Thiel becomes the second PayPal co-founder to put money into the UK’s Transferwise, which lets users send money internationally at much lower rates than those offered by traditional banks. Read more »
New AWS group appears to gird for mobile development; Google issues non-aggression patent pact; and PayPal caught in cloud war crossfire. Read more »
A claim by a third party that PayPal, a big VMware customer, was dumping VMware for OpenStack, touched off firestorm, this week. Read more »
Mirantis, the OpenStack system integrator to the stars, is making its “Fuel” OpenStack automation libraries freely available under the Apache 2.0 license. Read more »
PayPal co-founder Max Levchin has launched a new payments startup called Affirm, coming out of his new lab venture meant to foster startups around the concept of data. Read more »
Is the world of big data one in which information about us allows us to personalize services and benefit from that personalization, or is it one in which our data is used against us by companies and governments? Read more »
Many of the biggest stories in the connected consumer space occurred mostly offstage in 2012, from Apple’s new media services to policymakers in Washington. Overall, the past 12 months have laid important groundwork for significant advances in the connected consumer space. The year 2013 should be eventful. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Canadian entrepreneur Louis Michaud, who has spent years trying to commercialize his “out there” technology to harness tornadoes for power, has received a small grant from PayPal co-founder and early Facebook investor Peter Thiel’s early stage lab Breakout Labs. Read more »
PayPal is targeting cash lovers and the underbanked with a new cash card that allows people to use cash for online purchases. The cards can be bought at 30,000 locations and can be used to fund a Paypal account. Read more »
When we think about data privacy, we normally think about a company giving or selling our info to a third party. But a single company can also circulate around our information among its various units in ways that raise similar privacy concerns Read more »
Apple’s Passbook joins the mobile payments gold rush. But Jeff Fagel, of edo Interactive, has doubts about its viability and says until we see a system that’s easier for everyone, plastic will remain king. Read more »
PayPal is trying to lure in customers with new holiday promotions that allow shoppers to get pricing matching, free return shipping and free six-month financing. The deals apply to sales online, at eBay sites and in-store. Read more »
The purpose of the on-screen guide has shifted. By connecting the guide to content-recommendation engines and advertising platforms, service providers and connected-TV device manufacturers are using the EPG as an access point for understanding consumers and reaching out to them to own the living room. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
PayPal is letting go of 325 full time employees and 120 contractors as part of its restructuring under new CEO David Marcus. Marcus has been trying to make PayPal a more nimble organization built around mobile. Read more »
Apple stole the spotlight in the third quarter with the release of its iPhone 5, Amazon pursued the tablet market aggressively with a new line of tablets, and Microsoft prepped to launch Windows 8 and the highly anticipated Surface tablet. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
PayPal is enabling small and medium-sized merchants to offer Bill Me Later as a financing option for online transactions. Consumers can get no-interest financing for six months on purchases of $99 or more. The move should help small businesses by increasing order sizes and conversions. Read more »
I spent two days last week watching experts on big data and data science discuss how their companies are building businesses around data, or at least rethinking how they do business. Although most came from the web, these five ideas should matter across industries. Read more »
PayPal is partnering with Discover to greatly expand the number of merchant locations that will be able to handle its in-store payments. Starting in April, seven million locations in the U.S. will be able to handle PayPal payments. Read more »
Smartphones can enable an amazing level of connectivity, but they can also allow that activity to be monitored and used in controversial ways. But for mobile marketing to realize its full potential, consumers may need to sacrifice their privacy to one degree or another. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
A company that aims to release ebooks into the Creative Commons through crowdfunding has had to halt operations after Amazon Payments withdrew support for crowdfunding payments. Kickstarter, which also uses Amazon Payments, remains unaffected for now. Read more at paidContent »
PayPal liked Card.io so much, it not only used the startup to help it capture credit card images for its PayPal Here product, it is now buying the San Francisco startup. The team will help PayPal build out its digital wallet. Read more »
