Author: azeeadmin

More evidence that Gen-Z is switching to chat platforms for just about everything, including banking emerges today in the news that Zelf, a FinTech startup offering neobank-style services, is generating buzz amongst Gen-Zers in Spain and France. Its ability for users to interact solely via messaging has seen the startup hit over 260,000 pre-card orders since its launch in early April, according to the company which is specifically targeting Gen-Z.

They are not alone. Other players in the ‘banking services via a messaging’ space include Kotak Mahindra Bank in India (on WhatsApp) and ICICI in WhatsApp (India). However, neither of these can do actual provisioning of the card and addition to Apple Pay and Google Pay in the messengers, which is what Zelf can do.

With Zelf, users get an account and a virtual card via their Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Viber and Telegram accounts. For offline and online purchases Zelf supports Apple Pay and Google Pay. This lightweight onboarding means card issuance takes less than 30 seconds via a Passport or national ID. Users then get a virtual Mastercard debit card available in their favorite messenger app. Operating inside the EU’s “Single Euro Payments Area” means it’s pretty easy for the startup to scale its offering to other countries.

Part of the reason Zelf is confident it can scale is that it has signed a deal with Treezor, a Banking-as-a-Service platform based in France. Treezor is a fintech, registered with the ACPR, and was acquired in 2019 by the Société Générale group.

Elliot Goykhman, founder and CEO of ZELF tells me: “With 84% of screen time taken by 5 apps, mostly messengers, we make sending and receiving money as easy as sending a message. Instant notifications, voice commands instead of buttons, simple invoicing and QR codes are some of the messenger banking features that will simplify the financial routine and bring money matters to the default apps of today – the messengers.” It will also soon work in Discord and Telegram, he says.

The business model for Zelf will come from interchange fees, premium account fees and – towards the end of this year – from loans, credit cards, and voice memo-activated invoices.

Niantic, the game developer behind Pokémon GO, has raised $470 million — most recently at a $4 billion valuation — largely on the promise that it can translate the mainstream success of a breakout mobile game into a full-fledged augmented reality platform that can rival efforts by Facebook and Apple.

Today, Niantic shared that it will begin further leveraging Pokémon Go players to bolster its 3D data collection, allowing users to share videos of real-world PokéStop and Gym locations that Niantic will crowdsource to create rich 3D maps.

“A machine-readable, 3-D map of a place gives devices (such as current mobile phones and future headsets) a better understanding of the depth and the complexities of the real world,” a Niantic blog post regarding the announcement reads.

The move is likely to be the subject of privacy concerns as Niantic collects and sophisticatedly interprets rich user data. Confining the data collection to locations specifically designated as a PokéStop and Gym will allow Niantic to minimize the chances they are collecting visual data from private locations like inside someone’s home. The feature will be opt-in for players, at least initially. Data uploaded to Niantic’s servers will also be anonymized and visual data including faces and license plates will be blurred automatically, the company says.

This announcement comes just two months after Niantic’s acquisition of AR startup 6D.ai, which had professed to be building out a crowdsourced 3D map of the world.

As Niantic pushes 3D data collection to more of its users, the company likely hopes to give itself a key data advantage in its race to build out an augmented reality developer platform. In addition to its own game titles, the studio has also slowly been building out its Niantic Real World Platform which allows augmented reality developers to leverage its AR tech to create their own games and software.

Niantic faces steep competition from Apple’s ARKit platform and Facebook’s nascent Spark AR platform to court developer attention. Niantic’s key platform advantage could rely on supplying developers with access to a network of 3D data maps which would allow them to create larger, more ambitious AR projects, while likely allowing users of those projects to also send visual data back to Niantic, further strengthening said platform.

Niantic will rolling out its 3D data collection feature in June to Pokémon Go users ranked above Level 40 and will push it to others soon thereafter.

SpaceX is giving astronauts a lift to the International Space Station, a new jailbreak can unlock any iPhone and a startup raises $250 million to reduce food waste.

Here’s your Daily Crunch for May 26, 2020.

1. NASA and SpaceX confirm SpaceX’s first ever astronaut launch is a ‘go’

SpaceX’s Falcon 9 and Crew Dragon spacecraft are now set to fly with NASA astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken onboard, making a trip to the International Space Station. Both the agency and SpaceX announced yesterday that they have officially passed the final flight readiness review, meaning everything is now a ‘go’ for launch.

The only remaining major hurdle is the weather, which is currently looking around 40% favorable for a launch attempt on schedule for Wednesday, May 27 at 4:33 PM EDT.

2. Hackers release a new jailbreak that unlocks every iPhone

Details of the vulnerability that the hackers used to build the jailbreak aren’t known, but it’s not expected to last forever. Just as jailbreakers work to find a way in, Apple works fast to patch the flaws and close the jailbreak.

