We know that the future is digital, especially since the outbreak of Covid-19. While fears about the future prevail in traditional industries, business is going better than ever before for all those who are digital and adaptable. As more and more companies and consumers are realizing this, there is an unprecedented openness to new solutions. The best example is the card reader: just a year ago, it was only available in large chains or at the train station, but today you can pay with a card or smartphone at almost any bakery. One of the beneficiaries of this trend is
PayPal (NASDAQ: PYPL).
PayPal: Innovative long runner
Started years ago, as a payment service on the net, PayPal is now active worldwide and is growing notably in emerging economies. The company recently announced a partnership with Mercado in Mexico and Brazil to enable customers to make contactless payments.
PayPal is also represented in Southeast Asia and cooperates there with the Gojek platform, which has 170 million users. The company has shown that PayPal knows how to gain market share with innovative solutions after the introduction of Google Pay in Germany. At that time, PayPal and
Mastercard (NYSE: MA) together offered their customers a virtual credit card that links to the payment service. While many banks were still working on solutions, thousands of customers were paying with their PayPal account in retail stores,
a move that brought PayPal many additional sales.
On the stock exchange, the PayPal share went up by almost 80% on a one-year horizon. Despite the already high valuation, the market continues to believe in the growth story.
In the past, PayPal has repeatedly proven how agile it is when it comes to gaining new market shares. The boom in online trade continues to drive value. Another advantage of PayPal is the fact that many users already have an account - if the company adds an innovative function, passive customers can quickly become profit makers.
Northern Data: Computing power the raw material of the future
The server operator,
Northern Data (FSE: NB2), also has no reason to complain about a lack of customers. The company has specialized in offering computing power.
In times when decentralized solutions are in demand, the demand for computing power for video rendering, handling blockchain processes, and other computationally intensive activities, is increasing. Northern Data recently announced a new USD 200 million mega-project.
In collaboration with hardware companies, Gigabyte and AMD (NASDAQ: AMD), the company plans to develop a high-performance computing project with a combined computing power of 3.1 exaflops. For comparison: the fastest supercomputer currently available from Fujitsu has a computing power of 1.07 exaflops.
Northern Data's one-year performance shows that the company's business model is well received by the market,
with the share price rising by a full 340%. Interestingly, in the summer, the stock plunged after an anonymous writer on a social media platform accused the company of not having competitive prices. The waves have calmed down again, and profitable business is likely to have contributed to this. The trend toward digitization is unstoppable, and in this context, computing power is the raw material of the future.
Combating money laundering as a business model
The European Central Bank has ideas and plans for the next stage of the digitization of money.
Plans are to offer the euro in digital form, independently of banks, as a kind of digital cash, money flows would then take place without a bank. Crypto-currencies could serve as a model for these plans. These have been offering decentralized and anonymous solutions for a long time and are conquering the economy.
The Canadian company BIGG Digital Assets (CSE: BIGG) specializes in helping government agencies and companies track money flows and transactions involving digital currencies. It is becoming increasingly important for companies to identify dubious sources and prevent money laundering. BIGG wants to shed light on this issue and has been working with U.S. authorities for some time.
The market sees potential in BIGG
Besides the solutions to make the confusing crypto market more transparent, BIGG also offers trading software for crypto-currencies. With the increasing popularity of digital currencies, the demand for BIGG's solutions is also growing. The stock market sees a good deal of imagination in the business model and has raised the share price by a whopping 170% over the past twelve months.
With a market capitalization of only EUR 15.4 million, the share is still a niche player and is unlikely to be known to many investors, but opens an exciting perspective for speculative investors!
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