Author: Akin Naphtal

Yellow Card is excited to announce the launch of an additional five coins to the app. With the additional coins Yellow Card now provides a wider-range of cryptocurrencies for their customers. Allowing customers to view and trade over seven digital assets including: Bitcoin (BTC), Tether (USDT), Ethereum (ETH), USD Coin (USDC), Cardano (ADA), Solana (SOL) & Celo Dollar (cUSD). In the last few years, Yellow Card has provided innovative financial solutions to many Africans across the continent. The fintech company most recently launched its new innovative payment feature, Yellow Pay across the continent. Now with the launch of the new…

Salesforce-owned communication platform, Slack, has introduced an AI-powered app named ChatGPT that can assist users in responding to colleagues in a matter of seconds. Access to the app will allow users to click on the three-dots icon in a thread and opt for “Draft reply” instead of typing out a response. Although it is not yet clear how detailed the responses will be, the app can be edited to suit the conversation. While companies and organisations can sign up for the ChatGPT beta here, the news is part of Salesforce’s broader announcement of Einstein GPT. The company is infusing its…

TikTok is giving content creators a new way to monetize their videos on the platform by launching a paywall feature called Series. Unlike the typical short-form TikTok videos, Series allows creators to make collections of up to 80 videos, with each clip being up to 20 minutes long. The paywall monetization model is similar to Patreon or OnlyFans, with creators setting their own rates from $1 to $190. Fans can access the exclusive content either from direct in-video links or the creator’s profile page. The paywall feature is only available to select creators for now, with applications opening up in…

The National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) will be highlighting key standards, guidelines and frameworks for the development, standardization and regulation of information technology practices in the face of global digital revolution at the 2023 RegTech Africa Conference. Kashifu Inuwa Abdullahi, Director General, NITDA who confirmed attendance at the RegTechAfrica Conference would discuss Information Technology policy objectives and provide frameworks within which the policies are implemented. At the conference, Inuwa along side other speakers would discuss issues that help cross the divide between regulatory reporting and technology spectrums and also look at different approaches in which technology and data could…

Abound, a U.K.-based consumer lending service, has raised £500 million ($601 million) in a big fundraise to fuel its own open banking-based business. The startup will use the funds to finance loans, bring more customers to its platform and invest in its technology, which combines open banking data and machine learning algorithms to build what Abound believes is a better “credit score” for applicants. Abound’s technology uses bank transaction data to build its AI-based risk and lending profiles, which the company describes as “financial X-rays”. These profiles help Abound “understand true affordability” when it comes to loans. In addition to…

Google is making progress toward its goal of creating an AI language model that supports 1,000 different languages. In an update posted on Monday, the company shared more information about the Universal Speech Model (USM), a system it describes as a “critical first step” in achieving its objectives. Last November, Google announced its plans to create a language model supporting 1,000 of the world’s most-spoken languages while also revealing its USM model. According to Google, USM is “a family of state-of-the-art speech models” with 2 billion parameters trained on 12 million hours of speech and 28 billion sentences across over…

Google has started rolling out a new UI design for Google Drive, Docs, Sheets and Slides, in line with its Material Design 3 language. The company says that the apps will still function the same way as before but should now be more simplified, with less clutter and a few improvements and additions. According to Google, the updated design is meant to streamline core collaboration journeys across its products, similar to Gmail’s new look. The redesign was announced in February and the rollout began on March 10th for rapid release domain users. The update will reach all Workspace and personal…

Vertiv, a global provider of critical digital infrastructure and continuity solutions, has introduced the Vertiv™ Liebert® CWA, a new generation of thermal management system for slab floor data centres. For decades, hyperscale and colocation providers have used raised floor environments to cool their IT equipment. Simplifying data centre design with slab floors enables the construction of new white space more efficiently and cost-effectively, but also introduces new cooling challenges. The Liebert CWA was designed to provide uniform air distribution to the larger surface area which comes with a slab floor application, while also allowing more space for rack installation and…

Growfin, a Singapore- and San Francisco-based fintech startup that offers software-as-a-service (SaaS) for finance departments, has raised $7.5 million in Series A funding. The startup plans to use the funding to expand its operations in the U.S. and Asia and to build more AI-based technology to expand its platform. Growfin’s next plan is to create a forecasting tool that predicts trends “based on past payment behavior and current receivables data through Growfin”. The funding round was led by Singapore’s SWC Global, with participation from existing backers 3one4 Capital and angel investors. According to Growfin, the latest funding comes after an…

Apple has reportedly given the green light to an app called “aBlueMail”, which is powered by an AI chatbot, after the developer assured the company that the app has content moderation tools. The Wall Street Journal reports that Apple closely examined a language tool in the software that uses AI and questioned whether it could generate inappropriate content for children. “We assured Apple that our update includes content moderation”, said Ben Volach, co-founder of Blix Inc., the maker of the app. He also suggested that the company should be transparent about any new policies related to the use of AI…