Rishi Taparia - Issue #44
This week we look at WhatsApp accelerating its payments rollout, Visa’s allergic reaction to GDPR (only half joking…), UberEats its way to $6bn in run rate bookings, Walmart paying for employees to go back to school, Mary Meeker’s 2018 internet trends and more. Enjoy!
FinTech
WhatsApp Hastens Payments Push for 200 Million Indians
WhatsApp is said to be accelerating the launch of its payment services in India, potentially launching as early as next week, in an effort to capture market share in an increasingly competitive market. Google is already live with their Tez application, and market leader Paytm has been expanding their footprint both in payments and commerce with Paytm Mall. Facebook is said to be partnering with HDFC, ICICI and Axis Bank, with State Bank of India said to be the laggard. This launch is sure to send waves through the ecosystem, and not just in India. Facebook has not yet monetized WhatsApp and given the app’s broad user base, there is tremendous opportunity to do so. Inserting payments as a use case makes sense, but Facebook’s payment execution remains questionable.
Apple Developers To Get Full Access To NFC Chip
Apple is supposedly going to be opening up their NFC chip to third party developers in iOS 12, a move that is likely to be announced at WWDC next month. Said to be in trial with hotels in order to do wireless key management and door unlocking, this move could theoretically turn all future iPhones into NFC payment acceptance devices (I say future devices because I believe there is a hardware restriction on current iPhones that inhibits them from being NFC receivers). Some believed that it was unlikely that Apple opens up access and to be fair the exact access they are going to be providing is still unclear, but I hope this move means more NFC experiences since it is just so simple.
India Said to Resist Lobbying by US Payment Firms to Ease Local Data Storage Rules
Local data hosting is a pain in the behind for any non-local companies. AWS, Google Cloud and now Alibaba Cloud have made local data hosting less cumbersome, but the pain in setting up local infrastructure remains. India’s government recently has been resisting lobbying efforts by the payment networks arguing against onshoring payments data.
The payment companies are worried India’s data onshoring move could set a precedent and nudge other major governments to implement similar rules at a time when there is heightened scrutiny on how companies globally handle their customers’ data.
Visa card network failure – what we know so far
Somebody pressed the “IMPLEMENT GDPR” button and the entire payment network went down. Ok, I kid, but as of my typing this, that’s as good of an explanation as any!
Commerce
Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi says UberEats has a $6B bookings run rate
In case you weren’t aware, food delivery is big business. This week at the Code Conference Uber CEO disclosed that its food delivery business Uber Eats is doing $6 billion in run rate bookings, growing at 200%. This puts it on pace to be the largest food delivery business outside of China.
Walmart to offer employees a college education for $1 a day
Great job numbers and a 18-year low unemployment rate of 3.8% means it is harder for employers to find and retain workers. A recent survey of small business owners found that the number 1 problem they wanted help with was hiring. Walmart is hoping to attract more employees with a promise to pay for education.
Degrees will be offered by the University of Florida in Gainesville, Brandman University in Irvine, Calif., and Bellevue University in Bellevue, Neb., all nonprofit institutions with online programs for working adults.
The only catch? Walmart will only pay for employees looking for degrees in business and supply-chain management since those are the courses that “will be relevant across the industry and for future work opportunities”.
Technology
2018 Internet Trends
It was Mary Meeker week this week, with the former research analyst presenting her 2018 Internet Trends. This link is to the PDF - I highly encourage taking a spin through it. She does a great job talking telling the internet story with data that may seem surprising (example: 2017 saw 0% growth in YoY smartphone shipments).
Worried About Big Tech? Chinese Giants Make America’s Look Tame
“China’s internet titans have a powerful ally found nowhere else, though: the Chinese government.” Most important line in the whole piece.
Airbnb Founders Go It Alone in China After Refusing Merger Offer
The typical path for an international company entering China goes something along the lines of show up in market thinking you can go it alone, spend a bunch of money marketing and lobbying, realize it will be too difficult to go it alone and do a market search of the competition, decide to either strike a partnership with a local partner and form a JV or leave the market entirely. Simple right? AirBnB decided to stop after step 2 and continues to fight the good fight on their own in China, fighting with
Random Tidbits
Why Doesn't Anyone Answer the Phone Anymore?
It’s hard to argue with the statement “Telephone culture is disappearing.” We’ve gone from a society that ran to answer the phone to one that actively avoids picking it up. The idea that the device we carry in our pockets and backpacks is a ‘phone’ is ludicrous. Why did this happen? An interesting contributor to the cultural change: robocalls. According to this article a supposed 3.4 billion robocalls were made in April, a staggering number by any measure.
Quote I’m thinking about: “The cumulative accretion of knowledge by specialists that allows us each to consume more and more different things by each producing fewer and fewer is, I submit, the central story of humanity.” Matt Ridley, The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves