October 2020 – Page 87 – Digital Pulse

News: Embedded finance might represent fintech’s future

October 5, 2020
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The fintech industry is on a tear. Popular consumer services like Robinhood to Coinbase and Revolut have managed to attract millions of customers, but the most interesting trend right now is embedded finance. Tech companies that don’t necessarily provide financial services can embed services from fintech companies directly in their products. At the same time,

The fintech industry is on a tear. Popular consumer services like Robinhood to Coinbase and Revolut have managed to attract millions of customers, but the most interesting trend right now is embedded finance.

Tech companies that don’t necessarily provide financial services can embed services from fintech companies directly in their products. At the same time, fintech companies can find a new distribution channel by providing financial products outside of their main product. They don’t necessarily need a consumer product anymore.

At TechCrunch Disrupt, we talked about this trend and the most important changes in the fintech industry with three experts — Hope Cochran, a managing director at Madrona Venture Group (and former King CFO), Ruth Foxe Blader, a partner at Anthemis, and John Locke, a partner at Accel.

Banking as a service: Every tech company is potentially a fintech company

We started the conversation by talking about banking as a service. For entrepreneurs hoping to launch a fintech company, there are many regulatory requirements and it can take a while to set up the infrastructure.

“If the intention is to offer something else and it happens that you need fintech infrastructure, then it makes no sense to build it yourself,” Cochran said. “They should utilize the banking-as-a-service model. But maybe their intention is to create a true fintech and the secret sauce is to build it.”

Even in the latter case, it doesn’t mean that founders shouldn’t consider banking as a service for the very beginning of their company, as it can serve as a bridge before switching to their own infrastructure.

“But the problem with building it yourself is that it takes years to get it out there and get through the regulatory hurdles and you can’t see if your product and idea are actually working. So if you want to get to market much faster and iterate and see if you’ve hit upon something that will work on the market, I think banking as a service is a really important tool,” Cochran said.

Locke doubled down on that idea and described banking as a service as a massive opportunity for an entire wave of entrepreneurs, but if you don’t launch your product fast enough, another entrepreneur will find a way to enter the market more quickly.

News: Google teams up with Samsonite to launch a Jacquard smart fabric-enabled backpack

October 5, 2020
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It has been over four years since Project Jacquard, Google’s smart fabric technology, made its debut at the I/O developer conference. Launched out of what was then Google’s ATAP unit, Jacquard is currently best known for being available on Levi’s jeans jackets, but Saint Laurent also launched its $1,000 Cit-e Backpack with built-in Jacquard technology.

It has been over four years since Project Jacquard, Google’s smart fabric technology, made its debut at the I/O developer conference. Launched out of what was then Google’s ATAP unit, Jacquard is currently best known for being available on Levi’s jeans jackets, but Saint Laurent also launched its $1,000 Cit-e Backpack with built-in Jacquard technology. Today, Google is adding a fourth product to the Jacquard lineup with the launch of the Samsonite Konnect-i backpacker, which, at $200 for the Slim version and $220 for the Standard edition, is a bit more friendly on the wallet than the Saint Laurent backpack.

Jacquard, in case you need a refresher, is Google’s technology for adding touch sensitivity to fabrics. That means you can touch the sleeve of your jacket or, in this case, the strap of your backpack, to trigger a handful of functions on your phone. The whole system is powered by a small tag (which you charge via a mini-USB port). That tag can also relay notifications through its built-in LED and a small vibration motor.

Image Credits: Google/Samsonite

The number of gestures — and what they can trigger — is relatively limited, especially since you can only really assign three gestures: brush up, brush down and double-tap. You can assign standard media controls to these (think brush up for “next song”), drop a pin to save a place, hear the current time, ping your phone, hear directions to your next waypoint or arrival time or trigger the Google Assistant. Gestures can also trigger your phone’s shutter to take a selfie and there’s a “light” function that lights up the Jacquard tag’s LED. Why this last function exists isn’t quite clear to me because that LED is weak. Google says it can help you get noticed in a crowd or stay visible at night, but unless you’re trying to be found in the darkest of caves, nobody will be able to see it.

As you can see, the main idea here is to let you access some of your phone’s functions while walking through the city with your headphones on.

Image Credits: TechCrunch

It’s been about a year since Google and Levi’s launched the Jacquard-enabled trucker jacket. At the time, that was the launch of Jacquard 2.0, with a couple of additional features and a new dongle that now works across products. At the time, our review and those from our peers were pretty tepid. I’m not sure it’ll be all that different this time around.

