Business
Snapchat users share fury at upcoming fees for Memories storage
Liv McMahonTechnology reporter
Getty Images“Half of my life is on this app and now they expect us to pay for it.”
One-star reviews and a sense of injustice have dominated online discussion since the popular messaging app Snapchat became the latest tech firm to put a price tag on a service people previously enjoyed using for free.
The app’s parent company Snap announced in September it would start charging people if they have more than five gigabytes worth of previously shared images and videos saved as Memories.
For many, these retro posts act as a window to the past – leading some to accuse the firm of “corporate greed” in posts on social media and negative reviews on Google and Apple’s app stores.
Snap has compared its paid storage plans to those provided by Apple and Google for smartphones.
And as an alternative for those who don’t want to pay, users can download their Memories, which for some span tens of gigabytes of data, to their device.
The firm told the BBC only a small number of users would be affected by the changes.
It also acknowledged it was “never easy to transition from receiving a service for free to paying for it” – but suggested it would be “worth the cost” for users.
Many criticising the move online seem to disagree.
An online petition dubbed the fee a “memory tax”, with commenters calling it “dystopian” and “ridiculous” – while one person threatened never to use the app again.
Meanwhile, in a one-star review on the Google Play store, a person calling themselves Natacha Jonsson said it felt “very unethical”.
“If I know millennials right, most of us have years worth of memories on Snapchat,” they said.
“And most of us only kept the app mainly for that reason.
“5GB is absolutely nothing when you have years worth of memories… Bye Snap.”
And Guste Ven, a 20-year-old journalism student in London, shared on TikTok her plans to delete the app.
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“I decided that I needed to download all my memories as soon as I could,” she told BBC News.
“Almost all of my teenage years have been documented through my Snapchat memories, all of the photos in there are really important to me.
“It just doesn’t make sense to start charging people for something that has been free for so many years.”
Snapchat has not yet said how much storage plans would cost in the UK – only that they are part of a “gradual global rollout”.
But 23-year-old Amber Daley, who also lives in London, said in a post on TikTok she would be “distraught” by such charges.
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Amber told the BBC the app had become “a part of everyday life” since she started using it in 2014.
While she said she understood the platform needed to make money, Amber suggested the Memories feature means more to users than the company may have realised.
“I think it’s quite an unfair move to charge your customers who have been loyal and devoted,” she said.
“These aren’t just called Memories, these are our actual memories.”
‘Emotional artefacts’
Companies deciding to charge users for a service that was previously free is nothing new, and millions pay for services like iCloud and Google Drive to backup their photos and videos from their smartphone.
The reality of storing data in the cloud – which some in the tech industry like to refer to as simply “somebody else’s computer” – is it costs money.
“Hosting trillions of Memories on Snapchat isn’t a trivial amount,” social media consultant Matt Navarra told the BBC.
“Snapchat has to try to find a way to cover the cost of storage, bandwidth, back-ups, content delivery, encryption – all that stuff.”
Bloomberg via Getty ImagesBut Mr Navarra said introducing fees for a service that had previously been free, and users had been encouraged to use as such, may feel like a “bait and switch” for some.
“Moving the goalposts after people have built this huge digital archive doesn’t really sit right,” he said.
And for many, he added, “Memories aren’t just data dumps, they’re emotional artefacts”.
The feeling was shared by those leaving critical reviews, with one person calling their Snapchat photos and videos “the most precious thing to me”.
“[Memories] have every aspect of my life within them from celebrations of new family members’ births, mourning of passed loved ones, memories with friends/family, [and] my whole teenage years,” they wrote.
Dr Taylor Annabell, a postdoctoral researcher at Utrecht University in the Netherlands, said Snapchat’s move shows the implications of commercial platforms being used to store sentimental personal content.
“They benefit from this trust, interdependence, and presumption of never-ending access, which even incentivises some users to remain with the platform or continue to use it in order to scroll back through their archive,” she told the BBC.
“But these are not benevolent guardians of personal memory.”
