Author: Tapiwa Matthew Mutisi

PayPal will be moving forward with its plans to transform its mobile payment app into a “super app” according to the company’s CEO. During a recent Q2 earnings call PayPal CEO Dan Schulman told investors that the initial version of its new consumer digital wallet app is now “code complete” and this means…

Square Inc, the payments firm of Twitter Inc co-founder Jack Dorsey, will buy Australian fintech company Afterpay Ltd for $29 billion, creating a global transactions giant in the biggest buyout of an Australian firm. Square’s decision to purchase the buy now, pay later (BNPL) pioneer is that it looks to expand further into…

Three tech giants namely Apple, Microsoft, and Google owner Alphabet have recently reported a combined profit of more than $50 billion in the April-June quarter, underscoring their unparalleled influence and success at reshaping the way we live. Although these companies make their money in different ways, the results served as…

Microsoft Teams has gained new Defender ‘Safe Links’ phishing protection to protect users against potentially dangerous phishing URLs. The additional phishing protection in Teams is available for organizations using Defender for Office 365 to guard against phishing attacks that use weaponized URLs. While email is the standard medium for delivering…

South African payments startup Yoco has raised US$83-million (about R1.2-billion) from top investors in series-C funding round as demand grows among small businesses for its digital payments tools. New investors include Dragoneer Investment Group, which is making its Africa investment debut, Breyer Capital, HOF Capital, The Raba Partnership, 4DX Ventures, TO…

Spotify is taking a cue from social networks like Facebook, which deliver a constant stream of notifications under a “bell” icon in the mobile app to keep users engaged with the latest content. As shared at Stream On in February, there are 50,000+ hours of content uploaded to Spotify every…

Jeff Bezos wants to spot NASA up to $2 billion in a bid to reignite the battle for space between his rocket company Blue Origin and Elon Musk’s SpaceX. The world’s richest man appealed to NASA Administrator Bill Nelson in an open letter Monday, offering to cover billions of dollars in the…

Netflix posted sluggish subscriber growth when it reported earnings Tuesday, and forecast bigger gains ahead. The streaming service said it has 209 million subscribers globally after adding a little more than a million subscribers in the second quarter of 2021. That beat the company’s own expectations for the quarter, even though it was…

Microsoft recently announced that it’s rolling out a Windows 11 update that includes its Chat feature for talking with friends and family members over Microsoft Teams. People who are already testing Windows 11 through the Windows Insider program will be able to try the Chat software before Windows 11 becomes generally available…

YouTube has launched a new way for video creators to earn money from fans through a feature called Super Thanks, as the Alphabet Inc streaming service looks to attract more content makers. The feature, a fourth way for YouTubers to earn money from their viewers, comes as competing platforms like short-form…

Riding his own rocket, the richest human in the world, Amazon.com and Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos and three others landed safely after Blue Origin’s first flight to space with passengers aboard, a key milestone in the company’s effort to make space tourism viable. Bezos streaked into space Tuesday on a thrilling 10-minute…

The EU, the U.K., and NATO on Monday joined the US in condemning cyberattacks on Microsoft Exchange servers which affected at least 30,000 organizations globally by hackers based in China, though the EU stopped short of blaming the Chinese government. Australia, Japan, New Zealand, and Canada also joined the coalition,…

Just over a week after Richard Branson flew to the edge of space, fellow billionaire Jeff Bezos is set for a similarly high-stakes trip aboard his own rocket. After conquering Earth, Bezos eyes a new frontier in space tomorrow after building a massive business empire that has in many ways conquered…

Zoom Video Communications Inc announced that it’s acquiring Five9, a provider of cloud contact center software, in an all-stock transaction valuing the company at $14.7 billion. The deal marks Zoom’s first billion-dollar acquisition and comes as the company prepares for a post-pandemic world with employees returning to the office. It’s the second-biggest…

The Huawei P50 series finally got an official launch date. Huawei confirmed that it would be unveiling the flagship P50 series this month. The company recently posted the event for the P50 series launch will take place on July 29, though as of now, the rumours suggests that we are…

Cape Town-based employee wellness app Strove has just raised $278K (R4-million) in seed funding in a round led by venture capital firm, Launch Africa. The round comes after venture builder The Delta launched the initial product in January. Chris Bruchhausen, in partnership with The Delta, founded Strove in 2020, and the company…

Microsoft is once again advising its customers to disable Windows print spooler, after a new vulnerability that allows hackers to execute malicious code on machines has emerged. While a patch fixing the flaw will be released in due course, the most effective workaround currently on the table is to stop…

All of the other Chinese smartphone brands have benefited from Huawei’s international demise (except Honor), but none more than Xiaomi, and today’s news comes to confirm this fact yet again. According to Canalys, in the second quarter of 2021, Xiaomi was the second-biggest smartphone maker globally in terms of sales.…

Crypto is poised to set a new record for the biggest private round fundraise ever. The France-based fantasy soccer game and non-fungible token (NFT) trading platform Sorare has reportedly completed a $532 million funding round at a $3.8 billion valuation. This round would add to an already lucrative 2021 for…

Netflix Inc is the king of streaming with more than 200 million subscribers. But now it appears the platform has set its sights on dominating a new form of entertainment: video games, marking its first big move beyond TV shows and films, and has hired a former Electronic Arts Inc. and Facebook Inc. executive to lead…