The Business Model Behind Buy Now, Pay Later Apps

Buy now, pay later companies like Affirm, Klarna and Afterpay boomed during the pandemic as consumers looked for an accessible alternative to credit cards. But even as their customer bases grow, these companies are struggling to turn a profit. 

PayPal, Apple and even credit card companies themselves are trying to get in on the action. 

WSJ explains how these services work, how they differ from traditional credit card payments and why some consumers have concerns.

China’s Power Crisis Threatens to Delay Apple Gadgets, Other Goods - WSJ

China’s electricity shortages have hit factories that produce a lot of the goods we use every day, including Apple gadgets and furniture. The country’s coal problems expose the growing pains in transitioning to a greener future and risks to the global supply chain.

 

Apple’s Big September News - iPhone 13, Apple Watch Series 7 and iPad Mini

iPhone 13 Mini and iPhone 13 get better battery life and new camera tricks. iPhone 13 Pros get brighter, faster displays. Apple Watch grows a larger screen with Series 7. And Apple revamps the iPad Mini. WSJ’s Joanna Stern highlights the fall lineup.

 

Hundreds of iPhones Are in ‘Ted Lasso.’ They’re More Strategic Than You Think

Reporters from the Wall Street Journal watched 40+ hours of the streaming service to analyze Apple's product placement strategy Watch an Apple TV+ show and you’re likely to notice a lot of iPhones, iPads and other Apple products. We analyzed 74 episodes of the streaming service’s top shows, including “Ted Lasso,” and “The Morning Show,” to better understand the strategy behind all that product placement. 

 

Apple Store vs. Repair Shop: What the Right to Repair Is All About

Apple said it would cost $999 to fix a MacBook Pro. An independent repair store did it for $325. WSJ’s Joanna Stern went on a journey to repair two water-damaged laptops and show how new legislation could provide more options for fixing our broken gadgets.

Apple’s Software Chief Explains ‘Misunderstood’ iPhone Child-Protection Features

Neural Hashes, Safety Vouchers and More Fun Terms Explained Apple’s tools for flagging child pornography and identifying explicit photos in kids’ messages caused backlash and confusion. In an exclusive interview, Apple software chief Craig Federighi sat down with WSJ’s Joanna Stern to defend the technology and explain how it will work.

Why Microsoft keeps beating Apple and Google with Windows

 

Microsoft Windows debuted in 1985 and for the past two decades it has been the dominant PC operating system worldwide. In 2020, Windows had almost 83% market share by unit shipments, while Google Chrome OS had 10% and Apple’s Mac OS had 7%, according to Gartner. 

From solitaire to its iconic start button and start up sounds, productivity apps, gaming and corporate computing, Windows changed the way we use computers. The legendary Windows 95 helped propel the company to dominate the market in personal computing. Microsoft has introduced many versions of Windows since its inception with some more memorable than others. It’s competed with IBM, Apple, and Google for market space. According to Microsoft, there are more than 1.3 billion devices running Windows 10 worldwide on a monthly basis. Today, Windows only makes up 14% of Microsoft’s business but remains a critical part of it. The company just announced the latest version Windows 11. 

CNBC spoke with former Microsoft employees including Terry Myerson, Michael Cherry, Brad Silverberg and Tandy Trower to get a look back at over three decades of Windows.

Facebook Pay’s Expansion Plans Might Get No ‘Likes’ From Big Tech Rivals

The mobile wallet race officially became the mobile wallet war  last Wednesday, after Facebook announced plans to support the use of its Facebook Pay system on sites outside of its ecosystem. 

This first big step into the wider world of payments would have been less remarkable had it not involved Shopify’s 1.7 million merchants as its inaugural external test case. It was a move that gave the Facebook endeavor an immediate degree of credibility and surely caught the eye of wallet-space heavyweights like Apple, Google, PayPal, and more.

Apple Working On 'Apple Pay Later' Monthly Installment Offering

Apple is developing a perk for Apple Pay users that will allow them to buy products and pay for them in monthly installments, according to a Bloomberg report.

How to deal with big tech - The Economist

Senator Amy Klobuchar is leading a crusade against big-tech giants such as Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook and Google. These companies dominate the S&P 500 and wield a huge amount of influence. Should they be broken up?

How to Regulate Big Tech? Ideas from the BIS

The U.S. House Judiciary subcommittee, in a 449-page report last October characterized Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google as “gatekeepers” with “significant and durable market power.” The antitrust panel acknowledged open competition’s economic benefits and opportunities but compared the Big Techs to “the kinds of monopolies we last saw in the era of oil barons and railroad tycoons.”

“Big Techs have done something quite remarkable,” Agustín Carstens, general manager of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), said in a January talk, Public Policy for Big Techs in Finance. “Within less than two decades, they have gone from being startups to dominating a range of markets. This is unprecedented,” Carstens said, noting that financial services accounted for “only 11%” of Big Tech revenues “so far.” 

In Fintech Regulation: How to Achieve a Level Playing Field, a paper published in early February, Fernando Restoy, chairman of the BIS Financial Stability Institute (FSI), examines the straightforward “same activity, same regulation” principle alongside so-called entity-based regulation. 