I’ve tried out the backpack for the last few days. Like before, Jacquard does what it promises to do. The gesture recognition worked as expected. Alerts from my phone made the tag vibrate and the backpack itself is comfortable, if not the flashiest entry into the market. It’s a Samsonite, though, and the target market here isn’t necessarily college students but business travelers (though that market is pretty dead for the time being).

Image Credits: Samsonite

The backpack itself comes in two versions: slim and standard. The only real difference here is that the slim version has a vertical zipper and the standard version a horizontal one. It features plenty of pockets, a padded laptop compartment and everything else you’d want from a modern backpack. I could easily see myself going on a business trip with it.

Like before, the question remains whether Jacquard is a gimmick or actually a useful technology. Thanks to the pandemic, most of us aren’t heading out as much as we used to — and we’re definitely not going on a lot of trips. Maybe it’s not the right product for this time, but I can see myself using it more than the jacket once all of this is over. Chances are I’ll use a backpack wherever I go, after all, whereas I don’t wear a jacket half the year. The promise of Jacquard is to allow you to focus on the world around you, without the distractions of your phone. For that to work, it needs to be ubiquitous or you’ll just forget you ever had it. That works better on a backpack than a jacket — at least for me.

Whether that’s worth $200 to you is a decision you must make for yourself.

Google brings its Jacquard wearables tech to Levi’s Trucker Jacket

News: Feds arrest former Amazon employee after company reported him to FBI for fraud

October 5, 2020
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Amazon today disclosed that a former employee has been arrested for committing fraud against the online retailer. The company says it reported Vu Anh Nguyen to the Federal Bureau of Investigation in July 2020 for falsely issuing refunds for products ordered on Amazon.com to himself and his associates. The U.S. Dept. of Justice on Friday

Amazon today disclosed that a former employee has been arrested for committing fraud against the online retailer. The company says it reported Vu Anh Nguyen to the Federal Bureau of Investigation in July 2020 for falsely issuing refunds for products ordered on Amazon.com to himself and his associates. The U.S. Dept. of Justice on Friday brought charges against Nguyen for federal wire fraud and aggravated identity theft, according to court filings.

Nguyen was previously employed with Amazon as a Selling Support Associate based in Tempe, Arizona. In this role, his job involved providing support for Amazon’s third-party sellers and assisting in the creation and management of seller listings using a “Spoofer” account, which allow Amazon employees to view and edit third-party seller accounts.

From these accounts, employees are able to manually authorize refunds for items ordered from third-party sellers, which is how the abuse occurred.

In the criminal complaint, Nguyen is alleged to have committed wire fraud between November 2019 and February 2020 by using his employee access to falsely and fraudulently issue $96,508.13 in refunds to himself and others. These refunds were not requested by legitimate purchasers. During the course of this scheme, Nguyen used or caused the use of interstate wires, the filing states.

The scheme involved approximately 318 unauthorized refunds for orders purchased through eight Amazon accounts belonging to Nguyen and others. These included refunds for high-value items, like computers and electronics, none of which were ever returned to Amazon.

Nguyen also operated two third-party seller accounts, Bullsy and ItemsQuest, where refunds were issued to orders he was shipping to his own home or others had access to.

Nguyen also ordered $222.04 worth of items sent to his home as a part of this scheme, the complaint alleges, then fraudulently authorized a concession refund for the items, allowing him to essentially keep the items without paying.

In addition, on Aug. 14, 2019, Nguyen committed identity theft related to the wire fraud activities by using the name and credit card information belonging to a third-party, the FBI says. This involved an order totaling just $47.80 for household items, like a drawer organizers and cabinet liners.

Nguyen had originally been hired by Amazon on March 4, 2019. His employment was terminated on March 24, 2020 after he ignored repeated attempts by Amazon to reach him about the fraudulent activity the retailer had detected.

Separately from the Amazon fraud case, Nguyen was the target of a Dept. of Justice/FBI investigation for a type of securities fraud known as “free-riding,” which had resulted in losses of approximately $695,000 across eight brokerage firms, the complaint notes. On the SEC.gov website’s post about the litigation release, however, those losses are said to have actually totalled over $1 million.

Amazon, in press release issued today, notes that it has systems in place to mitigate misuse of its tools and to monitor and detect suspicious behavior. These systems had identify the suspicious refunds, prompting its investigation. Amazon then reported the case to the FBI.

