Venmo’s Public API Allows Access to Information About User Transactions
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Arguably, PayPal’s Venmo is the most popular mobile payment application in the US and, with 40 million active users, the second largest consumer finance platform based on the number of digital users at the top US banks. Venmo’s viral nature is based on its social network-like experience in which users interact and share transactions not only with friends but also public feeds.
PayPal has been criticized because users have to opt in to disable public access to information about their transactions. Other than amounts, many details of their transactions are publicly available.
Out of curiosity, we analyzed 696 Venmo transactions that took place over 3 minutes on 1/1/19. As shown below, 32% of the transactions were food related, with the Pizza emoji (🍕) one of the most popular words or emojis attached as a message. 23% of transactions landed in the ‘Other’ bucket, as they were difficult to characterize, while 15% were for rent or utility payments, not unsurprising on the first day of the month. Notably, 6% of the transactions were service related, with categories ranging from “Consulting” to “Therapy”.
Source: Public Venmo API
Facebook Expects to Launch ‘GlobalCoin’ in 2020
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Facebook’s highly anticipated cryptocurrency is set to launch in the first quarter of 2020. Named ‘Globalcoin’, the cryptocurrency will be a stablecoin pegged to a basket of fiat currencies. With plans to launch in a dozen countries by the first quarter of 2020 and spending significant time with officials from both the US Treasury and the Bank of England, Facebook appears to be taking a regulatory-friendly approach.
Facebook also is in talks with money transfer firms including Western Union as it aims to provide more efficient ways for people to transfer and store value without a bank account. Clearly, it intends to compete with Paypal’s Venmo and Square’s CashApp to become one of the world’s digital wallets.
In ARK Disrupt Issue 163, we discussed potential strategies and reasons to foster the adoption of Facebook’s cryptocurrency. Targeting the $600 billion remittance market seems promising given Facebook’s 2+ billion global user-base because existing mobile payment platforms are country-specific and cannot facilitate cross border transactions. The risks to consider, however, are government bans in countries fearful of losing control over their currencies. Despite these risks, the opportunities could revolve around data: with more transactions on its network, Facebook will be able to identify and track spending habits more precisely, improving ad targeting in all of its apps.
Facebook is expected to outline details about the launch this summer. We will be watching closely.
A Winter Freeze Hits Huawei
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The US Commerce Department is adding Huawei to its “Entity List”, effectively barring US companies from providing products and services to the Chinese tech champion. Google, Microsoft, and ARM, among others, already have indicated that they will stop providing Huawei with new products.
The fallout from this ban could be profound. Huawei smartphones rely on ARM-based CPUs and Google’s Android operating system. An export ban on these technologies effectively freezes Huawei’s product roadmap. Huawei will have to find an alternative to ARM-based mobile chips and a non-Google version of Android, a nearly impossible task.
Huawei’s 5G infrastructure faces a similar fate. 5G equipment requires components and intellectual property (IP) from US companies such as Qualcomm, Broadcom, Analogy Devices, and Texas Instruments, among others. Building a full 5G product stack without access to US suppliers might not be possible.
If China and the US negotiate a trade deal, it could lift the ban against Huawei overnight. But, if tensions escalate, Huawei could be the first victim of the “long game”.