News: FinanZero, Brazil’s free online credit marketplace, raises $7M

• April 5, 2021
• by:   
• in:  Blog 
• note:  no comments 

FinanZero, a Brazilian online credit marketplace, announced today that it has closed a $7 million round of funding – its fourth since it launched in 2016 was founded in 2016. It has raised a total of $22.85 million to date. The real-time online loan broker allows people to apply for a personal loan, a car

FinanZero, a Brazilian online credit marketplace, announced today that it has closed a $7 million round of funding – its fourth since it launched in 2016 was founded in 2016. It has raised a total of $22.85 million to date.

The real-time online loan broker allows people to apply for a personal loan, a car equity loan, or a home equity loan for free and receive an answer in minutes. A key to FinanZero’s success is that it doesn’t offer the loans itself, but has instead partnered with about 51 banks and fintechs who back the loans.

FinanZero is based in Brazil’s financial capital, Sao Paulo, and has 52 employees.

“From day one we said, ‘We only work with a success fee,’ so we only get paid when the customer signs the loan contract,” said Olle Widen, the company’s co-founder, and CEO. 

Instead of charging the customer, FinanZero gets a commission from one of its partners, and with a growing volume of credit applications – an average of 750,000 applications per month – the company has seen 61% revenue growth from 2019-2020.

The Brazilian finance and banking market has been ripe for disruption, as it has traditionally favored the rich. 

Those with low incomes – the vast majority of Brazilian citizens – are then left with few options when it comes to financing, and which in turn forces them into compounding debt they’ll likely never escape from. Traditionally, young Brazilians have lived with their families until they got married, and while there is a cultural aspect to it, the bottom line is that mortgages were infinitely hard to get approved for. 

With products like FinanZero and Nubank – Latin America’s largest digital bank – Brazilians are starting to see more economic mobility and independence from the legacy institutions that dictated their lives for so long.

Widen, who is Swedish, moved to Brazil about 10 years ago for personal reasons, and while there, was pitched the idea of FinanZero by Webrok Ventures, an investment company focused on bringing Nordic innovation to Brazil. 

At the time, Swedish startup Lendo – a precursor to FinanZero – was making waves in Sweden, and the team felt that a similar model would succeed in Brazil, a country known for its bureaucracy and red tape, and thus primed for a streamlined and hassle-free approach to loans.

The original idea was to just copy Lendo, Widen said, but as others have discovered, along the way the team needed to “tropicalize” the product and the experience, meaning they had to build a custom solution for the Brazilian market and its people.

“The founder of Lendo was a childhood friend of mine,” said Widen, of his close ties to the Swedish fintech.

To apply for a loan on FinanZero you don’t need to provide your credit score. Instead, all you need is a utility bill (proof of address), proof of income, and your government ID. The process is so simple, Widen said, that 92% of loan applications are initiated from a smartphone.

“Our business model is very based on the bank’s risk appetite and we saw 60% growth from 2019-2020. We are close to 3 million visits per month, about 1.5 are unique and in March of 2021, we had 800K people fill out the entire loan form. We have about a 10% approval rating across all products,” Widen said.

The round was led by the Swedish investors VEF, Dunross & Co, and Atlant Fonder, which are all previous investors in the company. The funding will go toward marketing – most of which will be on T.V. – product development, and talent acquisition.

News: Byju’s acquires Indian tutor Aakash for nearly $1 billion

• April 5, 2021
• by:   
• in:  Blog 
• note:  no comments 

Why did Byju’s raise over $1 billion last year and is already inching closer to securing another half a billion dollars? We are getting some answers today. Byju’s said on Monday it has acquired Aakash Educational, a 33-year-old chain of physical coaching centres, as the Indian online learning giant looks to further consolidate its leadership

Why did Byju’s raise over $1 billion last year and is already inching closer to securing another half a billion dollars? We are getting some answers today.

Byju’s said on Monday it has acquired Aakash Educational, a 33-year-old chain of physical coaching centres, as the Indian online learning giant looks to further consolidate its leadership position in the world’s second largest internet market.

The Indian startup paid “close to $1 billion” in cash and equity for the acquisition, which is one of the largest in the edtech space, three people familiar with the matter told TechCrunch. (EY advised the firms on the transaction.)

Backed by Blackstone, Aakash owns and operates more than 200 physical tutoring centres across the country aimed at students preparing to qualify for top engineering and medical colleges.

The decades-old firm has made some of its offering available online in recent years, but the pandemic’s recent shift to students’ preferences made Aakash and Byju’s explore a deal six-seven months ago, executives from the firm told TechCrunch in a joint interview. (They declined to comment on the financial aspects of the deal.)

Aakash Chaudhry, Managing Director and Co-promoter of Aakash Educational, said the two firms joining forces will offer “very substantial and value-additive services to students.” The leadership at Aakash Educational will stay with the firm after the acquisition.

The acquisition will enable the two entities to build the largest omni-channel for students in India, he said. “Students who have wanted to access physical classrooms have gotten that from us. And those who wanted to access content and learning online has been served by Byju’s. Together, we will leverage the physical location and technology and online learning and offer students that is unique,” he said.

The future of education will blend offline and online experiences, said Byju Ravendran, co-founder and chief executive of the eponymous startup, in an interview. And Byju, a teacher himself, would know. Prior to launching the online platform, Ravendran took classes for hundreds of students at stadiums.

For several of Byju’s offerings such as test-preparation, he said, an online-only model is still a few years away. Monday’s deal is also aimed at expanding the reach of Byju’s and Aakash Educational in smaller towns and cities, the executives said.

Amit Dixit, Co-head of Asia Acquisitions and Head of India Private Equity at Blackstone at Blackstone, which acquired a 37.5% stake in Aakash for about $183 million in 2019, said that an “omni-channel will be the winning model in test prep and tutoring, and we look forward to being a part of the partnership between the two foremost companies in Indian supplementary education – Aakash and Byju’s.”

Ravendran said the startup is looking to acquire more firms. TechCrunch reported last week that the startup is holding acquisition talks with California-headquartered startup Epic for “significantly more than $300 million.”

News: Indian social commerce Meesho valued at $2.1 billion in new $300 million fundraise

• April 5, 2021
• by:   
• in:  Blog 
• note:  no comments 

Meesho said on Monday it has raised $300 million in a new financing round led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2 as the Indian social commerce startup works to become the “single ecosystem that will enable all small businesses to succeed online.” The new round — a Series E — gives the five-year-old startup a valuation

Meesho said on Monday it has raised $300 million in a new financing round led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2 as the Indian social commerce startup works to become the “single ecosystem that will enable all small businesses to succeed online.”

The new round — a Series E — gives the five-year-old startup a valuation of $2.1 billion, up from about $600 million – $700 million in 2019 Series D investment. The Indian startup, which has raised about $490 million to date, said existing investors Facebook, Prosus Ventures, Shunwei Capital, Venture Highway, and Knollwood Investment also participated in the new round.

This appears to be Shunwei Capital’s first investment in an Indian startup in nearly a year. New Delhi last year introduced a rule to require its approval for a Chinese investor to write a check to an Indian firm.

Bangalore-based Meesho operates an eponymous online marketplace that connects sellers with customers on social media platforms such as WhatsApp, Facebook and Instagram. Its offerings include order management, taking care of logistics, online payments, real-time shop updates, and allowing businesses to get their customers to subscribe.

