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Uber announced Wednesday that it will add planes, trains, hotels, buses, and rental cars to its main app in the United Kingdom. Train and bus services will start this summer, flights will be added later in the year, and hotels will come at a to-be-determined future date.
Investors are still wondering if the ride-hailing app might add a feature that includes positive cash flows. | | | • | | Big banks are plotting a way to cut Visa and Mastercard out of some payments. | | • | | Covid lockdowns in China have some bankers sleeping in the office. | | • | | Entrepreneurs are the unexpected pandemic winners. | | | | |  | Financial Services | Big Banks May Use Payment Service Zelle to Take on Mastercard and Visa | | America’s big banks are in a football huddle discussing an audible that would screen credit card companies out from one of their most lucrative revenue sources.
According to The Wall Street Journal, several notable Wall Street lenders are considering expanding their use of money transfer service Zelle to retail purchases, at the expense of card issuers like Mastercard or Visa. Who owns Zelle? The banks. | The Swipe Sweepstakes | | Every time a consumer swipes, taps, or inserts their credit or debit card, the merchant being paid is quietly hit with a fee of around 2% by the card issuer. Last year, American Express, Discover, Mastercard, Visa, and private label credit cards made $105 billion from those fees, according to analysts at Nilson, in what might be the most lucrative middleman gig in the world.
Banks, too, make billions every year from the fees, which are divvied up with card issuers. That means circumventing card companies could net banks even more money, a thing they notoriously love. It just so happens that seven US banks — Bank of America, Truist, Capital One, JPMorgan Chase, PNC Bank, US Bank, and Wells Fargo — co-own an increasingly popular online payments app called Zelle. Originally launched to compete with PayPal’s Venmo and Block’s Cash App, some think it could be better positioned to take on card issuers: | • | | The banks are reportedly considering creating a payment option on Zelle where money could go from a customer’s bank account to a merchant. Zelle, used by 1,425 banks and credit unions, handled 1.8 billion transactions last year, with $490 billion changing hands. That’s more than double 2019 figures and laps Venmo’s $230 billion worth of processed transactions. | | • | | According to sources who spoke to the WSJ, Wells Fargo and Bank of America are in favor of the move, but JPMorgan, US Bank, and Capital One are on the fence. | | | | Been Done Before: Mobile payments apps WeChat Pay and AliPay are wildly popular in Asia and established a foothold there even before the pandemic. According to McKinsey, the region was responsible for $900 billion in revenue for the global payments industry in 2019, almost half the total. | | | | | | Global Economy | Shanghai’s “Grim” Covid Outlook Has Bankers Sleeping in Tents at the Office | | The past two years of the pandemic granted millions of financial professionals the opportunity to work from home. The latest outbreak in Shanghai has turned that idea on its head: Some bankers and hedge fund staffers are living at work.
China’s most populous city, a major global financial center with a $660 billion economy, reported a record 17,000 Covid-19 cases Wednesday. The milestone is testing the country’s commitment to ironclad public health restrictions and, with it, the global economic recovery. Some brave workers have set up camp to keep markets open. | All the Time Overtime | | Escalating case numbers led officials in Shanghai to implement a widespread, indefinite quarantine this week after staggered lockdowns failed to lance the bubble. “The situation is extremely grim,” the director of Shanghai's epidemic response, Gu Honghui, told local state media.
Employees at banks such as the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, Orient Securities, and the Shanghai Futures Exchange have set up tents and cots next to their cubicles, living at work to keep markets running. The valiant effort may blunt the fallout, but China’s economic growth already appears in trouble: | • | | Last month, activity in China’s services sector shrunk the fastest in two years amid new mobility restrictions. The Caixin Purchasing Managers’ Index fell to 42.0 in March from 50.2 in February (anything below 50 represents contraction). | | • | | On Wednesday, Asian stock markets were a collage of downward-pointing arrows. Japan’s Nikkei fell 1.5%, and China’s Hang Seng dropped more than 2%. | | | | Global Risk: Right now, 23 Chinese cities that are home to 193 million people and 22% of the country’s GDP are in some form of lockdown, according to brokerage Nomura. On Tuesday, Bank for International Settlements head Agustín Carstens warned the world is teetering on the brink of persistent inflation if global supply chains, where China is a central player, are subject to more disruption. China's premier, Li Keqiang, insisted Wednesday that the government's 5.5% growth projection for this year, which many analysts already thought was a little too rosy, remains unchanged.
It’s Intense: “You will find out that your more gentle and quieter colleagues can actually snore so loudly,” Jennifer Dong, a Shanghai real estate worker who spent some time living in the office last month, told The Wall Street Journal. | | | | | | SPONSORED BY ACTIVECAMPAIGN | Today’s To-Do List: | Clear Inbox ✓ Return Call From HR ✓ Replenish Caffeine Source ✓ Optimize Marketing Plan ___ There’s no questioning the importance of day-to-day tasks. We don’t recommend leaving your Human Resources department hanging, for one. But why does something as crucial and time-sensitive as marketing keep sliding down the to-do list? The reason for many is, “Where to start?” ActiveCampaign has the answer 一 with 10 ready-to-roll email automation templates that will put you on the path to marketing primacy: | | | | | | | | Small Business | There Are More US Businesses Now Than Before the Pandemic |  | | In early 2020, as Covid-19 pushed many companies to either close or shed employees at an alarming rate, those newly out of work found something to do with their free time: start a business.
A new report released this week by a Washington think tank says 7% more physical businesses exist now than before the pandemic started. That’s because entrepreneurs, propped up by direct government subsidies and stimulus payments, built companies like it was, well, nobody’s business. | Services With a Smile | | Nearly 170,000 new professional and technical service firms were added nationwide between the third quarter of 2019 and the third quarter of 2021, making up 23% of overall growth, the report from the Economic Innovation Group found. And, with so many staying home and ordering necessities online, freight trucking companies rapidly sprouted, especially in counties where hubs already existed.
All told, nearly 75% of US counties have more businesses now than before the pandemic, with the biggest gainers being small and mid-sized counties throughout the West and South. Of the 25% of counties that didn’t grow, New York was hit particularly hard, creating what appears to be a Big Apple-Potato divide: | • | | Manhattan (aka, New York County) lost more businesses than any other county, down nearly 400 full-service restaurants and 300 limited-service restaurants alone — and almost 4,700 overall. | | • | | Meanwhile, Ada County, Idaho, home to the City of Boise — where many newly remote workers migrated amid Covid — added 3,779 businesses, a 23% jump that made the Gem State the nation’s top business incubator. | | | | Just Peachy: Georgia’s Down South, Cobb, and Fulton Counties grew more than 15% during the pandemic after posting just 2% and 4% growth, respectively, in the prior two-year period.
Old Is New Business: Businesses providing services to the elderly and disabled added nearly 100,000 new establishments, or 13% of national net growth. | | | | | | Extra Upside | • | | The Fed is considering shrinking its balance sheet by a whopping $95 billion… per month. | | • | | Russia says it will pay bonds in rubles, which may lead to a default. | | • | | Here are 4 words to get you pumped: A drone for people. Sure, we’ve all seen these tiny aircraft buzzing over parks and buildings, but LIFT Aircraft is the first company to create drones for personal flight – pretty frickin’ nifty. Get in on the sky-high fun by investing in their StartEngine campaign right here.* *Partner | | | | | | |  | Just For Fun | | | | | Written by Sean Craig and Vince DiMiceli. | | No longer want to receive these emails? Unsubscribe here. Copyright © 2022 The Daily Upside, LLC., All rights reserved. 1230 York Avenue, Box 154, New York, NY 10065 | | | | |
