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Affirm is launching the product in the UK as the buy now, pay later market faces regulatory changes

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Affirm co-founder and CEO Max Levchin

Buy now, pay later (BNPL) giant Confirm launches in the UK, its first market outside North America.

Its long-awaited arrival comes as UK lawmakers consider latest rules to align BNPL corporations with other traditional consumer credit services, although such rules are usually not expected to return into force until at the least 2026 — long enough for Affirm to achieve traction and gain favor with consumers and regulators alike.

Founded in 2012, Affirm emerged from a startup incubator called HVF, founded by the co-founder of PayPal Max Levchin (pictured above), who eventually took the reins of Affirm in 2014 to fuel its industrial growth. The company has expanded beyond the US and Canada in 2022and has forged lucrative partnerships with major e-commerce corporations over the years — Affirm has been Shopify’s premier financial partner for nearly a decade, not to say Walmart and Amazon, which last yr chosen Affirm as its first Amazon Pay BNPL partner in the U.S. . Recently, Affirm also acquired the mighty Apple as a client.

“Debt normalization”

The BNPL model is easy: customers are encouraged to buy goods on credit, repaying the debt in several interest-free installments, and the BNPL provider makes money from merchant fees. Or, if the customer may require an extended repayment period, the loan may include interest.

The BNPL market has long been on the radar of UK regulators, with existing operators such as Klarna and Clearpay often criticized for encouraging impulse purchases and debt normalization. So far, this has been done by the British Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). certain powers to manage BNPL providersbut there are key exceptions, such as interest-free credit services, where fixed-amount contracts provide for debt repayment inside 12 months.

However, latest rules which are in the pipeline could bring BNPL corporations fully into line with other consumer credit corporations. The Labor government last month announced a brand new BNPL consultation with plans to introduce regulations to “ensure people using BNPL products have clear information, avoid overpriced loans and have strong rights when problems arise”.

It’s clear that Affirm is already attempting to position itself favorably with each customers and authorities. Indeed, for the UK launch, the company notes that its interest-bearing payment options won’t include compound interest – as a substitute, the interest shall be fixed and calculated in full on the original amount borrowed.

It’s also value noting that Klarna began charging late fees last yr in the UK, and this is one area where Affirm goals to distinguish itself – it says it won’t charge late fees or another “hidden fees”.

Directly

It’s been a difficult few years for the BNPL sector. Klarna was valued at over $45 billion in 2021, a figure that quickly dropped by 85% to $6.5 billion following the great post-pandemic “correction” that many corporations have experienced. However, last week news broke that Klarna was being priced rose again to $14.6 billion. It’s been a similarly tumultuous time for Affirm, whose ups and downs have followed a trajectory harking back to its European rival.

After its 2021 IPO, Affirm’s market capitalization reached a staggering $47 billion, but the company’s stock has taken an enormous hit, with its market capitalization dipping below $3 billion in the past yr. However, Affirm’s stock has soared to over $13 billion in 2024, and the company is listed on NASDAQ the company recently reported fourth quarter year-over-year revenue growth of 48% and losses decreased from $206 million to $45 million. Levchin also projected profitability in 2025.

We’ve known for a while that Affirm’s next port of call outside the US and Canada can be the UK, and the company’s chief revenue officer Wayne Pommen is the record holder say it will deal with markets where a few of its largest existing partners are already present.

For a UK launch, it doesn’t have any of the big name brands it has in the domestic market, but the proven fact that it counts the likes of Amazon, Shopify and Apple amongst its US customers means it would not be an enormous deal. For now, nonetheless, Affirm intends to operate in the market through flight booking site Alternative Airlines and payment processor Fexco, and “additional UK and international brands are expected to follow.”

In preparation for today’s launch, Affirm told TechCrunch it has already hired roughly 30 employees, including Ruth Spratt who manages the local branch and at the same time plans to extend employment by the end of the yr. And much like your individual “remote first” ethos elsewhereemployees are usually not tied to a selected physical hub.

The company didn’t confirm its next expansion plans in Europe or elsewhere, but said it will “take the same disciplined approach” it has all the time taken to future expansion.