3. Preventing food waste nets Apeel $250 million from Singapore’s government, Oprah and Katy Perry

Over the past eight years, Apeel Sciences has grown from a humble startup launched with a $100,000 grant from the Gates Foundation to a giant, globe-spanning company. What’s drawn these financiers and the fabulously famous to invest is the technology that Apeel has developed that promises to keep food fresh for longer periods on store shelves.

4. China set to launch Mars probe and rover mission in July

China’s space program will launch a Mars mission in July, according to its current plans. This will include deploying an orbital probe to study the red planet, and a robotic, remotely controlled rover for surface exploration.

5. Steve Case and Clara Sieg on how the COVID-19 crisis differs from the dot-com bust

Case is the former CEO of AOL turned VC, while Clara Sieg is a Stanford-educated VC heading up Revolution’s Silicon Valley office. Throughout an hour-long chat with Extra Crunch, they touched on numerous subjects, including how diverse founders can take advantage during this downturn and how remote work may lead to growth outside Silicon Valley. (Extra Crunch membership required.)

6. Bluecore raises $50M for its first-party, AI-based marketing automation tools

Bluecore is a marketing technology firm that uses data gained from direct marketing like email, social media and site activity, combining that data with machine learning to make better predictions about who might want to buy what.

7. This week’s TechCrunch podcasts

The latest full-length episode of Equity discusses the new social app Clubhouse, while the morning headline roundup looks at a bunch of remote work fundings. Over at Original Content, we review Netflix’s interactive “Kimmy Schmidt” special.

(Our embeddable podcast player seems to be having issues, but you should still be able to listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or your player of choice.)

The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 9am Pacific, you can subscribe here.

Long-distance ride sharing startup BlaBlaCar announced that it is expanding to scooter sharing. But the company isn’t going to operate its own fleet of scooters. Instead, BlaBlaCar is partnering with Voi, a European e-scooter service that has raised $136 million over multiple rounds.

Voi operates in dozens of European cities including Paris, Marseille and Lyon. Over the next few weeks, Voi scooters will feature three different brands — Voi, BlaBlaCar and BlaBla Ride.

Existing Voi members will still be able to use the Voi app. But BlaBlaCar also plans to launch its own app, BlaBla Ride. Existing BlaBlaCar users will be able to log in with their BlaBlaCar accounts.

According to AFP, BlaBlaCar says it isn’t a financial transaction — it’s just a partnership that could benefit users of both platforms.

BlaBlaCar has launched several new services over the past couple of years. It has acquired Ouibus and rebranded it to BlaBlaBus. It operates a carpooling marketplace for daily commutes between your home and your workplace called BlaBlaLines.

Interestingly, unlike Grab, Gojek and Uber, BlaBlaCar isn’t building a super app to access several different services. BlaBlaLines is still a separate app for instance. It creates some friction for users that could be interested in multiple services.

The company thinks BlaBla Ride could be a great solution for the last mile of your ride. A bus or carpooling driver could drop you off in the city center and you could then unlock a scooter to reach your destination.

Browser developers love to add small Easter Eggs to their apps to help you while away the hours when your Interent is down, for example. Chrome has long had the Dino game, that you can start from the ‘No internet’ error screen, for example. With its surf game, Microsoft’s Edge team built something similar into its pre-release channels earlier this year and as the company announced today, it’s now also available in the stable channel, too.

Just type in ‘edge://surf’ into your URL bar and you’re off to the races. The surf game is an endless scroller where you try to avoid obstacles, other surfers and the occasional attention-starved kraken. It’s more fun than the Dino game and also a bit more fully-featured. There are different game modes (endless, time trial, zig zag) and you can play with keyboard, mouse, touch or gamepad. If you like your games even more casual, there is a reduced speed mode and there is a high visibility mode for those with visual impairments.

After almost a year in public preview, the Edge team launched its first stable version earlier this year and only last week, Microsoft announced a slew of new features at its virtual Build developer conference. Even during its preview period, Edge was already a capable browser, though it lacked any killer features — unless being a very good Chromium-based browser made by Microsoft was really what you were always looking for. That’s slowly changing now, as the team is now building out the Edge feature set. The surf game isn’t exactly a killer feature, but it does help set the overall vibe for the browser and shows that Microsoft is looking to go beyond the basics now.

SpaceX has signed a new agreement with the U.S. Army that will see that defense serve test SpaceX’s forthcoming Starlink satellite-based broadband network over the course of three years to evaluate its usefulness in serving their needs. The R&D agreement, as first reported by SpaceNews, is a fairly standard agreement ahead of any actual commercial procurement deal for the U.S. military.

