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What’s So Different About China’s Mobile Payments’ Ecosystem
There’s plenty of differences between the mobile commerce market in the U.S. and the mobile ecosystem seen in China.
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- Technology
- Region
- South Asia
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Where Cellular Networks Don’t Exist, People Are Building Their Own
Inside the cloud that is perpetually draped over the small town of San Juan Yaee, Oaxaca, Raúl Hernández Santiago crouches down on the roof of the town hall and starts drilling. Men wearing rain gear of various impermeabilities cluster above him, holding a 4-meter-tall tower in place. Braided wires trail from four small circles welded near its midpoint; eventually those will be bolted or tied down in order to hold the tower steady during the frequent storms that roll through this part of Mexico’s Sierra de Juárez mountains. They don’t want it falling over every time it rains. Ninety thousand of the town’s pesos—a bit over $6,000—are invested in the equipment lashed to the top of the tower, in a town where many residents get by on subsistence agriculture.
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- Technology
- Region
- Latin America
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E-Wallets catching on in India
In a rush to board a train in time, Shivani Bhargava, a 19-year-old Delhi University student from Mumbai, ends up in a tight spot after she forgets her wallet at home. After getting down at the station in Delhi, she has to book a cab and reach her hostel at the earliest, but doesn’t have the cash or cards to do so. Enter Meru Cabs’ ‘cab wallet’. All she does is tap her mobile app and, voila, the payment is made. “Not only did I reach my hostel safely, but I also got a 30% discount,” says Bhargava.
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- Technology
- Region
- South Asia
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What Alibaba Is Getting With Its $575 Million Investment In Paytm
Alibaba Group and its financial-services affiliate Zhejiang Ant Small & Micro Financial Services Group’s planned $575 million investment in the online-payment and marketplace businesses of India’s One97 Communications called Paytm will be the Chinese company’s first major investment in India’s fast-growing e-commerce industry. A deal between the two companies will open the floodgates for large amount of cross-border trade between India and China. Here’s what you need to know about Paytm.
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- Technology
- Region
- South Asia
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Indonesian Telco Indosat Launches ATM Card to Go with E-Wallet
Indonesian telco company Indosat, in collaboration with Qatar National Bank (QNB), launched a mobile money ATM card this week, CNN Indonesia reports. The card is integrated with Indosat’s ewallet feature Dompetku, which now claims to be the first mobile money provider in Indonesia with a parallel ATM service feature.
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- Technology
- Region
- Asia Pacific
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Weekly Roundup – 12/6/14: Overcoming paywalls, increasing information accessibility in the pursuit of a healthier planet
There’s been a good bit of discussion recently about the accessibility of health care information; specifically, the timely sharing of research on such topics as Ebola.
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- Health Care, Technology, Telecommunications
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Kenya’s Wananchi Group raises $130m for African expansion
Kenya’s Wananchi Group, which owns the Zuku pay-TV and fibre brands, has raised US$130 million in funding to expand in East and Southern Africa.
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- Technology
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Half the world will online by 2017
Over 50% of the global population will have Internet access within three years’ time, with mobile broadband over smartphones and tablets now the fastest growing technology in human history, according to the 2014 edition of the State of Broadband report.
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- Technology