This article was originally published on : techcrunch.com
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‘Wolves’ sequel canceled because director ‘no longer trusted’ Apple

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It could also be hard to recollect, but George Clooney and Brad Pitt starred together within the movie “Wolves,” which Apple released just two months ago.

On Friday, the film’s author and director Jon Watts said Friday that the sequel is not any longer happening; IN one other interview for Deadlinehe explained that he “no longer trusts (Apple) as a creative partner.”

According to reports, the corporate limiting your film strategy. For example, “Wolfs” was imagined to have a giant theatrical release, but as an alternative it played in a limited variety of theaters for just per week before it landed on Apple TV+.

Watts, who also created the brand new Star Wars series “Skeleton Crew,” said Apple’s change “came as a complete surprise and was made without any explanation or discussion.”

“I was completely shocked and asked them not to tell me I was writing a sequel,” Watts said. “They ignored my request and announced it in their press release anyway, apparently to put a positive spin on their streaming axis.”

As a result, Watts said he “quietly refunded the money they gave me to continue” and canceled the project.

This article was originally published on : techcrunch.com
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The Rise and Fall of the “Scattered Spider” Hackers.

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A statue of CrowdStrike’s action figure that represents the Scattered Spider cybercriminal group, seen at the Black Hat cybersecurity conference in August 2024.

After greater than two years of evading capture following a hacking spree that targeted some of the world’s largest technology firms, U.S. authorities say they’ve finally caught a minimum of some of the hackers responsible.

In August 2022 security researchers made their information public with a warning that a bunch of hackers targeted greater than 130 organizations in a complicated phishing campaign that stole the credentials of nearly 10,000 employees. The hackers specifically targeted firms that use Okta, a single sign-on service provider that hundreds of firms around the world use to permit their employees to log in from home.

Due to its give attention to Okta, the hacker group was dubbed “0ktapus”. By now the group has been hacked Caesar’s entertainmentCoinbase, DoorDash, Mailchimp, Riot Games, Twilio (twice) and dozens more.

The most notable and severe cyber attack by hackers in terms of downtime and impact was the September 2023 breach of MGM Resorts, which reportedly cost the casino and hotel giant a minimum of $100 million. In this case, the hackers collaborated with the Russian-speaking ransomware gang ALPHV and demanded a ransom from MGM for the company to get better its files. The break-in was such a nuisance that MGM-owned casinos had problems with service delivery for several days.

Over the past two years, as law enforcement has closed in on hackers, people in the cybersecurity industry have been attempting to work out exactly tips on how to classify hackers and whether to place them in a single group or one other.

Techniques utilized by hackers similar to social engineering, email and SMS phishing, and SIM swapping are common and widespread. Some of the individual hackers were part of several groups chargeable for various data breaches. These circumstances make it obscure exactly who belongs to which group. Cybersecurity giant CrowdStrike has dubbed this hacker group “Scattered Spider,” and researchers imagine it has some overlap with 0ktapus.

The group was so energetic and successful that the US cybersecurity agency CISA and the FBI issued a advice in late 2023 with detailed details about the group’s activities and techniques in an try and help organizations prepare for and defend against anticipated attacks.

Scattered Spider is a “cybercriminal group targeting large companies and their IT helpdesks,” CISA said in its advisory. The agency warned that the group “typically engaged in data theft for extortion purposes” and noted its known ties to ransomware gangs.

One thing that is comparatively certain is that hackers mostly speak English and are generally believed to be teenagers or early 20s, and are sometimes called “advanced, persistent teenagers.”

“A disproportionate number of minors are involved and this is because the group deliberately recruits minors due to the lenient legal environment in which these minors live, and they know that nothing will happen to them if the police catch the child” – Allison Nixon , director of research for Unit 221B, told TechCrunch at the time.

Over the past two years, some members of 0ktapus and Scattered Spider have been linked to a similarly nebulous group of cybercriminals generally known as “Com” People inside this broader cybercriminal community committed crimes that leaked into the real world. Some of them are chargeable for acts of violence similar to robberies, burglaries and bricklaying – hiring thugs to throw bricks at someone’s house or apartment; and swatting – when someone tricks authorities into believing that a violent crime has occurred, prompting the intervention of an armed police unit. Although born as a joke, the swat has fatal consequences.

