FinTech

Credit card giant Visa is acquiring Plaid, San Francisco-based company that focuses on democratizing financial services through technology. The sum of the acquisition made up $5.3 billion, which is twice as much as Plaid’s valuation in 2018.We’re incredibly excited to share that Plaid is joining @Visa!Together, we’re looking forward to expanding our products for developers and connecting consumers with the fintech services that are making money easier for everyone. More details...

Telegram’s bank records are going to be released to the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). This reversal in the case came as a shock to many. The current ICO misconduct court case has taken another dimension. This change came as in a filing yesterday the Court of the Southern District of New York (SDNY) gave Telegram time till February 26 to release them.The filing will also allow the removal of information. This is for privacy reasons. It is also in line with the privacy...

Saudi Aramco is a Saudi Arabian national petroleum and natural gas company. In December 2019, the company in its IPO initially raised $25.6 billion which already then was a record-setting number. They sold 3 billion shares worth $8.53 (or 32 riyals) a share. Already at the beginning of the IPO, the company stated that they might sell additional shares through the greenshoe option. It’s also called over-allotment of shares, which means that companies are allowed to issue more shares in the...

Recently, the new fintech terms came to town. We are already used to certain terms such as FAANG, FANG and even FAAMNG. When it comes to stocks, and especially technology-related ones, the times are certainly “a-changing”.2020 began already as a pretty turbulent one. With great geopolitical tensions, an unsure trade deal between the U.S. and China, Donald Trump’s impeachment (moreover, Meghan and Harry are leaving the Crown) – it seems that there is going to be a pretty tough year for big...

Management consulting and research firm Everest Group has released a new market report focusing on the future of blockchain. The report, entitled “BigTech Battle: Assessing Managed Blockchain Platform Readiness for Enterprise Use,” addresses a number of major players developing blockchain projects, including Hewlett Packard, IBM, and Microsoft.The report cites Jelurida’s Ardor blockchain-as-a-service platform, alongside Multichain’s Enterprise, as two technologies with favorable ease of...

The North Korea-based hacking group Lazarus appears to be coming back, and this time, it’s allegedly using the encrypted messaging service Telegram to steal your cryptocurrency.Lazarus Is Bigger Than EverThe news comes by way of cybersecurity firms Kaspersky Labs, which stated recently that the group is taking “more careful steps” to ensure it can steal users’ data or digital funds without raising too many red flags. Researchers are calling the new attack wave “Operation AppleJeus Sequel,” a...

PayPal admitted that someone discovered a possible severe security breach that could lead to the exposure of user passwords to a hacker. Alex Birsan, who discovered the breach, earned a bug bounty worth $15,300 for reporting the problem. The vulnerability itself was disclosed on January 8 and has since been repaired.In his public disclosure, Birsan wrote that this “is the story of a high-severity bug affecting what is probably one of PayPal’s most visited pages,” referring to the login...

2020 could quite easily be a great year for FAAMNG stocks if things continue the way they currently are. FAAMNG comprises Facebook (FB), Apple (AAPL), Amazon (AMZN), Microsoft (MSFT), Netflix (NFLX), and Google’s parent company Alphabet (GOOG and GOOGL). These are the biggest tech and internet stocks in the world.FAAMNG Stocks in 2020A publication from The Arora Report shows the current money flow into these companies via their stocks. Dividing each stock into several data points, the table...

Recently, there appeared reports stating that American food delivery giant Grubhub is in talks with Walmart, Kroger, Albertsons, and Ahold-Delhaize. Some have rumored that the companies may acquire the leading food ordering and delivery company. The discussions around the news became even hotter after the comments of Brittain Ladd, ex-Amazon executive, and supply-chain consultant.Ladd said:“I have spoken with executives from each company (especially Walmart) and there is interest in acquiring...

Airbnb, DoorDash, and GitLab are among 18 unicorn companies that are set to run an initial public offering (IPO) sometime in 2020. The expectation for a more definite announcement at some point this year, already means that there is more than enough to anticipate in the financial clime. While there will most likely still be more public announcements, these 18 are already making the rounds.The market for initial public offerings in 2019 was a little disappointing, to say the least. Compared to...