SpaceX’s Starlink network, which is still in development and which is set to go live for select customers in the U.S. and Canada later this year according to the company, aims to provide low-latency, high-speed internet connectivity globally using low Earth orbit small satellites. Its network is designed specifically to address the needs of customers located in hard-to-reach and underserved areas, with network connectivity that the company hopes will be better and more reliable than existing satellite-based connections, which rely on geostationary satellites located much further away from Earth.

The Army will be looking at finding out what kind of investment it needs to make in ground station infrastructure and integrating SpaceX’s network connectivity with its existing systems, SpaceNews report. Provided there are not big show stoppers there, SpaceX’s solution could address a lot of the challenges the military faces with connectivity no matter where they’re operating. Obviously, they don’t always find themselves working in places with high population density and easily accessible ground network infrastructure.

There are other ways in which Starlink’s operating model doesn’t fit with the Army’s needs, including its reliance on ground stations, which may or may not be accessible to the Army in whatever operating theater they happen to currently be in. Still, it’s very possible that Starlink could meet the needs of some of its operations and not others, but provide big improvements in those areas where it does work.

Starlink launches are set to continue at a regular pace throughout the year as SpaceX continues to build out its many hundred-satellite network. The more satellites that SpaceX has on orbit, the greater its geographic reach, and the less likely its network is to encounter interruptions in service, since each satellite hands off the connection from one to another as they orbit the Earth.

France's data protection watchdog CNIL has released its second review of StopCovid, the contact-tracing app backed by the French government. The CNIL says there’s no major issue with the technical implementation and legal framework around StopCovid, with some caveats.

France isn’t relying on Apple and Google’s contact-tracing API. Instead, a group of research institutes and private companies have worked on a separate solution.

At the heart of StopCovid, there’s a centralized contact-tracing protocol called ROBERT. It relies on a central server to assign a permanent ID and generate ephemeral IDs attached to this permanent ID. Your phone collects the ephemeral IDs of other app users around you. When somebody is diagnosed COVID-19-positive, the server receives all the ephemeral IDs associated with people with whom they’ve interacted. If one or several of your ephemeral IDs get flagged, you receive a notification.

ROBERT has been a controversial topic as it isn’t an anonymous system — it relies on pseydonymization. It means that you have to trust your government that it isn’t collecting too much information and it doesn’t plan to put names on permanent IDs.

But the CNIL says that ROBERT focuses on exposed users instead of users who are diagnosed COVID-19-positive — it is “a choice that protects the privacy of those persons,” the agency says. The CNIL also says that ROBERT tries to minimize data collection as much as possible.

Inria released a small portion of the source code that is going to power StopCovid a couple of weeks ago. The research institute originally said that some parts wouldn’t be open-sourced. The CNIL contested this decision and Inria has now reversed its stance and the government promises that everything will be released, eventually.

The StopCovid development team is also launching a bug bounty program in partnership with YesWeHack following recommendations from France’s national cybersecurity agency (ANSSI).

On the legal front, the draft decree excludes data aggregation in general. For instance, the government won’t be able to generate a heat map based on StopCovid data — StopCovid doesn’t collect your location anyway.

The CNIL says that the government promises that there won’t be any negative consequence if you’re not using StopCovid, nor any privilege if you’re using it. The government also promises that you’ll be able to delete pseudonymized data from the server. All of this is still ‘to be confirmed’ with the final decree.

Finally, the CNIL recommends some changes when it comes to informing users about data collection and data retention — it’s hard to understand what happens with your data right now. There should be some specific wording for underage people and their parents as well.

In other news, the government has sent me some screenshots of the app. Here’s what it looks like on iOS:

France’s digital minister, Cédric O, will be in front of parliament members tomorrow to debate the pros and cons of StopCovid. It’s going to be interesting to see whether the French government has managed to convince parliament members that a contact-tracing app is useful to fight the spread of COVID-19.

Here’s another edition of “Dear Sophie,” the advice column that answers immigration-related questions about working at technology companies.

“Your questions are vital to the spread of knowledge that allows people all over the world to rise above borders and pursue their dreams,” says Sophie Alcorn, a Silicon Valley immigration attorney. “Whether you’re in people ops, a founder or seeking a job in Silicon Valley, I would love to answer your questions in my next column.”

“Dear Sophie” columns are accessible for Extra Crunch subscribers; use promo code ALCORN to purchase a one- or two-year subscription for 50% off.

Dear Sophie:

My spouse’s startup is transferring her to the U.S. to help set up an office there. Will I be able to go with her and work in the U.S.? How long will it take for me to get a work permit? How long will we be able to stay?

