With iOS 12, Apple focuses on performance

{rss:content:encoded} With iOS 12, Apple focuses on performance https://ift.tt/2suxeww https://ift.tt/2swfbpJ June 04, 2018 at 07:46PM

Apple’s Craig Federighi announced that Apple was doubling down on performance with the upcoming release of iOS 12 at the WWDC event in San Jose, Calif. today.

What’s more, he said, the company would be making these changes to the full range of iOS devices going back to 2013. “And so for iOS 12, we are doubling down on performance from top to bottom making improvements to make your device faster and more responsive. And because we want these changes to be available the full range of our customers, iOS 12 will be available on all the same devices as iOS 11,” Federighi told the WWDC audience.

Perhaps because customers were unhappy to learn about the battery issues with older iOS devices Federighi stressed that Apple has focussed these performance increases on older devices, giving people with older iPhones, the maximum lift. Using the iPhone 6 as an example, he gave some figures about performance increase, stressing that it was still early days. (As an iPhone 6 user, I was listening carefully.)

“Now on that device, iOS delivers a number of improvements. Across common operations you’ll see that apps launch up to 40% faster, the keyboard can come up to 50% faster and you can slide to take a photo at up to 70% faster,” he said.

But he said, the biggest focus, and one all iPhone users can appreciate, is that they are working to optimize performance when it’s under load. As Federighi said that’s when you need performance the most and where iOS 12 really shines.

“We put iOS 12 through our stress tests and we saw in those conditions share sheet coming up twice as fast, and apps launching twice as fast. These are big, big improvements,” he stressed.

Lastly, Apple also optimized iOS 12 at the chip level working with the chip team to optimize performance, while taking battery life into account. If you keep the power pedal to the metal for too long, you suck battery, but Apple is trying to find that perfect balance of power and battery life in iOS 12.

“CPUs traditionally respond to an increased demand for performance by slowly ramping up their clock speed. Well, now in iOS 12, we’re much smarter. When we detect that you need a performance lift when you’re scrolling and launching an app, we ramped up processor performance instantly to its highest state delivering high performance and a ramp it down just as fast to preserve battery life,” he said.

All of this will be available when iOS 12 is released later this year.

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Facebook’s latest privacy blunder has already attracted congressional ire

The news that Facebook offered to partners until just recently a form of the friend-scraping capability it claimed to have discontinued back in 2014 has, within hours, brought rebuke and a call to action from the House of Representatives.

“It’s deeply concerning that Facebook continues to withhold critical details about the information it has and shares with others. This is just the latest example of Facebook only coming forward when forced to do so by a media outlet,” reads a statement from Rep. Frank Pallone (D-NJ).

Indeed, the question of whether and how a user’s friends’ data was being shared with third parties was brought up during Zuckerberg’s testimony. It is, after all, likely that this is the vector by which millions of users’ data was exfiltrated by agents both malicious and benign.

Facebook says it “disagrees” with the New York Times’ criticisms of its device-integrated APIs

In the same line of thinking as “don’t talk to the cops,” the CEO was almost certainly instructed not to volunteer any disadvantageous information unless directly asked. Therefore, it should surprise no one that he failed to mention that there existed until quite recently a similar program allowing third parties to collect data on unsuspecting friends.

It’s telling of Facebook’s current predicament that before they can adequately answer some questions, even more arise.

“Our Committee is also still waiting for a lot of answers from Facebook to questions Mr. Zuckerberg could not or would not answer at our hearing,” Pallone said.

He also called for the FTC to get involved: “The Federal Trade Commission must conduct a full review to determine if the consent decree was violated.” I’ve asked if the Representative will be appealing to the FTC directly, and/or whether any existing investigation (the FTC is quiet about these) will be affected.

