Tag: pay

With just 7 COVID-19 deaths in Taiwan, even huge events are back in business

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It’s a Saturday afternoon at 3:00 in the afternoon, and Taipei Metro’s blue line is packed. Riders are standing shoulder to shoulder. Exiting passengers positioned in the interior kindly ask those in front of the doors to make way. All passengers are sporting compulsory masks—including those heading to the four-day Outdoor Show at the Nangang Exhibition Center. Right inside the exhibition center entrance, a young man is positioned off to the side behind a standup desk. On top sit a laptop and connected security camera. As attendees flow through the doors, the camera captures their body temperature and relays it to the laptop, where their respective temperatures pop up in front of their faces on the screen Read More …

Big Tech was already dominant. Has coronavirus made it unstoppable?

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People often ask me what stocks I own. My investing advice is simple: I only invest in unregulated monopolies. They aren’t supposed to exist, but our antitrust laws were written in the era of steam engines, and enforcement has been nonexistent. Big tech is the twenty-first century version of John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie, and there is no trust-busting Teddy Roosevelt on the horizon to rein them in. How have they done it? The algorithm is this: innovate, obfuscate, and exploit. Especially in a pandemic. Post Corona: From Crisis to Opportunity by Scott Galloway Put simply, COVID-19 has been an effective weapon of mass distraction from big tech’s bad behavior. No news story survives 12 hours while a pandemic coupled with a national display of incompetence renders everything else what it is, less important. But whether we are paying attention or not, unchecked growth and market dominance lead to a slew of problems. Inevitably, companies without serious competition become less innovative and capture more profits and share from exploiting their position, and less from creating real value. And to protect that position, they perform infanticide on other innovators. No wonder that Amazon, Apple, Google, and Facebook have added hundreds of billions in market value since March Read More …

Gmail’s new logo is just a taste of Google’s plan to rethink productivity

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Let’s get one thing out of the way right off the bat: Google’s habit of repositioning products has become a bit of a punchline. From the seemingly endless cycle of shifting messaging service strategies to the recent branding 360 with the Google TV – Android TV – Google TV again saga, the company has a slight reputation for failing to commit to any particular concept for long. Sometimes, though, a new beginning makes sense. Sometimes, a product’s evolution seems appropriate. And sometimes, despite the well-warranted inclination to sigh at the notion of Yet Another Google Name Change, the reason for a rebranding actually resonates—and feels like a step in the right direction. That’s certainly the case with Google Workspace, a new identity Google is rolling out for the entity formerly known as G Suite (which itself was formerly known as both Google Apps and Google Apps for Your Domain) this week. Workspace is, on the surface, an updated name and brand for Google’s collection of productivity apps—Gmail, Docs, Calendar, Drive, and so on. The rebrand is more than just a new name: It also includes some significant changes both in function and in appearance. That means that all these apps’ logos are getting a big makeover—so get ready to say so long to the iconic Gmail envelope. “This is the moment in which we break free from defining the structure and the role of our offerings in terms that were invented by somebody else in a very different era,” says Javier Soltero, Google’s vice president and general manager of G Suite and now Workspace. So if it isn’t just a new name, what is it? Well, it’s complicated. Workspace isn’t exactly a new service , in and of itself. It’s more of a new mindset—a connective tissue that reimagines how Google’s productivity apps exist and reshapes them as more than just vaguely related individual pieces. “The space in between those apps becomes really important,” Soltero says. Read More …

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 …

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 …