The startup claims to have a network of more than 13 million entrepreneurs, a majority of whom are women, from hundreds of Indians towns who largely deal with apparel, home appliances and electronics items.

Meesho said it will deploy the fresh capital to help 100 million individuals and small businesses in the country to sell online. “In the last one year, we have seen tremendous growth across small businesses and entrepreneurs seeking to move their businesses online,” said Vidit Aatrey, co-founder and chief executive of Meesho, in a statement.

“We have been closely tracking Meesho for the last 18 months and have been impressed by their growth, daily engagement metrics, focus on unit economics and ability to create a strong team. We believe Meesho provides an efficient platform for SME suppliers and social resellers to onboard the e-commerce revolution in India and help them provide personalized experience to consumers,” said Sumer Juneja, partner at SoftBank Investment Advisers, in a statement.

In a recent report, UBS analysts identified social commerce and business-to-business marketplaces as potential sources of competition to e-commerce firms such as Amazon and Flipkart in India.

Social commerce is one prominent bets to take on modern e-commerce that has struggled to make inroads in India, despite billions of dollars ploughed by Amazon and Flipkart. Another bet is digitizing neighborhood stores in the country that dot tens of thousands of towns, cities and villages in India. Global giants Facebook and Google are backing both the horses.

News: LG is shutting down its smartphone business worldwide

• April 5, 2021
• by:   
• in:  Blog 
• note:  no comments 

LG said on Monday it will close its loss-making mobile phone business worldwide as the once pioneer brand looks to focus its resources in “growth areas” such as electric vehicle components, connected devices, smart homes, robotics, AI and B2B solutions, and platforms and services. The South Korean firm said in a statement that its board

LG said on Monday it will close its loss-making mobile phone business worldwide as the once pioneer brand looks to focus its resources in “growth areas” such as electric vehicle components, connected devices, smart homes, robotics, AI and B2B solutions, and platforms and services.

The South Korean firm said in a statement that its board of directors approved the decision today. The unsurprising move follows the company’s statement from January when it said it was reviewing the direction of its smartphone business.

LG, which maintained No. 3 spot in the smartphone market in the U.S. for a long time, said it will continue to sell handsets until the inventory lasts, and will provide software support for existing lineup of smartphones for a certain period of time that would vary by region.

The company said the status of its employees of phone business will be determined at the local level. In January, reports emerged that said LG was looking to sell its smartphone business. In the same month, the company said it would launch a rollable phone this year. But it appears all the efforts to keep the business stay afloat failed.

“Moving forward, LG will continue to leverage its mobile expertise and develop mobility-related technologies such as 6G to help further strengthen competitiveness in other business areas. Core technologies developed during the two decades of LG’s mobile business operations will also be retained and applied to existing and future products,” it said in a statement.

The poor financial performance of LG’s smartphone business has been public information for several years. Like countless other Android smartphone vendors, LG has struggled to turn things around.

LG focused on mid-range and high-end smartphones, two segments of the market that have become increasingly competitive in the past decade thanks to the rise of Chinese phonemakers such as Huawei, Xiaomi, OnePlus, Oppo and Vivo that are launching better value-for-money models every few months. (Once a rival, HTC has been struggling, too.)

Several phonemakers today rely heavily on software services such as mobile payments to make money. While LG launched a mobile payments service in 2017, two years after Samsung launched Samsung Pay, LG’s portfolio of services remained thin throughout the years.

News: You might have just missed the best time to sell your startup

• April 3, 2021
• by:   
• in:  Blog 
• note:  no comments 

Welcome back to The TechCrunch Exchange, a weekly startups-and-markets newsletter. It’s broadly based on the daily column that appears on Extra Crunch, but free, and made for your weekend reading. Want it in your inbox every Saturday? Sign up here.  Happy Saturday, everyone. I do hope that you are in good spirits and in good

Welcome back to The TechCrunch Exchange, a weekly startups-and-markets newsletter. It’s broadly based on the daily column that appears on Extra Crunch, but free, and made for your weekend reading. Want it in your inbox every Saturday? Sign up here. 

Happy Saturday, everyone. I do hope that you are in good spirits and in good health. I am learning to nap, something that has become a requirement in my life after I realized that the news cycle is never going to slow down. And because my partner and I adopted a third dog who likes to get up early, please join me in making napping cool for adults, so that we can all rest up for Vaccine Summer. It’s nearly here.

On work topics, I have a few things for you today, all concerning data points that matter: Q1 2021 M&A data, March VC results from Africa, and some surprising (to me, at least) podcast numbers.

On the first, Dan Primack shared a few early first-quarter data points via Refinitiv that I wanted to pass along. Per the financial data firm, global M&A activity hit $1.3 trillion in Q1 2021, up 93% from Q1 2020. U.S. M&A activity reached an all-time high in the first quarter, as well. Why do we care? Because the data helps underscore just how hot the last three months have been.

I’m expecting venture capital data itself for the quarter to be similarly impressive. But as everyone is noting this week, there are some cracks appearing in the IPO market, as the second quarter begins that could make Q2 2021 a very different beast. Not that the venture capital world will slow, especially given that Tiger just reloaded to the tune of $6.7 billion.

On the venture capital topic, African-focused data firm Briter Bridges reports that “March alone saw over $280 million being deployed into tech companies operating across Africa,” driven in part by “Flutterwave’s whopping $170 million round at a $1 billion valuation.”

The data point matters as it marks the most active March that the African continent has seen in venture capital terms since at least 2017 — and I would guess ever. African startups tend to raise more capital in the second half of the year, so the March result is not an all-time record for a single month. But it’s bullish all the same, and helps feed our general sentiment that the first quarter’s venture capital results could be big.

And finally, Index Ventures’ Rex Woodbury tweeted some Edison data, namely that “80 million Americans (28% of the U.S. 12+ population) are weekly podcast listeners, +17% year-over-year.” The venture capitalist went on to add that “62% of the U.S. 12+ population (around 176 million people) are weekly online audio listeners.”

As we discussed on Equity this week, the non-music, streaming audio market is being bet on by a host of players in light of Clubhouse’s success as a breakout consumer social company in recent months. Undergirding the bets by Discord and Spotify and others are those data points. People love to listen to other humans talk. Far more than I would have imagined, as a music-first person.

How nice it is to be back in a time when consumer investing is neat. B2B is great but not everything can be enterprise SaaS. (Notably, however, it does appear that Clubhouse is struggling to hold onto its own hype.)

Look I can’t keep up with all the damn venture capital rounds

TechCrunch Early Stage was this week, which went rather well. But having an event to help put on did mean that I covered fewer rounds this week than I would have liked. So, here are two that I would have typed up if I had had the spare hours:

• Striim’s $50 million Series C. Goldman led the transaction. Striim, pronounced stream I believe, is a software startup that helps other companies move data around their cloud and on-prem setups in real time. Given how active the data market is today, I presume that the TAM for Striim is deep? Quickly flowing? You can supply a better stream-centered word at your leisure.
• Kudo’s $21 million Series A. I covered Kudo last July when it raised $6 million. The company provides video-chat and conferencing services with support for  real-time translation. It had a good COVID-era, as you can imagine. Felicis led the A after taking part in the seed round. I’ll see if I can extract some fresh growth metrics from the company next week. One to watch.

