The Wall Street Journal recently reported that Klarna, a European buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) provider, is considering raising capital at a valuation of around $15 billion. The new figure is both a dramatic decline from Klarna’s mid-2021 valuation of more than $45 billion, and the $30 billion figure it was reported to be targeting earlier this year.…

Klarna’s potential valuation cut to $15B appears sufficiently steep — TechCrunch

By GENE JOHNSON SEATTLE (AP) — A federal jury on Friday convicted a former Seattle tech worker of several charges related to a massive hack of Capital One bank and other companies in 2019. Paige Thompson, 36, a former Amazon software engineer who used the online handle “erratic,” obtained the personal information of the banks customers… read more:

Jury convicts Seattle woman in massive Capital One hack — The Denver Post

Pan-African digital payments company MFS Africa is acquiring U.S.-based Global Technology Partners (GTP) in a cash-and-shares deal worth $34 million, FT reported today. There are very few deals of such manner; that is, an African tech company buying up a U.S.-based one.

MFS Africa acquires GTP for $34M as it looks to issue prepaid cards to its clients — TechCrunch

A top former executive at the highly valued NFT startup OpenSea was arrested Wednesday and charged “with wire fraud and money laundering in connection with a scheme to commit insider trading,” according to a press release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Southern District of New York (SDNY)…

Former OpenSea exec arrested and charged with insider trading of NFTs — TechCrunch

Lithium, an element that you may not have thought about since high school chemistry class, has been making headlines recently. This lightweight substance is a critical component in rechargeable lithium-ion batteries, which are used in most personal electronics and electric vehicles. And in the last year, it’s gotten expensive…

Lithium Is Key to the Electric Vehicle Transition. It’s Also in Short Supply — TIME

Technology turned out to be a boon for pets during the pandemic. Without ready access to vets, pet owners turned to mobile apps to keep track on their pet’s health, often via educational content, and in some cases that was linked to insurance providers. The behavior has lit up the VC world as startups roll…

COVID was the best thing for Kitty, as insurance apps for pets boom — TechCrunch

Facebook Pay will soon be renamed Meta Pay, according to a blog post written by Meta’s head of fintech, Stephane Kasriel. With the rebrand, the company is focusing on enhancing the payments experiences it already provides with Facebook Pay in regions where it’s seeing good adoption, as opposed to focusing on expanding to new countries.…

Facebook Pay will be renamed Meta Pay soon — TechCrunch

Hi all, it was a roller coaster of a week in the world of fintech as I published two separate articles on startup layoffs and a nine-figure funding round in the span of a few hours. It was also a week filled with lots of activity on FinTwit, or “Financial Twitter”… read more:

The Interchange: Stripe takes a swing at Plaid — TechCrunch

On the Netflix series the two play feisty octogenarians who see old age not as a death sentence, but as a victory lap – a belief they’ve always pursued in real life.

Lily Tomlin and Jane Fonda on “Grace and Frankie,” age and activism — Home – CBSNews.com

Outages in Apple’s online services are not unusual, but this one is rather peculiar. Some users may not be able to add their Mastercard credit and debit cards to Apple Pay on Wednesday, according to Apple.

The company says there’s an ongoing outage in its payment system, but it seems to only affect Mastercard users.…

Ongoing Apple Pay outage affects Mastercard credit and debit card users — 9to5Mac