— Hopeful in Hyderabad

Dear Hopeful:

Congratulations on starting an exciting new adventure with your family. U.S. immigration law allows visa holders to bring their spouse and dependent children with them to the U.S. and you can check out this podcast on the topic. Dependent children are defined as children who are under the age of 21 and unmarried. Whether or not the spouse can get a work permit, which is called an Employment Authorization Document (EAD), depends on which dependent visa the spouse receives.

Facebook’s internal R&D group, NPE Team, has today launched a new app called CatchUp that makes it easier for friends and family in the U.S. to coordinate phone calls or set up group calls with up to 8 people. While there are a number of group chat apps available to users today, what makes CatchUp unique is that the calls it enables are audio-only, not video, and it flags when users are available. In addition, CatchUp won’t need a Facebook account to use the service — the app works with your phone’s contacts list.

CatchUp does seem to take some inspiration from Houseparty, in that users in CatchUp can designate when they’re available to talk by setting their status in the app. This is similar to how Houseparty’s video chat app also lets you see who’s live, by sending out notifications when friends open the app and flagging them as “here” in the app’s interface.

Similarly, CatchUp shows users as “Ready to Talk” in the top section of its homescreen, with offline users and other contacts listed below.

Facebook explains the app’s intention is to address one of the key reasons people no longer make phone calls — they don’t know when someone has time to talk and they don’t want to interrupt them. Meanwhile, calls that can’t be answered go to voicemails that recipients don’t bother checking, which forces communication to go through text messaging or chat apps instead. And while video chats are on the rise, a phone call is often more convenient as users aren’t always video-ready or they’re trying to multi-task, not sit in front of a screen.

CatchUp approaches the problem of not knowing if a phone call would bother someone by allowing you to see who is ready and able to talk as soon as you launch the app.

Users can also create and join groups of friends, family, and mutual contacts in the app, as you can with other chat apps. Or they can place 1-on-1 calls as an alternative to using the phone.

Placing a call is simple as well. It’s just a one-button tap — not a complicated process of calling contacts, then “merging” calls as you do on your smartphone’s Phone app.

Facebook explains the idea for the app actually came about prior to the COVID-19 outbreak and subsequent quarantine, but the NPE Team accelerated the app’s development as a result of the pandemic.

While there are already easy ways to make voice calls using Facebook’s own Messenger and WhatsApp apps, the difference is that CatchUp works with your phone’s contacts. Users will have to download the app, but they won’t need to have an existing Facebook account — or an account with any Facebook-owned companies. Plus, the app’s simplified user interface could make it easier for older users, like grandma and grandpa, to navigate. It’s really just a one-screen experience with a toggle button to become “available” to talk.

The app also includes privacy features that allow you to configure which contacts can join your 1-on-1 and group calls.

CatchUp is currently being tested in the U.S. for a limited time on iOS and Android devices. Like other NPE Team apps, Facebook may choose to terminate the app if it’s not adopted by a sizable userbase. To date, the NPE Team has launched a small handful of apps, including meme creator Whale, conversational app Bump, music app Aux, video app Hobbi, couples app Tuned, and Apple Watch app Kit.

Even though it’s a vast sector in the midst of transformation, manufacturing is often overlooked by early-stage investors. We surveyed top VCs in the industry to gather their perspectives on the challenges and opportunities facing manufacturing.

Traditionally, manufacturing companies are capital-intensive and can be slow to implement new technology and processes. The investors in the survey below acknowledge the long-standing barriers facing founders in this space, yet they see large opportunities where startups can challenge incumbents.

These investors noted that the pandemic is bringing overnight change in the manufacturing world; old rules are being rewritten in the face of worker safety, remote work and the need for increased automation. According to Eclipse Ventures founder Lior Susan, “COVID-19 has exposed the systemic vulnerabilities inherent to manufacturing and supply chain and, as such, significant opportunities for innovation. The market was lukewarm for a long time — it’s time to turn up the heat.”

• Lior Susan, founder and managing partner, Eclipse Ventures.
• Ajay Agarwal, Bain Capital.
• Greg Papadopoulos, venture partner, NEA.
• Dayna Grayson, co-founder and general partner, Construct Capital.

Lior Susan, Eclipse Ventures

What trends are you most excited about in manufacturing from an investing perspective?

Digital solutions that offer manufacturers greater agility and resilience will become major areas of focus for investors. For example, manufacturers still reliant on manual assembly were unable to build products when factories closed due to the coronavirus lockdown. While nothing would have kept production at 100%, the ability to quickly pivot and engage software-defined processes would have allowed manufacturing lines to continue building with a skeleton crew (especially important for any facility required to implement social distancing). Such systems have remote monitoring capabilities and computer vision systems to flag defeats in real-time and halt production if necessary.