The retailer regularly pursues investigations and lawsuits aimed at tackling fraud across its platform. Recently, this included supporting wire fraud charges against four individuals who committed $19 million in a fraudulent invoicing scheme targeting Amazon’s vendor system. It also this summer launched a counterfeit crimes unit to tackle the growing problem with counterfeit products sold on its marketplace, and helped stop multiple fraudulent affiliate marketing schemes.

While many of the fraud schemes involved external parties, sometimes Amazon’s own employees are involved. In September, the U.S. Dept. of Justice charged six people with bribing Amazon employees in exchange for restoring their banned products or services, an indictment alleges, for example. In the past, Amazon employees have also been arrested for merchandise theft.

Amazon offered a brief statement on the new charges involving Nguyen.

“We thank the Department of Justice and Federal Bureau of Investigation for their swift work to the hold this fraudster accountable,” a spokesperson said. “There is no place for misconduct or fraud at Amazon. We hold our employees to a high bar, have systems in place to proactively prevent fraud, continue to monitor activity, and will pursue all measures to protect our store and hold bad actors accountable.”

News: Gillmor Gang: Airborne

October 5, 2020
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Lorne Michaels is the showrunner, to use a binge term, for Saturday Night Live. The show returned for its first season under the watchful gaze of pandemic rule, and the results were thankfully successful. Last season struggled in the early days of the virus, turning into a Zoom-heavy series of audience-free college tries. We appreciated

Lorne Michaels is the showrunner, to use a binge term, for Saturday Night Live. The show returned for its first season under the watchful gaze of pandemic rule, and the results were thankfully successful. Last season struggled in the early days of the virus, turning into a Zoom-heavy series of audience-free college tries. We appreciated the effort, but not really the lack of comic relief. This time, things have changed.

Michaels has said he’s not sure whether the rigorous safety procedures will hold up for the next five weeks until the election. The possibility of having to shut down makes every moment count The opening replay of the first (perhaps only) debate was exciting not just for its pairing of Jim Carrey and Alec Baldwin but for the foreshadowing jokes of the President’s hospitalization. Carrey’s careful tape measuring and repositioning. of the distance between the candidates’ lecterns efficiently underlined our mistrust of everything Trump says. It felt good to see a slightly altered version of the nightmare we’ve been living.

The SNL band’s music was joyous, relief for those who long for the sound of musicians working together rather than in assembled overdubs. The individual players’ isolation baffles bridged the studio feel of the performance with a sense that this version of a new now could actually work moving forward. The band felt slimmed down somehow, but tighter and funkier in the rhythm section. Weekend Update and Chris Rock’s opening monologue delivered some edgy balance to the show’s disposable set pieces. Success here was relief, not salvation.

Meanwhile, television and social notifications continue to joust for control of the horizontal. Reality shows like the Supreme Court Nominee pageant in the Rose Garden opened the week with the musical question “Is that really safe?” and ended with the thunderous “No!” of Thursday and Friday. Inevitably, the media began to stir as the Walter Reed press conferences betrayed more in unanswered questions than medical details. And so the question begets: how will we triage the final 30 days of the campaign?

A rolling set of experiments in how to fashion a new normal. Regardless of who wins the actual election, the country seems united on what to trust as a workable strategy for surviving this toxic political moment. The actual mechanics of the vote and the relative margin of the victory seem within a range of too close to call for a week minimum, and a 4-5 % margin for Biden. That presupposes no October surprise, or not any more. A court challenge seems likely, but how seriously it will be prosecuted seems unlikely given how fed up the population has become.

For the hybrid cable/online audience that will decide the election, it’s no longer about undecided, which have fallen to lower levels than typical for this time in the campaign. The only real question left is whether there is still a hidden Trump vote that will materialize 2016-style, or a 2018-style change wave that will sweep the Senate majority as well. The good news is that we’re 30 days from beginning to count that vote.

That means 4 more Saturday Night Lives in a row, and whether the virus will permit it. This isn’t about whether we can do this nationally, expand the NBA bubble coast to coast. Not as long as the campaign mandates conflict about the very procedures needed to make a real difference. The Rose Garden wave of infections makes it much more difficult to ignore masks, social distancing, and contact tracing, but real change will likely wait on the end of, if not the results of, the election. Either way, the trend will be toward limiting the spread by controlling super spreader events.

