China’s multi-purpose messaging app WeChat has won significant market share in China’s crowded mobile-internet marketplace by embracing quick-response (QR) codes, now used for almost all WeChat in-store payments. The app’s ubiquity has also helped reshape the way its 768 million users make payments to restaurants, taxis, and each other.
M-PESA was launched nine years ago. Today almost every single household in Kenya uses it. Most Kenyans didn’t have access to traditional banks before. Which already makes mobile banking a game-changer. Now scientists say there could be an extra benefit for poor customers: Mobile banking might lift people out of poverty. Source: New M-PESA…
WASHINGTON — For about $50, you can get a smartphone with a high-definition display, fast data service and, according to security contractors, a secret feature: a backdoor that sends all your text messages to China every 72 hours. Security contractors recently discovered preinstalled software in some Android phones that monitors where users go, whom they…
A mobile number can be even more valuable than a Social Security number, since it’s tied to so many databases and connected to a device you carry with you. Source: A 10-Digit Key Code to Your Private Life: Your Cellphone Number – The New York Times
Deutsche Lufthansa AG is undergoing rapid digital transformation, in part to better leverage an influx of passenger data from smartphones and other devices via the Internet of Things, according to the airline’s chief information officer, Roland Schütz. Source: Q&A: Lufthansa CIO Roland Schütz on Digital Transformation in the Skies – CIO Journal. – WSJ
Google’s new strategy of controlling both hardware and software for its devices puts the company more directly in competition with Apple and many of its own Android partners. It’s a necessity, Google says, because of the advent of artificial intelligence. Source: Google Introduces the Pixel, Its Own Smartphone – The New York Times
I don’t post reviews, but I thought this article was interesting because of its discussion of AI’s role in our life now, and more importantly, in the future. With the new MacOS and Apple’s AirPods, Siri’s more powerful than ever, but still not as good as some competitors, Joanna Stern writes. Source: Apple’s Siri: A…
Citigroup Inc. is set to join its fellow big banks in building a peer-to-peer payments app in the hope of fending off fintech upstarts like Venmo. Source: Citigroup Teams Up With Rival Banks to Fight Venmo – WSJ
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