The full article here; How to Regulate Big Tech? The BIS Has Some Ideas

 

The problem with Artificial Intelligence ….. it’s artificial

There is a problem with artificial intelligence and that is because it is artificial. No amount of coding can replace human intelligence and more than that, intuition; the ability to see the bigger picture and to make the correct assumptions and decisions from a myriad of factors. Hence the major concerns that the overhyped driverless automobile will never really become a reality.


Let us look at a much simpler example, something that happened to me today and that has left me totally frustrated, with the amount of time wasted and the sheer incompetence of the technologists and the lack of understanding of business.


A close relative indicated that a certain Apple accessory would be a suitable gift for a coming birthday and given that the closest Apple Store to where I live is some 50 km distant (not to mention all the restrictions relative to the pandemic), I sat myself down to order the item online. I was quite happy to pay the exorbitant delivery charge as it was still cheaper than the cost of petrol, parking costs and the road tolls involved in getting there in person.


Great. I find the item I want, I enter my name and delivery address, mobile number and confirm that this is all ok and then proceed to the checkout. I enter my credit card details and my national ID number (a requirement in the country I live in), card expiry date and CSV number and hit enter ….. and?


Well then my problems began. A second or two later a message pops up on my screen “Thank you for submitting your card details. As soon as the credit card is authorised we will advise you”.


Odd that. I am used to getting an immediate confirmation of payment. After all, the amount is tiny too, in the region of $90. This was at 1:30 pm.


Five minutes later I get an SMS on my mobile with a link asking me to do a verification on the credit card details. The verification consists of confirming that it is my own credit card and confirming my address. The address verification is semi-automated. As soon as I begin entering the name of the town the system pulls up a list of towns to choose from. The same happens with the street names. All very smart. Then I have to enter my national ID number, and press submit.


At 5:07 pm I get another SMS. Big problem, I am told. Some of my credit card details are WRONG! Which ones? My address and my mobile number. Apple cannot process my order. They have the gall to give me the telephone number of the credit card company.


Well the details are NOT wrong! I have lived at my current address for 14 years now and it's the same one that shows on my credit card account that arrives in the post each month. I have had the same mobile number since mid-1999!


I try to telephone Apple, but after hanging on for what seemed an age I give up. My fuming is slowly rising to boiling point. It's then that I notice that the notification came through to me via WhatApp and possibly gives me a way to communicate with the folk who don't answer the phone. So I craft a diplomatic enquiry.


17:20 <This is wrong. Please call me>

17:54 <I am waiting for a reply...... Please!!!!>


I have just about given up when at 8:16 pm I get the following reply.

<credit card company claims they have different contact details of the credit card owner>


What follows becomes a comedy of errors.


I send a reply together with a copy of the address section of the last credit card account, clearly showing the same address, but to no avail. I am told that Apple can do nothing. I must contact the credit card company.


So, seeing that they won’t (or can’t) take my money I ask them to cancel the order. Yes, they can do that, they tell me, BUT am I aware that there is a 5% cancellation fee, with a minimum of $29? NO I am not. How, I wonder, are they going to collect the cancellation fee as they can’t charge my account (or can they if it suits them)?


I have no intention of contacting the credit card company and no, I am not cancelling the order either. So much for Artificial Intelligence which is clearly at the back of all this - one machine talking to another with not intuition. Any natural intelligence would have seen the stupidity of the two errors and adjusted for them.


Perhaps the paranormal will help and someone at Apple can organize a seance to contact Steve Jobs and ask him for a solution.

Mobile payments trends report shows mainstream adoption is a long way off

Industry analysts had predicted that Apple would kick smartphone wallets into gear but that might not be it.

When Apple Pay was launched, many analysts believed this would be the start of powerful mobile payments trends. They felt that Apple was the key to the mainstream adoption of mobile wallets. That said, that wallet app has now been available for about two years and adoption has been slower than anticipated.

Some analysts are now saying that the start of the widespread use of mobile payments won’t happen for some time.

READ MORE>>

The adblocking revolution is months away (with iOS 9) – with trouble for advertisers, publishers and Google

From The Overspill –

“Remember newspapers? In the old days, adverts appeared in print, on the radio and on the TV. Most ad-supported news organisations that have shifted to the internet began in print.

Ads in print were straightforward. Advertisers bought space, and editors could turn them down, or sometimes decide not to run them if a story broke that would bring about an awkward juxtaposition of, say, the advert for a shoe store on page 3 and the big breaking story now being placed on page 3 about people having feet crushed by a runaway steamroller. (The ad would get moved to another page.) Print ads were hard for advertisers to track, though they could use codes and so on that would clue them in to where someone had seen one if they responded directly.”

Read more>>

Apple Impacts Mobile Banking: For Better or Worse

From The Financial Brand –

“Apple is uniquely positioned to take its current cachet with regards to simplicity, design and trust and help the banking industry deliver a better experience than was possible in the past. Will Apple Watch, Touch ID, Apple Pay and Apple Wallet be a gift or a curse in the long run?”

Read more>>

Banks to allow account access using fingerprint tech

From BBC News –

“Two banks are allowing their customers to access accounts on their smartphones using fingerprint recognition technology, in a UK industry first.

RBS and NatWest customers must activate the feature with their security information, but would only need to use Apple's Touch ID thereafter.

The banks said that, after three failed login attempts, customers would have to re-enter their passcodes.

But a security expert expressed concern that Touch ID is not secure enough.’

Read more>>