And two more rounds that you also might have missed that you should not. Holler raised $36 million in a Series B. Per our own Anthony Ha, “[y]ou may not know what conversational media is, but there’s a decent chance you’ve used Holler’s technology. For example, if you’ve added a sticker or a GIF to your Venmo payments, Holler actually manages the app’s search and suggestion experience around that media.”

I feel old.

And in case you are not paying enough attention to Latin American tech, this $150 million Uruguayan round should help set you straight.

Various and sundry

Finally this week, some good news. If you’ve read The Exchange for any length of time, you’ve been forced to read me prattling on about the Bessemer cloud index, a basket of public software companies that I treat with oracular respect. Now there’s a new index on the market.

Meet the Lux Health + Tech Index. Per Lux Capital, it’s an “index of 57 publicly traded companies that together best represent the rapidly emerging Health + Tech investment theme.” Sure, this is branded to the extent that, akin to the Bessemer collection, it is tied to a particular focus of the backing venture capital firm. But what the new Lux index will do, as with the Bessemer collection, is track how a particular venture firm is itself tracking the public comps for their portfolio.

That’s a useful thing to have. More of this, please.

Alex

News: Amazon addresses pee bottle denial tweet

• April 3, 2021
• by:   
• in:  Blog 
• note:  no comments 

Amazon kicked off the holiday weekend by backtracking slightly on a social media offensive that unfolded in the waning days of a historic unionization vote. The earlier  comments reportedly arrived as Jeff Bezos was pushing for a more aggressive strategy. Along with taking on Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, the Amazon News Twitter account

Amazon kicked off the holiday weekend by backtracking slightly on a social media offensive that unfolded in the waning days of a historic unionization vote. The earlier  comments reportedly arrived as Jeff Bezos was pushing for a more aggressive strategy.

Along with taking on Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, the Amazon News Twitter account went toe to toe with Congressman, Mark Pocan. The Wisconsin Democrat cited oft-reported stories of Amazon workers urinating in bottles in reaction to comments from Consumer CEO, Dave Clark.

“You don’t really believe the peeing in bottles thing, do you?” the account asked. “If that were true, nobody would work for us. The truth is that we have over a million incredible employees around the world who are proud of what they do, and have great wages and health care from day one.”

The Congressman’s initial response was pithy and to the point: “[Y]es, I do believe your workers. You don’t?”

Subsequent reports have served to cement those stories. One called the urination issue “widespread” among Amazon drivers, adding that defecation had also, reportedly, become a problem. Last night, the company offered a mea culpa of sorts, saying it “owe[s] an apology to Representative Pocan.”

Things break down a bit from there. Amazon’s apology acknowledges that workers peeing in bottles is a thing, but appears to imply that it’s limited to drivers and not the fulfillment center staff at the center of this large scale unionization effort. From there, the company adds that drivers peeing in bottles is an “industry-wide issue and is not specific to Amazon.”

The company helpfully includes a list of links and tweets that are, at very least, an indictment of the gig economy and the treatment of blue collar workers, generally. Essentially, Amazon is admitting to being a part of the problem, while working to spread the blame across an admittedly faulty system.

Reports of workers urinating in bottles also go beyond drivers, including stories of warehouse employees resorting to the act in order to meet stringent quotas.

“A typical Amazon fulfillment center has dozens of restrooms, and employees are able to step away from their work station at any time,” company writes in the post attributed to anonymous Amazon Staff. “If any employee in a fulfillment center has a different experience, we encourage them to speak to their manager and we’ll work to fix it.”

Union vote counting for the company’s Bessemer, Alabama warehouse began last week. Results could have a wide-ranging impact on both Amazon and the industry at large.

News: Nonobvious acquisitions are on my 2021 bingo board

• April 3, 2021
• by:   
• in:  Blog 
• note:  no comments 

At the end of 2020, I argued that edtech needs to think bigger in order to stay relevant after the pandemic. I urged founders to think less about how to bundle and unbundle lecture experience, and more about how to replace outdated systems and methods with new, tech-powered solutions. In other words, don’t simply put

At the end of 2020, I argued that edtech needs to think bigger in order to stay relevant after the pandemic. I urged founders to think less about how to bundle and unbundle lecture experience, and more about how to replace outdated systems and methods with new, tech-powered solutions. In other words, don’t simply put engaging content on a screen, but innovate on what that screen looks like, tracks and offers.

A few months into 2021, the exit environment in edtech…feels like it’s doing exactly that. The same startups that hit billion and multi-billion valuations during the pandemic are scooping up new talent to broaden their service offerings.

Ruben Harris, the founder of Career Karma, a platform that matches aspiring coding professionals to bootcamps, put together a massive report recently with his team to talk about the pandemic’s impact on the bootcamp market.

James Gallagher, the author of the report, tells me:

It is important to note that the full potential of bootcamps has not yet been realised. We are now seeing more exploration of niches like technology sales which provide gateways into new careers in tech for people who otherwise may not have been able to acquire training. To scale such models, new businesses will need venture capital.

He went on to explain how a notable acquisition from 2020 was K12 scooping up Galvanize, “which would give K12 exposure into corporate training and the coding bootcamp space, a market outside of K12’s focus at the moment.”

To me this report signal two things: the financial interest in boot camps isn’t simply stemming from other bootcamps (although that is happening), but it’s surprising partnerships. Leaving this subsector, we see creative acquisitions such as a Roblox for edtech buying a language learning tool, and a startup known for flashcards scooping up a tech tutoring service.

• How is edtech spending its extra capital
• Byju’s in talks to acquire US-based reading platform, Epic
• The tech-powered wave of smart, not slow, tutoring sessions

Readers should know by this point that I love a nonobvious acquisition (except when this almost happened), so if you have any more tips on coming deals in edtech, please Signal me or direct message me on Twitter.

I’ll end with this: Successful startup founders are innately ambitious, finding opportunity in moonshots and convincing others that the odds are in their favor. However, the ceiling for what defines ambition heightens almost everyday. What used to be a win is now a nonnegotiable, and a feat is only a feat until your competitor hits the exact same milestone.

Acquisitions are one way to scoop up competition and synergistic talent, but it’s what happens next that matters the most.

In the rest of this newsletter, we will talk about Clubhouse competitors, how a homegrown experiment became one of the fastest growing companies in fitness tech and a cool-down in public markets (?!). As always, you can get this newsletter in your inbox each Saturday morning, so subscribe here to join the cool kids.

Clubhouse might create billions in value, but could capture none of it

Remember when everyone was buzzing around about building Stories? That’s so pre-pandemic. A number of companies recently announced plans to build their own versions of Clubhouse, after the buzzy app unearthed the consumer love for audio.

Here’s what to know: It might be easier to start guessing who isn’t building a Clubhouse clone at this point. Our predictions are already starting, but jokes aside, the rise in clones could mean that Clubhouse might have to make a run for its pre-monetized money (cough, cough, Twitter spaces). It doesn’t matter if a startup is first in unlocking a key insight, all that matters is who executes that key insight the best.

• Facebook’s Clubhouse rival looks a lot like Clubhouse right now
• Discord is launching new Clubhouse-like channels for audio events
• LinkedIn confirms it’s working on a Clubhouse rival, too
• Swell launches its app for asynchronous voice conversations
• Slack wants to be more than a text-based messaging platform
• Twitter Spaces arrives on Android ahead of Clubhouse
• Spotify is getting into live audio because of course it is
• Career Karma built audio rooms
• China’s Clubhouse clones via Protocol

A strong unicorn, literally

Tonal, a fitness tech startup, became a unicorn this week after raising a new tranche of capital.