Business
Payment revolution! Facial recognition, fingerprints to soon authenticate UPI payments, Aadhaar biometric data to be used: Report – The Times of India
Facial recognition and fingerprint authentication – these are the two new features that may be launched for payments made through the Unified Payments Interface (UPI), according to a Reuters report.The National Payments Corporation of India, UPI’s operator, intends to display this biometric capability at Mumbai’s Global Fintech Festival, the report said.Users in India can authenticate payments through UPI using facial recognition and fingerprints beginning October 8, according to three sources with direct knowledge of the development quoted by Reuters.The verification process will utilise biometric information stored within the Government of India’s Aadhaar identification system, sources were quoted as saying.Following recent Reserve Bank of India directives allowing different authentication approaches, this change will deviate from the existing protocol that mandates numeric PIN validation for payments.NPCI’s UPI witnessed a reduction in transaction volume during September, whilst the transaction value showed a slight increase.NPCI data revealed that UPI handled 19.63 billion transactions in September, down from 20.01 billion in August. However, the total transaction value increased slightly to Rs 24.90 lakh crore from Rs 24.85 lakh crore in the previous month.Daily transactions averaged 654 million, with a daily value averaging Rs 82,991 crore.In comparison to the previous year, UPI demonstrated significant growth, with transaction volume increasing by 31% and value rising by 34%.September also saw declining trends across other digital payment platforms. The Immediate Payment Service (IMPS) recorded 394 million transactions valued at Rs 5.97 lakh crore, decreasing from August’s 477 million transactions worth Rs 5.98 lakh crore. The Aadhaar Enabled Payment System (AePS) transactions decreased to 106 million from 128 million.
Business
Canara HSBC IPO: Insurance firm sets price band at Rs 100 to Rs 106; targets Rs 10,000 crore valuation – The Times of India
Canara HSBC Life Insurance Company Ltd on Tuesday announced the price band for its upcoming IPO, setting it at the range of Rs 100 to Rs 106 per share, targeting a valuation of about Rs 10,000 crore at the upper end.The insurer’s Rs 2,516-crore public offering will open for subscription on October 10 and close on October 14. Bidding for anchor investors is scheduled for a single day on October 9, according to a public announcement.Canara HSBC Life’s IPO will be a full offer for sale (OFS), with promoters and an investor putting up a total of 23.75 crore shares. Canara Bank is set to sell 13.77 crore shares, HSBC Insurance (Asia-Pacific) Holdings Ltd will sell 47.5 lakh shares, while Punjab National Bank plans to offload 9.5 crore shares.As this is an OFS, Canara HSBC Life will not receive any money from the IPO, instead the proceeds will go entirely to the selling shareholders, PTI reported.Investors can bid for a minimum of 140 shares and in multiples of 140 thereafter. Canara HSBC Life is expected to list on the stock market on October 17.Since its incorporation in 2007, the company has grown into a leading bank-backed private player in India’s life insurance sector. For this IPO, 50% of the shares are reserved for qualified institutional buyers (QIBs), 35% for retail investors, and the remaining 15% for non-institutional investors. Canara HSBC Life is a joint venture promoted by Canara Bank, which holds a 51% stake, and HSBC Group’s HSBC Insurance (Asia Pacific) Holdings, which owns 26%. Canara Robeco Asset Management is also launching its IPO, open for subscription from October 9 to 13. In December last year, Canara Bank had received approval from the Reserve Bank to divest its stake in its life insurance and mutual fund businesses.
Chinese car making giant BYD says the UK has become its biggest market outside China, after its sales there surged by 880% in September compared to a year earlier.
The company says it sold 11,271 cars in the UK last month, with the plug-in hybrid version of its Seal U sports utility vehicle (SUV) accounting for the majority of those sales.
It comes after figures from the car industry body the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) showed that sales of electric vehicles (EVs) jumped to a record high in September.
The UK is particularly attractive to firms like BYD as the country has not imposed tariffs on Chinese EVs, unlike other major markets such as the European Union and the US.
BYD, which offers cheaper models than many of its Western rivals, said its share of the UK market jumped to 3.6% in September.
The company will launch more new hybrid and electric cars in the months ahead, said the BYD’s UK manager Bono Ge. He added that the brand’s future in Britain looks “hugely exciting”, having just opened its 100th retail outlet.
UK EV sales hit a record high last month, with sales of pure battery electric vehicles rising to almost 73,000, according to the SMMT.
Sales of plug-in hybrid cars grew even faster, it said.
The Kia Sportage, Ford Puma and Nissan Qashqai were the best-selling cars in September. Chinese models – the Jaecoo 7 and BYD Seal U – were also in the top 10.
But despite the surge in overall EV sales in the UK, petrol and diesel vehicles still made up more than half of new car sales last month, according to the SMMT.
In October last year, the EU announced it would hit imports of Chinese EVs with levies of up to 45%.
The measure is aimed to protect European car makers from being undermined by what the EU believes are unfair Chinese-state subsidies.
Chinese car makers like BYD have been effectively shut out of the US by high tariffs, which were backed by both President Donald Trump and his predecessor Joe Biden.
Payment revolution! Facial recognition, fingerprints to soon authenticate UPI payments, Aadhaar biometric data to be used: Report – The Times of India
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