Pallone is just one among hundreds of senators and representatives, but he is one of the crew responsible for the pending Congressional Review Act rollback of the FCC’s new, weaker net neutrality rules. So it’s not a surprise to see him weigh in quickly on another tech issue. Here’s hoping it helps keep Facebook accountable.

from Social – TechCrunch https://ift.tt/eA8V8J Facebook’s latest privacy blunder has already attracted congressional ire Devin Coldewey https://ift.tt/2Jfl6G3
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Apple introduces iOS 12

{rss:content:encoded} Apple introduces iOS 12 https://ift.tt/2sxGUX9 https://ift.tt/2xGVDnJ June 04, 2018 at 07:18PM

Apple announced the next version of iOS at its WWDC developer conference. While iOS 12 won’t be available before the fall, it’s always interesting to get a sneak peek at the next version of iOS.

Apple's senior vice president of Software Engineering Craig Federighi first talked about some numbers. 81 percent of iOS users are currently running iOS 11. 6 percent of Android users are currently on the last version.

“For iOS 12, we’re doubling down on performance,” Federighi said. iOS 12 is going to be available on all devices that currently support iOS 11.

It’s interesting the Federighi talked about iOS 12 on the iPhone 6 Plus. Apps launch 40 percent faster, the keyboard comes up 50 percent faster and opening the camera is 70 percent faster.

You get the idea, the big new feature of iOS 12 is performance and optimization.

But it doesn’t mean that Apple didn’t think about new features. Apple has created a new file format for augmented reality called USDZ. Adobe CTO Abhay Parasnis talked for a couple of minutes to announce that Adobe apps are going to support USDZ.

Apple is launching a new app to educate people about augmented reality. This app is called Measure and works pretty much like popular third-party app MeasureKit. While Apple says USDZ is a file format for augmented reality, Federighi also showed a USDZ 3D file in the middle of an Apple News article.

And the company is also updating ARKit with multiplayer augmented reality. You can get the same augmented reality experience with multiple devices.

This is a developing post, please refresh for updates.

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Lendix raises $37 million for its lending marketplace

French startup Lendix has raised a new funding round of $37 million (€32 million). With this new influx of cash, the startup has one goal in mind. It wants to become the leading lending marketplace of Continental Europe.

Idinvest and Allianz are leading the round, with CIR SpA (De Benedetti’s holding firm) also participating. Existing investors Partech, CNP Assurances, Decaux Frères Investissements and Matmut are also participating once again.

As of today, people living in France, Spain and Italy can sign up to lend money to companies established in those three countries. But the startup is already working hard to expand to the Netherlands and Germany before the end of the year. Next year, Lendix plans to operate in 7 countries.

And it seems like it’s becoming easier to launch new markets. There are now quite a few users and institutional investors on the platform. Lendix doesn’t need to attract Dutch users to start lending to Dutch companies. French, Italian and Spanish users are already willing to put some money in Dutch companies. It’s a true European user base because everybody uses the same currency.

With today’s funding round, it’s going to be easier to launch in Germany. “When you want to open in Germany — and that is our current plan — it’s harder to recruit if you don’t have a German brand name behind you,” co-founder and CEO Olivier Goy told me.

That’s why Allianz is going to be more than just a financial backer. For instance, the insurance company is going to promote Lendix to its corporate clients so that they think about Lendix if they need to borrow some money.

It’s another proof that Lendix doesn’t want to be a French company that operates in other countries. The company also has opened an office in Madrid and another one in Milan with local teams.

Lendix is still a drop in the bucket compared to traditional bank loans. But the company wants to differentiate its product offering from regular banks as much as possible.

Right now, when a company requests a loan, the company’s algorithms are going to work on a basic credit scoring. After that, somebody calls the company to ask a few questions. The Lendix team can focus on more specific information.

“We also have developed a tool called Iris,” CTO Benjamin Netter told me. “It is going to become the biggest intelligence database for European companies.”

France is leading the way when it comes to open data. You can now access the registry of commerce, the identification number database and important incorporation events. But it’s a mess if you want to access this data. There are different file formats, and the same database uses different fields depending on the region of France.