Here’s what to know: The new status underscores market growth for at-home fitness solutions. And while we don’t have a Tonal S-1 yet, we do have a Tonal EC-1. EC-1’s are TechCrunch’s riff on an S-1, and are essentially a deep dive into a company.

Reporter JP Mangalindan wrote thousands and thousands of words about Tonal, from its origin story to business model, its focus on communities and its biggest hurdles ahead.

• How a homegrown experiment became one of the fastest-growing companies in fitness tech
• Millions of dollars and 3.5 years, and it all came down to this
• Building online communities for fun, profit and product
• Can Tonal become the luxury fitness market champion?

Initial public o….no

You’ve probably had a better week than Compass, Deliveroo and Kaltura. The three companies all had different events that illustrate a potential damper on the part that has been the public markets.

Here’s what to know: Compass cut its shares and lowered pricing of said shares, Deliveroo had a rough debut as a delivery company on the public markets, and Kaltura postponed its IPO after valuation demand didn’t hit expectations.

In other news, though:

• Coursera prices IPO at top end of its range in boon to edtech valuations
• Coinbase to direct list on April 14th, provide financial update on April 6th
• UiPath’s IPO filing suggests robotic process automation is booming

Around TechCrunch

Thanks to everyone who tuned in to TechCrunch Early Stage! If you enjoyed the event (or missed it), don’t worry: Disrupt is almost here.

• Buy a pass to Disrupt 2021 and get a free Extra Crunch membership
• And I want to give a shout-out to two newsletters that I hope you read each week along with Startups Weekly: This Week in Apps and The Exchange. 

Across the week

Seen on TechCrunch

How startups can go passwordless, thanks to zero trust

Tips for founders thinking about doing a remote accelerator

US iPhone users spent an average of $138 on apps in 2020, will grow to $180 in 2021

Niantic CEO shares teaser image of AR glasses device

The Weeknd will sell an unreleased song and visual art via NFT auction

Seen on Extra Crunch

Embedded procurement will make every company its own marketplace

5 mistakes creators make building new games on Roblox

E-commerce roll-ups are the next wave of disruption in consumer packaged goods

How our SaaS startup improved net revenue retention by more than 30 points in two quarters

News: How Jamaica failed to handle its JamCOVID scandal

• April 3, 2021
• by:   
• in:  Blog 
• note:  no comments 

Amber Group claimed it faced “cyberattacks, hacking and mischievous players.” In reality, the app was just not that secure.

As governments scrambled to lock down their populations after the COVID-19 pandemic was declared last March, some countries had plans underway to reopen. By June, Jamaica became one of the first countries to open its borders.

Tourism represents about one-fifth of Jamaica’s economy. In 2019 alone, four million travelers visited Jamaica, bringing thousands of jobs to its three million residents. But as COVID-19 stretched into the summer, Jamaica’s economy was in free fall, and tourism was its only way back — even if that meant at the expense of public health.

The Jamaican government contracted with Amber Group, a technology company headquartered in Kingston, to build a border entry system allowing residents and travelers back onto the island. The system was named JamCOVID and was rolled out as an app and a website to allow visitors to get screened before they arrive. To cross the border, travelers had to upload a negative COVID-19 test result to JamCOVID before boarding their flight from high-risk countries, including the United States.

Amber Group’s CEO Dushyant Savadia boasted that his company developed JamCOVID in “three days” and that it effectively donated the system to the Jamaican government, which in turn pays Amber Group for additional features and customizations. The rollout appeared to be a success, and Amber Group later secured contracts to roll out its border entry system to at least four other Caribbean islands.

But last month TechCrunch revealed that JamCOVID exposed immigration documents, passport numbers, and COVID-19 lab test results on close to half a million travelers — including many Americans — who visited the island over the past year. Amber Group had set the access to the JamCOVID cloud server to public, allowing anyone to access its data from their web browser.

Whether the data exposure was caused by human error or negligence, it was an embarrassing mistake for a technology company — and, by extension, the Jamaican government — to make.

And that might have been the end of it. Instead, the government’s response became the story.

A trio of security lapses

By the end of the first wave of coronavirus, contact tracing apps were still in their infancy and few governments had plans in place to screen travelers as they arrived at their borders. It was a scramble for governments to build or acquire technology to understand the spread of the virus.

Jamaica was one of a handful of countries using location data to monitor travelers, prompting rights groups to raise concerns about privacy and data protection.

As part of an investigation into a broad range of these COVID-19 apps and services, TechCrunch found that JamCOVID was storing data on an exposed, passwordless server.

This wasn’t the first time TechCrunch found security flaws or exposed data through our reporting. It also was not the first pandemic-related security scare. Israeli spyware maker NSO Group left real location data on an unprotected server that it used for demonstrating its new contact tracing system. Norway was one of the first countries with a contact tracing app, but pulled it after the country’s privacy authority found the continuous tracking of citizens’ location was a privacy risk.

Just as we have with any other story, we contacted who we thought was the server’s owner. We alerted Jamaica’s Ministry of Health to the data exposure on the weekend of February 13. But after we provided specific details of the exposure to ministry spokesperson Stephen Davidson, we did not hear back. Two days later, the data was still exposed.

After we spoke to two American travelers whose data was spilling from the server, we narrowed down the owner of the server to Amber Group. We contacted its chief executive Savadia on February 16, who acknowledged the email but did not comment, and the server was secured about an hour later.

We ran our story that afternoon. After we published, the Jamaican government issued a statement claiming the lapse was “discovered on February 16” and was “immediately rectified,” neither of which were true.

Instead, the government responded by launching a criminal investigation into whether there was any “unauthorized” access to the unprotected data that led to our first story, which we perceived to be a thinly veiled threat directed at this publication. The government said it had contacted its overseas law enforcement partners.

When reached, a spokesperson for the FBI declined to say whether the Jamaican government had contacted the agency.

Things didn’t get much better for JamCOVID. In the days that followed the first story, the government engaged a cloud and cybersecurity consultant, Escala 24×7, to assess JamCOVID’s security. The results were not disclosed, but the company said it was confident there was “no current vulnerability” in JamCOVID. Amber Group also said that the lapse was a “completely isolated occurrence.”

A week went by and TechCrunch alerted Amber Group to two more security lapses. After the attention from the first report, a security researcher who saw the news of the first lapse found exposed private keys and passwords for JamCOVID’s servers and databases hidden on its website, and a third lapse that spilled quarantine orders for more than half a million travelers.

Amber Group and the government claimed it faced “cyberattacks, hacking and mischievous players.” In reality, the app was just not that secure.

Politically inconvenient

The security lapses come at a politically inconvenient time for the Jamaican government, as it attempts to launch a national identification system, or NIDS, for the second time. NIDS will store biographic data on Jamaican nationals, including their biometrics, such as their fingerprints.

The repeat effort comes two years after the government’s first law was struck down by Jamaica’s High Court as unconstitutional.

Critics have cited the JamCOVID security lapses as a reason to drop the proposed national database. A coalition of privacy and rights groups cited the recent issues with JamCOVID for why a national database is “potentially dangerous for Jamaicans’ privacy and security.” A spokesperson for Jamaica’s opposition party told local media that there “wasn’t much confidence in NIDS in the first place.”

It’s been more than a month since we published the first story and there are many unanswered questions, including how Amber Group secured the contract to build and run JamCOVID, how the cloud server became exposed, and if security testing was conducted before its launch.