After two years of hacking, authorities are finally starting to discover and prosecute Scattered Spider members.

in July This was confirmed by the British police arrest of a 17-year-old in reference to the MGM burglary.

In November, the U.S. Department of Justice announced it had indicted five hackers: Ahmed Hossam Eldin Elbadawy, 23, of College Station, Texas; Noah Michael Urban, 20, from Palm Coast, Florida, arrested in January; Evans Onyeaka Osiebo, 20, of Dallas, Texas; Joel Martin Evans, 25, of Jacksonville, North Carolina; and Tyler Robert Buchanan, 22, from the UK, who was arrested in June in Spain.

This article was originally published on : techcrunch.com
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OpenAI accidentally deleted potential evidence in NY Times copyright lawsuit (update)

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OpenAI logo with spiraling pastel colors (Image Credits: Bryce Durbin / TechCrunch)

Lawyers for The New York Times and Daily News, who’re suing OpenAI for allegedly copying their work to coach artificial intelligence models without permission, say OpenAI engineers accidentally deleted potentially relevant data.

Earlier this fall, OpenAI agreed to offer two virtual machines in order that advisors to The Times and Daily News could seek for copyrighted content in their AI training kits. (Virtual machines are software-based computers that exist inside one other computer’s operating system and are sometimes used for testing purposes, backing up data, and running applications.) letterlawyers for the publishers say they and the experts they hired have spent greater than 150 hours since November 1 combing through OpenAI training data.

However, on November 14, OpenAI engineers deleted all publisher search data stored on one among the virtual machines, in keeping with the above-mentioned letter, which was filed late Wednesday in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.

OpenAI tried to get better the information – and was mostly successful. However, since the folder structure and filenames were “irretrievably” lost, the recovered data “cannot be used to determine where the news authors’ copied articles were used to build the (OpenAI) models,” the letter says.

“The news plaintiffs were forced to recreate their work from scratch, using significant man-hours and computer processing time,” lawyers for The Times and the Daily News wrote. “The plaintiffs of the news learned only yesterday that the recovered data was useless and that the work of experts and lawyers, which took a whole week, had to be repeated, which is why this supplementary letter is being filed today.”

The plaintiffs’ attorney explains that they don’t have any reason to consider the removal was intentional. However, they are saying the incident highlights that OpenAI “is in the best position to search its own datasets” for potentially infringing content using its own tools.

An OpenAI spokesman declined to make an announcement.

However, late Friday, November 22, OpenAI’s lawyer filed a motion answer to a letter sent Wednesday by attorneys to The Times and Daily News. In their response, OpenAI’s lawyers unequivocally denied that OpenAI had deleted any evidence and as a substitute suggested that the plaintiffs were guilty for a system misconfiguration that led to the technical problem.

“Plaintiffs requested that one of several machines provided by OpenAI be reconfigured to search training datasets,” OpenAI’s attorney wrote. “Implementation of plaintiffs’ requested change, however, resulted in the deletion of the folder structure and certain file names from one hard drive – a drive that was intended to serve as a temporary cache… In any event, there is no reason to believe that any files were actually lost.”

In this and other cases, OpenAI maintains that training models using publicly available data – including articles from The Times and Daily News – are permissible. In other words, by creating models like GPT-4o that “learn” from billions of examples of e-books, essays, and other materials to generate human-sounding text, OpenAI believes there isn’t a licensing or other payment required for examples – even when he makes money from these models.

With this in mind, OpenAI has signed licensing agreements with a growing number of recent publishers, including the Associated Press, Business Insider owner Axel Springer, the Financial Times, People’s parent company Dotdash Meredith and News Corp. OpenAI declined to offer the terms of those agreements. offers are public, but one among its content partners, Dotdash, is apparently earns at the least $16 million a 12 months.

OpenAI has not confirmed or denied that it has trained its AI systems on any copyrighted works without permission.

This article was originally published on : techcrunch.com
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