FinTech news in Facebook category

A Meta spokesperson told journalist that it is shifting its investments away from NFTs toward products like Meta Pay, as well as features that enable creators to earn money directly on Meta platforms, like its tipping feature called gifts.

Instagram and Twitter aren’t the only digital giants looking to embrace NFTs, as YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki suggested that the platform may embrace web3 technologies, including NFTs, as a means of helping YouTube creators make money. Earlier this year, Zuckerberg said Meta is going to work on augmented reality NFTs, or 3D NFTs, that you can bring to Instagram Stories using Spark AR, which is the company’s software AR platform. Instagram to start testing NFTs with select creators this week Facebook begins testing NFTs with select creators in the US Instagram’s NFT functionality allows users to connect a digital wallet, share NFTs and automatically tag both a creator and collector for attribution.

Although it’s currently not making any money in its Russian operation, Viber, which is end-to-end encrypted, has kept the service live where it hasn’t been blocked by Russian authorities, since a lot of communication happens between Ukrainians and Russians (there remain a lot of links between the people, despite the actions and rhetoric of the Russian government), and it’s continuing to operate its service in Ukraine where it can — the occupied territories where Russia has taken control of communications being the exception. The company is not quick to disclose exact monthly active user figures, but in 2016, Viber was widely reported to have 823 million users (note: not active users — one citation of this number from its PR firm here); in that same year, an exec told journalist that it had 266 million monthly active users. Now it is making a move to double down on that strategy: it launching Payments on Viber — a new service that will let users set up digital wallets tied to their Viber accounts. Viber, the messaging app owned by Japanese e-commerce giant Rakuten, has long been dancing around the area of fintech, launching services like money transfer and chatbot payments in various countries over the years.

Right now, the company gets largely paid through affiliate fees and exchange of data. opts in for a suggested insurance plan Clicks into a location-based offer Answers market research or campaign measurement questions Or scans Pogo card for a discount when buying a prescription In the next iteration, Wong says, Pogo will suggest users to turn to fee-free banking alternatives, and then Pogo can make money through affiliate fees.

With the company announcing its quarterly financial results on July 21, one thing to listen for is whether it elaborates any further on either of these fronts, which, conveniently, would help Snap bolster the message to investors that it’s working on more ideas to generate revenue, to complement, or offset, whatever ups and downs it might face in the advertising market. The leak of the NFT test seems to be part of a mini product sprint at Snap: It’s coming just days after Snapchat launched its premium subscription Snapchat Plus. FT’s report noted that Snap doesn’t plan to take any money from creators to show off their digital collectibles — just like Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. In the latest development, Snap is exploring ways to let artists show off their digital collectibles as AR filters on Snapchat.

In recent months, the company has also been testing support for digital collectables (aka NFTs) — so having its own digital wallet infrastructure could support a wider push into non-fungible token trading if Meta decides there’s enough money to be made (but, again, NFT trading volumes are steeply down vs last year as digital collectables catch crypto’s chill).

Instagram to start testing NFTs with select creators this week Meta to roll out new monetization tools on Instagram and Facebook, including a creator marketplace After debuting NFT support on Instagram in May, Meta has launched digital collectibles support on Facebook with select creators. Zuckerberg has also said Meta is going to work on augmented reality NFTs, or 3D NFTs, that you can bring to Instagram Stories using Spark AR, which is the company’s software AR platform.

Google has invested in Progcap, an Indian startup that provides working capital to small and medium-sized businesses, the firms said Tuesday, making a new push into a category that has attracted the attention of Facebook and Amazon in recent years.

Facebook has been in payments since 2009 and says people use its platforms to make payments in 160 countries and 55 currencies, including person to person, business to business, and business to consumer payments. Facebook Pay will soon be renamed Meta Pay, according to a blog post written by Meta head of fintech, Stephane Kasriel.

The firm did not disclose funding amounts oddly but is sharing that their first round is co-led by a16z Crypto and Paradigm with participation from Thrive Capital, Coatue, Felix Capital, Ribbit Capital, Matrix Partners and Zeev Ventures. Bitcoin’s lightning network allows for cheaper and faster transactions than the base level network allows, making it a more ideal platform to leverage for payments and decentralized apps.

Instagram head Adam Mosseri announced today that the platform is going to start testing NFTs with select creators in the United States this week. Mosseri noted that there will be no fees associated with posting or sharing a digital collectible on Instagram. At launch, the supported blockchains for showcasing NFTs on Instagram are Ethereum and \[…\]

Taxfix as you might suspect prefers to talk about the good news stories around tax filing — it’s easy! and it’s often free money owed to you! — so Ott wasn’t keen to talk about how much money it calculated people owed to the state, but there is an opportunity there too to provide financing and longer-term managing of that financing as a different kind of product.

First, it will help it expand the company expand its geographic footprint: Azimo currently has payment licenses in the U.K., the Netherlands, Canada, Australia and Hong Kong, and it operates a payment network in more than 160 countries, while Papaya Global (not to be confused with the other fintech called Papaya) operated services in 150 countries just prior to this deal, Eynat Guez, Papaya Global CEO and co-founder.

The story begins years ago when Root wanted to build new kinds of banking services. Co-founder and CEO Nick Root is a computer science graduate and former CTO, COO, CFO and CEO who did 12 years in the London banking industry before starting Intergiro.

Split Payments was introduced alongside the news that Messenger is launching new voice message recording controls so users can pause, preview, delete or continue recording a voice message before sending it. The company said that its feature offering end-to-end encrypted group chats and calls in Messenger is now fully rolled out. The launch of Split Payments comes as Messenger added Venmo-like QR codes for person-to-person payments last summer. Messenger also added another security feature that will alert users if someone snaps a photo from Messenger’s disappearing messages.

This was followed by Social (70 apps), Entertainment (57 apps), Books (37 apps), Lifestyle (33 apps), Tools (26 apps), Business (25 apps). However, mobile game publishers led the adoption of the keyword, as 107 apps in the Game category now reference the term, or 19% of the apps studied.

Earlybird, best known as the Berlin-based VC which has backed myriad German and European startups such as SoundCloud and N26, is today expanding its reach in Europe with the creation of a team and adjunct fund based out of Paris, France. According to most annual European surveys, France regularly appears as the third biggest startup ecosystem in Europe, (behind first the U.K. and then Germany) and last year investment in French startups doubled. The background to this of course is that European VC is (finally!) becoming more competitive as it feels the heat both from U.S. VCs, and also other European VCs using remote working and deal-making to suck up deals well outside their territories. The fund’s core focus lies on early-stage companies — predominantly seed and Series A — and will be supporting French entrepreneurs with initial investments of between €1 million to €10 million.

If the sale of the Diem Association’s assets goes through, Meta and its partners in the association will get some money back, while Silvergate Capital will become the only company in charge of the Diem project.

Dedicated crypto platforms like Coinbase or even Paypal, Venmo and Stripe, which recently added abilities to use crypto for payments, could evolve into the U.S. versions of super apps, assuming crypto issuers can work with regulators to find a middle ground between protecting the consumer and creating new financial and investment opportunities.

Here are 5 NFT trends that will bring social media audiences into web3 en masse: NFT verification Skeptics are quick to point out that NFTs are dumb because you can simply right-click and save the underlying files.