Apple and Google close loophole that allowed Russians to use Mir cards for mobile payments

Apple has closed a loophole that had allowed some Russians to continue using its mobile payments service despite the ongoing economic sanctions against Russia. According to Reuters, the company told the country’s largest lender on Thursday it would no longer support Russia’s homegrown Mir payments system through Apple Pay.

“Apple has informed NSPK it is suspending support for Mir cards in the Apple Pay payment service,” the National Card Payment System said Friday. “Starting from March 24th, users cannot add new Mir cards to the service. Apple will stop all operations of previously added cards over the next few days.”

Google took similar action last week as well. According to a separate report from The Wall Street Journal, the company paused a pilot that had allowed Russians to connect their Mir cards to Google Pay. “Google Pay is pausing payments-related services in Russia as a result of payment services disruption out of our control,” a Google spokesperson told the outlet.

As The Verge notes, the Central Bank of Russia established Mir after the US and other countries imposed sanctions on Russia in response to its annexation of Crimea in 2014. According to statistics shared by the Central Bank, Mir cards are involved in more than 25 percent of all card transactions within the country. Previously, cards from major Russian financial institutions like VTB Group and Sovcombank stopped working with Apple Pay and Google Pay shortly after the Kremlin launched its invasion of Ukraine on February 24th.

Apple buys UK-based open banking startup Credit Kudos

Apple has acquired an open banking and credit reference company called Credit Kudos. A terms of use page on Credit Kudos’ website, which was updated on March 21st, notes that the company is a subsidiary of Apple and its policy link now redirects to Apple’s website.

According to The Block, the acquisition closed earlier this week and valued Credit Kudos at $150 million.

Credit Kudos is essentially a credit check agency that claims to provide a more rounded picture of a person’s financial health and creditworthiness than other approaches. Its API taps into the UK’s open banking platform to analyze bank account data. It aims to help banking providers make faster and better decisions when people are seeking loans or other financial services.

The deal could pave the way for Apple Card to arrive on the other side of the Atlantic. Apple’s credit card has been available in the US since August 2019. The API could help the company determine whether to approve a UK resident’s application for an Apple Card. It may also be used to guide Apple’s decision-making process when choosing whether to let customers pay for products over a number of installments.

VW will invest $7.1 billion in its North American production capacity

Volkswagen’s electrification efforts in North America will receive an additional $7.1 billion investment over the next five years, the company announced on Monday. 

VW intends to spend that money on “[boosting] its product portfolio, regional R&D and manufacturing capabilities,” per a release, in hopes that doing so will help drive 55 percent of its US sales to be EVs by 2030. The company intends to ramp down its internal combustion production capacity over the same time frame, transitioning American assembly plants to produce the ID.4 in 2022, the ID.Buzz in 2024, and a yet-to-be-released SUV starting in 2026.

The company estimates that 90 percent of the vehicles it sells in North America are already assembled in North America. Its production facilities in Chattanooga, TN have already begun the electrification process with its factories at Pueblo and Silao, Mexico coming online by the middle of the decade.

VW is also betting big on batteries, having already invested more than $2.7 billion in North American supplier partnerships ahead of the ID’4’s launch. The company also plans to officially open its Battery Engineering Lab (BEL) in Chattanooga this May and is considering constructing a battery production plant stateside as well though that’s still in its most initial planning stages.    

These investments are already paying dividends to drivers. During a press event Monday morning, Scott Keogh, President and CEO, Volkswagen Group of America noted that VW intends to bring OTA updates and new software features like plug-and-charge, which automates the transaction portion of recharging on a public station allowing drivers to simply plug in without having to swipe a debit card or fiddle with NFC readers, later this year. 

GM to buy out SoftBank’s stake in Cruise self-driving unit

General Motors is acquiring SoftBank’s stake in Cruise and pouring even more money into the self-driving unit it purchased in 2016. The auto giant has announced that it’s buying out SoftBank Vision Fund 1’s equity ownership into the company that’s worth $2.1 billion. In addition, it has committed to investing an extra $1.35 billion in Cruise to replace the funding SoftBank promised in February after the self-driving car company started offering robotaxi rides in San Francisco. 

The automaker didn’t say why it’s buying SoftBank’s equity ownership, but GM chief executive Mary Barra said:

“Our increased investment position not only simplifies Cruise’s shareholder structure, but also provides GM and Cruise maximum flexibility to pursue the most value-accretive path to commercializing and unlocking the full potential of AV technology.”

SoftBank, meanwhile, has recently struggled with debt and the plummeting value of its properties. It may no longer be interested in an investment that won’t field returns anytime soon. In February, SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son said the company would sell “a good chunk of assets” after ARM’s multi-billion sale to NVIDIA fell through.

As TechCrunch notes, GM could have also bought out SoftBank as a step towards spinning out Cruise or taking it public. A GM spokesperson told the publication that the automaker will “consider all opportunities to create value for [its] shareholders” and that it “has not ruled out a future IPO of Cruise.”

The California Public Utilities Commission recently granted Cruise (and Waymo) permission to charge for robotaxi rides in the state, as long as there’s a human driver behind the wheel. Cruise already applied for a Driverless Deployment permit, but the agency is still reviewing its application. 

ARM will reportedly lay off up to 1,000 employees after NVIDIA sale falls through

Up 1,000 ARM employees in the US and the UK will be laid off, according The Telegraph and Bloomberg. Chief Executive Officer Rene Haas reportedly told staff in a memo that the Softbank-owned chipmaker is cutting between 12 to 15 percent of its workforce, with 1,000 being the high end of that range, as part of its efforts to curb spending. The company said in a statement:

“Like any business, ARM is continually reviewing its business plan to ensure the company has the right balance between opportunities and cost discipline. Unfortunately, this process includes proposed redundancies across Arm’s global workforce.”

Softbank was supposed to sell ARM to NVIDIA for a massive deal that was worth $40 billion based on the latter’s stock prices in 2020. If the acquisition had gone through, it would’ve been the largest in the chip sector yet and would’ve been worth around $60 to $80 billion today. The deal collapsed completely in February, however, due to strong opposition by regulators around the world. Industry players, including ARM customers Qualcomm and Microsoft, also voiced their opposition against the deal, citing concerns that NVIDIA might prevent ARM from licensing its chip designs. 

NVIDIA will pay Softbank a break fee of $1.25 billion for the failed purchase, and the Japanese conglomerate will proceed with its backup plan of taking ARM public. Neither of those is enough to keep things running as is, if the UK-based chipmaker is cutting jobs. Bloomberg says, though, that most of the job cuts won’t affect the company’s engineers. Despite the failed acquisition, NVIDIA plans to continue working closely with ARM and will continue to support the company as a licensee.