TechCrunch emailed both the Jamaican prime minister’s office and Jamaica’s national security minister Matthew Samuda to ask how much, if anything, the government donated or paid to Amber Group to run JamCOVID and what security requirements, if any, were agreed upon for JamCOVID. We did not get a response.

Amber Group also has not said how much it has earned from its government contracts. Amber Group’s Savadia declined to disclose the value of the contracts to one local newspaper. Savadia did not respond to our emails with questions about its contracts.

Following the second security lapse, Jamaica’s opposition party demanded that the prime minister release the contracts that govern the agreement between the government and Amber Group. Prime Minister Andrew Holness said at a press conference that the public “should know” about government contracts but warned “legal hurdles” may prevent disclosure, such as for national security reasons or when “sensitive trade and commercial information” might be disclosed.

That came days after local newspaper The Jamaica Gleaner had a request to obtain contracts revealing the salaries state officials denied by the government under a legal clause that prevents the disclosure of an individual’s private affairs. Critics argue that taxpayers have a right to know how much government officials are paid from public funds.

Jamaica’s opposition party also asked what was done to notify victims.

Government minister Samuda initially downplayed the security lapse, claiming just 700 people were affected. We scoured social media for proof but found nothing. To date, we’ve found no evidence that the Jamaican government ever informed travelers of the security incident — either the hundreds of thousands of affected travelers whose information was exposed, or the 700 people that the government claimed it notified but has not publicly released.

TechCrunch emailed the minister to request a copy of the notice that the government allegedly sent to victims, but we did not receive a response. We also asked Amber Group and Jamaica’s prime minister’s office for comment. We did not hear back.

Many of the victims of the security lapse are from the United States. Neither of the two Americans we spoke to in our first report were notified of the breach.

Spokespeople for the attorneys general of New York and Florida, whose residents’ information was exposed, told TechCrunch that they had not heard from either the Jamaican government or the contractor, despite state laws requiring data breaches to be disclosed.

The reopening of Jamaica’s borders came at a cost. The island saw over a hundred new cases of COVID-19 in the month that followed, the majority arriving from the United States. From June to August, the number of new coronavirus cases went from tens to dozens to hundreds each day.

To date, Jamaica has reported over 39,500 cases and 600 deaths caused by the pandemic.

Prime Minister Holness reflected on the decision to reopen its borders last month in parliament to announce the country’s annual budget. He said the country’s economic decline last was “driven by a massive 70% contraction in our tourist industry.” More than 525,000 travelers — both residents and tourists — have arrived in Jamaica since the borders opened, Holness said, a figure slightly more than the number of travelers’ records found on the exposed JamCOVID server in February.

Holness defended reopening the country’s borders.

“Had we not done this the fall out in tourism revenues would have been 100% instead of 75%, there would be no recovery in employment, our balance of payment deficit would have worsened, overall government revenues would have been threatened, and there would be no argument to be made about spending more,” he said.

Both the Jamaican government and Amber Group benefited from opening the country’s borders. The government wanted to revive its falling economy, and Amber Group enriched its business with fresh government contracts. But neither paid enough attention to cybersecurity, and victims of their negligence deserve to know why.

---

Send tips securely over Signal and WhatsApp to +1 646-755-8849. You can also send files or documents using our SecureDrop. Learn more. 

News: NASA SBIR march 21

• April 3, 2021
• by:   
• in:  Blog 
• note:  no comments 

NASA’s SBIR program regularly doles out cash to promising small businesses and research programs, and the lists of awardees is always interesting to sift through. Here are a dozen companies and proposals from this batch that are especially compelling or suggest new directions for missions and industry in space. Sadly these brief descriptions are often

NASA’s SBIR program regularly doles out cash to promising small businesses and research programs, and the lists of awardees is always interesting to sift through. Here are a dozen companies and proposals from this batch that are especially compelling or suggest new directions for missions and industry in space.

Sadly these brief descriptions are often all that is available. These things are often so early stage that there’s nothing to show but some equations and a drawing on the back of a napkin — but NASA knows promising work when it sees it. (You can learn more about how to apply for SBIR grants here.)

Autonomous deorbiting system

Martian Sky Technologies wins the backronym award with Decluttering of Earth Orbit to Repurpose for Bespoke Innovative Technologies, or DEORBIT, an effort to create an autonomous clutter-removal system for low Earth orbit. It is intended to monitor a given volume and remove any intruding items, clearing the area for construction or occupation by another craft.

Ultrasonic additive manufacturing

There are lots of proposals for various forms of 3D printing, welding, and other things important to the emerging field of “On-orbit servicing, assembly, and manufacturing” or OSAM. One I found interesting uses ultrasonics, which is weird to me because clearly, in space, there’s no atmosphere for ultrasonic to work in (I’m going to guess they thought of that). But this kind of counterintuitive approach could lead to a truly new approach.

Robots watch each other’s backs

Doing OSAM work will likely involve coordinating multiple robotic platforms, something that’s hard enough on Earth. TRAClabs is looking into a way to “enhance perceptual feedback and decrease the cognitive load on operators” by autonomously moving robots not in use to positions where they can provide useful viewpoints of the others. It’s a simple idea and fits with the way humans tend to work — if you’re not the person doing the actual task, you automatically move out of the way and to a good position to see what’s happening.

3D printed Hall effect thrusters

Hall effect thrusters are a highly efficient form of electric propulsion that could be very useful in certain types of in-space maneuvering. But they’re not particularly powerful, and it seems that to build larger ones existing manufacturing techniques will not suffice. Elementum 3D aims to accomplish it by developing a new additive manufacturing technique and cobalt-iron feedstock that should let them make these things as big as they want.

Venusian batteries

Venus is a fascinating place, but its surface is extremely hostile to machines the way they’re built here on Earth. Even hardened Mars rovers like Perseverance would succumb in minutes, seconds even in the 800F heat. And among the many ways they would fail is that the batteries they use would overheat and possibly explode. TalosTech and the University of Delaware are looking into an unusual type of battery that would operate at high temperatures by using atmospheric CO2 as a reactant.

Neuromorphic low-SWaP radio

When you’re going to space, every gram and cubic centimeter counts, and once you’re out there, every milliwatt does as well. That’s why there’s always a push to switch legacy systems to low size, weight, and power (low-SWaP) alternatives. Intellisense is taking on part of the radio stack, using neuromorphic (i.e. brainlike – but not in a sci-fi way) computing to simplify and shrink the part that sorts and directs incoming signals. Every gram saved is one more spacecraft designers can put to work elsewhere, and they may get some performance gains as well.

Making space safer with lidar

Astrobotic is becoming a common name to see in NASA’s next few years of interplanetary missions, and its research division is looking at ways to make both spacecraft and surface vehicles like rovers smarter and safer using lidar. One proposal is a lidar system narrowly focused on imaging single small objects in a sparse scene (e.g. scanning one satellite from another against the vastness of space) for the purposes of assessment and repair. The second involves a deep learning technique applied to both lidar and traditional imagery to identify obstacles on a planet’s surface. The team for that one is currently also working on the VIPER water-hunting rover aiming for a 2023 lunar landing.