Lendix has been parsing all this data to turn it into an actionable database. This way, Lendix can get a clear overview of companies that apply for a loan.

The company doesn’t plan to stop there. You could use Iris to detect some fraud patterns. For instance, a person could keep incorporating new companies and shutting them down quickly.

Eventually, you could reach out to companies before they need to apply for a loan. Netter mentioned a restaurant called Street Bangkok. They’ve opened three restaurants over the past six months. It’s clear that they might need some money at some point to invest in new restaurants. Lendix Iris could spot those patterns.

Lendix is still nowhere near as big as Funding Circle. But the company thinks there’s enough room for multiple players in this space. Both can grow at the same time by competing with traditional banks.

And it starts by being faster than a traditional bank. Companies get a rate within 48 hours. “Our goal is that you should be able to get a rate within half a day,” Goy said. Banks will have a hard time giving you an answer so quickly.

Disclosure: I share a personal connection with an executive at CNP Assurances.

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J Lendix raises $37 million for its lending marketplace https://ift.tt/2Jtpch7

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Live from Apple’s WWDC 2018 keynote

{rss:content:encoded} Live from Apple’s WWDC 2018 keynote https://ift.tt/2J9sK8Y https://ift.tt/2sBZSLv June 04, 2018 at 05:11PM

It’s that time again. This morning kicks off Apple’s annual World Wide Developers Conference. It’s a week of programming focused on developers, but this morning’s big event has a little something for everyone. Here’s a quick break down of what we can likely expect when Tim Cook takes the stage this morning.

The keynote will most likely be focused on announcements surrounding iOS 12 and macOS 10.14 — in fact, we got a bit of a preview of the latter over the weekend. WatchOS and HomeKit will probably get some love, as well, along with ARKit, which took center stage at the event, this time last year.

As for hardware — expect Apple to throw us a couple of bones on that front, as well — though the really big announcements around iPhone, iPad and the like, are probably being saved for another day. Beyond that, the sky — or the San Jose Convention Center ceiling, at least — is the limit.

We’ll see you right here at 10AM PT/1PM ET/5PM GMT

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Microsoft promises to keep GitHub independent and open

Microsoft today announced its plans to acquire GitHub for $7.5 billion in stock. Unsurprisingly, that sent a few shock waves through the developer community, which still often eyes Microsoft with considerable unease. During a conference call this morning, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, incoming GitHub CEO (and Xamarin founder) Nat Friedman and GitHub co-founder and outgoing CEO Chris Wanstrath laid out the plans for GitHub’s future under Microsoft.

The core message everybody on today’s call stressed was that GitHub will continue to operate as an independent company. That’s very much the approach Microsoft took with its acquisition of LinkedIn, but to some degree, it’s also an admission that Microsoft is aware of its reputation among many of the developers who call GitHub their home. GitHub will remain an open platform that any developer can plug into and extend, Microsoft promises. It’ll support any cloud and any device.

Unsurprisingly, while the core of GitHub won’t change, Microsoft does plan to extend GitHub’s enterprise services and integrate them with its own sales and partner channels. And Nadella noted that the company will use GitHub to bring Microsoft’s developer tools and services “to new audiences.”

With Nat Friedman taking over as CEO, GitHub will have a respected technologist at the helm. Microsoft’s acquisition and integration of Xamarin has, at least from the outside, been a success (and Friedman himself always seems very happy about the outcome when I talk to him), so I think this bodes quite well for GitHub. After joining Microsoft, Friedman ran the developer services team at the company. Wanstrath, who only took over the CEO role again after its last CEO was ousted after harassment scandal at the company, had long said that he wanted to step down and take a more active product role. And that’s what’s happening now that Friedman is taking over. Wanstrath will become a technical fellow and work on “strategic software initiatives” at Microsoft.

