India's payments regulator is set to decide as early as Monday whether to curb the dominance of Walmart's PhonePe and Google in the nation's fast-growing mobile payments market, a move that could reshape how its billion-plus population moves money. The decision centers on UPI, or Unified Payments Interface, a network backed by more than 50 retail banks that has changed how Indians pay for everything from groceries to taxi rides. The platform processes over 13 billion transactions monthly, making it one of the world's largest digital payment networks. It's also, by far, the most popular way Indians transact online. The uncertainty has thrown a wrench into PhonePe's plans to go public. The startup, valued at $12 billion and backed by Walmart, would be one of India's most prominent technology IPOs. PhonePe's co-founder and chief executive, Sameer Nigam, said in August that the startup cannot go public 'if there is uncertainty on the regulatory side.' 'If you are buying a share at Rs 100 and you price it assuming we have 48-49% market share, then there is an uncertainty about whether it will come down to 30% and by when,' said Nigam (pictured above) at a fintech conference. 'We are requesting them [the regulator], if they can find another way to at least solve whatever their concerns are or tell us what the list of concerns is.'...

It has been a busy year in the private equity realm, with countless big-money acquisitions unfolding. The take-private space specifically has seen some sizable transactions, with private equity firms spearheading more than a dozen billion-dollar deals for public tech companies. London-headquartered Permira was a key protagonist, joining Blackstone to acquire European online classifieds group Adevinta for $13 billion, and in October, taking the popular website building platform Squarespace private in a deal eventually worth $7.2 billion. It's not just billion-dollar acquisitions that interest Permira, though. In addition to closing a fresh '16.7 billion buyout fund last year, the company has separate funds that take minority and majority stakes in earlier-stage, high-growth companies. Its first such investment was in Sweden's Klarna back in 2017, a fintech giant that's only now preparing to IPO eight years later. 'We're still invested in Klarna,' Permira's new co-managing partner and co-CEO Brian Ruder confirmed to TechCrunch. 'Generally speaking, with these minority growth strategies, you don't control the exit, and therefore we embrace being in these companies for a long time. But we also kind of have to be in these companies for a long time.'...

The year began with such promise. Back in January, I remember sitting in a presentation hall at a Las Vegas hotel during CES 2024 as Rabbit CEO Jesse Lyu unveiled the R1. This colorful and fun pocket-sized AI companion promised to do everything, from ordering an Uber to answering all your vexing questions. My story on the R1 had just gone live and within hours'I'm not trying to pat myself on the back here'there were a lot of eyeballs on it. The device was unlike anything that had come before, and showed us a novel vision of how these newfangled AI agents would fit into our lives. Rabbit's R1 became the breakout story of CES, and the company claims it sold 100,000 units by March. Soon after it came Apple's Vision Pro'a $3,499 mixed-reality headset that lets you escape the real world to watch movies, play games, and work in a cyber-office with multiple screens hovering around you. Apple had spent the year prior hyping it, and it was the first new product category for the company since the Apple Watch in 2015....

'We regret to inform you that as of December 27, 2024, the Bench platform will no longer be accessible,' the notice reads. 'We know this news is abrupt and may cause disruption, so we're committed to helping Bench customers navigate through the transition.' The company's entire website is currently offline except for the notice, leaving thousands of businesses in the lurch. Bench touted having more than 35,000 U.S. customers just hours before it was shut down, according to a snapshot saved by the Internet Archive. Bench, which had raised $113 million from high-profile backers such as Shopify and Bain Capital Ventures, developed a software platform to help customers store and manage their bookkeeping and tax reporting documents. The move is a shock to current and former customers. Justin Metros, the co-founder and CTO of Radiator, said years of his company's accounting and tax documents are still stored on the site, although he no longer uses the platform. He learned about the shutdown from TechCrunch....