commitments

Apps, Fintech

EU Settlement: Apple’s Pledges to Resolve Antitrust Probe into Apple Pay

Mobile Payment With Wallet App And Wireless Nfc Technology. Man Paying And Shopping With Smartphone Application And Credit Card Information.

The EU suspects Apple of unfairly favoring its own mobile payment tech, Apple Pay, and squeezing out the ability of rivals to develop competing contactless payment offerings on its mobile platform. It has also committed to applying “fair, objective, transparent, and non-discriminatory” eligibility criteria to grant NFC access to third parties — which will have to conclude an ADP license agreement to gain access. The Apple Pay competition saga dates back several years at this point. The Apple Pay case pre-dates ex ante competition legislation the bloc has since enacted and which Apple is subject to; having been designated, in September, as a so-called “gatekeeper” under the Digital Markets Act (DMA). And although Apple’s payment tech, Apple Pay, has not been designated a “core platform service” the iOS App Store has.

Max Chen
January 19, 2024

Uncategorized

3 Years Later: Tracking Who Followed Through on Their Diversity Pledges After BLM

In the past three years, a lot of companies launched DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) initiatives, and we even saw a brief period when those promises were fulfilled. When the market was on the up and up, Black founders, like many other founders out there, were raising record amounts. But come 2022, the market dipped, interest rates skyrocketed, investments nearly froze, hiring slowed, and widespread layoffs hit everyone. Today, it almost feels like many of the promises the venture capital industry made in 2020 have gone unfulfilled. To find out exactly how many kept their word, we checked up on some of those that made commitments to DEI following the BLM protests in 2020.Who kept their word?