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Tuesday, 21 March 2023

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Good morning!

Today more job cuts has rocked Amazon. The company said it will let go of 9000 employees. In Africa, startups are fighting for dear life in what seems like very little room for runway.

ChipperCash sent out a memo to customers saying that it's cutting its five per cent cashback promo. If you ask me, I'll say it's not the best decision as competitors offering better dollar rates gain popularity.

It seems like ChipperCash doesn't even seem to be interested in retaining its old customers. A handful of old Chipper Cash users say that they've moved to Payday. Their grievances all seem to be the same; the rate (800 Naira per dollar) is just too high, especially as they begin to pay their acceptance fees into fancy US universities this season, and withdrawals take days.

Last week, after a Twitter user all but begged Payday CEO, Favour Ori to handle the full marketing of Payday, Chipper CEO, Ham Serunjogi entered the chat, asking if he didn't want the Chipper account instead. And then he gave another user who entered the chat 15 dollars. "Here we have a wise man," Serunjogi tweeted. Except, that lucky chap was busy promoting Payday on his account.

Who is the joke on?

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Below are the tech stories and news you need to know to start your day, carefully curated by Technext.
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A word from Yellow Card

Yellow Card
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Trade over $10 worth of crypto or send the equivalent with Yellow Pay to your loved ones from now till March 26th. Sign Up now and carry out a transaction of $10 and above to stand a chance.

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Summary of the news

  • Amazon has slashed 9,000 jobs
  • South Africa's Fin has acquired Thuthukani
  • Credable has raised $2.5 million
  • Microsoft is reportedly testing a built-in cryptocurrency wallet for Edge
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Ecosystem

Credable
  • South Africa's Fin has acquired Thuthukani, a Pretoria-based fintech startup as part of its expansion efforts, TechCabal reports. Through the acquisition, Thuthukani will be renamed to Fin Home Loans and integrated into Fin’s South African portfolio with a mandate to give middle to lower-income Fin customers access to affordable finance. “The leadership of Thuthukani has done an excellent job in building up a needed development housing finance offering for the South African market," Timothy Nuy, co-founder and co-CEO of Fin said.
  • Credable has raised $2.5 million to provide financial services to businesses in Nigeria and Pakistan, TechCrunch reports. “The problem we’re trying to solve is that a huge population of underbanked customers need banking services to improve their livelihoods. Rather than try to create a new channel to bank these customers, we aim to enable these channels through a B2B2C offering that provides the customers with the banking services they need in the channels they’re already in," CEO Nadeem Juma said.
  • Onepipe has closed a $4.8 million credit line from pan-African investment firm, TLG Capital. The deal, which had been in the works since the third quarter of last year, will power the startup’s inventory finance solution for small businesses. Onepipe’s funding announcement comes as the company is letting go of about 20% of its employees, TechCabal reports.
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A word from Kora

Kora
Payments in Africa is complicated, Kora makes it easy. Build your custom payment experience with Kora. Accept payments in NGN, KHS, GHS and USD, make payouts and get access to same-day settlement anywhere in the world. Africa is waiting.

Get into it at www.korahq.com
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Policy

Bola Tinubu
  • INEC has suspended the collation of results for Saturday’s governorship elections in Enugu and Abia to review some results in parts of the states, Channels reports.
  • Market operators are saying that the banking sector will need to rework its model to remain profitable under president-elect Bola Tinubu's (APC) administration. To remain competitive, banks will need to focus on improving their technology infrastructure, developing new digital products and services, and enhancing their online and mobile banking capabilities. They will also need to invest in cybersecurity to protect their customers’ data, Nairarmetrics reports.
  • SEC said the reason it is encouraging capital market operators to develop technology is to make the capital market more attractive for fintech startups, Nairametrics reports. "We are improving so many things to make it easier for them. We see fintech as an important gateway for youths to enter the market. We are conscious of that and we are working towards it," DG, Lamido Yuguda said.
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Social Tech

Meta
  • Meta has announced that it’s making its new Meta Verified program available to users in the US, which means that American users will now be able to purchase a blue checkmark on Facebook or Instagram for $US11.99 per month on the web, or $US14.99 in-app, accounting for respective App Store charges, SocialMediaToday reports.
  • BBC has told staff to remove the TikTok app from all their corporate devices, except if there’s a "justified business reason" for it, SocialMediaToday reports.
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Global News

Amazon
  • Microsoft is reportedly testing a built-in cryptocurrency wallet for Edge, its web browser, Technext reports. Microsoft explained that the feature would give users absolute control over a non-custodial crypto wallet. The integrated features would help to protect users against insecure addresses or apps.
  • Amazon has announced today that it is looking to cut down an additional 9,000 employees in the coming weeks, bringing the total number of layoffs to 27,000. "As our internal businesses evaluated what customers most care about, they made re-prioritization decisions that sometimes led to role reductions, sometimes led to moving people from one initiative to another, and sometimes led to new openings where we don’t have the right skills match from our existing team members. This initially led us to eliminate 18,000 positions and as we completed the second phase of our planning this month, it led us to these additional 9,000 role reductions," CEO Andy Jassy said.
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Latest in funding

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A word from Polygon

IMG_1025 (1)
Polygon is a decentralised Ethereum scaling platform that enables developers to build scalable user-friendly dApps with low transaction fees without ever sacrificing security.

Click here for more.
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Other stories we are following

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Written by
Dennis Da-ala Mirilla
Edited by
Tomiwo Ojo

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