Author: Gugu Lourie

MTN Group said on Wednesday that it expects to spin off its FinTech Business before the end of the first quarter in 2022. In March, MTN announced plans to spin off its FinTech Business. For more read: MTN Set To Spin Off Fibre, FinTech Businesses, Invite Third Party Investors “The FinTech separation project is progressing well, in line with our Ambition 2025 strategy,” Ralph Mupita, MTN Group CEO, said on Wednesday. “MTN Rwanda recently received a license to operate a separate fintech entity bringing the number of separated entities to 12 (out of 16 fintech markets). “We continue…

MTN Group announced on Wednesday that it had lost 1,7 million customers in the quarter ended 31 March 2021 hit by new SIM registration regulations in Nigeria. The company said excluding the Nigeria subscribers were up 3.4 million. MTN now has 277.9 million subscribers. On Monday, MTN Nigeria announced that its subscribers dropped by 5 million to 71.5 million due to the effects of customer churn and the regulatory restrictions on new SIM sales and activations. Last December, the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) announced that the Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Dr. Isa Ali Ibrahim (Pantami) directed the NCC to embark on…

UK-based EV startup Arrival is working with Uber to design and build an affordable, purpose-built electric vehicle for the ride-hailing industry. The startup said the Arrival Car is expected to enter production in Q3 2023. Arrival will collaborate with Uber drivers in the design process over the coming months to ensure the Arrival Car reflects the needs of professional drivers and their passengers, with the final vehicle design expected to be revealed before the end of 2021. The Arrival Car will address the global need to shift ride-hailing and car-sharing services, with over 30 million estimated drivers across the ride-hailing…

Sony Interactive Entertainment has made a minority investment in Discord, a popular gaming-focused chat app. Sony will integrate the gaming-focused chat app with PlayStation’s own built-in social tools. “At PlayStation, we’re constantly looking for new ways to enable players around the world to connect with one another, form new friendships and communities, and share fun experiences and lasting memories,” Jim Ryan, President & CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment said. “It’s in this spirit that we’re excited to announce a new partnership with Discord, the communication service popularized by gamers and used by more than 140 million people every month around…

Standard Bank has launched a service status page to keep customers up to date about the status of banking services and offerings, following the extended disruption to banking services. Yesterday, the bank said it had identified a hardware issue that impacted its Mobile App, Internet Banking and ATMs. The issue has now been resolved and services across all banking channels are now fully restored. We apologise for the frustration that such disruptions cause you, the bank said on Twitter. Standard Bank said today it has launched a new service status page to give you real-time status of our banking services…

Dell Technologies is selling Boomi, a provider of cloud-based integration platform as a service (iPaaS), to investment firm Francisco Partners, and private equity firm TPG, for $4 billion (R57 billion). This is part of a strategy by the company to shave off its debt problem created when they bought EMC in 2015. In April, Dell announced plans to spin off its 81% equity ownership of VMware, forming two standalone public companies. The tech firm acquired VMware as part of the $67 billion (R963 billion) EMC acquisition in 2015. Under terms of the planned spin-off, VMware will distribute a special cash dividend of $11.5 –…

Verizon is to sell Verizon Media for $5 billion to New York Stock Exchange-listed Apollo Global Management. Verizon will retain a 10% stake in the company, which will be known as Yahoo at the close of the transaction and continue to be led by CEO Guru Gowrappan. Verizon Media comprises iconic brands such as Yahoo and AOL, as well as leading ad tech and media platform businesses. The corporate carveout will allow Verizon Media to aggressively pursue growth areas and stands to benefit its employees, advertisers, publishing partners and nearly 900 million monthly active users worldwide. “We are excited to…

Telkom has unveiled the May Big Deal, which is data-packed and keeps you connected for next to nothing. The SmartBroadBand 20GB Wireless LTE SIM-Only May big deal offer with 20GB of data is available for R99 a month. The Telkom March Big Deal deal includes the following: 10GB Anytime data 10GB Night Surfer data LTE MiFi router R99 Once-off activation fee Connects up to 16 devices Why the May Big Deal? Enjoy the convenience of connecting instantly, anywhere and at any time. No landline required, no technician needed. Just insert your SIM card, plug it and enjoy a fast, reliable connection. And…

YeboYethU, the broad-based black economic empowerment arm of Vodacom, says it is trying to find thousands of elusive shareholders who are yet to claim millions of rand in dividend payouts.   Last August, YeboYethu announced it was looking for thousands of shareholders owed close to R74 million.   “As things stand, 11 515 shareholders have not claimed dividends with a total value of R66 178 220.60,” a Vodacom official told TechFinancials.   The revelation that just over R66 million was yet to be claimed suggests that YeboYethu has only paid out R8 million to investors.   Some of the reasons…

Paxos, a blockchain infrastructure company, has raised $300 million (R4,3 billion) from previous investors Declaration Partners, PayPal Ventures, Mithril Capital, Senator Investment Group, Liberty City Ventures, WestCap and more. To date, Paxos has raised more than $500 million (R7,2 billion) in funding and with a valuation of $2.4 billion (R29 billion). Paxos is one of the fastest-growing fintech startups in the world and its technology powers crypto brokerage services of PayPal and PayPal-owned Venmo. Venmo enables millions of users to buy, hold and sell bitcoin and a handful of other major cryptocurrencies. “Demand for our enterprise solutions has accelerated much faster than we could have…