“I am surprised” by these performances, from PayPal to Flink to Volocopter
3-in-1: 3 digital news in 1 minute. On Monday. Episode 244
Discover 3 original digital news, invest one minute and be a better professional!
News 1: PayPal the most downloaded app in 2020, what?
PayPal is confirmed (by app analytics site appannie.com) as the most downloaded app in 2020, worldwide. A very good track record, at a moment where many alternatives like Klarna, Google Pay (and the new Plex system announced in the US), Apple Pay and many national finance manager (like successful French Lydia or Italian Satispay). This week PayPal CEO announces that PayPal will grow to a “super app” covering finance management and shopping. Opinion for B2B: A discreet, but very efficient proposition from PayPal when banks and credit cards add double, tripple identification process. Still today, PayPal is somewhat “magic” for the user — and that will grow with new features. But its force is the strong offer to the merchants (support, APIs, even credits).
2021, the PayPal app will change! And change the financial interface market.
News 2: Volocopter marches with surprisingly strong invest, so early
Volocopter develops electric flying taxis — fascinating but sounds like very far in the future. No, they just receive a €200 million invest (total of €368m) for a launch in two years. Concretely Volocopter already applied for flying in US larger cites in January. However, at the centre lies VoloIQ, a software platform to manage urban air flying (together with Lufthansa Technik). Opinion for B2B: Front-end and back-end…Front-end is a fantastic, sci-fi flying taxi. Back-end is a software platform that manages the data, the fleet, the landing, the ground infrastructure. Then it makes sense — the invest so early in the development. Latest investor, not disclosed — former investor were Daimler, Chineses Geely and German state railways.
Urban air vehicle, and electric, and futuristic looking, and a platform. Sounds like a winner.
News 3: Flink, another fast delivery offer
10 minutes later — the order is delivered to your home. This is a complete new delivery proposition and market with contenders popping up everywhere. GuPuff reigns in the US. Gorillas made a fast start in Berlin, Cologne, Hamburg, Amsterdam and now London. And now comes Flink, based in Berlin — raised 10m in Jan and now 52m from the investor behind german beverage delivery success story “Flaschenpost”. Opinion for B2B: Everywhere in larger cities — a new model arises, shop groceries in the app, get it delivered in 10 minutes from so-called dark stores (lot of properties are free in residential areas, with stores closing). We are witnessing a race to which one of the offer will breakthrough the European market, especially the under-developed German delivery market.
European cup of fast delivery underway!
Author is the research team (10 trend scouters) at specialist Space and Lemon (Hamburg, Berlin) — scouting in main tech geographies, in AI development, virtual worlds and e-commerce. Excerpts of research are gathered here in original weekly news since 2016, always with a professional opinion — no re-write of TechCrunch. Research time: March 2021.
Come back next Monday and share your opinion.