During today’s call, Friedman also stressed Microsoft’s commitment to keeping GitHub as open as it is today — but he also plans to expand the service and its community. “We want to bring more developers and more capabilities to GitHub, he said. “Because as a network and as a group of people in a community, GitHub is stronger, the bigger it is.”

As for the product itself, Friedman noted that everything GitHub does should be about making a developer’s life easier. And to get started, that’ll mean making developing in the cloud easier. “We think broadly about the new and compelling types of ways that we can integrate cloud services into GitHub,” he noted. “And this doesn’t just apply to our cloud. GitHub is an open platform. So we have the ability for anyone to plug their cloud services into GitHub, and make it easier for you to go from code to cloud. And it extends beyond the cloud as well. Code to cloud. code to mobile, code to edge device, code to IoT. Every workflow that a developer wants to pursue, we will support.”

Another area the company will work on is the GitHub Marketplace. Microsoft says that it will offer all of its developer tools and services in the GitHub Marketplace.

And unsurprisingly, VS Code, Microsoft’s free and open source code editor, will get deeply integrated integrated GitHub support.

“Our vision is really all about empowering developers and creating a home where you can use any language, any operating system, any cloud, any device for every developer, whether your student, a hobbyist, a large company, a startup or anything in between. GitHub is the home for all developers,” said Friedman.

It’s unclear whether all of these commitments today will easy developers’ fears of losing GitHub as a relatively neutral third-party in the ecosystem.

Nadella, who is surely aware of this, addressed this directly today. “We recognize the responsibility we take on with this agreement,” he said. “We are committed to being stewards of the GitHub community, which will retain its developer-first ethos operate independently and remain an open platform. We will always listen to develop a feedback and invest in both fundamentals as well as new capability once the acquisition closes.

In his prepared remarks, Nadella also stressed Microsoft’s heritage as a developer-centric company and that is it already the most active organization on GitHub. But more importantly, he addressed Microsoft’s role in the open source community, too. “We have always loved developers, and we love open source developers,” he said. “We’ve been on a journey ourselves with open source and the open source community. Today, we are all in with open source. We are active in the open source ecosystem. We contribute to open source project and some of our most vibrant developer tools and frameworks are open-sourced when it comes to our commitment to all source judges, by the actions we have taken in the recent past our actions today and in the future.”

https://ift.tt/2JrE9jW Microsoft promises to keep GitHub independent and open https://ift.tt/2LU7Ic5

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How to watch the live stream for today’s Apple WWDC keynote

{rss:content:encoded} How to watch the live stream for today’s Apple WWDC keynote https://ift.tt/2JrMX9i https://ift.tt/2sFwzaX June 04, 2018 at 04:47PM

Apple is holding a keynote today at the San Jose Convention Center, and the company is expected to unveil new updates for iOS, macOS, tvOS, watchOS and maybe also some new hardware. At 10 AM PT (1 PM in New York, 6 PM in London, 7 PM in Paris), you’ll be able to watch the event as the company is streaming it live.

Apple is likely to talk about some new features for all its software platforms — WWDC is a developer conference after all. Rumor has it that Apple could also unveil some MacBook Pro update with new Intel processors.

If you have the most recent Apple TV, you can download the Apple Events app in the App Store. It lets you stream today’s event and rewatch old events. Users with old Apple TVs can simply turn on their devices. Apple is pushing out the “Apple Events” channel so that you can watch the event.

And if you don’t have an Apple TV, the company also lets you live-stream the event from the Apple Events section on its website. This video feed works in Safari and Microsoft Edge. And for the first time, Apple says that the video should also work in Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox.

So to recap, here’s how you can watch today’s Apple event:

• Safari on the Mac or iOS.
• Microsoft Edge on Windows 10.
• Maybe Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox.
• An Apple TV gen 4 with the Apple Events app in the App Store.
• An Apple TV gen 2 or 3, with the Apple Events channel that arrives automatically right before the event.

