Also, Ucommune acquires Woo Space, Grab launches Grab Financial, and Jewel Paymentech raises series A

Google to ban cryptocurrency, initial coin offering ads – [South China Morning Post]

Internet giant Google has announced its decision to block ads for cryptocurrencies, initial coin offerings, and other related content, according to this report by the South China Morning Post.

Cryptocurrencies coming under heat from regulators worldwide, with several financial institutions and governments banning purchases using digital currencies.

This new policy came in the wake of Google’s annual “bad ads” report, where the company reviews the number of advertisements they remove from the web. Last year, Google pulled 3.2 billion advertisement for malicious and deceptive content.

 

Ucommune acquires Woo Space – [Dealstreet Asia]

China’s co-working giant Ucommune has acquired its rival Woo Space, boosting Ucommune’s valuation to US$1.7 billion, according to this report by Dealstreet Asia.

Ucommune is said to be on track to becoming Asia’s largest co-working space provider following this acquisition, with a previous acquisition of New Space early this year landing the company with a unicorn status.

Ucommune serves over 4,000 enterprises in over 33 cities in China, Singapore, London, and New York.

 

Grab launches Grab Financial – [Press release]

Ride-hailing giant Grab announced the launch of Grab Financial, the fintech platform within the grab ecosystem. Along with this announcement is the announcement of two new partnerships to boost their financial services offering.

Partnering with Japan’s Credit Saison, Grab will provide loans and lending services to unbanked and underbanked consumers and micro businesses all over Southeast Asia. They have also announced a partnership with Chubb, a casualty insurance company, to offer insurance solutions for Grab’s driver-partners and customers.

The announcement was made during a keynote at the Money 20/20 Asia Conference in Singapore today.

 

Singapore’s Jewel Paymentech raises Series A+ funding round – [e27]

Jewel Paymentech develops intelligent risk solutions for the banking and electronics payment industry. The funding round was led by GMO Payment Gateway, with existing investor Tuas Capital Partner also participating.

Jewel Paymentech said that they will use the funding to support its marketing expansion plan.

The post Today’s top tech news, March 14: Google to ban cryptocurrency ads appeared first on e27.