Today in the Connected Economy: Google Invests $1B in Airtel

Today in the connected economy, Google makes a $1 billion investment in India’s Bharti Airtel, while Brooks Brothers and Citi extend their consumer credit alliance. Also: how Apple had a quarter that defied supply chain woes.

Google Investing $1B in India’s Bharti Airtel

Google will invest up to $1 billion in Indian telecon Bharti Airtel as part of a long-term partnership designed to accelerate the country’s digital ecosystem.

The investment, will be divided between a $700 million equity investment in Airtel, along with up to $300 million provided for commercial services, including programs to make devices more affordable to consumers and offerings designed to accelerate digital inclusion in India.

Brooks Brothers Extends Credit Card Alliance with Citi

Brooks Brothers and Citi Retail Services are extending their consumer credit card alliance in an effort to revolutionize omnichannel payment options.

The agreement between the two brands supports their common goal to advance omnichannel engagement and develop customer customer relationships that span generations. Brooks Brothers is the oldest apparel company in America, while Citi Retail Services is among North America’s biggest retail credit providers.

E2open Teams With PayCargo to Drive Freight Payments

Supply chain management platform E2open and global logistics payment firm PayCargo have teamed up to provide faster freight payments for carriers, forwarders and shippers.

E2open’s embedded payment processes will employ PayCargo’s solution to move cargo from ports faster, thus eliminating the labor-intensive and time-wasting system of printing, mailing and issuing paper checks and doing wire transfers.

The companies say their combined capabilities will give clients efficient system for booking, confirming, tracking, settling and releasing cargo, thus moving merchandise seamlessly from origin to destination.

By Making ‘Dumb Cameras’ Smart, AI Is Improving Traffic Efficiency

Imagine a world where commercial fleets paid cities a toll to allow their vehicles to travel without stopping at traffic lights. It might sound like chaos, but with the help of 5G and vehicle-to-everything (V2X) tech, traffic lights could communicate with connected vehicles and give priority to the fleets’ vehicles, saving them time and money.

“Use cases such as emergency vehicle priority or freight vehicle priority, that technology already exists,” Georges Aoude, CEO and co-founder of Derq, told PYMNTS.

“What doesn’t exist yet is the ecosystem, because it’s not yet there at the scale that you can start charging those commercial companies a fee to use those systems. But I see this as one important use case,” Aoude said.

Apple Services, Wearables, 5G Devices Drive Record Quarter That Defied Supply Chain Woes

For most businesses, $124 billion in sales in a year — or even a decade — would be quite an accomplishment. It’s something Apple did in 90 days.

But there’s something else more impressive about the tech giant’s October to December sales run last year: it showed that the the pandemic era’s digital shift isn’t simply a fad that can be stopped by a pandemic, historic inflation or a shortage of computer chips.

In other words, what Apple did was about more than money. It shows that the progression of the connected economy is unstoppable, and people and businesses won’t go backward.

Paying the World Should Be As Easy as Sending a WhatsApp Message

What does it mean to “pay the world?” For Thunes Collections CEO Christophe Bourbier, it means a world where consumers around the globe can leverage technology to make payments as quick and easy and sending an instant message.

“When we say pay the world, we would like any payment, not just payments in the U.S. or Europe or between the U.S. and Europe, [but] any payment to be as easy, quick and as inexpensive as [sending] a WhatsApp message,” Bourbier told PYMNTS in an interview.

But for consumers in emerging markets, those transfers can be challenging due to the number of regulations and unconnected platforms, which is why having payment system on par with WhatsApp is so important, Bourbier said.