Of course, you also can read TechCrunch’s live blog if you’re stuck at work and really need our entertaining commentary track to help you get through your day. We have a big team in the room this year.

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Microsoft has acquired GitHub for $7.5B in Microsoft stock

After a week of rumors, Microsoft today confirmed that it has acquired GitHub, the popular Git-based code sharing and collaboration service. The price of the acquisition was $7.5 billion in Microsoft stock. GitHub raised $350 million and we know that the company was valued at about $2 billion in 2015.

Former Xamarin CEO Nat Friedman (and now Microsoft corporate vice president) will become GitHub’s CEO.

GitHub says that as of March 2018, there were 28 million developers in its community, and 85 million code repositories, making it the largest host of source code globally and a cornerstone of how many in the tech world build software.

But despite its popularity with enterprise users, individual developers and open source projects, GitHub has never turned a profit and chances are that the company decided that an acquisition was preferable over trying to IPO.

GitHub’s main revenue source today is paid accounts, which allows for private repositories and a number of other features that enterprises need, with pricing ranging from $7 per user per month to $21/user/month. Those building public and open source projects can use it for free.

While numerous large enterprises use GitHub as their code sharing service of choice, it also faces quite a bit of competition in this space thanks to products like GitLab and Atlassian’s Bitbucket, as well as a wide range of other enterprise-centric code hosting tools.

Microsoft is acquiring GitHub because it’s a perfect fit for its own ambitions to be the go-to platform for every developer, and every developer need, no matter the platform. [QUOTE]

Microsoft has long embraced the Git protocol and is using it in its current Visual Studio Team Services product, which itself used to compete with GitHub’s enterprise service. Knowing GitHub’s position with developers, Microsoft has also leaned on the service quite a bit itself, too and some in the company already claim it is the biggest contributer to GitHub today.

Yet while Microsoft’s stance toward open source has changed quite a bit over the last few years, many open source developers will keep a very close look at what the company will do with GitHub after the acquisition. That’s because there is a lot of distrust of Microsoft in this cohort, which is understandable given Microsoft’s history.

In fact, TechCrunch received a tip on Friday, which noted not only that the deal had already closed, but that open source software maintainers were already eyeing up alternatives and looking potentially to abandon GitHub in the wake of the deal. Some developers (not just those working in open source) were not wasting time even to wait for a confirmation of the deal before migrating.

While GitHub is home to more than just open source software, if such a migration came to pass, it would be a very bad look both for GitHub and Microsoft. And, it would a particularly ironic turn, given the very origins of Git: the versioning control system was created by Linus Torvalds in 2005 when he was working on development of the Linux kernel, in part as a response to a previous system, BitKeeper, changing its terms away from being free to use.

The new Microsoft under CEO Satya Nadella strikes us as a very different company from the Microsoft of ten years ago — especially given that the new Microsoft has embraced open source — but it’s hard to forget its earlier history of trying to suppress Linux.

Yet at the same time, it’s worth remembering that Microsoft is now a member of the Linux Foundation and regularly backs a number of open source projects. And Windows now has the Linux subsystem while VS Code, the company’s free code editing tool is open source and available on GitHub, as are .NET Core and numerous other Microsoft-led projects.

And many in the company were defending Microsoft’s commitment to GitHub and its principles, even before the deal was announced.

I don't think people understand how many of us at Microsoft love GitHub to the bottom of our hearts.

If anybody decided to mess with that community, there would be a riot to say the least

— Mat Velloso, the cynical (@matvelloso) June 4, 2018

Still, you can’t help but wonder how Microsoft might leverage GitHub within its wider business strategy, which could see the company build stronger bridges between GitHub and Azure, its clod hosting service, and its wide array of software and collaboration products. Microsoft is no stranger to ingesting huge companies. One of them, LinkedIn, might be another area where Microsoft might explore synergies, specifically around areas like recruitment and online tutorials and education.

https://ift.tt/2xFzUwe Microsoft has acquired GitHub for $7.5B in Microsoft stock https://ift.tt/2xDK9Bt

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PlayVS, bringing esports infrastructure to high schools, picks up $15 million

PlayVS, the startup building esports infrastructure at the high school level, has today announced the close of a $15 million Series A funding round. The financing was led by New Enterprise Associates, with participation from existing investor Science, as well as CrossCut Ventures, Coatue Management, Cross Culture Ventures, the San Francisco 49ers, Nas, Dollar Shave Club founder Michael Dubin, Twitch cofounder Kevin Lin, and others.

