- Amazon and Hachette announced an end to their dispute: Hachette, the fourth largest publisher, won the ability to set the prices for its e-books, which was a major contention in the fight. Neither side gave details of the deal, but both pronounced themselves happy with the terms.
- Uber in India has tied up with local mobile payments provider Paytm to sort out its problem with the RBI. Uber has been sweating in India ever since local taxi services complained to the RBI that Uber was violating Indian foreign exchange regulations by routing credit card payments from customers to Netherlands-based Uber BV. Most of it was converted back to Indian currency when payments were routed to cab drivers’ accounts in India, after adjusting for commissions, promotions, etc. But the RBI agreed with local competitors like Meru that such transactions violated rules meant to prevent fraud or flight of capital from the country, and that foreign players could not be allowed to bypass a two-stage credit card authentication process required for digital payments in India. Uber was initially given until October 31 to fall in line with these requirements, but the deadline was extended to the end of November. Now Uber has added Paytm’s digital wallet to its payment options. India is the first country where it has made such an arrangement. Those who have already registered with Paytm can just link their accounts with Uber. Others will need to sign up with Paytm which involves regulatory steps like verification of a phone number and email address.
- The launch of WeChat's free VOIP calling app was marred by problems; Tencent apologized, attributing the crashes to excessive demand: The folks behind China’s new WeChat Phonebook were left apologizing on Thursday after its Wednesday launch was marred by severe technical problems. WeChat Phonebook has garnered a lot of interest in China as a way to make your phone smarter and cheaper. The app offers free VOIP calling (as long as you’re on wifi) and a variety of convenient services like automatic contact list backup, syncing WeChat avatar images with your contact list, easy group texting, etc. The 1.0 version of the app hit China’s Android and iOS app stores yesterday, and while it immediately shot to the top of the charts, it hasn’t actually been working for many users. Users have reported being unable to register, log in, recieve confirmation text messages, and make phone calls, among other problems. Since making phone calls is the app’s main purpose, that’s kind of a big deal. On Thursday, WeChat apologized via the app’s official Weibo account for the issues. The cause, it says, is that the app had too many users, leading to service instability.
- Alibaba plans to raise $8 billion in a U.S. bond sale, just two months after its IPO: Asia’s largest Internet company is working to issue its first-ever U.S. dollar-denominated notes to refinance its credit facilities, according to a statement today. The bonds have been rated A+, or the fifth highest investment-grade rating, by Standard & Poor’s and an equivalent A1 by Moody’s Investors Service. The debt issue would be on top of the $25 billion that it collected in a September initial stock offering, which was the biggest share sale on record. The Hangzhou, China-based e-commerce company, with a market capitalization of almost $300 billion, has $11 billion in loans and credit lines, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.“They’re pretty flush with capital. It’s another example of companies being opportunistic and trying to take advantage of low rates while they can.” The company will be able to maintain a conservative capital structure with a strong net cash position in the next few years, while it keeps its ratio of debt to cash flow below 1.5 times, according to Fitch. A $4 billion term loan that the company obtained last year pays 2.75 percentage points more than the London interbank offered rate. Libor, the rate at which banks say they can borrow from each other, is at about 0.23 percentage point.