Social TV is any application, website or software that allows viewers to interact with television programming and share that interaction with others. Startups in this space hope to combine ubiquitous second-screen technology with well-established audience behavior to drive new value around shows. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Starbucks continues to show how a brick-and-mortar retailer can offer the convenience of mobile payments. With its updated Android app, the company adds PayPal support and a widget for card balance information and store locations. The app is now supported in the U.K. and Canada. Read more »
The Swedish investor has become a new backer of Billpay, a Samwer brothers operation and PayPal rival that’s talking expansion – but what kind? Read more »
With the online B2B payments market worth a whopping $250bn or so, Traxpay and its backers are hoping their real-time, back-office-friendly platform will give them a significant slice of the pie Read more »
PayPal is undertaking a big reorganization that simplifies the company’s structure around a mobile theme. It’s part of a larger effort to build a more unified experience for customers that is easier to use across the company’s different access points. Read more »
PayPal, one of the first companies to offer a bug reporting program, is following the lead of Google, Facebook and Mozilla and is now upping the ante with a paid bug bounty program, which will reward researchers for finding holes in PayPal.com. Read more »
Social virtual goods revenues will grow from $2.1 billion in 2010 to $4.1 billion in 2016. Leading this growth are disruptive factors such as mobile, regulatory changes and alternatives to the traditional OS. But the most important disruption vector will be increasing the universality of virtual currencies. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
EBay’s CEO John Donahoe has called 2012 a year of testing for PayPal’s in-store payments as it gears up for a big push next year. The company is making good on that with the launch of its first barcode-based payments in the UK at four retailers. Read more »
PayPal has made headlines about the business arrangements it’s secured for its in-store payment system. But the consumer strategy will be just as important. PayPal told me the marketing campaign for consumers began in the last week and will ramp up as PayPal adds more retailers. Read more »
PayPal unveiled 15 national retail partners that will support its in-store payment system, which is set to compete against the likes of credit cards and other emerging payment tools. It also launched a new mid-market payment tool for medium-sized businesses with multiple locations. Read more »
PayPal’s drive to become a major player for in-store payments is getting a huge push thanks to new partnerships with VeriFone, the top point-of-sale terminal maker and Equinox Payments, the No. 3 terminal maker. The deals now give PayPal access 40 million terminals worldwide. Read more »
The anticipated SpaceX launch was aborted at the last possible second after a computer detected a glitch in one of the rocket’s nine engines. The snafu raised anew questions of whether private industry can handle a space program. Read more »
Facebook has been criticized recently for its lackluster performance as an advertising platform, but the giant social network has other ways of monetizing its vast user base that could have even more growth potential — including Facebook Credits. Could it become a networked version of PayPal? Read more »
What Billy Beane is to baseball, Dave McClure wants to be technology startups. And like Beane, he is willing to go anywhere in the world to find a slight edge to beat his richer, bigger and fancier rivals on Sand Hill Road. Read more »
PayPal’s years of experience in online payments is one of its biggest assets as it chases mobile and in-store transactions. But the by product of all that experience — mounds of data — could be an even bigger weapon. PayPal’s chief scientist Mok Oh explains the possibilities. Read more »
PayPal is forming a joint venture with Softbank Corp. to help launch its small business mobile payment product PayPal Here in Japan. The joint venture, called PayPal Japan, will help PayPal target PayPal’s $1.7 trillion dollar retail market, which is made up of mostly small businesses. Read more »
Payment provider VeriFone is doubling down on the small and medium sized market with a new payment open platform called SAIL that will look to give merchants a more flexible tool for conducting transactions. SAIL also puts more big name pressure on Square. Read more »
A year after eBay bought mobile ad network WHERE, it’s ready to show how it will put the Boston startup to work. WHERE will become PayPal Media Network, as it moves beyond serving location-based mobile ads to offering inventory across eBay’s different online properties. Read more »
Even with the threat of PayPal looming, Square is seeing no slow down. The company told Bloomberg Wednesday that its annualized rate of processed transactions is now up to $5 billion, up from $4 billion a month ago Read more »