Even if back to school measures are rolled back, some SNL-like strategies will work to produce hybrid solutions. Efficient testing will combine with distancing, behavior, and tracing to localize the data and interact with the results of down-ballot elections. The November surprise may be that the power of partisan politics is reduced by practical mitigation, successful therapies, and a less heated preparation for vaccine distribution. A leading indicator of this trend can be seen in the streaming studios as they go back into adjusted production scenarios for the delayed fall season.

In that context, the successful SNL reboot included a healthy dose of advertising production values in its full roster of ads. With the holidays teed up, the move toward stay-sheltered e-commerce and food delivery will blend with the marketing campaigns of streaming network realignments like the one Chris Rock was promoting with his FX/Hulu Fargo project. As he channeled James Baldwin at the end of the monologue: “Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”

__________________

The Gillmor Gang — Frank Radice, Michael Markman, Keith Teare, Denis Pombriant, Brent Leary and Steve Gillmor . Recorded live Friday, October 2, 2020.

Produced and directed by Tina Chase Gillmor @tinagillmor

@fradice, @mickeleh, @denispombriant, @kteare, @brentleary, @stevegillmor, @gillmorgang

For more, subscribe to the Gillmor Gang Newsletter and join the notification feed here on Telegram.

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News: Ocean Solutions Accelerator’s third wave tackles a new set of aquatic challenges

October 5, 2020
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The Sustainable Ocean Alliance and its Ocean Solutions Accelerator take on the problems facing our planet’s waters, and the latest cohort of companies in the latter show a fresh slate of issues to address and resources to utilize. From reef rehabilitation to a “Fitbit for fishing boats,” they’re trying to fix things up in the

The Sustainable Ocean Alliance and its Ocean Solutions Accelerator take on the problems facing our planet’s waters, and the latest cohort of companies in the latter show a fresh slate of issues to address and resources to utilize. From reef rehabilitation to a “Fitbit for fishing boats,” they’re trying to fix things up in the oceans or at least mitigate the damage we’re doing down there.

The accelerator’s four week, all-virtual (like all of them these days) program focuses on the unique challenges faced by social good companies in this space.

“Startups in the sector are still struggling to find adequate funding during the early phases of operations,” the accelerator’s co-founder Craig Dudenhoffer told TechCrunch in an email. “Many of the solutions (especially hardware) are costly to produce and take a heavy upfront cash investment. We found that out of the hundreds of applicants, only a fraction had received substantial investments. We believe more investors need to educate themselves on opportunities in the ocean sector.”

The SOA team selected nine companies for this wave, only three of which are U.S.-based. “This year, in spite of the COVID-19 pandemic, we saw our largest and most diverse applicant pool to date,” said Dudenhoffer in the release announcing the companies. “I was particularly encouraged by this year’s applicant pool to see the varying types of solutions, as well as an increase in the number of entrepreneurs that are actively building technologies to address the critical challenges that face the ocean.”

In the Accelerator over the Sea

SOA founder Daniela Fernandez recently noted that their area of operation is especially international, so keeping things virtual actually opens up a lot of possibilities, especially for smaller companies that can’t afford to temporarily relocate. “It gives you so many options and makes it far more inclusive,” she told me. “Everybody just has more flexibility and tranquility. So I believe we were headed in that direction anyway.”

Image Credits: ARC Marine

Here are the nine lucky companies:

AquaAI (Norway): Developed a fishlike autonomous underwater vehicle for unobtrusive observation and inspection
AKUA (U.S.): Makes super-healthy kelp-based foods, starting with jerky and soon burgers
ARC Marine (U.K.): Helps protect and rehabilitate reefs with sustainable ‘Reef Cube’ habitat and nursery
Desolenator (The Netherlands): Solar-powered desalination for communities facing fresh water shortages
FlyWire (U.S.): Digital catch monitoring for compliance with regulations and connected commerce
microTERRA (Mexico): Sustainable, aquafarm-grown protein for animal feed
Oceanworks (U.S.): Marketplace for recycled ocean-sourced plastic
PlanetCare (Slovenia): Filter for catching microfibers in washing machine drains before they enter the water system
Trademodo (Canada): New, comprehensive platform for ethical seafood businesses and supply chains

The companies will get the tender loving care lavished on all the new accelerator’s participants, but possibly also a bit of harsh reality as they learn the difficulties of being an ethics-focused company with long-term goals in a capitalist system that demands almost immediate returns. One of the most important steps in building one of these companies seems to be getting over this demoralizing hump and seeing the possibilities in spite of the difficulties.