Monitoring space farms

Bloomfield does automated monitoring of agriculture, but growing plants in orbit or on the surface or Mars is a little different than here on Earth. But it’s hoping to expand to Controlled Environment Agriculture, which is to say the little experimental farms we’ve used to see how plants grow under weird conditions like microgravity. They plan to use multi-spectral imaging and deep learning analysis thereof to monitor the state of plants constantly so astronauts don’t have to write “leaf 25 got bigger” every day in a notebook.

Regolith bricks

The Artemis program is all about going to the Moon “to stay,” but we haven’t quite figured out that last part. Researchers are looking into how to refuel and launch rockets from the lunar surface without bringing everything involved with them, and Exploration Architecture aims to take on a small piece of that, building a lunar launchpad literally brick by brick. It proposes an integrated system that takes lunar dust or regolith, melts it down, then bakes it into bricks to be placed wherever needed. It’s either that or bring Earth bricks, and I can tell you that’s not a good option.

Several other companies and research agencies proposed regolith-related construction and handling as well. It was one of a handful of themes, some of which are a little too in the weeds to go into.

Another theme was technologies for exploring ice worlds like Europa. Sort of like the opposite of Venus, an ice planet will be lethal to “ordinary” rovers in many ways and the conditions necessitate different approaches for power, sensing, and traversal.

NASA isn’t immune to the new trend of swarms, be they satellite or aircraft. Managing these swarms takes a lot of doing, and if they’re to act as a single distributed machine (which is the general idea) they need a robust computing architecture behind them. Numerous companies are looking into ways to accomplish this.

You can see the rest of NASA’s latest SBIR grants, and the technology transfer program selections too, at the dedicated site here. And if you’re curious how to get some of that federal cash yourself, read on below.

News: This Week in Apps: Clubhouse clones, WWDC21, apps have their best-ever quarter

• April 3, 2021
• by:   
• in:  Blog 
• note:  no comments 

Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the weekly TechCrunch series that recaps the latest in mobile OS news, mobile applications and the overall app economy. The app industry is as hot as ever, with a record 218 billion downloads and $143 billion in global consumer spend in 2020. Consumers last year also spent 3.5 trillion minutes using apps on Android

Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the weekly TechCrunch series that recaps the latest in mobile OS news, mobile applications and the overall app economy. The app industry is as hot as ever, with a record 218 billion downloads and $143 billion in global consumer spend in 2020.

Consumers last year also spent 3.5 trillion minutes using apps on Android devices alone. And in the U.S., app usage surged ahead of the time spent watching live TV. Currently, the average American watches 3.7 hours of live TV per day, but now spends four hours per day on their mobile devices.

Apps aren’t just a way to pass idle hours — they’re also a big business. In 2019, mobile-first companies had a combined $544 billion valuation, 6.5x higher than those without a mobile focus. In 2020, investors poured $73 billion in capital into mobile companies — a figure that’s up 27% year-over-year.

This Week in Apps will soon be a newsletter! Sign up here: techcrunch.com/newsletters

This week we’re looking into app store trends, Apple’s upcoming WWDC, new App Store rejections and what they mean for ATT (App Tracking Transparency), and whatever happened to that Arizona App Store bill, among other stories.

Top Stories

Apps just had the biggest quarter on record

Big news for the app economy this week, as App Annie reported that consumer spending on mobile apps broke a new record. According to new data, worldwide consumers in Q1 2021 spent $32 billion on apps across both iOS and Google Play, up 40% year-over-year from Q1 2020. It’s the largest-ever quarter on record, with mobile consumers spending roughly $9 billion more in Q1 2021 compared with Q1 2020, in part due to the pandemic’s continued impacts.

Although iOS saw larger consumer spend than Android in the quarter — $21 billion versus $11 billion, respectively — both stores grew by the same percentage, 40%. Gaming drove a majority of the quarter’s consumer spending, as usual, accounting for $22 billion of the spend — $13 billion on iOS (up 30% year-over-year) and $9 billion on Android (up 35%).

Apple begins rejecting apps with fingerprinting tech

With the launch of iOS 14.5 looming, reports circulated this week that Apple has begun rejecting apps that use third-party SDKs that track users via a method called device fingerprinting. The Adjust SDK was one that didn’t yet comply with Apple’s new App Tracking Transparency guidelines, causing apps that included the SDK to be rejected. That could have been a large number of possible rejections, as Adjust’s website claims it’s trusted by more than 50,000 apps. But Adjust soon updated its SDK (open-sourced and here on GitHub), to hopefully re-enable app updates for its customers.

The App Tracking Transparency (ATT) changes have thrown a whole industry into disarray as companies scramble to comply and diversify their revenues. Snap, however, was found to be looking into alternative ways to bypass ATT by gathering data like IP addresses from companies that analyze ad campaigns to see if it could then cross-reference that data with its own, in order to continue tracking its users. Snap told the Financial Times it had tested the technique, called probabilistic matching, to test the impact of Apple’s policies, but claimed it intended to discontinue the program after Apple introduced its changes. (Sure Jan!) The company says it believes that tracking individual users will no longer be allowed going forward, but gathering data on “cohorts” would be. On Thursday, Apple sent letters to developers warning them to remove code that supported probabilistic matching, just in case.

WWDC 2021 announced

WWDC will again be virtual, Apple announced this week. The online event will take place June 7 to 11, as it did last year, allowing developers worldwide to tune in to watch prerecorded keynotes and sessions, and virtually network and learn from Apple engineers and employees. Though April 18, students can submit their Swift playground to this year’s Swift Student Challenge to win exclusive outerwear and Apple pins.

Everyone has already begun to read wayyyy too much into the imagery Apple published, which shows Memoji characters wearing glasses looking at a Mac screen. Is Apple teasing AR glasses?, some wondered. That doesn’t seem likely, though. The glasses are just a way to reflect the computer screen in a picture whose message largely conveys, yep, it’s another virtual event this year.

The Arizona App Store bill is dead

The bill was the work of the Coalition for App Fairness, led by Epic Games, Spotify, Tile and other developers who want alternatives to paying app store commissions and alternative distribution channels. Last week, it had been unclear why the AZ Senate skipped the vote on the bill, which had been passed by the AZ House. But according to the bill’s (HB2005) backer, Rep. Regina Cobb, speaking to The Verge, the decision was due to heavy lobbying by Apple and Google, which caused Senate members who had agreed to a vote to waiver. When the votes weren’t there, the Senate decided to skip bringing it up altogether.

Cobb, in an email to TechCrunch, confirmed the same. “We have been working with members on the committee and had the votes a few days prior,” she said. “Just before the committee was set to proceed, the Chairman notified the lobbyist for App Fairness that the votes were not there so he did not want to waste committee time on the issue.”

Weekly News

Platforms: Apple

Apple released the iOS 14.5 beta 6 to developers, which includes one major change: the release of new Siri voices. With iOS 14.5, Siri will no longer default to a female voice, but will rather allow customers to choose from a set of voices, presented in random order. Prior to the release, there had been some expectation that beta 5 would be the last before the public release, but that turned out to not be the case. However, now that beta 6 has arrived, the Release Candidate could follow as soon as next week.

Ahead of WWDC 2021, Apple updated its Apple Developer app. The app offers an updated look-and-feel, which now supports a sidebar navigation on iPad, full-screen video on larger Mac displays and a new way to discover content to watch and read in an updated Search section. As with last year’s WWDC, attendees will be able to connect with and tune into announcements, sessions and 1:1 labs via the Developer app.

