A Deal’s a Deal

Happy Monday…err, Tuesday. 

If you’re here in the U.S., here’s hoping you had a nice, long holiday weekend, and that you took a few moments to remember the memory of the service men and women who gave the ultimate sacrifice. They really are our nation’s heroes.

Now, even though it’s a Tuesday and not a Monday, there are some tech deals already looming and/or happening this week.

Reuters is reporting that Alibaba’s fintech affiliate Ant Financial has raised $10 billion, valuing the company at $140 billion.

In this round, Reuters reports that a number of global sovereign wealth funds and private equity firms joined the fundraising as main investors, including funding from Carlyle Group LP and VC firm Sequoia Capital.

Ant is controlled by Alibaba Group Holding Ltd founder Jack Ma. As Reuters reports, it was spun off from Alibaba when the group went public, and has diversified over the years into credit services, asset management, and online banking, as well as owning the Alipay payment platform.

In a deal closer to home, private equity firm KKR has said it will acquire BMC Software from an investment group that includes Bain Capital, Golden Gate Capital, and others.

According to a report from ZDNet, BMC has pivoted from mainframe software to being more of an IT service management play and cloud management and application optimization provider.

BMC Software had gone private in 2013 in a deal worth $6.9 billion.

And not to be outdone, the city of London has introduced a contactless payment scheme for buskers that will allow passers-by to use card readers to show their support for the city’s street performers. 

The BBC report indicates that the organization Busk in London is working with iZettle on the scheme and would be made available to buskers in all the capital’s boroughs over the coming months.

Smarter Speakers…and Payments

Strategy Analytics has released sales figures for voice assistants in the first quarter of 2018, and has reported that Apple sold an estimated 600K HomePod speakers.

If that number is correct, then Apple would have captured just 6 percent of the global smart speaker market, well behind Amazon and Google, according to a report by MacRumors.

During the same time period, Amazon shipped an estimated 4 million Echo smart speakers, giving it a 43.6 percent market share, and Google 26.5 percent with 2.4 million sales.

And year-over-year, Amazon’s sales increased by two million, and Google’s by 2.1 million.

Meanwhile, back at the payment settlement ranch ​PayPal is looking to square its game against Square and Stripe by buying iZettle for $2.2 billion in an all-cash deal.

According to a report from TechCrunch, the deal is expected to settle in Q3 2018, and would be PayPal’s biggest-ever transaction.

iZettle currently has operations in 12 markets, including several in northern Europe and Mexico, as well as in the U.K.

Impressions From SXSW Interactive 2012: Q&A With Clover VP Mark Schulze On The Mobile Boom

Sometimes, you just have to look to the person standing in line next to you to spark up a vibrant conversation about one of the industry’s most vibrant topics, in this case what I’ll call the “mobile boom.”

There’s no question, mobile marketing was a topic on the minds of SXSW Interactive 2012 attendees, and the person standing in line with me to get our badges for SXSW Interactive 2012 was a perfect candidate to talk to us about it, Clover Network Inc. vice president of business development, Mark Schulze.

Mark is an interactive industry veteran, having held senior positions at IAC/Match.com, AOL, AltaVista. His company, Clover Network Inc., is working to bring smarter payments to the mobile commerce realm, a still hugely-undertapped market opportunity where the industry is witnessing increasing demand for easy-to-pay mobile payment schemes.

Mark talked about this, and the broad sweep of the mobile boom, in this discussion at the IBM Future of Social lounge at SXSW Interactive 2012.

My Emerging New York Times Paywall Neurosis

So, here’s the deal.

I’m having major agita over this whole New York Times paywall thing.  And I know I shouldn’t be.

Let me just say, I love The New York Times. The gray lady has been a big part of my life since I first went to NYU as a wee college lad.

I used to zoom around the streets of Manhattan, working as a bike messenger and taking my life into my own hands (not to mention that of all the bus and taxi drivers), and whenever I took a break I’d sit down with a copy of the Times and play catch up with the world.

This was WAY before anything digital.  But in 1995, or somewhere thereabouts, the Times moved online and trained me not to worry about the cost of the newspaper by underwriting their stories via advertising.

So, I went along for the ride.

Now, I’m near a crossroads.  Though I highly value their content, and am willing to give them some money, I have to wonder how much is the right price.  Currently, I’m hearing at least $15/month.  I could probably buy into that.

But then, I see that they’re going to penalize me just because I have an iPad AND an iPhone (and want to be able to use it via the Web site).  Gray lady, it’s NOT the devices that’s interesting to me.  It’s allowing me to get the information via whatever digital channel happens to be the most convenient to me at the time.

Don’t you get that???  I know you have some really smart people working up there (I know some of them), but when I first saw this plan, I had to shake my head.

You trained me not to pay for your product, and now you’re training me to pay more than I probably should just because I pick up the virtual newspaper at more than one newstand???

Here’s the best part.  I found I could subscribe to the Weekend edition, complete with home delivery of an actual printed newspaper, for about the same amount I would pay for one of the middling digital editions…and I’d still get access to the New York Times Web site and digital editions gratis.

Could that be correct?

So, Mr. Sulzberger and Mr. Keller, know that I’m ready and willing to hand the gray lady some money every year, but please, simplify simplify simplify.

When you continue to give stories away for free via social media and search referrals, and yet *I* as a longtime loyal reader have to pay more to get access on these digital platforms (which, I would have thought, ultimately save some money since you didn’t HAVE to deliver a physical newspaper to my doorstep), there’s something wrong with this picture.

I’ve got my credit card out.  But I’m still waiting for a plan from you that makes sense and doesn’t force me to go out and sell newspapers subscriptions door by door just so I can pay for the privilege!

i’m lovin’ it!

IBM announced earlier today it signed a three year agreement with McDonald’s to provide a new cashless payment solution for 1,300 McDonald’s owned and franchised restaurants across the UK and Ireland.

IBM will help McDonald’s cater to the growing number of customers using credit and debit card payments by introducing an improved system that will be operational by the end of 2010.

With McDonald’s restaurants serving millions of customers every day, the IBM solution is expected to allow McDonald’s to continue improving customer experience at the counter by increasing the speed, flexibility and security of service.

Hearkening back to our security discussion in the previous post (which was, and I can’t make this stuff, titled “My Big Hack Attack.”  And I swear I had no advanced notice of this cool Mickey D’s announcement. Seriously!), McDonald’s existing strong levels of security will be enhanced even further with anti-tamper and fraud detection software installed on hand held chip and pin devices to help protect customer card payments.

The solution is going to also help McDonald’s find smarter ways to run its day-to-day operations more efficiently by centralizing business processes onto one database enabling automated settlement and reporting.

By installing these new processes, McDonald’s is also empowering its franchisees, the independent businessmen and women who own and operate the majority of McDonald’s restaurants, to view and query their own customer card data so any issues can be quickly resolved.

IBM will provide business and technology consulting services to integrate and maintain the payment solution which is being designed and built around the McDonald’s point of sale terminal. Following the launch of the new solution, IBM will host and support McDonald’s entire payment system in a secure UK data center.

The solution will be based around IBM’s StorePay and Sureswitch products to provide a complete payment service that extends from the hand held chip and pin device in the restaurant through to the back end processing on a pair of highly available IBM System p servers, which are monitored and managed by IBM’s UK Infrastructure Management Center.

The deal was signed in June 2010 and is part of a multi-phase project spread over three years to continue transforming McDonald’s payment systems.

No word yet on whether or not Ronald McDonald will get his own hand held device, but I figure the chances are good.