News
The Home Office is looking at a scheme to prevent card details being swiped by criminals and used without the knowledge of the account holder - a crime which affects a million people every year. to read more on how to stop credit card fraud, click here.
Digital consumers in LatAm and MEA are most likely to be smartphone owners, but arguably the most important fact is that figure reaches at least 9 in 10 across all regions. What’s more, unlike computers and tablets whose user bases skew more affluent than average, smartphone ownership is consistent across all income brackets. To read more on the smartphone demographic, click here.
Laundryheap has raised £2m in Angel funding in a round led by Simon Smith and QVentures. Founded three years ago, Laundryheap is now valued at £17m and is generating £2m in revenue this year, it will also be seeking to raise additional funds via a crowdfunding campaign later this year. To read more click here.
Ometria has raised a £4.5m ($6m) Series A led by US-based investment firm Summit Action. Ometria claims to combine customer insight with its retail-focused marketing automation platform, allowing each user to send bespoke marketing messages to its customers. The AI-powered platform has raised £8.3m ($11m) to date and claims to serve a wide range of clients including Feelunique, LoveCrafts, Wonderbly and Graze.com. To read more on this click here.
Asos Instant will initially be available to customers in any of London’s 122 postcodes on orders placed before 10am Sunday to Friday. It will cost £12.95 and parcels will be delivered between 6pm and 10pm on the same day. Availability in other major cities around the UK will follow in the coming months. To read more, click here.
Secret Escapes, a members-only online marketplace for travel deals, has secured $111m (£83m) in its latest funding push. The series D round was led by Temasek, a Singapore-based investment firm, with support from French firm Idinvest Partners, who are existing investors in Secret Escapes. The round included a mixture of equity and debt investment, with the debt facility coming from Silicon Valley Bank. to read more on this raise, click here.
Automation is coming after jobs, from fast food workers to accountants. Automation is already all around us. Cities are seeing front-end automated restaurants like Eatsa gaining popularity, while in factories automation has already arguably been a part of life for years (if not decades) in the form of heavy industrial and agricultural robots. To read more on how AI is effecting jobs, click here.
Eagle Eye, a leading SaaS technology company has today announced a partnership with Groupon UK, a leader in local commerce. Through the integration of both parties’ digital platforms, Groupon UK will look to provide customers with a range of offers from Eagle Eye’s network of national retailers and food and beverage merchants. To find out more on this click here.
Mobike and Ofo investors are in early talks to push China’s two largest bike-sharing start-ups into a merger. The pair’s combined valuation would likely exceed $4bn (£3bn), the companies are backed separetly by China’s two biggest internet giants -Alibaba and Tencent. To read more on this, click here.
Consumers are now paying for entertainment, food, beauty products and garments, even bacon, all via monthly rate subscriptions, according to new research. 9 out of 10 Brits choose to subscribe to their favourite stores, brands and services instead of purchasing them on a ‘one-off’ basis, demonstrating an 11 percent uplift from the previous year’s results. To read more about the new retail trends, click here.