U.S. users spent an average of $138 on iPhone apps in 2020, and the number is expected to grow to $180 in 2021, reported Sensor Tower. Throughout 2020, consumers turned to iPhone apps for work, school, entertainment, shopping and more, driving per-user spending to a new record and the greatest annual growth since 2016. Per-device spending on mobile games was a large part of that figure, growing 43% year over year from $53.80 in 2019 to $76.80 in 2020. That’s more than 20 points higher than the 22% growth seen between 2018 and 2019, when in-game spending grew from $44 to $53.80.

Platforms: Google

Google will begin to limit Android 11+ apps from being able to see what other apps the user has installed on their devices starting on May 5. The company now considers this “sensitive information,” though for years had allowed the practice. That made it easy for data-gathering apps that catalog to operate. Now, Google will only allow a few exceptions — apps that will be able to use the permission include antivirus, file managers and browsers. Expect to see data-gathering firms quietly release those sorts of apps in the near future.

Augmented Reality

Google expanded the AR virtual art galleries in its Arts & Culture app to include three new Pocket Galleries from  the Jean Pigozzi Collection and J. Paul Getty Museum.

Health & Fitness

A feature in The Cut this week raises questions about the viability and effectiveness of therapy apps like Talkspace, BetterHelp and AbleTo, some which use dating app-like models for matching clients to therapists as well as similar business models, where you can upgrade to live video and more features. The article questions whether the apps are able to deliver on their promises and notes how some have already faced questions over their use of data, sponsorship deals, treatment of workers and healthcare rule violations.

The global airline industry body IATA said it will launch a digital travel pass for COVID-19 test results and vaccine certificates on iOS by mid-April. The travel pass, meant to help speed up check-ins, is being tested already by U.K.-based Virgin Atlantic, which is using the IATA app on its London to Barbados flight on April 16.

Apple Maps adds COVID-19 travel guidance for over 300 airports worldwide in its recent update. The app will now show COVID-19 health measure information for airports when searched via the app, either through a link to the airport’s own COVID-19 advisory page, or directly on the in-app location card itself.

Social Networks

Facebook teamed up with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to launch a set of profile frames that will help to encourage vaccinations against COVID-19. The frames, offered in either English or Spanish, will say “Let’s Get Vaccinated” or “I Got My COVID-19 Vaccine.” Research shows that social norms can impact people’s behavior when it comes to their health, so the hope is that, as more adopt the frames, those hesitant about the vaccine will be encouraged to get one. Facebook will also begin showing users how many of their family and friends have been vaccinated, based on the frame usage.

Facebook this week introduced new tools that allow users to more easily switch to the “Most Recent” view or “Favorites” view of their News Feed, as well as tools to limit comments on posts and other changes. The launch came at the same time as the company argued in a long-winded post how its personalization algorithms are not at fault for the world’s ills and the rising spread of misinformation and dangerous health content. Rather, it blames the users who seek out this content and then engage with it. The company is pushing regulators to give it guidelines on misinformation, knowing that it will have an easier time with increased regulations than any new social media upstarts.

Instagram launched Remix on Reels, a TikTok Duets-like feature that allows users to record a video alongside someone else’s content in order to react, collaborate and more. Snapchat is developing its own Duets feature with the same name of Remix, too.

Snap is planning to expand further into hardware, The Information reported, with a new, more advanced version of its Spectacles smart glasses that include AR effects. It’s also reviving an older effort to build its own drone.

Instagram appears to be developing a new way to block the trolls. Reverse engineer Alessandro Paluzzi found in the app’s code a reference to a new option, “Hide More Comments,” which will automatically hide comments with frequently reported words.

Instagram announced it’s expanding its IGTV ads internationally for the first time, initially to markets including the U.K. and Australia.

Facebook extended the deadline for iOS apps using its Facebook Audience Network monetization platform to migrate their apps to bidding only — a response to Apple’s iOS 14 changes. The previous deadline was March 31, which has now been pushed to May 31. Android apps have until September 30.

Streaming & Entertainment

Business-focused social network LinkedIn confirmed it’s building a Clubhouse rival that will offer a speaker stage, as well as tools to join and leave the room, react to comments, request to speak and more. The company sees the feature as an extension of its existing offerings for creators, which also includes things like LinkedIn Live, Stories and newsletters. It says that it believes its offering will be able to differentiate from others because its network will be connected with people’s professional identity, not just a social profile.

Spotify significantly expanded its personalized playlist lineup with the launch of three new categories of playlists, called “Spotify Mixes.” Inspired by Daily Mixes, these new options offer easy-to-understand titles that include artist mixes (e.g. Drake Mix), genre mixes (e.g. Pop Mix) and decade mixes (e.g. 2010s Mix).

Audioburst launches a platform that will allow developers to integrate podcast feeds into mobile apps. The platform supports both partial or complete podcasts and radio shows and other streaming audio.

Discord became yet another tech company to offer its own Clubhouse-like feature with the launch of Stage Channels. The feature allows certain people to broadcast to a group of listeners, who can raise their hand to ask questions, while moderators can bring people onstage, remove them or put them on mute. Stage Channels are available on desktop, web and in Discord’s mobile apps.

Gaming

Apple’s subscription-based gaming service, Apple Arcade, was significantly expanded this week with the addition of more than 30 new titles, including new exclusives like NBA 2K21, Star Trek: Legends and a new version of The Oregon Trail from Gameloft. But it also notably adopted a new strategy as well, with the addition of older titles in two new categories called “Timeless Classics” and “App Store Greats.”

The former will include well-loved games like chess, backgammon, sudoku, crosswords, solitaire and others, while the App Store Greats will bring award-winning titles to Arcade like Threes!, Mini Metro, Fruit Ninja Classic, Monument Valley and Chameleon Run — all of which will be free and unlocked. With the additions, Apple Arcade has now grown to more than 180 total games for $4.99/mo (or included with an Apple One subscription.)

Finnish mobile gaming giant Supercell, developers of Clash of Clans and Clash Royale, announced it’s making three new Clash titles: a turn-based tactical game, Clash Quest; a virtual board game, Clash Mini; and a co-op action roleplaying game, Clash Heroes. The games are in early stages of development and will be killed if they don’t meet Supercell’s high standards.

Fintech

Following the meme stock frenzy, free stock trading app Robinhood will remove its controversial digital confetti feature, which critics said was a gamification technique — and not something that should be associated with financial investing.

WhatsApp Pay, the messaging app’s P2P payments feature, is now authorized in Brazil. The feature was first announced to roll out in Brazil last year, but had to be delayed after the country’s central bank said it could damage existing payments systems. It also said WhatsApp had failed to obtain proper licensing. On Tuesday, the bank said the service could go forward — now that it’s launched its own payments system called Pix, which has been widely adopted.

Bakkt released a digital wallet app for trading fiat currency for crypto, but also supports other digital assets not on the blockchain like frequent flier miles, loyalty points, gift cards and in-game assets.

Productivity

Microsoft’s Cortana mobile app for iOS and Android officially shut down on Wednesday, March 31. The AI-based personal assistant was Microsoft’s answer to Siri, Alexa and Google Assistant, but with more integration into Microsoft’s own apps. The mobile version, however, never caught on and Microsoft has since refocused on AI assistance built directly into its Microsoft 365 apps instead.

Google’s in-house incubator Area 120 launches Stack, an Android app that digitizes personal documents, IDs, receipts and more. It can then automatically name the files, extract key info (like the bill’s due date) and organize them, with help from Google’s DocAI technology. The app can also sync your scans to Google Drive for easy access.

