Category: Tech

With its new checking account, Credit Karma wants to get into your wallet

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Credit Karma, the company that turned the promise of a free credit score into a business worth over $7 billion, is joining the ranks of “neobank” startups offering a checking account. The product will be folded into Credit Karma Money, which launched last year as a savings account available to the company’s 100 million members. Digital banking has been gaining steam for the last several years, with the pandemic only accelerating consumers’ interest in the options that neobanks are providing. In the U.S. and Europe, there are now over two dozen neobanks, which have collectively raised over $6 billion in venture funding. “We think this is a product for people who have been left behind in financial services,” Credit Karma cofounder and CEO Kenneth Lin says of his company’s variation on the theme. Credit Karma Money Checking will not charge fees and will include automated features designed to help users better manage their money, such as bill payment date optimization. Over time, data from Checking will also help the company better present its members with targeted advertisements for loans, credit cards, and more. “Historically, Credit Karma has been focused on helping people optimize their credit, optimize their borrowing,” says Lin. “Now we’re moving to the other side of that spectrum. We want to help you save for your future, and this is the connector to making all of the pieces work.” [Image: courtesy of Credit Karma] Credit Karma is entering an increasingly crowded market for digital-first checking and savings accounts. Read More …

Inventors have raised millions on crowdfunding sites to build better masks

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In March, as COVID-19 cases spiked and supplies of N95 protective masks dwindled at the Bay Area hospital where her brother-in-law works, Megan Duong launched a local search for N95s. Along with her sister-in-law, Sabrina Paseman, Duong enlisted volunteers and tracked down 7,000 masks—barely enough to cover the needs of two hospitals for one day. “We just knew that it was not a scalable solution,” Duong said. So, Duong and Paseman, both former Apple employees, set out to invent a new tool that, they hoped, would make available mask technologies more effective and accessible. They weren’t the only inventors attempting to meet sudden, massive demand for personal protective equipment, or PPE. Experts say that PPE like masks is critical for slowing the spread of COVID-19. But for much of the pandemic, high-quality PPE has been in short supply for medical workers. Meanwhile, PPE available to the public has been of variable quality , with users complaining that cheap cloth masks, although widely available and recommended by public health agencies, are uncomfortable, hamper social interactions, and have limited effectiveness. Those issues have spurred new innovation, as inventors strive to make PPE cheaper, safer, more comfortable, and more accessible—and, in many cases, may see opportunities to turn a profit while doing so. Already, some new designs have earned praise from experts. Many others have not yet demonstrated that they’re any more effective than a standard cloth mask. “My concern is people are going to be spending a lot of money based on hype, which is not going to give them or anybody else any additional protection,” said Gary Garber, an infectious disease physician who also works with Public Health Ontario in Canada. On crowdfunding sites like Kickstarter and IndieGoGo, inventors have raised millions of dollars for new designs of face masks, gloves, and other PPE. University engineering labs have turned their attention to making masks and face shields. Read More …

The hottest new video game is . . . chess?

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As a global pandemic continues to determine a new normal, tens of thousands of viewers have been tuning in to watch people play chess on a live-streaming website called Twitch.tv . An American chess grandmaster, Hikaru Nakamura, along with a number of celebrities of the video game world, is leading a renaissance in the ancient game. While viewers eagerly wait for Nakamura’s streams to begin, they are treated to a slideshow of memes involving Nakamura’s face superimposed into scenes from pop culture. First a reference to a well-known Japanese animation, next a famous upside-down kiss with Spiderman, and finally, Nakamura’s characteristic grin is edited onto the Mona Lisa herself. From August 21 to September 6, Twitch and Chess.com are hosting a tournament, called Pogchamps, where some of the most popular gaming streamers in the world compete in a chess tournament with $50,000 on the line . The current renaissance in chess is happening at the confluence of live-streaming technology, video game culture, and one grandmaster’s exceptional skills as both a chess player and entertainer. What is emerging is an unexpectedly good pairing between chess and a digital generation that is showing how influential gamers can be. The game of kings is more popular than ever , with over 605 million players worldwide, and now, memes are involved. Chess explodes on Twitch.tv Twitch.tv is a live-video streaming website that was started in 2011 as a platform for users to watch other people play video games. In recent years, Twitch has grown to become the cultural hub of the gaming community. It now hosts tens of thousands of creators who broadcast live to a global audience of around 17.5 million viewers a day . Since 2015, chess viewership has experienced exponential growth on Twitch. Read More …

