For them, the difficulty hasn’t been opening local USD accounts; it’s been cost-effectively facilitating payments from international employers and online platforms.
“Using local products meant many remote workers had large chunks of their earnings eaten away with excessive fees.
The USD products couldn’t be local,” said Oudjidane, who is also the founding partner of emerging markets fintech fund Byld Ventures.
“The product would need to move to offering U.S.-based USD accounts,” accounts that, critically, would facilitate ACH payments to enable those freelance payments and came with the security that you get with U.S. banking, such as FDIC assurance.
“Freelancers and remote workers in these markets will undoubtedly be a critical source of foreign income to help rebuild,” Oudjidane said.
That’s a different strategy from just about every other market, where Google has been merging Wallet and Pay experiences together under a single Wallet app.
We’re continuing to invest in the Google Pay app to give people easy, secure access to digital payments,” a Google spokesperson said in a statement to TechCrunch.
Then, it tried to replace the Wallet and its Android Pay app with Google Pay.
In 2022, Google relaunched the Wallet app as its digital wallet platform for Android, Wear OS and Fitbit OS.
However, in February this year, the search giant announced it would replace Google Pay with the Wallet app in the U.S.
OpenAI is expanding to Japan, with the opening of a new Tokyo office and plans for a GPT-4 model optimized specifically for the Japanese language.
Japan is the current G7 chair and President of the G7’s Hiroshima AI Process, an initiative to promote AI safety, including stronger AI governance.
EnterprisingAs president of OpenAI Japan, Nagasaki will be tasked with building a local team on the ground to double down on OpenAI’s business in the country.
OpenAI says ChatGPT is also being used by local governments to “improve the efficiency of public services in Japan.”ChatGPT has long been conversant in multiple languages, including Japanese.
For now, OpenAI is giving early access to the GPT-4 custom model to some local businesses, with access gradually opened up via the OpenAI API “in the coming months.”
Now at the top of the App Store, The Eclipse App is a great companion for Monday’s solar eclipseA well-designed app designed to optimize your viewing of the total solar eclipse on Tuesday has surged to the top of the App Store.
The app began its App Store climb late on Sunday, gaining 35,000 downloads on the App Store and starting to move up the charts.
The app is currently ranked first in its category (Travel) and ninth Overall in the U.S. App Store and eighth in its category via Google Play.
Reviews are mostly positive on the App Store: There are 40 5-star reviews vs. 22 1-star reviews, Appfigures says.
You can also check your local forecast and subscribe to local events and check out other local points of interest.
Controversial crypto biometrics venture Worldcoin has been almost entirely booted out of Europe after being hit with another temporary ban — this time in Portugal.
The order from the country’s data protection authority comes hard on the heels of the same type of three-month stop-processing order from Spain’s DPA earlier this month.
Portugal’s data protection authority said it issued the three-month ban on Worldcoin’s local ops Tuesday after receiving complaints Worldcoin had scanned children’s eyeballs.
By contrast, EU data protection law gives people in the region a suite of rights over their personal data, including the ability to have data about them corrected, amended or deleted.
As Tools for Humanity’s lead DPA, under the one-stop-shop (OSS) mechanism in bloc’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), it is responsible for investigating privacy and data protection complaints about the company.
Crypto exchange OKX is ceasing services for users in India, it said in an email to customers Thursday, advising them to withdraw their funds by April-end.
The move follows Apple and Google pulling the eponymous app of OKX in the country after an Indian government agency said many crypto exchanges were operating illegally in the South Asian market.
Financial Intelligence Unit, the government agency, named Binance, Kraken, Huobi and Gate.io among apps operating “illegally” in India but hadn’t named OKX in its public statement.
OKX has advised customers in India to close all their active margin positions and withdraw all funds by April 30.
While India-based crypto exchanges continued to require rigorous know-your-customer verifications before onboarding new users, the same hasn’t been true of many global platforms.
Uber CEO outlines plans for increasing driver EV access, reducing emissions at SXSW Dara Khosrowshahi explains his priorities for Uber now that it's achieved profitabilityUber’s future will be greener, more affordable, and able to challenge Amazon at its own rapid delivery game, CEO Dara Khosrowshahi predicted while on stage this week at SXSW.
To achieve that, Uber has to make it easier and cheaper for drivers to access electric vehicles.
Uber said emissions are calculated based on Uber Green and Uber Comfort Electric rides, and the amount of CO2 emissions avoided compared to UberX or Uber Comfort trips of the same distance.
Riders can go to their account section of the Uber app to access the “estimated CO2 saved” feature, which shows all the emissions saved by taking Uber Green and Uber Comfort electric rides.
Since then Uber has partnered with autonomous sidewalk delivery startups Cartken and Serve Robotics and robotaxi companies Waymo and Motional.
Sea is “still making changes” and has yet to launch its popular mobile game Free Fire in India, more than six months after announcing plans to do so.
Garena, the gaming unit of Sea, announced plans to relaunch Free Fire in India in August last year.
At the time, Garena said Free Fire India will be made available in the country on September 5.
India banned Free Fire and dozens of other Chinese apps in 2022.
Days later, Sea said it was shutting down Shopee’s operations in India, months into testing the social commerce service in the country.
On Tuesday, the HR startup announced it is acquiring African-based payroll and HR software and services company PaySpace in a deal that marks its largest acquisition to date.
Financial terms of the PaySpace acquisition were not disclosed.
Separately, San Francisco-based Deel also revealed Tuesday that it has crossed $500 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR), organically, outside of this acquisition.
With the various buys, Deel claims that it now owns the full HR stack — entities, local teams (legal, HR payroll), and local payroll engines — across six continents.
Theirs is one of the best technologies we’ve ever seen … We had to do a lot of convincing.”In a written statement, PaySpace Director Clyde van Wyk said: “Like PaySpace, Deel strives to evolve its offering through disruption.
Rec, a new startup aiming to improve the local recreation experience, launched out of stealth today.
The platform’s offerings cater to four groups: residents, community organizers, coaches, and city staff.
Meanwhile, Parks and Rec departments gain access to booking, workforce management, and marketing tools.
In almost every partnership, launching Rec has resulted in both incremental participation from residents and incremental revenue for the Parks Department,” Rec explains.
“Our current focus is to build Rec hand in hand with Parks & Rec departments to give them the tools needed to give residents a reimagined recreation experience.