PlayVS first publicly launched out of the LA-based Science startup studio in April. The company partnered with the NFHS, the equivalent of the NCAA for high school-level sports, to build out leagues, rules and more around high school esports.

Most high school sports are governed by the NFHS, which writes the rules, hires referees, schedules seasons and determines the format of playoffs and state championships. That same infrastructure might carry over from one high school sport to another, but esports represents a new challenge for the NFHS.

PlayVS brings to market a platform that schedules games, helps schools hold tryouts and form teams, and pulls in stats real-time from games thanks to partnerships with game publishers.

In October, PlayVS will launch its inaugural season, bringing organized esports to more than 18 states and approximately 5 million students across 5,000 high schools.

As esports continue to grow, colleges and professional organizations have already started investing in scholarship programs and pro teams respectively. But whereas other high-level teams look at high school athletes for recruiting, the same infrastructure has not yet been put into place for esports.

PlayVS wants to change that. The new round of funding will go towards expanding the product and the team to eventually put PlayVS in every high school across the country. The company has yet to announce which schools will participate and which games will be available during the first season, but PlayVS has confirmed that the games will be PC-based and will come from the Multiplayer Online Battle Arena, Fighting and Sports genres.

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J PlayVS, bringing esports infrastructure to high schools, picks up $15 million https://ift.tt/2sFdgOS

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ING backs FinCompare, the German comparison platform for SME financing

FinCompare, the German fintech startup that offers a comparison platform for SME financing, has closed €10 million in Series A funding. The round is led by ING Ventures, the venture capital arm of dutch bank ING. The company’s previous backers Speedinvest, and UNIQA Ventures also followed on.

The comparison site currently only operates in Germany and since entering the market in February 2017 says it has attracted more than 2,500 customers and has processed more than one billion Euros. The new capital will be used by FinCompare to invest in its IT platform, including expanding the team, and for further European expansion.

The FinCompare platform itself follows a pretty traditional price comparison model, letting small to medium-sized businesses find, compare and even close a variety of financing options such as credit, leasing, factoring and finetrading. The products on offer are from more than 200 banks, alternative financial service providers, and development banks online.

The comparison platform claims to be independent, even if — like most comparison sites — FinCompare receives a kick back for any brokered loan or other financing solution in the form of commission from its financing partners. The fintech is also keen to talk up its independence in light of backing from ING Ventures, noting that remaining neutral in terms of the products it pushes is essential for any comparison platform.

ING’s investment in FinCompare is being positioned as part of the bank’s wider digitalization strategy: “ING Ventures was founded with the aim to invest in fintechs who establish a unique customer experience. Further, the investment in FinCompare enables us to expand our presence in the SME-segment in Germany,” says Benoit Legrand, CEO of ING Ventures.

Legrand also says the German SME industry is among the most attractive in Europe. “Here we can set incentives together with FinCompare and make life easier for businesses. This investment helps ING in the implementation of the bank’s strategy to become the market-leading platform for financing needs,” he adds.

Meanwhile, I understand FinCompare’s planned European expansion will see it eye up the german speaking markets of Austria and Switzerland during the next few months. Netherlands and Poland are also on the list, along with the U.K. “We are planning to launch in the U.K. in 2019, perhaps even through an acquisition,” FinCompare founder and CEO Stephan Heller tells me. Competitors in the U.K. include Fundingoptions, and Capitalise.

