Covid live news: poorer nations forced to reject 100m near-expired coronavirus vaccines; Spain to offer fourth dose to vulnerable

More than 100m vaccine doses were rejected in December alone due to rapidly expiring donations from wealthy countries; Spain continues vaccine push with 90.5% of population aged 12 and above jabbedFrench teachers walk out of classrooms in strike over C…

Yahaha Studios, a platform for building no-code, immersive games, raised $50M in 3 rounds ahead of its launch this year

The success of Roblox and other user-created gaming experiences like Overwolf have democratized the concept of making games and have taken it into the mainstream. Now, a startup founded by veterans from Unity, Microsoft and EA that is building a new platform for creators to build immersive games, and related communities around like-minded people, is […]

HeyCharge’s underground charging solution raises $4.7M Seed led by BMW i Ventures

EV charging continues to be a high-growth business, for obvious reasons. Since 2007, one of the largest players has been ChargePoint, the floated US company which with a widespread EV charging network. But plenty of startups are snapping at its heels. One of them is Germany-based HeyCharge, which realised there was a problem with how […]

Global Processing Services adds $100M to its coffers to grow its embedded finance and API payments platform

Embedded finance continues to be the engine driving the growth of fintech, with one group of companies building core banking, payments and other financial technology, and a much bigger group tapping that technology through APIs to build customer-facing businesses. Today, one of the bigger players on the core technology side — Global Processing Services — […]

Fintech Farm nabs $7.4M to launch neobanks in Nigeria and other emerging markets

Fintech Farm, a newly launched fintech startup based in the U.K. that creates digital banks in emerging markets, confirmed to TechCrunch today that it has raised $7.4 million in seed funding. The company said it plans to use the investment to launch neobanks in eight countries over the next 24 months. Flyer One Ventures and […]

In bad news for US cloud services, Austrian website’s use of Google Analytics found to breach GDPR

A decision by Austria’s data protection watchdog upholding a complaint against a website related to its use of Google Analytics does not bode well for use of US cloud services in Europe. The decision raises a big red flag over routine use of tools that require transferring Europeans’ personal data to the US for processing […]

Coronavirus live: 4.3m people in the UK had Covid last week; Switzerland cuts isolation to five days

Official estimates show Covid infections continued to rise in all four UK nations; Fears wave of Covid infections could threaten Swiss economy‘VIP lane’ to award PPE contracts in UK unlawful, high court rulesCovid boosters not viable strategy against n…