A demo day is scheduled for November 5, which is good timing because probably nothing else will be happening around then.

News: Dear Sophie: Now that a judge has paused Trump’s H-1B visa ban, how can I qualify my employees?

October 5, 2020
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Sophie Alcorn Contributor Share on Twitter Sophie Alcorn is the founder of Alcorn Immigration Law in Silicon Valley and 2019 Global Law Experts Awards’ “Law Firm of the Year in California for Entrepreneur Immigration Services.” She connects people with the businesses and opportunities that expand their lives. More posts by this contributor Dear Sophie: Will

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Sophie Alcorn is the founder of Alcorn Immigration Law in Silicon Valley and 2019 Global Law Experts Awards’ “Law Firm of the Year in California for Entrepreneur Immigration Services.” She connects people with the businesses and opportunities that expand their lives.

News: Quantum photonics startup Nu Quantum raises £2.1M from Amadeus Capital Partners

October 5, 2020
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For Quantum cryptography and simulation to become real, the technology requires high-performance light-emitting and light-detecting components that operate at the single-photon level and at ambient temperature. One of the few companies operating in this rarified arena is Nu Quantum, the quantum photonics company, is a spin-out from the University of Cambridge. It’s now raised a

For Quantum cryptography and simulation to become real, the technology requires high-performance light-emitting and light-detecting components that operate at the single-photon level and at ambient temperature. One of the few companies operating in this rarified arena is Nu Quantum, the quantum photonics company, is a spin-out from the University of Cambridge.

It’s now raised a £2.1 million in Seed funding in a round led by Amadeus Capital Partners . Ahren Innovation Capital, IQ Capital, Cambridge Enterprise and Martlet Capital also followed-on from the company’s pre-Seed investment round last September, with Seraphim Capital joining as a new investor. Last year it raised a £650,000 pre-seed investment round, also led by Amadeus.

The funding will go towards a state-of-the-art photonics lab in Cambridge and a major recruitment drive for scientists, product team members and business functions as the company approaches the launch of its first commercial technology demonstration.

Nu Quantum brings together a portfolio of intellectual property combining quantum optics, semiconductor photonics, and information theory, spun out of the University of Cambridge after eight years of research at the Cavendish Laboratory. Nu Quantum is one of a handful of companies in the world developing this photonics technology.

The company’s first commercial deliverable will use quantum photonic technology and proprietary algorithms to generate random numbers extracted from quantum-level effects, giving the highest confidence in the quality of these numbers which are ubiquitously used as cryptographic keys to secure data. Nu Quantum is a partner in the consortium led by the National Physical Laboratory, developing the UK standard for quantum random number generation, a project which was awarded £2.8m from the UK government’s Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund.

Dr Carmen Palacios-Berraquero, CEO, Nu Quantum, said in a statement: “Our aim is to enable the potential of quantum mechanics using quantum photonics hardware. This funding will allow us to do just that – a world-class multidisciplinary team and our new laboratories will give Nu Quantum the ability to deliver meaningful demonstrations of our technology into the hands of customers and partners for the first time.”

Alex van Someren, Managing Partner, Amadeus Capital Partners, said:
“Quantum photonics has the potential to transform cybersecurity through digital cryptography. We’re making another investment in Nu Quantum because we believe in the team and its ability to take its solutions to market. Cambridge is leading the world on developing and commercializing quantum computing hardware and applications, and Amadeus is excited to be backing great entrepreneurs here.”

Nu Quantum is a partner in the consortium led by the National Physical Laboratory, developing the UK standard for quantum random number generation, a project which was awarded £2.8m from the UK government’s Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund.

News: Accessibility’s nextgen breakthroughs will be literally in your head

October 5, 2020
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Predicting the future of technology for people with visual impairments is easier than you might think. In 2003, I wrote an article entitled “In the Palm of Your Hand” for the Journal of Visual Impairment & Blindness from the American Foundation for the Blind. The arrival of the iPhone was still four years away, but

Predicting the future of technology for people with visual impairments is easier than you might think. In 2003, I wrote an article entitled “In the Palm of Your Hand” for the Journal of Visual Impairment & Blindness from the American Foundation for the Blind. The arrival of the iPhone was still four years away, but I was able to confidently predict the center of assistive technology shifting from the desktop PC to the smart phone.