This Amazon exec figured out a way for customers to use cash

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For Americans without a debit or credit card, it’s nearly impossible to shop online. Amazon’s Ben Volk has devised a way for the company to accept cash, something it has technically done since 2017, but customers had to preload money into their account. With Amazon PayCode, which launched in the U.S. in September 2019, customers can pay with cash at partner Western Union after completing online checkout. Purchases arrive on their doorstep days later. “A lot of it had to come down to trust,” Volk says. (In certain countries outside of the U.S., roughly one-third of first-time Amazon customers opt to use PayCode.) Today, working with the USDA and 36 states, Volk has been piloting a way for recipients of SNAP benefits to buy groceries through Amazon. “I’m super proud to be a part of it,” he says. Read More …

Exclusive: Inside Uber’s billion-dollar bet to deliver food, people, and everything else

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Earlier this week, Uber acquired Postmates, the number four player in the food delivery space, for $2.65 billion. It was a clear statement that Uber is no longer just a rides company, but a home delivery company. Now, Uber is rolling out a new design in its main app that gives its Uber Eats business equal real estate with rides on the app’s home screen. This shift in Uber’s business began last year, but was dramatically accelerated by the coronavirus pandemic. As people began sheltering in place, the company’s rides business fell by 80% in April, and Uber Eats, the restaurant food delivery business, suddenly became its most popular product. Now, Uber Eats’s success has established it as a model from which Uber can design other services that rely on its advanced logistics platform. “We’ve really doubled down on our Eats business, extending not just in food, but from food into adjacent categories like delivery, like grocery, and essentials,” says Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi in an exclusive interview. “There we’re seeing a pretty extraordinary acceleration, which is good for the business, but it’s also a really important lifeline for the restaurants and other local stores in every city, that frankly our customers are interested in keeping alive in an unbelievably difficult situation [with] COVID.” Uber’s new focus on Eats may help it survive the pandemic, in which the company has already shed a quarter of its 26,000-odd person global workforce in two rounds of layoffs. But it’s unclear whether Eats and other new Uber services can speed the company’s path toward profitability. Uber has lost a lot of money since its ill-fated IPO last year: It reported a $8.5 billion loss for full-year 2019. It reported a net loss of $2.9 billion in the first quarter of 2020, its biggest loss in three quarters. Before the pandemic hit, Uber said it expected to hit profitability in the last quarter of 2020, but was forced to withdraw that guidance in April, saying the coronavirus had made its 2020 financial performance “impossible to predict.” [Photos: courtesy of Uber] Even amid growing losses, Uber has placed a big bet on Postmates as central to the future of its business. With the addition of Postmates, Uber Eats will control 37% of the food delivery service market but will still trail the market leader, Doordash, which owns 45%, according to Edison Trends. But Uber didn’t buy Postmates just to beef up its food delivery market share, as some have suggested. Postmates’s technology and people will very likely be used to deliver home products such as groceries, pharmacy products, home goods, hardware, and packages (the Postmates brand will live on, at least for now). Khosrowshahi suggested as much in the Postmates deal announcement  Monday: “Uber and Postmates have long shared a belief that platforms like ours can power much more than just food delivery,” he stated. Dara Khosrowshahi [Photo: courtesy of Uber] This flexibility is key to understanding how the coronavirus has expedited Uber’s transformation from a ridesharing company to a logistics platform that can deliver people, food, and things. Read More …