Cheque this out

Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) recently debuted the AWS App Studio, which is a generative AI tool that allows developers to build apps using verbal or written prompts. That sounds pretty amazing. You simply tell Amazon what you want and the AI will write the code.

Naturally, the technology to both build and to host the applications will sit on top of the AWS cloud infrastructure which is secure and reliable.

Imagine all the time saved by not having to code every small detail of an application. I can only assume that developers will pay a lot of money for access to this wonder technology, assuming it works as well as they hope it does. Time will tell.

It still blows my mind that people in the US wrote 3.5 billion cheques in 2022, down from 19 billion in 1990. Chatting with a few folks who live there, it seems that paying via cheque is easier in many cases than loading their banking details because there are so many different banks around. I suppose it is similar to the Japanese economy being heavily reliant on the fax machine. What is even more foreign to us in South Africa, is that people are happy to post cheques.

Using a cheque is a slow, expensive and unsafe payment method. It is part of the reason that South Africa stopped accepting them as of 1 January 2021, although, many banks stopped issuing cheque books years earlier.

Target (NYSE:TGT), a large US retailer, stopped accepting cheques on Monday, as many shoppers had stopped using it as a payment method already. It seems part of the move is motivated by speeding up check-out times. Can you imagine being at the till, with a long queue behind you, and you need to write out all the details on a cheque. Much easier to tap your iPhone and move on.

Stripe's valuation has ticked up to $70 billion after Sequoia Capital offered to buy shares from investors looking to cash out. The offer values the shares at $27.51 each, targeting up to $861 million worth from limited partners in its funds from 2009 to 2012.

This move follows a recent valuation of $65 billion in February, up from $50 billion in March 2022 but still well below its $95 billion peak in 2021.

Stripe was founded back in 2010 by the Irish brothers John and Patrick Collison after they dropped out of MIT. The two brothers turned seven lines of code into a business that operates in 46 countries and processes payments in 135 currencies, with clients like Amazon, Salesforce (NYSE:CRM), and Lyft. Today, Stripe competes with PayPal (NASDAQ:PYPL) and Adyen in the payments processing space.