Airwallex raises $100M at a $5.5B valuation to expand its business banking and payments platform globally

E-commerce and other online businesses are becoming increasingly global in their operations and customer bases, and a startup called Airwallex — which has built a banking solution that addresses the opportunity to provide cross-border financial services — has been seeing a massive surge of activity. To capitalize further on that opportunity, today the company is […]

Practice Ignition lands $50M to scale globally

Practice ignition, an Australia-based client engagement and commerce platform for professional service businesses, has raised $50 million (65 million AUD) in a Series C round to accelerate its growth and expand globally. It brings the startup’s total raised to $75 million, said Guy Pearson, CEO and founder of Practice Ignition. The fresh funding was led […]

Spotify’s new Podcast Subscriptions expand to global markets

Just a few months after launching support for podcast subscriptions to U.S. creators, Spotify today is making the service available to creators in global markets. The company says the service, which allows creators to mark episodes as “subscriber-only” content, will now become available in 33 new markets worldwide. When podcast subscriptions publicly launched in the […]

US says Iran-backed hackers are now targeting organizations with ransomware

The U.S. government, along with counterparts in Australia and the U.K, have warned that Iranian state-backed hackers are targeting U.S. organizations in critical infrastructure sectors — in some cases with ransomware. The rare warning linking Iran with ransomware landed in a joint advisory Wednesday, issued by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), the Federal […]

“Pikmin Bloom,” an AR mobile game, is Niantic’s next collaboration with Nintendo

Niantic announced yesterday that its next augmented reality mobile game will be Pikmin Bloom, a collaboration with Nintendo. The free game is available now for iOS and Android in Singapore and Australia, but will roll out globally in the coming days. Like Pokémon Go, Pikmin Bloom will encourage players to get outside and explore their […]

Facebook agrees to pay French publishers for news reuse

Facebook has reached a multiyear agreement to pay French publishers for resharing their content on its platforms, it announced today. The social media giant said the licensing agreement with the Alliance of national and regional newspapers “means that people on Facebook will be able to continue uploading and sharing news stories freely amongst their communities, […]

Snapchat to introduce family safety tools to protect minors using its app

Following moves by major tech platforms to better protect minors using their platforms, Snapchat is preparing to introduce its own set of “family engagement” tools in the coming months. Snap CEO Evan Spiegel teased the planned offering during an interview at the WSJ Tech Live conference this week, where he explained that the new product […]