Simon Holmstrom has solid NHL debut in Islanders’ win
The Islanders’ Simon Holmstrom made his NHL debut Wednesday night at UBS Arena.
https://nypost.com/2022/11/24/simon-holmstrom-has-solid-nhl-debut-in-islanders-win/
Air pollution caused 238,000 early deaths in Europe in 2020: EEA
The European Union’s environment watchdog has reported 238,000 premature deaths in the bloc in 2020 due to air pollution.
Man tries to rape woman onboard moving 4 train in lower Manhattan
Cops are looking for a man who tried to rape a woman on a moving subway train in lower Manhattan last week. The creep sat next to the 24-year-old straphanger on a northbound 4 train and then removed his pants and underwear just before 11:30 p.m. last Thursday, police said. He got on top of…
https://nypost.com/2022/11/24/man-tries-to-rape-woman-onboard-moving-4-train-in-lower-manhattan/
Atoa helps UK merchants cut down on card processing fees
Visa and Mastercard payments are convenient for customers, but can cost merchants high processing fees. Atoa Payments wants to provide a cheaper alternative that is still easy for customers to use. The London-based fintech announced today that it has raised $2.2 million in pre-seed funding.
The round was led by Leo Capital and Passion Capital, with participation from angel investors like GoCardless and Nested co-founder Matt Robinson, Moon Capital Ventures and MarketFinance co-founder Anil Stocker.
Atoa co-founder Sid Narayanan told TechCrunch that he and co-founder Cian O’Dowd developed the idea for Atoa after selling their previous startup, expense management platform KlearCard, to Singapore fintech Validus in 2021.
Their barber, who initially accepted card payments, started asking for cash payments or bank transfers because he wanted to reduce his card processing fees, which were around 1.6%. Narayanan and O’Dowd were used to card alternative payments after living in Singapore, and saw an opportunity to use the U.K.’s open banking payments stack to build a Visa and Mastercard alternative, Narayanan told TechCrunch.
Mastercard and Visa payment rails can cost small merchants and their customers net margins of 51%, with card machine fees of about 1.75%, Narayanan said. Atoa, on the other hand, charges a fixed percentage fee billable to merchant each months that is up to 70% lower than debit cards. It also does not have hardware rentals, service fees or PCI attestation of compliance charges.
To use Atoa, merchants download an app that connects to their bank accounts. Customers don’t need to download Atoa’s app to use the service. Instead, they can use Atoa as long as they have a U.K. mobile banking app. According to Narayanan, the majority of adults, or about 80% in the U.K., already have a mobile banking app on their phone, removing the main source of friction. Merchants send a link for payment by SMS, PayBay or offer a QR code to scan.
To incentivize more customers to use Atoa, the startup also plans to add rewards and loyalty benefits, like digital scratch cards that can let them get cash rewards into their existing U.K. bank accounts.
Once customers pay with Atoa, merchants to receive payment instantly through Instant Bank Pay. They also get funds in their bank account right away, instead of waiting for up to 1 to 2 business days.
Atoa says since it went live in June, it’s gotten more than 100% month-on-month total payment volume (TPV) growth and merchant customers. Its most direct competitors include card machine providers like SumUp, Zettle, Square and Barclaycard, Narayanan said. Atoa differentiates by offering lower fees and enabling merchants to receive funds more quickly than the three days typically required by card machine providers. It also charges lower fees than players that are intermediated by Visa and Mastercard.
In a statement about its investment, Passion Capital partner Robert Dighero said, “Atoa has come to the UK market at the right time to leverage open banking and bring to small and medium sized merchants a truly viable alternative to payment cards and card machines that can be deployed in-store within minutes. We’re delighted to work with the Atoa team after their first fintech success and look forward to partnering with them as they achieve even greater heights with Atoa.”
Atoa helps UK merchants cut down on card processing fees by Catherine Shu originally published on TechCrunch
https://techcrunch.com/2022/11/24/atoa-helps-uk-merchants-cut-down-on-card-processing-fees/
Anne Hathaway backs Pact, an all-women led VC for mission-driven startups, from West to East
How many VC funds can you name where the three partners all had babies whilst raising the fund, have deep connections in Asia as well as Europe and the US, and include actress Anne Hathaway as an LP? Not many I’d hazard.
But that’s the profile of Pact, a new Seed VC fund launched with a £30 million ($36 million) pot of cash to back early-stage startups across Europe. Pact will aim at ‘mission driven’ startups in what it calls the “ABC” categories: Access (economic inclusion), Betterment (personal and professional well-being), and Climate. (That’s a much more interesting way of addressing ‘doing good’ areas, instead of that trotting out the UN SDGs, IMHO). Pact’s investment tickets will range from around £1m to 1.5m.
As well as Anne Hathaway (she’s not ‘just’ an Oscar Award Winning Actor, but also a UN Woman Goodwill Ambassador), other LPs include Jeff Dean, the Head of AI at Google, and Keith Teare, a founding (and former) shareholder of TechCrunch and former tech entrepreneur in the UK and US.
