Latest news with #Platforms
Economic Times
a day ago
- Business
- Economic Times
Jio extends its ‘unlimited offer' with free JioHotstar access. What are the key benefits for its users?
Agencies This is an AI-generated image. After a strong response during the cricket season, Jio has extended its 'Unlimited Offer' this quarter, offering users on Rs 299 and above plans a 90-day free JioHotstar subscription in 4K for TV and mobile, along with a 50-day free trial of JioFiber or AirFiber for home use against a refundable deposit of Rs Platforms reported strong financial and operational performance for the quarter ended June 2025, with EBITDA rising 23.9% year-on-year to ₹18,135 crore. Net profit grew 24.8% to ₹7,110 crore. The company added 9.9 million net subscribers during the quarter, supported by gains in the mobility segment and record additions in home broadband connections. Monthly churn stood at 1.8%, while total subscriber base reached 498.1 million as of June 30, 2025. JioTrue5G users crossed the 200-million mark, reaching 212 million by the end of the quarter. Fixed broadband connections touched nearly 20 million, and JioAirFiber became the world's largest fixed wireless access (FWA) service with 7.4 million also launched JioGames Cloud, a cloud-based gaming platform offering access to over 500 titles across devices without dedicated hardware. Average revenue per user (ARPU) rose to ₹208.7, aided by tariff hikes and seasonal factors. Per capita data usage reached 37 GB/month, with total data traffic up 24% year-on-year to 54.7 billion GB. Free JioHotstar Subscription: All eligible Jio prepaid and postpaid users will get a complimentary JioHotstar subscription under the "Jio Home Unlimited Offer 2025". Who Can Avail the Offer – Prepaid Users: Jio prepaid users who recharge with ₹349 or above plans that include at least 1.5 GB data per day are eligible. Who Can Avail the Offer – Postpaid Users: Jio postpaid users with plans starting from ₹349 per month or more (including new customers or those changing their plan) are eligible. Not Eligible: The offer is not applicable to users of JioBharat, JioPhone, or voice-only value plans. Other Eligibility Conditions: To avail the offer, users must be active Jio prepaid or postpaid subscribers and enrolled in the Jio Prime membership. Offer Validity: The offer is available for a limited time starting from July 1, 2025. The end date will be decided by Jio. Offer Benefits: The benefits will be available during the validity period of the eligible recharge or postpaid plan. Free JioHotstar Access: Jio prepaid and postpaid users on eligible plans can get up to 3 months of complimentary JioHotstar (JHS) subscription in 4K. Eligibility – Prepaid Users: Recharge with ₹349 or above (plans with 1.5 GB/day or more). Recharge within 48 hours of expiry to continue benefits for the 2nd and 3rd months. Prepaid Benefits: Recharge valid for 28–30 days: 1 month JHS. Recharge valid for 28–56 days: 2 months JHS (recharge again within 48 hrs for 3rd). Recharge valid beyond 56 days: 3 months JHS. Eligibility – Postpaid Users: Active postpaid plan of ₹349/month or higher. Valid for new activations or plan changes during the offer period. Eligible postpaid users get full 3-month JHS subscription. Not Eligible: JioBharat, JioPhone, and voice-only value plans. Jio Home WiFi Offer 50-Day Free Home Internet Trial : Eligible Jio prepaid/postpaid users get a free trial of JioFiber or JioAirFiber for 50 days. : Eligible Jio prepaid/postpaid users get a free trial of or for 50 days. Eligibility – Prepaid : New users recharging with ₹349. Existing users recharging with ₹349+ plans (1.5 GB/day or more). ₹100 data add-on recharge is also eligible. : Eligibility – Postpaid : Active monthly plan of ₹349 or above. ₹100 data add-on recharge also qualifies. : Upfront Payment : ₹500 refundable deposit, returned as five ₹100 vouchers after 6 months (one voucher redeemable at a time). : ₹500 refundable deposit, returned as five ₹100 vouchers after 6 months (one voucher redeemable at a time). How to Avail : Express interest via MyJio app or . Offer activation is on a first-come, first-served basis and subject to technical feasibility. : Post Offer : After 50 days, users will be auto-migrated to the ₹599 JioFiber/JioAirFiber postpaid plan. :
