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Upgrade CEO Renaud Laplanche speaks at a conference in Brooklyn, New York, in 2018.
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U.S. fintech start-up Upgrade is set to enter the increasingly crowded buy now, pay later market.

Upgrade, which was founded by former LendingClub boss Renaud Laplanche in 2016, is a digital banking start-up that offers people payment cards along with personal lines of credit.

Unlike a credit card, which lets consumers revolve their balance, Upgrade takes all the purchases someone makes in a month and creates an installment plan for paying down the debt. The payment plans are typically long-term, ranging anywhere from six to 36 months, and charge a fixed interest rate.

Now, Upgrade plans to launch a buy now, pay later-style product that lets users pay off their debt in four months, without accruing any interest. The company expects to debut the new service in the coming months, Laplanche told CNBC.

“We are working on a version of the Upgrade Card that’s better suited for smaller expenses,” Upgrade’s CEO said in an interview. “In that case, we don’t need to charge interest because it’s a smaller amount.”

Buy now, pay later, or BNPL, has boomed to become a $100 billion industry thanks in large part to the coronavirus pandemic which accelerated the growth of online shopping.

BNPL services let shoppers spread the cost of their purchases over three or four months. Rather than charging consumers, BNPL companies make their money by taking a small fee from merchants on each transaction.

Upgrade’s product will be different to those offered by firms like Klarna, Affirm and Afterpay. Instead of adding a checkout option on merchants’ websites, Upgrade will lump a user’s card purchases together and invoice them what they owe over a four-month period.

“What we like about embedding the product into a card is the broader acceptance,” Laplanche told CNBC. “BNPL often relies on partnerships with merchants.”

“It’s starting to get mainstream online,” he added. “But not so much in-store.”

Prior to starting Upgrade, Laplanche helped grow LendingClub into the world’s largest peer-to-peer lending platform, connecting investors with borrowers through its marketplace. However, he was ousted in 2016 amid irregularities with loan practices and Laplanche’s alleged lack of disclosure over a personal investment.

Last year, LendingClub shut down its peer-to-peer loans platform and signaled a push into banking with its acquisition of U.S. lender Radius.

Laplanche has come a long way since his exit from LendingClub, with Upgrade reaching a $3.3 billion valuation in August. The French-born entrepreneur said it would be a while yet before Upgrade goes public, but he wants to make sure the company is IPO-ready in the next 18 months.

“We clearly have the size,” he said. “We’re growing very, very fast. We’ve been profitable now for more than a year, which is rare for a company that is growing that fast.”

“We can hopefully be ready sometime in the next 18 months. Then we’ll make a decision at that time on what’s best for our shareholders and our team members.”

Fintechs jump into BNPL

Upgrade isn’t the only fintech jumping on the BNPL bandwagon. Fast, a start-up backed by payments giant Stripe, plans to offer BNPL as a payment method through its platform. The firm, which lets users purchase items in one click across a range of websites, is aiming to roll out the feature in the first quarter of 2022, CEO and co-founder Domm Holland told CNBC.

“It’s a payment method that we need to support because a certain amount of consumers want to use it a certain percentage of the time,” Holland said. “For me, it’s just a way of addressing a larger share of wallet for our merchants.”

In the U.K., digital bank Monzo has begun offering a BNPL-like product called Flex, which lets customers split payments into monthly installments, either interest-free for three months or at a 19% rate for six to 12 months. Rival firm Revolut is also planning to introduce a BNPL feature.

It highlights growing interest from companies big and small in the booming BNPL market. PayPal debuted its own version of the service, called Pay in 4, last year. Meanwhile, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey’s payments processor Square reached a deal to acquire Australia’s Afterpay for $29 billion, and Mastercard jumped into the space this week with an installments program for banks and fintechs.

Still, the BNPL sector has become the subject of much scrutiny lately. The British government is planning to impose tougher regulatory checks on the fast-growing industry amid concerns that services like Klarna are encouraging shoppers to spend more than they can afford. The U.K. Treasury department is expected to release a consultation on the reforms next month.

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Cryptocurrencies rise to start the week, bitcoin jumps above $102,000

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Cryptocurrencies rise to start the week, bitcoin jumps above 2,000

The photo illustration shows the Bitcoin cryptocurrency on November 12, 2024 in Shanghai, China.

Vcg | Visual China Group | Getty Images

The price of bitcoin leapt back above $100,000 to start the first full trading week of the new year.

The flagship cryptocurrency was last higher by about 4% at $102,234, according to Coin Metrics. The broader crypto market, as measured by the CoinDesk 20 index, gained more than 3%. Bitcoin and ether are coming off their best weeks since Dec. 6, while Solana had its best week since Nov. 22.

“Overall, we are in a bullish environment and traders appear to be risk-on as we head into the new year,” Mario Jurina, CEO at crypto swaps platform Jumper.Exchange. “With Trump’s election set to be certified today, and January often being a bullish month — six of the past 10 years saw positive price action — it’s no wonder markets are moving upward.”

