Welcome to TechCrunch Fintech!
This week, we’re looking at Rippling’s controversial decision to ban some former employees from selling their stock, Carta’s massive valuation drop, a GenZ-focused fintech raise, and more!
But there is one big exception: It has banned former employees who work for a handful of competitors from selling their stock.
What else we’re writingIn early 2022, the fintech startup Bloom was accepted into Y Combinator as the first-ever startup from Sudan to participate in the famed accelerator.
In an unusual move, Capital One is teaming up with payment giants (and rivals) Stripe and Amsterdam-based Adyen to offer a free product aimed at fraud reduction, the financial services giant told TechCrunch in an exclusive interview.
We now know how much Tesla paid as it released its annual proxy statement on Wednesday morning, which includes a section on “related person transactions” the company has made.
Tesla has also paid X around $50,000 in 2023 and $30,000 through February 2024 for “commercial, consulting and support agreements.” Likewise, X paid Tesla $1 million in 2023 and around $20,000 through February 2024 for the same unspecified work.
Tesla paid Musk’s tunneling effort, The Boring Company, $200,000 in 2023 and $1 million through February 2024.
“The Committee and its counsel are aware of the media narrative regarding Musk, Tesla, and its Board,” the committee writes in the proxy.
“And the Committee’s work was conducted against a backdrop of unrelenting public interest in whether Tesla would reincorporate and in Musk’s compensation.
Amazon will have to publish an ads library in EU after allAmazon will have to provide information about the ads running on its platform in a publicly accessible online archive after all, following a decision by the European Union’s highest court Wednesday.
Other tech giants designated under the DSA have complied with the ads transparency provision.
However, on Wednesday, the Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU) reversed the September decision by the EU General Court to grant Amazon the partial suspension.
It is also a win for platform transparency as it will force Amazon to be more open about the ads it displays and monetizes.
In a statement following the CJEU decision provided to TechCrunch, and attributed to an Amazon spokesperson, the company said:
The European Union has confirmed it’s looking into Apple’s decision to close Epic Games’ developer account — citing three separate regulations which may apply.
Yesterday the Fortnite maker revealed Apple had terminated the account, apparently reversing a decision to approve the developer account last month.
Epic had planned to launch its own app store, the Epic Games Stores, on iOS in Europe, as well as relaunching Fortnight on Apple’s platform.
And it accused Apple of breaching the bloc’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) by killing its developer account.
The US court ruling Apple is citing to justify terminating Epic’s developer account is unlikely to have standing in the EU.
Apple has reversed its decision about blocking web apps, also known as Progressive Web Apps (PWAs), on iPhones in the EU.
Last month, Apple reduced the functionality of PWAs as mere website shortcuts with the release of the second beta of iOS 17.4, as security researcher Tommy Mysk and Open Web Advocacy had first pointed out.
The company then updated its developer page saying that because of security risks like malicious web apps reading data from other web apps and accessing cameras, it decided to end support for home screen apps.
Apple also said that PWAs had “very low user adoption” so there might not be a lot of impact on users.
Separately, the Open Web Advocacy group published an open letter addressed to Tim Cook to lift the ban on web apps, which was signed by hundreds of organizations and individuals including Mastodon, internet advocate Cory Doctorowand Vercel CTO Malte Ubl.
Meta’s external advisory group, its Oversight Board, announced today that it is expanding its scope to Threads along with Facebook and Instagram to scrutinize Meta’s content moderation decisions.
This means if users on Threads are unsatisfied with Meta’s decision on issues like content or account takedown, they can appeal to the Oversight Board.
Having independent accountability early on for a new app such as Threads is vitally important,” Oversight Board co-chair Helle Thorning-Schmidt said in a statement.
In 2018, Mark Zuckerberg formally talked about having an independent oversight board for the first time.
The Oversight Board has ruled on some important cases over the years.
But Apple’s compliance doesn’t give app makers the victory they had hoped, as the tech giant aims to still charge commissions on purchases made outside of apps — a decision Epic aims to challenge in court.
The decision meant Apple had to remove the “anti-steering” clause from its agreement with App Store developers.
Apple updated its App Store Guidelines following the Supreme Court’s decision but with a lot of caveats.
For instance, users won’t be able to cancel their subscriptions within Apple’s App Store or request refunds — they’ll have to do this through the developer’s website.
The developer lobbying group, Coalition for App Fairness, which also includes Epic, issued its own statement on Apple’s new App Store rules.
Pan-African e-commerce platform Jumia has disclosed its intention to discontinue its food delivery service, Jumia Food.
As a result, Jumia will cease its food delivery operations across these markets by the end of December 2023.
Jumia is redirecting its focus towards the core physical goods business and maintaining its JumiaPay operations across all 11 markets, as outlined in a recent statement.
Jumia’s decision to discontinue its food delivery business aligns with a broader trend in the industry, mirroring the recent exit of another food delivery competitor, Bolt Food, from Nigeria and South Africa.
Both exits seem to be influenced by current macroeconomic headwinds, high inflation and intensified competition within the food delivery sector across the continent.
Instead, what is immediately changing as a result of this ruling is the legality surrounding the app store business model itself — and potentially others.
“What we know right now is that this is going to impact the walled garden business model Google and Apple and other companies have enjoyed for a while,” Swanson said.
In fact, the legal risk from this business model may encourage other businesses to change, even without being dragged to court.
Apple didn’t regularly engage in side deals (though it considered one with Netflix) nor did it pay developers to launch on its app store instead of theirs, as Apple only offers one route to app distribution: the App Store.
“Just because it is your business model does not mean it is legal or that it’s right,” VanMeter pointed out.
The FCC explained that this first application was a high-level, short one, and that those qualifying for that would receive closer scrutiny.
(In fact the FCC had considered not even letting orbital communications companies apply, but decided to allow them to compete on their merits.)
This was in addition to “numerous financial and technical deficiencies” the agency identified in the proposal and the company’s operations.
It even leaned on the promise of SpaceX’s super-heavy launch vehicle Starship as evidence for these claims.
As the FCC points out, though:A the time of the Bureau’s decision, Starship had not yet been launched.