Finextra
08-07-2025
- Business
- Finextra
Worldpay Embedded Payments now available worldwide
Worldpay Embedded Payments are now available around the world as the fintech giant grows its platform capabilities for payment integrations that are smooth and can grow with the business. 0 This content is provided by an external author without editing by Finextra. It expresses the views and opinions of the author. The expansion gives businesses the power to offer customised, real-time payments right on their platforms, which makes things easier for users and more efficient for the business. The demand for embedded financial services is growing fast with 90% of small- and medium-sized businesses indicating access to financial products and services from within their software platforms is critical, according to Worldpay® research. To meet this demand, Worldpay is expanding its Worldpay for Platforms offering to Canada and the United Kingdom, while deepening its presence in Australia. This offering empowers software providers to embed highly secure, scalable payment experiences directly within their platforms. With global scale, deep payments expertise, and personalized relationship management, Worldpay helps thousands of SaaS providers deliver great experiences and accelerate their growth. 'As business software tools converge into unified experiences, we're investing in embedded payments to help SaaS providers become the everything platforms for their users,' said Matt Downs, head of Worldpay for Platforms. 'We are committed to serving our current software platforms and new clients in the key geographies where they do business by making embedded solutions easier to integrate and elevating the experiences they provide their users.' This latest expansion of Worldpay Embedded Payments shows that the company is dedicated to making platform-driven commerce work in all areas and industries. Worldpay for Platforms is making complex financial services easier for developers to create native software experiences that enable automated reconciliation and single point of service support for merchants. One such customer benefitting from Worldpay for Platforms' Canadian expansion is accommodation platform CampLife: 'Because we are able to embed and customize the payment experience within our software offering, Worldpay is helping us drive value for our clients with an enhanced, seamless end-to-end experience,' said Tyler Duffy, president at CampLife. 'Not only does this improve the lives of our clients who use our software to manage their business, it brings new levels of convenience to the camping experience when people are booking their getaways.' Worldpay for Platforms provides a fully managed payments service that reduces risk, simplifies compliance, and allows platform providers to focus on their core services. This service enables easier payment integration, creating a centralized hub for customer transactions and enhancing business management tools. With a modern API architecture, Worldpay for Platforms offers a single point of integration for credit and debit cards, direct debit, digital wallets, and more payment methods, setting it apart from many UK providers. 'Embedded payments are a growth engine,' said Alison Morris, SVP and GM of international platforms at Worldpay. 'By offering integrated payment experiences that are trusted, secure and designed around the end-customer, vertical software providers can unlock new revenue streams, increase retention and strengthen loyalty. By launching across these new geographies, we're helping our partners deliver more value, grow faster and stand out in increasingly competitive markets.' Worldpay Embedded Payments are going to change how platforms handle seamless, scalable transactions across markets and industries when they are rolled out around the world.
Yahoo
21-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Where Will Duolingo Be in 1 Year?
