Daily Tech Snippet: Thursday, April 6

• Facebook's Whatsapp Is Getting Into Digital Payments in India: Facebook Inc.’s WhatsApp is getting into digital payments in India, a first for a global messaging service that’s only just begun to explore ways to generate revenue. It’s chosen to kick off that maiden effort in India, a market dominated by Alibaba-backed digital payments leader Paytm but where WhatsApp’s 200 million users outnumber any other country. WhatsApp wants to “contribute more to India’s vision for digital commerce,” it said in a statement Wednesday. The company also advertised on its website for a “Digital Transactions Lead, India” to be based in Menlo Park, California, but with an ability to understand local financial standards such as India’s digital-ID program Aadhaar and its banking payments interface. India is seeing unprecedented activity in digital payments, particularly since the government banned high-value currency notes in November and took a series of steps to incentivize digital payments in a country where cash remains king. Among the market’s recent entrants is Sequoia Capital and Kleiner Perkins-backed Truecaller.

• Jeff Bezos Says He Is Selling $1 Billion a Year in Amazon Stock to Finance Race to Space: Standing against the backdrop of his New Shepard rocket booster and a full-scale mock capsule for carrying humans into space, Jeff Bezos revealed on Wednesday that he was selling about $1 billion in Amazon stock a year to finance his Blue Origin rocket company. Mr. Bezos, the billionaire founder of Amazon, showed off the reusable rocket booster and the mock-up of the capsule that will take people up for panoramic views back down at earth, during a symposium here. Mr. Bezos, who hopes to build Blue Origin into a commercial and tourist venture, also disclosed that it would cost about $2.5 billion to develop an even bigger rocket, New Glenn, capable of lifting satellites and, eventually, people into orbit. Like his fellow technology titan Elon Musk of SpaceX and Tesla, Mr. Bezos has identified reusable rocket parts as a key to lowering the price of admission to the field, which he said on Wednesday would lead to a “golden age of space exploration.” Last month, Mr. Bezos announced the first-paying customer, Eutelstat, a satellite company, for New Glenn, whose commercial flights would help offset costs. New Glenn is expected to fly by 2020, he said, but humans will not be passengers on the heavy-lift rocket until many years after that. Mr. Bezos has repeatedly expressed caution about setting timetables for the start of Blue Origin’s commercial or passenger trips, and he did not diverge from that on Wednesday. He would not say when New Shepard would undergo its next round of test flights, or set a specific date as a goal, merely mentioning next year for possible tourist trips.

• Australian regulator sues Apple alleging iPhone 'bricking': Australia's consumer watchdog has sued Apple Inc (AAPL.O) alleging it used a software update to disable iPhones which had cracked screens fixed by third parties. The U.S. technology giant "bricked" - or disabled with a software update - hundreds of smartphones and tablet devices, and then refused to unlock them on the grounds that customers had had the devices serviced by non-Apple repairers, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission said in a court filing. "Consumer guarantee rights under the Australian Consumer Law exist independently of any manufacturer's warranty and are not extinguished simply because a consumer has goods repaired by a third party," ACCC Chairman Rod Sims said in a statement. The regulator said that between September 2014 and February 2016, Apple customers who downloaded software updates then connected their devices to their computers received a message saying the device "could not be restored and the device had stopped functioning". Customers then asked Apple to fix their devices, only to be told by the company that "no Apple entity ... was required to, or would, provide a remedy" for free, the documents added.