Tech Talk

Curve , the London fintech that is re-bundling various financial products by letting you consolidate all your bank cards into a single card and app, is partnering with Samsung in the U.K. to power its forthcoming debit card, which is scheduled to launch later this year. Dubbed “Samsung Pay Card” — and obviously a bid by Samsung to better compete with Apple Wallet and Apple’s own credit card launch — the product is being described as a digital payment solution that will give Samsung customers “greater flexibility and control when managing their finances by offering a single view of spend, whilst also enabling a simple and secure way to pay”. Just like Curve’s direct offering, it also promises the ability to “sync multiple loyalty and bank cards in one place” for a true digital wallet experience. Notably, at one point in the press release the product is referred to as Samsung Pay Card “powered by Curve,” pointing to a degree of co-branding, too. If you look carefully at the product ren

Flipkart on Wednesday added support for three more local languages as the Indian e-commerce giant looks to widen its foothold in smaller cities and towns across the country where fewer people speak English and Hindi. The Walmart -owned firm said its online marketplace now has interfaces in Tamil, Telugu, and Kannada, three languages that are spoken by roughly 200 million people in India. Today’s announcement follows Flipkart adapting its interface in Hindi language on its website and app last year . Flipkart’s rival, Amazon, added support for Hindi in 2018. It does not support any additional Indian languages. A Flipkart spokeswoman told TechCrunch that support for Hindi language has been well received by customers. “About 95% of consumers who opted for the Hindi interface continued using the interface as a testament of its efficacy,” the spokeswoman said. Flipkart said the new localization effort, for which it conducted on-ground surveys in many cities, includes a “judicious” mix

Memo Bank wasn’t always called Memo Bank. It originally started as Margo Bank and it has been flying under the radar for a few years. The French startup is now about to launch publicly and shared more details about what it is building. As the name suggests, Memo Bank is a bank. It plans to server business customers exclusively and it targets small and medium companies that generate over €2 million in annual turnover and have more than 10 employees. Jean-Daniel Guyot, the co-founder and CEO of Memo Bank, previously founded Capitaine Train, which later became Captain Train, which later was acquired by Trainline. Capitaine Train disrupted online train ticket sales in France as the national railway company basically had a monopoly. When you’re creating a bank, you’re also entering a highly regulated market. And Memo Bank’s team is aware of that and wants to create a barrier to entry with its competitors while providing a different service compared to legacy players. Memo Bank is a c

The feature will probably begin rolling out sometime in the coming weeks. What you need to know WhatsApp will soon gain support for animated sticker images. WhatsApp briefly rolled out support for animated stickers on Android with beta v2.20.194.7. The latest WhatsApp beta v2.20.194.9, however, removes the feature. A report published by WABetaInfo earlier this month had revealed that WhatsApp is planning to introduce the ability to search messages by date on both Android and iOS. While the search by date feature is expected to begin rolling out sometime later this year, it looks like WhatsApp users will soon be able to view animated stickers. WhatsApp added support for animated stickers with beta version 2.20.194.7 on Android and 2.20.70.26 on iOS (via WABetaInfo ). As per Android Police , however, the feature has now been removed with the latest beta v2.20.194.9. If you have WhatsApp beta 2.20.194.7 installed on your phone, you may be able to view animated stickers in

A collective of more than 1,000 researchers, academics and experts in artificial intelligence are speaking out against soon-to-be-published research claims to use neural networks to “predict criminality.” At the time of writing, more than 50 employees working on AI at companies like Facebook, Google and Microsoft had signed on to an open letter opposing the research and imploring its publisher to reconsider. The controversial research is set to be highlighted in an upcoming book series by Springer, the publisher of Nature . Its authors make the alarming claim that their automated facial recognition software can predict if a person will become a criminal, citing the utility of such work in law enforcement applications for predictive policing. “By automating the identification of potential threats without bias, our aim is to produce tools for crime prevention, law enforcement, and military applications that are less impacted by implicit biases and emotional responses,” Harrisburg Univ

Brazil, the second largest market for WhatsApp, has suspended the instant messaging app’s mobile payments service in the country a week after its rollout in what is the latest setback for Facebook. In a statement, Brazil’s central bank said it was taking the decision to “preserve an adequate competitive environment” in the mobile payments space and to ensure “functioning of a payment system that’s interchangeable, fast, secure, transparent, open and cheap.” Banks in the nation have asked Mastercard and Visa, who are among the payments partners for WhatsApp in Brazil, to suspend money transfer on WhatsApp app. Failure to comply with the order would subject the payments companies to fines and administrative sanctions. In its statement, Brazil’s central bank suggested it hadn’t had the opportunity to analyze WhatsApp’s payment service prior to its rollout. Tuesday’s announcement is the latest setback for Facebook, which began testing WhatsApp Pay in India two years ago and has ye

Qupital , a trade financing platform, announced today that it will partner with eBay as one of its officially recommended Hong Kong financing service providers. In today’s announcement, Qupital said it will provide offshore financing services, including working capital, to eBay sellers in China through QiaoYiDai, its main product. The agreement with eBay means Qupital will be able to monitor the real-time data of eBay sellers who apply for their services, which the fintech startup says will enable it to assess credit applications within three days, on average, and settle drawdown requests in less than a day. Founded in 2016 and based in Hong Kong, Qupital raised a $15 million Series A last year led by strategic investor CreditEase FinTech Investment Fund, with participation from Alibaba Hong Kong Entrepreneurs Fund and MindWorks Ventures. Qupital is one of a growing roster of fintech companies in Asia— Aspire and First Circle are a couple other examples—that provide loans, cre