Australian Fintech and Startups
Afterpay delists and becomes ‘Block’ on the ASX under the ticker $SQ2 (dual listing). Monumental! Link
Pay-on-demand company, Beforepay, listed on the ASX. Link
Car rental service, Car Next Door, was acquired by Uber. Car Next Door has been a fascinating story since its inception ~2012. Link / Car Next Door
Instant grocery delivery service, Milkrun, scored $75m investment (and competitor, Send, raised a $5m Series A a few weeks prior). Let the games begin…Link
Cool new Fintech: Zibra, a smart digital wallet that consolidates all of your existing cards (similar vibes to Curve in the UK). Link
Big Tech & Crypto
Peloton is temporarily halting production of their exercise bikes, sending a ~25% drop in their share price…Link
…and they’re also getting some bad PR for having insiders sell ~$500m of stock before announcements last year. Link
Crypto.com has a $35m hack whereby they had to freeze customer withdrawals. Link
Open Finance platform, Plaid, acquired account verification service Cognito as it looks to expand outside of account aggregation. Link
Amazon suspends ban on Visa payments in the UK. Amazon banned Visa credit cards as a payment option in the UK (post Brexit, there was no region-mandated cap on interchange, so Visa increased it), then they both said "oh, actually we should probably resolve this". So they undid the ban, after creating a heap of noise and confusing customers. Oops. Link
Google’s research themes from 2021. Link
GDPR v.s. Google Analytics. Link
Potpourri
Interview with Wordle’s creator, Josh Wardle. Link
Shazam for your thoughts? Link
Jimmy’s Notes
In true Australian fashion, everything’s ticking up in late January. Awesome to see so much activity already 🙌🏽
Trivia
(a) The name of what small landlocked country in the Himalayas is believed to be derived from a Sanskrit word meaning “the end of Tibet”?
(b) RAT has become a popular acronym meaning ‘rapid antigen test’. What does PCR mean?
( c) Ozone exists at room temperature in what state, and is made of 3 atoms of what element?
***
Trivia Answers
(a) Bhutan
(b) Polymerase chain reaction
( c) Gas / Oxygen
No. 2 for 2022 excellent work and you know I'm not pissing in your pocket when I say your newsletter is right up there with the must-reads. Also, as ever, fk your trivia I'm a smart person why do you lie to me.