News Byte

Mohr Davidow Leads $25 Million Investment in Zebit’s Consumer Credit Platform

San Diego-based Zebit has raised $25 million in a fourth round of funding to grow its platform, which enables retailers to assess the risk of selling items to an individual consumer on credit. Mohr Davidow Ventures led the round, with Crosslink Capital, Leapfrog Ventures and QED Investors also participating. To date, Zebit says it has completed more than a million transactions.

News Byte

Raspberry Pi, a Credit-Card-Sized Computer, Set to Launch

The Raspberry Pi, a credit-card sized computer that plugs directly into your TV via an HDMI input, is launching next month, following five years of research and development. Developed in the U.K. by the Raspberry Pi Foundation, the $35 version of the device runs Linux, has a 700MHZ ARM 11 processor and 256MB of RAM, and features the first-person multiplayer video game Quake 3 Arena; the $25 version has similar specs, but with 128MB of RAM. Videogame veteran David Braben, the brains behind the Pi, has been quoted as saying he originally created the Pi for educational use.

Use Your AmEx, Scan a Bar Code, Get an iPod?

American Express Black Card holders might not strike some as the bargain-hunting kind, but AmEx is getting on board with mobile bar code scanning to offer more loyalty rewards to all cardholders.
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Sprint Says May Need to Raise Capital

Sprint Nextel Corp. said it may need to tap capital markets or draw down on its credit line, a disclosure that surprised investors and sent its shares falling Friday.

Groupon Retracts “Wildly Profitable” Statement in Latest SEC Filing

Groupon has updated its IPO filing to add in several new pieces of information, the most glaring of which is the retraction of statements one of its founders made to the press.
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Payments Provider Dynamics Raises Even More Capital Than Square! (Just Kidding.)

Pittsburgh-based Dynamics is announcing a $35 million round of financing that it will use to make a more intelligent credit card that it hopes will compete against others in the space, including Square and Google Wallet. It thought it was one of the biggest rounds raised this year by a payments company, and it was for about 20 minutes until Square announced it had raised $100 million.
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Fitch Lowers Nokia Credit Rating

Fitch Ratings downgraded Nokia Corp.’s credit ratings by two notches, to one step away from junk territory, saying that the cellphone maker’s market share quickly deteriorated and will take time to recover.

You Will Know Jack–Square CEO Dorsey Added to D9 Speaker Lineup

We’ve added Jack Dorsey, one of Silicon Valley’s hottest entrepreneurs, to the D: All Things Digital conference stage. He’s now busy disrupting the online payments space with his Square start-up, and before that invented a little service called Twitter. Heard of it?
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American Express Launches All-New Digital Payments Platform to Attack PayPal's Bread and Butter

American Express is launching an all-new Internet-based payment system that will go up against PayPal as part of the company’s plans to expand beyond its briefcase-touting business clientele.

Cash Isn't King–Liquidity Is

EMoney took a side trip this morning from the massive crowds gathering at Moscone in downtown San Francisco for the Game Developers Conference to Japantown, where there was an equally vibrant, albeit slightly smaller, conference called the Future of Money.

Waxman to Wolff: Unhand My Content!

Sprint: The Now Network