“A cell phone costing less than $100,” I wrote, “will be able to see for the person who can’t see, read for the person who can’t read, speak for the person who can’t speak, remember for the person who can’t remember, and guide the person who is lost.” Looking at the tech trends at the time, that transition was as inevitable as it might have seemed far-fetched.

We are at a similar point now, which is why I am excited to play a part of Sight Tech Global, a virtual event Dec. 2-3 that is convening the top technologists to discuss how AI and related technologies will usher in a new era of remarkable advances for accessibility and assistive tech, in particular for people who are blind or visually impaired.

To get to the future, let me turn to the past. I was walking around the German city of Speyer in the 1990s with pioneering blind assistive tech entrepreneur Joachim Frank. Joachim took me on a flight of fancy about what he really wanted from assistive technology, as opposed to what was then possible. He quickly highlighted three stories of how advanced tech could help him as he was walking down the street with me.

As I walk down the street, and walk by a supermarket, I do not want it to read all of the signs in the window. However, if one of the signs notes that kasseler kipchen (smoked porkchops, his favorite) are on sale, and the price is particularly good, I would like that whispered in my ear.
And then, as a young woman approaches me walking in the opposite direction, I’d like to know if she’s wearing a wedding ring.
Finally, I would like to know that someone has been following me for the last two blocks, that he is a known mugger, and that if I quicken my walking speed, go fifty meters ahead, turn right, and go another seventy meters, I will arrive at a police substation!

Joachim blew my mind. In one short walk, he outlined a far bolder vision of what tech could do for him, without bogging down in the details. He wanted help with saving money, meeting new friends and keeping himself safe. He wanted abilities which not only equaled what people with normal vision had, but exceeded them. Above all, he wanted tools which knew him and his desires and needs.

We are nearing the point where we can build Joachim’s dreams. It won’t matter if the assistant whispers in your ear, or uses a direct neural implant to communicate. We will probably see both. But, the nexus of tech will move inside your head, and become a powerful instrument for equality of access. A new tech stack with perception as a service. Counter-measures to outsmart algorithmic discrimination. Tech personalization. Affordability.

That experience will be built on an ever more application rich and readily available technology stack in the cloud. As all that gets cheaper and cheaper to access, product designers can create and experiment faster than ever. At first, it will be expensive, but not for long as adoption – probably by far more than simply disabled people – drives down price. I started my career in tech for the blind by introducing a reading machine that was a big deal because it halved the price of that technology to $5,000. Today even better OCR is a free app on any smartphone.

We could dive into more details of how we build Joachim’s dreams and meet the needs of millions of others of individuals with vision disabilities. But it will be far more interesting to explore with the world’s top experts at Sight Tech Global on Dec. 2-3 how those tech tools will become enabled In Your Head!

Registration is free and open to all.

Jim Fruchterman a pioneering social good entrepreneur and founder of Benetech and Tech Matters.

News: Venmo launches its first credit card, offering up to 3% cash back, personalized rewards

October 5, 2020
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Last October, Venmo announced it would launch its first credit card sometime in 2020. Today, the PayPal-owned company is making good on those promises with the debut of the Venmo Credit Card, initially rolling out to select customers. The Visa card offers 3% cash back on eligible purchases, personalized rewards, and tools to track and

Last October, Venmo announced it would launch its first credit card sometime in 2020. Today, the PayPal-owned company is making good on those promises with the debut of the Venmo Credit Card, initially rolling out to select customers. The Visa card offers 3% cash back on eligible purchases, personalized rewards, and tools to track and manage finances. However, what makes the card potentially appealing to Venmo’s younger user base is how the card is directly integrated into the Venmo mobile app.

Cardholders will be able to track their spending in real-time, organized by category, plus split and purchases, view their cash back status, make payments and manage their card directly in the Venmo mobile app. They can also opt in to receive real-time alerts when purchases and payments are made, much like other credit card and banking apps allow for today. And they can receive alerts when cash back is applied to their account.

Instead of offering a certain percentage in cash back rewards to all Venmo users by category, for example, or as Apple Card does by vendor (at its top tier), the new Venmo Card rewards system will be personalized.

Users can earn rewards from 8 different spending categories: Grocery, Bills & Utilities, Health & Beauty, Gas, Entertainment, Dining & Nightlife, Transportation, and Travel. Users will earn 3% back on their top spending category, 2% from the second highest category, then 1% on all other purchases, the company says.