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J ING backs FinCompare, the German comparison platform for SME financing https://ift.tt/2xDgWqj

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N26 now has 1 million customers

You don’t sign up to a bank account every day. And yet, German startup N26 has managed to attract 1 million clients across Europe. They generate €1 billion in transaction volume every month ($1.17 billion).

It took N26 only nine months to grow from 500,000 to 1 million. And the company now plans to have 5 million users by 2020.

It’s an aggressive goal, but N26 plans to expand beyond the Eurozone. The company confirms that customers based in the U.K. and the U.S. will be able to create an N26 account in the coming months.

While N26 announced a new metal card at TechCrunch Disrupt in December 2017, the card has only been available to some customers. Everybody will be able to sign up for a metal card within the next few weeks.

Revolut is still slightly ahead of N26, but both companies are growing quite rapidly. N26 currently gets 2,500 new users every day. Back in February, Revolut said it was attracting between 6,000 and 8,000 new users per day. The company now has nearly 2 million users.

Of course, you can’t really compare Revolut with N26 as Revolut isn’t technically a bank account. It’s much easier to sign up to Revolut as you don’t need to initiate a video call to verify your identity.

But it’s clear that both companies are doing incredibly well right now when it comes to growth.

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J N26 now has 1 million customers https://ift.tt/2suvbbM

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TransferWise partners with France’s second largest bank BPCE Groupe

TransferWise might be best known for its international money transfer app, but the European fintech unicorn has always had ambitions of being a broader platform play entirely agnostic of how you access the service. This includes providing banks with access to the TransferWise API to power their own international money transfer features. However, perhaps understandably — given that the company also competes with banks — these partnerships have been small in number.

With that said, today TransferWise is adding what looks like its most significant banking partner to date: BPCE Groupe, France’s second largest bank. The partnership will see TransferWise provide international money transfer services for BPCE Groupe’s 15 million or so customers, which, the company notes, is the first time a major bank in Europe will directly integrate TransferWise’s API into its mobile banking apps.

TransferWise’s existing bank partnerships are with Estonia’s LHV, and German challenger bank N26. It was due to add U.K. challenger bank Starling to the list, but the integration with the bank’s app never materialised and TechCrunch learned last week that the partnership has now dissolved entirely.

Meanwhile, the partnership between Groupe BPCE/Natixis Payments and TransferWise isn’t set to be launched until the beginning of 2019. Once it does launch, the bank’s customers be able to send money outside of the eurozone at TransferWise’s standard fees via the banks’ app.

“Both TransferWise and BPCE are committed to offering the best possible service and the fairest deal to their customers and this collaboration is an important step in making that a reality for everyone,” says TransferWise. “The service will enable BPCE customers to send money to over 60 countries at TransferWise’s usual low fee of 0.5 per cent on most currency routes and at the mid-market exchange rate”.

Adds Kristo Käärmann, co-founder and CEO of TransferWise: “TransferWise has a mission to make money move around the world as fast and as cheaply as email. This partnership is a momentous step on that journey – for the first time a major mainstream bank is offering its customers the chance to benefit from TransferWise’s lightning fast, low cost service. It’s proof that we can scale our technology, which will allow other big institutions to seamlessly integrate with the service”.

On that note, it will be interesting to see how TransferWise continues to walk the tight rope of partnering whilst, in some ways and with increasing feature parity, competing with the same potential partners.

The original target for the company’s consumer and business money transfer app was incumbent banks who typically charge high fees for international money transfers and aren’t always transparent about the way they mark up the underlying exchange rate. And more recently it has launched its “Borderless” account, a multi-currency banking product that includes a debit card and lets you deposit, send and spend money. However, TransferWise co-founder and Chairman Taavet Hinrikus has always insisted that the Borderless account is designed to work as a companion product to your main current account and not a fully fledged bank replacement.

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J TransferWise partners with France’s second largest bank BPCE Groupe https://ift.tt/2HhWzhM

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