit Auto Dealers Association and its executive board.

There’s another benefit to the move: outdoor demos. The annual show’s current January time slot holds attendees hostage in the a massive Cobo Center. A June show date will allow automakers, and even mobility tech startups, to hold demonstrations and first drives on the streets of Detroit. Autonomous and automated driving demonstrations will surely pop up as well.

Detroit Auto Show Summer 2020 from Lacey Ward on Vimeo.

Detroit is already in the midst of a revitalization. And an event in June will give organizers and officials a chance to show off the city, including Hart Plaza, Detroit RiverWalk, Campus Martius, Woodward Avenue and Grand Circus Park.

Expect the Big Three automakers to make a big splash on their home turf. Ford is already on its way. The automaker announced this summer plans to transform at least 1.2 million square feet of space in Corktown—Detroit’s oldest neighborhood—into a hub for its electric and autonomous vehicles businesses. The campus won’t be complete until 2022.

A week after PayPal led a $50 million round in the cross-border payment specialist PPRO, one of its big competitors in the developing world has announced an acquisition of its own in the same space. PayU — the payments division of Naspers that is sometimes described as the PayPal of the developing world — has acquired Zooz, a startup based out of Israel that provides an API to merchants that lets them accept a variety of payments depending on the market.

The two had already been working together — specifically to provide PayU payment options to merchants in markets where PayU is active — and the plan will be to integrate the services further to enable PayU to step deeper into the cross-border payment services space, potentially even by enabling the integration of the payment methods of competitors as part of the mix of payment options.

“In the choice between building a closed walled garden and open platform, we decided to go with the second model,” PayU’s CEO Laurent le Moal said in an interview. “The reality is that you need to be neutral and work with everyone.”

PayU will also invest in adding further features to the Zooz platform, such as fraud management (which you could argue is table stakes these days in payments), real-time reporting and smart routing.

Zooz’s whole team of 70 will be joining, including co-founders Oren Levy (CEO) and Ronen Morecki (CTO), who will respectively take senior roles at PayU as business development with larger merchants, and CTO of innovation.

Terms of the deal have not been disclosed, but that PayU has said that this deal brings its total spend on acquisitions and investments to about $350 million to date. That includes acquiring CitrusPay for $130 million, investing €100 million (between $120 million and $130 million) in Kreditech and several other investments. Doing the math, this potentially puts this deal at a range of between $50 million and $100 million.

Zooz was founded in 2010 and had raised around $33 million, from investors that include Target Global Ventures, Fang Fund, iAngels, Kreos Capital and existing investors Blumberg Capital, lool ventures, Rhodium, Claltech (Access Industries’ Israeli tech vehicle), XSeed Capital, CampOne Ventures and angel investor Eilon Tirosh.

Similar to PPRO, the company in which PayPal invested earlier this month, Zooz’s service addresses the widespread fragmentation that exists in payments globally. While credit cards are very much the norm in the US, globally they account for just under 20 percent of all e-commerce transactions, with consumers and businesses in different geographies developing their own localised payment methods and preferences. For example, cash on delivery or deposited with convenience stores, or bank transfers also play big roles.

This can be a problem for a merchant that is based in one country but interested in selling to people in another — an opportunity estimated to be worth $994 billion globally — if it doesn’t accept whatever the local payment method happens to be. Zooz addresses this by providing an API to merchants that gives them the option of a number of payment providing companies and methods so that they can enable the most popular variety of payment options to buyers depending on the market.

It will be worth watching whether payment companies will continue to be happy integrating with Zooz after its sale to PayU is complete. The fact that Zooz already integrates with different payment options, and itself is not a payment services provider, was one reason why PayU was interested in it.

At a time when there are multiple options for payment methods, including PayU itself, there is potentially an opportunity to be able to make revenues by trying to play in as many of those transactions as possible. Notably, PayU already lets people integrate some 250 methods into its own wallet, and it says it’s the leading online payment service provider in 16 markets out of the 17 in which it is active..

Zooz potentially will be boosting that footprint with more than just a platform that enables multiple payment options, but the transaction data and analytics that come with those transactions, which can become useful for other services in other parts of the business.

“The unique contribution we bring to PayU is an advanced technological layer which not only helps merchants worldwide to upscale their operations and provide a better customer experience, but also offers analytics and optimization capabilities that equip them with unprecedented insights,” noted Levy, Zooz’s CEO.