That’s a competitive offering compared with other cash back cards, given that the Venmo Card doesn’t include an annual fee. However, the card does charge other typical fees — like for cash advances, late and returned payments, and interest. Currently, the APR ranges from 15.25% to 24.24%, based on the account holder’s creditworthiness.

While Venmo doesn’t incentivize touchless purchases, as Apple Card does by paying out a higher cashback percentage for Apple Pay transactions, Venmo’s card does come equipped with an RFID chip for tap to pay transactions at point-of-sale. This is not entirely contactless, but requires less contact than inserting the card into a chip reader which can often require the user to hold the terminal steady with their other hand so it doesn’t swivel.

The new card also allows users to begin shopping virtually before their card arrives in the mail. And if the card becomes lost or stolen, it can be instantly disabled from within the Venmo app. Through Visa, the card includes Visa Traditional Credit Card benefits, as well as travel and lifestyle perks for Visa Signature cardholders.

Image Credits: Venmo

Given that personalized cards are in demand among millennial users, Venmo Cards are offered in 5 different colors and come emblazoned with the user’s own Venmo QR code on the front, making each card unique. This allows users to scan a friend’s card with the Venmo app when they want to send a payment or split a purchase.

Venmo already offers a Mastercard-branded debit card for its users — an offering it launched to target is millennial customer base, who tend to avoid credit cards as they’re worried about becoming trapped in the vicious credit-and-debt cycle. However, as many millennials are now finally starting to marry and buy their first homes, they’re coming to realize that establishing a credit history matters. But they may still shy away from big banks, preferring alternative credit products, like credit cards that work like debit or perhaps Venmo’s Card, as it’s tied to a money management app they already use and rely on.

Venmo in Q2 said it had over 60 million active accounts using its payments app — meaning those accounts who had completed a transaction within a 12-month timespan. It declined to say how many have since adopted its debit card to date. The company also reported $37 billion in Venmo payment volume in the most recent quarter. That means Venmo sports a large and active user base that it can upsell the new card to from within its free, peer-to-peer payments app, instead of only relying on external marketing.

As earlier reported, the Venmo Card is issued by Synchrony Bank, which is today known for powering a number of store cards, including those from Amazon, eBay, JCPenney, TJX, Stein Mart, American Eagle, Gap, Old Navy, Rooms to Go, Lowe’s and many others — around 100 cards, in total. The company has financed over $149 billion in sales and has 75.5 million active accounts, according to its website.

At launch, Venmo is making the new card available to select customers via the Venmo mobile app. It says the card will be available to all in the U.S. in the months ahead.

News: Six favorite Techstars startups ahead of its next rush of demo days

October 5, 2020
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With TechCrunch Disrupt happening last month, I fell behind on watching accelerator demo days. It’s time to correct that oversight. In August and September, the Techstars network of startup accelerators held demo days for various classes of startups, grouped by either geographic location or focus. Kansas City, for example, or space. The Exchange explores startups,

With TechCrunch Disrupt happening last month, I fell behind on watching accelerator demo days. It’s time to correct that oversight.

In August and September, the Techstars network of startup accelerators held demo days for various classes of startups, grouped by either geographic location or focus. Kansas City, for example, or space.

The Exchange explores startups, markets and money. Read it every morning on Extra Crunch, or get The Exchange newsletter every Saturday.

With October upon us, there’s another crop of Techstars demo days around the corner. To prevent falling further behind, let’s take a look at a few startups from Techstars’ September cohorts (and two from August) this morning to get primed for what the accelerator collective and venture fund will get up to next.

To find six favorites to share today, I dug through startups from Techstars’ Kansas City accelerator (full class here), its SportsTech Melbourne accelerator (full class here), its Toronto cohort (full class here), and its Tel Aviv location (full class here). You can find TechCrunch coverage of Techstars’ two space accelerators here, and their full classes here and here.

Before we jump in, this month Techstars has cohorts graduating from another five accelerators, including groups from LA, NYC, Atlanta, and more. So, there will be no shortage of startups to look at in short order. With that, let’s get into some favorites from the the past groups.

Favorites and standouts

We’ll start with the Kansas City accelerator. Kansas City, where my parents are from, incidentally, is a locale best known for its culinary magic and musical history, not to mention a famous sports team or two. I was pleasantly surprised to find out that Techstars also had a foothold in the city.

Monthly Archives: October 2020