Duolingo's user base and paid subscriptions are growing rapidly. The company's new strategy is focused on expanding artificial intelligence (AI) and automation. Management says the goal is faster innovation, not just cost-cutting, but the sudden AI embrace could drive away some users. 10 stocks we like better than Duolingo › Language-learning leader Duolingo (NASDAQ: DUOL) is soaring on the wings of a green owl. The company's gamified online education services are drawing in tons of active users, assisted by a large cast of cartoon-style characters. The recent first-quarter report showed 130 million monthly active users (MAUs), up 33% year over year. The number of paid subscribers is rising even faster with a 40% jump, also driving robust gains in revenue and profits. Duolingo's stock price nearly tripled in 52 weeks, including an earnings-inspired 65% surge in the last month alone. At the same time, the company is making some game-changing strategic decisions, doubling down on artificial intelligence (AI) tools and automation. Where will this radical AI commitment take Duolingo over the next year, and how will it affect the stock price? I don't have all the answers, but let's check out a few clues. Duolingo published an official long-term strategy document in April 2025. This overview starts with Duolingo's official mission statement: "To develop the best education in the world and make it universally available." From there, it describes a beneficial flywheel of more learners giving Duolingo the resources to build better learning tools, which then boost the customer growth again. The company doesn't have a firm long-term roadmap. Instead, Duolingo prefers pushing out new ideas quickly and adapting to the lessons learned from each new experiment. This "Green Machine" philosophy lets Duolingo hire innovative people, let them experiment, and make a commitment to the ideas that work well. This approach reminds me of the "move fast and break things" tactics in the early days of Meta Platforms. Going back even further, the company now known as Alphabet built the Google search engine in a flurry of quick technology updates. Oh, and Alphabet's mission is to "organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful." Duolingo didn't copy that idea word for word, but the old Google approach sure looks like a direct inspiration. Duolingo could absolutely have picked worse role models than two of the world's largest and most successful technology companies. Finally, Duolingo's strategy statement points to a global target market of 1.8 billion language learners, currently boiling down to 117 million MAUs and 9.5 million paid Duolingo subscribers. The growth potential is massive, especially since language education is just the start of a much more ambitious vision. The strategy document says, "We started with language learning for its economic impact, but our goal is to build a 100-year company that transforms how the world learns everything." Early expansion efforts include math and music, and a chess course is about to join the party. But in the long run, Duolingo wants to teach a lot of different subjects. Now, that document mentioned AI in passing. One week later, co-founder and CEO Luis von Ahn reinforced the AI focus in an email sent to all Duolingo workers. AI has been a part of the Duolingo story for years, especially in the ultra-premium Duolingo Super subscription plan. There, the system won't just say that you got a question wrong, but will also explain the mistake in detail. You can also strike up a natural conversation with a Duolingo chatbot, featuring the cartoon characters you see across the learning platform. But the company is going further with its AI plans. "Duolingo is going to be AI-first," von Ahn wrote. That means generating brand-new quiz content from scratch, scaling up the Duolingo platform to serve a much larger user base, and building new experiences (like the Video Call chats) around AI tools. It also means phasing out human contractors, wherever they're doing work that AI alternatives can tackle. That doesn't mean Duolingo will stop hiring humans, but there will be fewer new hires, and they should bring their best AI management skills to the job interview. This all-hands memo was quickly leaked outside the company, inspiring more criticism than optimism. Many readers said they would stop using Duolingo. Some critics dislike Duolingo's heavy use of artificial intelligence, while others focus on the uncomfortable idea of replacing human talent with robotic automation. The first-quarter earnings report hit the newswires two weeks later, and von Ahn added some color to his AI philosophy in the earnings call, saying: We're going to try to automate everything. This is going to save us some costs on things that humans used to do that now AI can do. However, we're going to apply all of that, and many of those same people, to develop AI features. In other words, Duolingo isn't planning to fire every human. Instead, people are being retrained and equipped with more AI tools. The AI shift is not about cost-cutting and profit-boosting. It's an attempt to accelerate Duolingo's innovation process. The question is how clearly the management team can communicate this nuance to Duolingo's users and investors. The second-quarter report will show the direct impact on the company's user growth, perhaps with a somewhat slower MAU boost than usual. After that, it's off to the races with another growth-boosting gadget in Duolingo's tool belt. I'm assuming that the negative memo comments represent a loud minority, like the grumbles you see anytime a subscription service raises its prices. I could be wrong, of