Search Results for: covid

Opinion: Factors that will likely shape ecommerce in the second half of 2020

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COVID 19 Read consumer

As we enter the second half of 2020, Dan Barker examines the key trends that are set to shape ecommerce, and how retailers can respond to them. The first half of 2020 has been eventful for ecommerce. Of course technical innovation has progressed: Shopify launched a marketplace, Google relaunched organic product listings, Facebook introduced ‘shops’, and thousands of other changes. But much of the first half of 2020 was shaped by a disease named after 2019. The effects of ‘SARS2’ on ecommerce are tough to overstate. Tens of thousands of…

Central Bank of Kenya Declines to cap the free M-Pesa transactions to five

olivia Craig
M-Gas Mpesa Central Bank of Kenya

Kenya’s leading telco Safaricom has lost the bid to cap free M-Pesa transactions to five. This comes after subscribers split high-value transfers to avoid paying transfer fees, costing it billions of shillings in revenues. The company had petitioned the Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) to cap the number of multiple transactions between two numbers, according to a recent disclosure of conference call transcripts between Safaricom and investors seen by the Business Daily. Safaricom reported that customers were splitting high-value money transfers of as high as Sh60,000 to deals of below…

Opera’s Opay Pulls Plug on ORide, OCar, Shifts focus to eCommerce & payments

Dianne Jacobs
Opera’s Opay Pulls Plug on ORide, OCar, Shifts focus to eCommerce & payments

News earlier in the week broke that Opera-backed Nigerian fintech startup, OPay has reportedly shut down all its business operations in Nigeria following a letter issued by its foreign investors amidst the poor economic climate caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.. A report claims that all verticals of the startup, including ride hailing, ORide and OTrike — which were still active in other states aside Lagos; the recently launched B2B and B2C eCommerce platforms, OMall and OTrade; OExpress for logistics; and food delivery feature, OFood will be closed down. Opay launched…

Uber Africa launches Uber Cash in partnership with Flutterwave

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Uber Africa launches Uber Cash in partnership with Flutterwave

Uber will launch its Uber Cash digital wallet feature in Sub-Saharan Africa in partnership with San Francisco based  Nigerian founded fintech firm Flutterwave. This will let riders to top up Uber wallets using the dozens of remittance partners active on Flutterwave’s Pan-African network. Flutterwave works as a B2B payments gateway network that allows clients to tap its APIs and customize payments applications. Uber Cash will go live this week and next for Uber’s ride-hail operations in South Africa, Kenya, Nigeria, Uganda and Ghana, Ivory Coast and Tanzania, according to Alon…

Online retailers sales see their highest growth on record in April

Dianne Jacobs
Amazon CloudFront Edge

Online retailers are seeing Black Friday-like sales due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on their business. According to new data from Adobe’s Digital Economy Index, U.S. e-commerce jumped 49% in April, compared to the baseline period in early March before shelter-in-place restrictions went into effect. Online grocery helped drive the increase in sales, with a 110% boost in daily sales between March and April. Meanwhile, electronic sales were up 58% and book sales have doubled. The data comes from Adobe’s index of the digital economy, which analyzes more…

Facebook shareholders want to postpone end-to-end encryption plan

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Facebook End-to-end encryption

It is reported that investors at Facebook annual stockholder meeting will vote on a proposal to postpone the firm’s plans for end-to-end encryption. The social media firm wants to make the measure the default option across its messaging platforms to protect privacy. But activist shareholders have however stated that this would make it nearly impossible to detect child exploitation on Facebook, now the group wants the company to delay the move until after its board of directors studies the risk further. “As shareholders, we know that privacy is important to…

NewsGuard, news credibility and transparency content scoring service free for all Microsoft Edge users

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NewsGuard

NewsGuard is a desktop browser extension that displays credibility and transparency content scoring and is available by subscription. It launched in August 2018 and typically costs $2.95 per month for a desktop user. In recent weeks, NewsGuard, the internet news watchdog service, has been escalating its battle against misinformation by opening a Coronavirus Misinformation Tracking Center and offering its service for free to all internet users until July 1. Until recently, only Microsoft Edge mobile device users on iOS and Android had unlimited free access to the service. Last week, the company entered a partnership with…

Using Big Data In The Fight Against Coronavirus

olivia Craig
Big Data

One of the advantages we have today in the fight against coronavirus that wasn’t as sophisticated in the SARS outbreak of 2003 is big data and the high level of technology available. China tapped into big data, machine learning, and other digital tools as the virus spread through the nation in order to track and contain the outbreak. The lessons learned there have continued to spread across the world as other countries fight the spread of the virus and use digital technology to develop real-time forecasts and arm healthcare professionals…

Embrace internet tech to keep key sectors in operation

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Video Game

Covid-19 is reminding workers that the digital economy is one that best absorbs the shocks of any disease that discourages physical contact and social grouping. The novel coronavirus that first appeared in mainland China has now spread across the world, with more than 82,000 reported cases and nearly 3,000 deaths, as of Thursday. And right alongside the outbreak is the deployment of myriad types of AI-powered tech that is now being put on full display. Economies are at a standstill, with key sectors under serious existential threats of extinction. It…

Sophia Bekele Speaks on Technology for Economic Development in Africa at the Yale University

The Yale Undergraduate Association for African Peace and Development held a youth conference on the theme: Re-imagining Africa: a closer look at Autonomy, Identity and Perspective. The Yale Undergraduate Association for African Peace and Development held the second annual Sankofa54: African Youth Empowerment Conference on April 12th – 14th, 2013.The student youth conference was held on the theme: Re-imagining Africa: a closer look at Autonomy, Identity and Perspective. The conference included five discussion panels concerning economic development, global health, and peace and conflict resolution, as well as a series of breakout…