Amazon reports rising demand and engagement for productivity apps on Amazon Fire tablets. During 2020, the pandemic-fueled changes to work and home life led to a 62% increase in productivity by app users month over month across the tablet app store, and a 226% growth in app engagement amongst productivity customers in the last year. The company says it expects these trends to continue in 2021.

Government & Policy

Republicans on the House and Senate antitrust committees wrote letters to Apple, Google and Amazon, asking them about Parler’s removal from their respective platforms, framing it as targeting “one small business.” The tech companies had removed Parler for failing to follow their community guidelines over content and moderation after finding that the app had been used to plan, coordinate and facilitate the storming of the U.S. Capitol.

Apple’s App Store has been found to be hosting more than a dozen apps created by a China paramilitary group accused of Uyghur genocide, The Information reported. The organization, which has been sanctioned by the U.S. for human rights abuses, has published apps that offer news, info about government services and provides aid to small businesses with e-commerce orders, and more.

South Korea’s antitrust regulator said Wednesday it’s going to refer Apple’s local unit and one of its executives to the prosecution for allegedly impeding the regulator’s probe into unfair business practices. It also said it will fine Apple Korea 330 million won ($265,000 USD) for hampering the investigation.

Security & Privacy

The Odyssey Team announced the release of its new Taurine jailbreak for all devices running iOS 14-iOS 14.3. The jailbreak is installed using AltServer, similar to the unc0ver jailbreak.

A research report covered by Ars Technica found that Google collects up to 20x more data on Android users than Apple collects from iOS users. The report had analyzed the telemetry data transmitted directly to the companies themselves through pre-installed apps and when idle. Google disagreed with the report’s finding and says there were flaws in the researcher’s methodology that caused findings to be off by “an order of magnitude.”

The Washington Post covered a story about how an App Store scammer stole a user’s life savings, $600,000, in bitcoin. The user believed the app was safe because Apple markets its App Store as trustworthy, but the app itself had been designed to trick users by pretending to be associated with Trezor, the maker of a hardware device used to store cryptocurrencies. The actual Trezor said it’s been notifying Apple and Google for years about fake apps that were scamming its customers, to no avail. The fake app got through App Review then changed itself to a crypto wallet without Apple’s knowledge.

Funding and M&A

Celebrity video request app Cameo raised $100 million in Series C funding in a round led by Jonathan Turner with e.ventures. The new funds value the business at just north of $1 billion.

Spotify acquired Betty Labs, the maker of the live audio app Locker Room with the goal of taking on Clubhouse. The app currently focuses on sports talk but will be expanded to cater to a wider range of fans and creators across “a range of sports, music, and cultural programming.” It will also add “a host of interactive features that enable creators to connect with audiences in real time,” like Clubhouse. The rise of live audio has offered a potential threat to Spotify’s investment in podcasts, as it connects users to audio programming in real time, instead of through recorded and produced shows. Spotify had earlier said it would add interactivity to its Anchor podcast recording app to better connect podcasters and listeners, but with the Locker Room sale it’s taking a further step towards fully embracing live audio.

Holler raised $36 million from CityRock Venture Partners and New General Market Partners to power “conversational media” in your favorite apps. The company works with partners like PayPal-owned Venmo and The Meet Group to bring AI-powered recommendations of GIFs and stickers to use when messaging in the apps. The content is monetized in partnership with companies like HBO Max, IKEA and Starbucks for branded stickers. Holler’s content now reaches 75 million users monthly, up from 19 million last year.

Madison-based Fetch Rewards raised a $210 million Series D for its customer loyalty and retail rewards app, valuing the business at more than $1 billion. The round was led by SoftBank through its Vision Fund 2, and makes Fetch Rewards one of the Midwest’s few unicorns. The app’s 7 million active users earn points by sharing photos of their receipts, which allows them to earn gift cards and participate in sweepstakes. The funding will help the company speed up its ability to process online receipts.

Funko, makers of pop culture collectibles, entered the NFT market by acquiring a majority stake in TokenWave, the makers of the TokenHead mobile app. The app allows users to showcase and track their NFT holdings, and today has over 10 million NFTs on display. Funko aims to launch its first NFTs in June, at starting prices of $9.99, with a unique property offered each week. Its products will be sold on the Worldwide Asset Exchange.

Chinese video streaming platform Bilibili invested HK$960 million (around $123 million USD) into X.D. Network, the makers of the game distribution platform TapTap, giving it a 4.72% stake in the company. X.D. is seen as a competitor with traditional game distributors in China, including the Android app stores operated by smartphone makers.

Chinese grocery app Nice Tuan raised $750 million from Alibaba, DST Global, and others to bolster its supply chain and increase its fresh produce offerings. The company today serves 1,598 cities and counties across China, and sees 15 million orders per day.

U.K.-based Nested raised an additional £5 million for its modern real estate agency that connects home buyers and agents using technology across web and mobile.

Expense tracking app Ensemble raised $3 million in seed funding for its app that helps divorced parents track shared expenses, like medical bills, extracurricular activities, transportation and other things that may fall outside of child support, which tends to cover just food, shelter and clothing needs.

China’s Q&A site Zhihu, a Quora rival, dropped 11% to the bottom of its marketed range following its $522.5 million U.S. IPO. The company is the largest Q&A community by average mobile monthly users and revenue, with 75.7 million MAUs in the last quarter.

Stockholm-based sport fishing app Fishbrain raised $31 million in funding for its mobile app that offers both a social network and social commerce platform for fishing with nearly 12 million registered users worldwide.

Indonesian investment app Ajaib added $65 million to its Series A, bringing the round to $90 million, in an extension led by Ribbit Capital — the fintech investor who also led Robinhood’s $3.4 billion round last month. This is its first investment in Southeast Asia.

Gaming startup Lowkey raises $7 million from Andreessen Horowitz for its app that allows gamers to both create and view short gaming clips. The company sees an opportunity in helping gamers cut down their existing content for distribution to short-form video platforms, like Instagram and TikTok.

Downloads

Smart Photo Widget

Cromulent Labs, the makers of Launcher and other apps, this week introduced a Smart Photo Widget that automatically frames each photo to fit the widget size you selected. You can also configure the widget to skip any bad photos from album (blurry, dark, screenshots, etc.) as it rotates through the best photos throughout the day. In the Premium version, you can add a date and time or other overlays and filter your photos to match your style. The app is free on iOS with in-app purchases.

Frenzic: Overtime (Soon)

The popular app publisher and Twitterific developer Iconfactory announced on Friday it will soon launch Frenzic: Overtime, a sequel to the game that first launched on the iPhone App Store 13 years ago. The title will bring players over 45 levels with multiple gameplay modes and hundreds of mini-goals to achieve as they unlock the secrets of Frenzic Industries in this arcade style puzzler. The title will be available on Apple Arcade, but subscribers can already visit the game’s listing page and set a notification to be alerted to its launch.

SPIN Safe Browser

A parental control app maker Boomerang, which continues to face App Review roadblocks, pivoted this year to develop safe browser technology. A new version of its SPIN Safe Browser designed for schools in need of filtering content was released this week. The app leverages AppConfig for content filter management through MDMs like Jamf School and Jamf Pro. Administrators can use the feature to enable or disable any of the categories as well as specific URLs that should be blocked or allowed.

Tweets