course. A huge groundswell of actual cancellations would be a real problem, forcing Duolingo to slow its AI roll. It could even take the momentum out of its profitable growth trends, doing real damage to the stock and the learning system's reputation. However, I'm not terribly worried about that risk today. Management didn't mention a wave of cancellations in recent conference presentations, nor did they highlight weak user retention metrics. Sweeping such trends under the rug is not a good idea, setting investors up for a hard fall after the next business report. So I'll keep an eye on those metrics in 2025, just in case. But I do expect von Ahn and company to do the right thing, both in terms of accurate data reporting and a responsible balance between human and AI-driven operations. In short, Duolingo's user count and stock price should keep growing from here. Before you buy stock in Duolingo, consider this: The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the for investors to buy now… and Duolingo wasn't one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years. Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $642,582!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $829,879!* Now, it's worth noting Stock Advisor's total average return is 975% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to 172% for the S&P 500. Don't miss out on the latest top 10 list, available when you join . See the 10 stocks » *Stock Advisor returns as of May 19, 2025 Suzanne Frey, an executive at Alphabet, is a member of The Motley Fool's board of directors. Randi Zuckerberg, a former director of market development and spokeswoman for Facebook and sister to Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg, is a member of The Motley Fool's board of directors. Anders Bylund has positions in Alphabet and Duolingo. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Alphabet and Meta Platforms. The Motley Fool recommends Duolingo. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. Where Will Duolingo Be in 1 Year? was originally published by The Motley Fool Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Yahoo
13-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Apple introduces new accessibility features including braille note taker
(Reuters) - Apple said on Tuesday it is bringing a host of new features later this year that are geared towards making its devices more accessible, including a braille note taker and expanded 'zoom' for its mixed-reality headsets, Vision Pro. For users who are blind or visually impaired, vision accessibility features will be expanded using Vision Pro's camera system. The updated zoom features can help users magnify everything in view using the main camera, the iPhone maker said. "We are dedicated to pushing forward with new accessibility features for all of our products," said Sarah Herrlinger, Apple's senior director of Global Accessibility Policy and Initiatives. Apple will allow approved apps to access the main camera on Vision Pro to provide live, person-to-person assistance for visual interpretation in apps such as Be My Eyes. Be My Eyes is an application that connects people who are blind or visually impaired with volunteers and companies worldwide through live video. The Vision Pro, lauded by analysts for its technology, represents Apple's entry into the headset market otherwise dominated by Meta Platforms. Apple is also introducing 'Braille Access' that turns iPhone, iPad, Mac and Apple Vision Pro into a braille note taker. With this feature, users can open any app by typing with a connected braille device or Braille Screen Input - an Apple system that allows users to enter braille into their devices. Apple's new features also include a system-wide reading mode designed to make text easier to read for users with disabilities such as dyslexia or low vision, the company said. Sign in to access your portfolio
Yahoo
13-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Apple introduces new accessibility features including braille note taker
(Reuters) - Apple said on Tuesday it is bringing a host of new features later this year that are geared towards making its devices more accessible, including a braille note taker and expanded 'zoom' for its mixed-reality headsets, Vision Pro. For users who are blind or visually impaired, vision accessibility features will be expanded using Vision Pro's camera system. The updated zoom features can help users magnify everything in view using the main camera, the iPhone maker said. "We are dedicated to pushing forward with new accessibility features for all of our products," said Sarah Herrlinger, Apple's senior director of Global Accessibility Policy and Initiatives. Apple will allow approved apps to access the main camera on Vision Pro to provide live, person-to-person assistance for visual interpretation in apps such as Be My Eyes. Be My Eyes is an application that connects people who are blind or visually impaired with volunteers and companies worldwide through live video. The Vision Pro, lauded by analysts for its technology, represents Apple's entry into the headset market otherwise dominated by Meta Platforms. Apple is also introducing 'Braille Access' that turns iPhone, iPad, Mac and Apple Vision Pro into a braille note taker. With this feature, users can open any app by typing with a connected braille device or Braille Screen Input - an Apple system that allows users to enter braille into their devices. Apple's new features also include a system-wide reading mode designed to make text easier to read for users with disabilities such as dyslexia or low vision, the company said. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