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Bitcoin rises above $100,000 to start the week

The moves in crypto coincided with a rebound in tech stocks as Nvidia and shares of other chip names jumped. The tech-heavy Nasdaq was last higher by about 1.7%.

Crypto stocks Coinbase and MicroStrategy advanced nearly 6% and 5%, respectively. MicroStrategy Monday morning reported it has purchased another 1,070 bitcoins for about $101 million, bringing its total bitcoin holdings to 447,470.

Activity is coming back into the crypto market after a post-election rally that was driven by promises of a more supportive regulatory environment. The optimism sent prices rocketing for weeks before cooling at the end of the year. The price of bitcoin is expected to roughly double under the new administration this year, with some price predictions, like Fundstrat’s Tom Lee’s, being as high as $250,000.

Don’t miss these cryptocurrency insights from CNBC Pro:

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Amazon’s Ring announces smart smoke alarm as CES tech palooza kicks off

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Amazon's Ring announces smart smoke alarm as CES tech palooza kicks off

Ring security cameras are displayed on a shelf at a Target store on June 01, 2023 in Novato, California. 

Justin Sullivan | Getty Images

Amazon‘s Ring is partnering with fire safety product maker Kidde to launch a connected smoke alarm, the company announced Monday at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

The companies plan to launch Kidde smoke and carbon monoxide alarms that integrate Ring’s home security technology and can deliver alerts to the Ring mobile app. The Kidde Smart Smoke Alarm with Ring will cost $54.97, while the Kidde Smart Smoke and CO Alarm with Ring will cost $74.97. Both products will ship in April.

As part of the launch, Ring will also roll out a $5-per-month subscription service that gives users access to round-the-clock professional monitoring and emergency dispatchers.

Amazon acquired Ring in 2015 for a reported $1 billion. The home security company is primarily known for its video doorbell devices, which allow users to record activity in front of their homes, though it has expanded to include a portfolio of products ranging from camera-equipped floodlights to flying security camera drones.

Amazon doesn’t disclose unit sales for its Ring division, but Ring and rival home security company SimpliSafe comprise one-fifth of the U.S. market for professional monitoring systems, according to data from market research firm Parks Associates. Ring CEO Liz Hamren, who took the helm from founder Jamie Siminoff in March 2023, told Bloomberg last May that the company “recently” became profitable.

Users aren’t required to subscribe to Ring Home, the company’s program that enables video recording storage and other security features, in order to access the new smoke alarm service.

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Global chip stocks climb as Foxconn’s bumper results show a continuation of the AI boom

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Global chip stocks climb as Foxconn's bumper results show a continuation of the AI boom

Jakub Porzyck | Nurphoto | Getty Images

Global semiconductor stocks climbed on Monday after contract electronics giant Foxconn announced record fourth-quarter revenues, suggesting the artificial intelligence boom has far more room to run.

Hon Hai Precision Industry, which does business as Foxconn internationally, said in a Sunday statement that the company’s fourth-quarter revenue totaled 2.1 trillion New Taiwan dollars ($63.9 billion), growing 15% year-over-year.

Foxconn — which is a supplier to Apple — also set a record, posting the highest fourth-quarter revenue ever in company history, according to the statement.

The firm’s bumper revenue performance was driven by growth in its cloud and networking products — which includes AI servers like those designed by the likes of chipmaker Nvidia — and components and other products segments.

Computing products and smart consumer electronics — which numbers iPhone and other smartphones — saw “slight declines,” Foxconn said.

Shares of several semiconductor firms across Asia, Europe and the U.S. rose, as a result.

In Asia, TSMC hit a record high Monday and closed 1.9% higher in Taiwan.

The largest semiconductor manufacturer globally, TSMC produces chips for the likes of AMD and Nvidia.

Other Asian chip firms also logged share price gains — South Korea’s SK Hynix and Samsung rose nearly 10% and 4%, respectively.

In Europe, globally critical semiconductor equipment firm ASML saw its shares jump almost 6%, while fellow Dutch chip company ASMI’s stock rose almost 5%. Germany’s Infineon surged more than 6%.

The momentum in semi stocks could last as they have great earnings momentum, says Jim Cramer

Paris-listed shares of European contract chipmaker STMicroelectronics rose nearly 6%.

Stateside, Nvidia got a boost from the Foxconn numbers, climbing 2% in U.S. premarket trading.

Also boosting chip stocks on Monday was Microsoft’s announcement at the end of last week about plans to invest $80 billion in 2025 on data centers that can handle AI workloads.

Microsoft is one of several tech giants splurging on GPUs (graphics processing units) from Nvidia to train and run the most advanced AI models.

AMD, Nvidia’s closest rival, rose 3% in pre-market trading Monday, while fellow U.S. chip firms Qualcomm and Broadcom both climbed almost 2%.

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