Tag: finance
Why COVID-19 could delay Interswitch, Africa’s next big IPO
The economic effects of COVID-19 could delay Africa’s next big IPO — that of Nigerian fintech unicorn Interswitch. If so, it wouldn’t be the first time the Lagos-based payments company’s plans for going public were postponed; the tech world has been anticipating Interswitch’s stock market debut since 2016. For the…
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Robinhood raises $280M, pushing its valuation to $8.3B
As expected, Robinhood has closed a new round of capital. The late-stage, consumer investing app announced today that it has closed a $280 million Series F funding at an $8.3 billion valuation. This closely tracks prior coverage that the firm was hunting for a nine-figure round at a valuation of…
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Africa Roundup: Visa connects to M-Pesa, Flutterwave enters e-commerce
It seems the demand for Safaricom’s M-Pesa payment product never eases. Since its 2007 launch in Kenya, the fintech app has commanded over 70% of the mobile money market in that country. When COVID-19 hit the East African nation of 53 million in March, the Kenyan Central Bank turned to…
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Silver Lake to invest $747M in India’s Jio Platforms
Weeks after Facebook invested $5.7 billion in Indian telecom giant Jio Platforms, private equity firm Silver Lake is following suit. Silver Lake announced on Monday it will be investing 56.56 billion Indian rupees (about $746.74 million) in the top telecom operator Jio Platforms, giving it a valuation of $65 billion. Reliance…
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Index and Credo lead a $2.75M seed in anti-fraud tech, Resistant AI
Prague based Resistant AI has nabbed a $2.75M seed round. The security startup’s machine learning technology is designed to be deployed on top of AI systems used for financial decision making to protect customers in markets such as financial services and ecommerce from attacks such as targeted manipulation, adversarial machine…
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Meet EventBot, a new Android malware that steals banking passwords and two-factor codes
Security researchers are sounding the alarm over a newly discovered Android malware that targets banking apps and cryptocurrency wallets. The malware, which researchers at security firm Cybereason recently discovered and called EventBot, masquerades as a legitimate Android app — like Adobe Flash or Microsoft Word for Android — which abuses…
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