They are joined by Anchor investor Campden Hill Capital; Yeming Wang, the former head of EMEA of Alibaba; Fahd Beg, the COO of Naspers; Todd Ruppert, the retired CEO of T. Rowe Price Global and venture partner at Greenspring Associates, and Tilo Bonow, CEO of PIABO.
The three female partners — Tong Gu, Reem Mobassaleh Wyndham, and Monik Pham — were former VCs in other funds. Gu was an investor at ADV (of which Teare was formerly a part) and built a data analytics startup in Shanghai which she exited. Wyndham was also an investor for ADV and a former founder. Pham was part of the founding team of the early-stage fund Fuel Ventures and launched several social enterprises in Africa and India.
Speaking to Reem Mobassaleh Wyndham, she told me they’d been raising the fund for a little over a year (during their pregnancies and first children) but the idea had been “in the works” for about five or six years: “We both joined ADV the same week. And we met Monique around the same time. What we observed within the early stage landscape in the UK was a few key things that were missing. There are very few early-stage fund managers that have both operational experience and deep operational experience abroad in emerging markets. And that’s something that the three of us, in a very complimentary way, bring to the table.”
“We believe that capitalism should and can be inclusive while still producing huge results,” she added. “And we really want it to be able to back companies at the early stage that are really positively shaping the future. We’ve all built our careers with that Northstar as a guide for us. It’s a value that we’ve always espoused, but it’s only now at this point that the market is really coming around to it. There shouldn’t be a trade off between socially sustainable, environmentally sustainable and commercially sustainable outcomes. You have to think about both. And that’s a value that all three of us came together on,” she said.
Tong Gu told me: “I grew up in China, and I witnessed how entrepreneurship and technology have enabled a large population of people who used to be under the poverty line to become wealthier and make their lives better. I started a tech company enabling independent small brand owners to compete with the larger ones. And for me, that was the experience of really driving economic inclusion, but in sort of a tech-enabled way.”
Wyndham admitted “it’s not a huge fund”. However, she said the £30 million should get them enough companies to get the “healthy diversification” needed for fund returns: “We could do 18 to 20 companies, either leading or co-leading. We’ve been very thoughtful about how we have curated our LP base. So the LPS that have come in are strategic and they provide domain expertise, and market access, but they also provide capital continuity. The vast majority are looking for access to deal flow. So in that sense, this is actually scaling our firepower beyond the 30 million.”
On having a Hollywood moviestar among their LPs, Wyndham added: “She’s actually a friend of mine and mentor of about 12 years and since then we’ve become friends and have shared values. One of her big causes is childcare, and lack thereof, as the final frontier for gender parity. And that’s something that we’ve experienced firsthand as three female GPs who all had our first children while raising this fund. We had to figure out how to overcome the structural headwinds to be able to do both. That’s very much one of the lessons that we hope to share with the ecosystem, and that’s sort of where Anne comes in.”
Pact’s first investment has been made into Growth Kitchen, a London-based company that launches sustainable food brands based on data insights.
Past investments for the team members of Pact include Clause acquired by DocuSign. Onto, an electric vehicle subscription service; Perlego, an online learning platform; and Yoco, an African FinTech company.
Anne Hathaway backs Pact, an all-women led VC for mission-driven startups, from West to East by Mike Butcher originally published on TechCrunch
Nets’ Yuta Watanabe will miss rest of trip with hamstring injury
The Nets will be without rapidly developing glue guy Yuta Watanabe at least through the rest of their current road trip.
https://nypost.com/2022/11/24/nets-yuta-watanabe-will-miss-rest-of-trip-with-hamstring-injury/
Silver (SI) Retests 38.2% Fib Retrace of Mar-Sep Slide
Also seen on FT (Financial Times), Interactive Brokers, ICE, Amazon, Zerohedge, CNA, Liquid (Quoine), Tradable Patterns publishes 3 newsletters: Today’s Top 3 Trades, Coffee Daily and Crypto Weekly …
South Korea in demographic crisis as many stop having babies
Many young people in South Korea have chosen not to marry or have children, citing a change of views toward a marriage and family life and uncertainty of their future …
Gay Australian male soccer player says FIFA’s rainbow armband ban has made him feel ‘excluded’
Josh Cavallo, the only openly gay top-flight male soccer player in the sport, has told CNN that FIFA’s decision to ban players from wearing “OneLove” armbands at the Qatar 2022 has made him feel “excluded.”
Mile posts: Items on Aspel Kiprob, Mercy Biwott, Gable Sieperda, Isaac Basten, Dana Feyen, Kassie Parker, Aubrie Fisher, Christopher Collet
Iowa Central was beaten only by top-ranked Colby, which dominated with 38 points and four runners in the top 10 to win its first national title.
https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/mile-posts-items-aspel-kiprob-070504055.html