The Wall Street Journal - 20.09.2019

© 2019 Dow Jones & Company. All Rights Reserved. *** THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.** Friday, September 20, 2019 |B1

TECHNOLOGY: GOOGLE MOBILE PAYMENTS TAKE OFF IN INDIA B4

BUSINESS&FINANCE

“It is certainly possible that

we will need to resume the or-

ganic growth of the balance

sheet earlier than we

thought,” he said. “We’ll be

looking at this carefully in

coming days and taking it up

at the next meeting.”

A decision to resume the

growth of the Fed’s balance

sheet wouldn’t mark the start

of a new bond-buying program

to stimulate economic growth

by lowering long-term interest

rates, like those the Fed began

in several rounds after the

2008 financial crisis.

Instead, the Fed would be-

gin buying small amounts of

Treasury securities on a regu-

lar basis to prevent the

amount of money in the bank-

ing system from declin-

ing. This marks a return to the

normal precrisis practice of al-

lowing the Fed’s balance sheet

to grow in line with the

broader economy. A decision

to do so also wouldn’t on its

own fix recent cash shortages

in money markets. The New

York Fed has moved to inject

up to $75 billion in those mar-

kets daily since Tuesday to

help pull down interest rates

and announced it will do so

again on Friday.

Fed officials didn’t decide

thematterthisweek,instead

preferring to study how the fi-

nancial system is digesting

their five-year effort to drain

reservoirs of cash to reverse

their crisis-era stimulus.

Analysts at Evercore ISI ex-

pect the Fed will need to buy

$8 billion to $14 billion in

Please turn to page B10

A sudden spike in overnight

lending rates this week is forc-

ing the Federal Reserve to

consider increasing its hold-

ings of Treasury securities for

the first time in five years.

Fed Chairman Jerome Pow-

ell said Wednesday the central

bank would be studying

whether to increase its hold-

ings, sometimes referred to as

its balance sheet, carefully be-

fore approving any action at

its Oct. 29-30 meeting.

BYNICKTIMIRAOS

Cox Automotive, bringing its

valuation to about $3.5 billion,

The Wall Street Journal previ-

ously reported.

Amazon has built up its de-

livery fleet in recent years and

has become a force in the

shipping industry, although it

still works with companies

such as United Parcel Service

Inc. FedEx Corp. recently

ended its two major shipping

contracts with Amazon.

Mr. Bezos said Thursday

that the commitments are part

of a new climate pledge that

promises Amazon will report

Please turn to page B2

Amazon.com Inc. plans to

buy 100,000 electric delivery

vehicles as it seeks to reduce

its carbon emissions in the

face of criticism of its environ-

mental impact.

The order was part of a

broader company pledge made

by Chief Executive Jeff Bezos

while speaking at the National

Press Club in Washington,

D.C., on Thursday. He said the

company plans to be carbon-

neutral by 2040 and plans to

meet the goals of the Paris cli-

mate agreement 10 years ear-

lier than the 2050 target.

The e-commerce giant is or-

dering the electric vehicles

from the suburban Detroit-

based startup Rivian Automo-

tive. Amazon said the vehicles

will start delivering packages

to customers in 2021. The

company plans to have 10,000

of the new electric vehicles on

the road as early as 2022, and

all 100,000 by 2030.

Amazon led a $700 million

financing round in the elec-

tric-vehicle startup earlier this

year. Rivian recently landed a

$350 million investment from

BYPATRICKTHOMAS

Amazon Goes Electric to Cut Emissions

The company ordered 100,000 delivery vehicles from startup Rivian with plans to start using them in 2021.

AMAZON ILLUSTRATION

PERSONAL

TECHNOLOGY

By Joanna Stern

Don’t Rush

To Update

iPhone’s

Software

Apple re-
leased its next
big iPhone
software up-
date, iOS 13,
asafree
download Thursday. It in-
cludes lots of welcome new
features, bound to improve
your daily iPhone experience.
But one thing isn’t quite
ready: The exterminator to kill
the bugs that come with it.
The new software, which I
have been testing, supports
the iPhone 6s and later
iPhones, including the little
iPhone SE.
While the iPhone’s inter-
face didn’t change drastically,
there are some significant de-
velopments, such as Dark
Mode, intended to make the
whole operating system eas-
ier on your eyes, along with
new photo and video editing
options, Memoji stickers and
new parental controls.
It also supports Sign in
with Apple, a new privacy-
minded way to log in to web-
sites and apps. This is the
first year where Apple has
broken out the iPad’s soft-
ware: The more dramatically
updated iPadOS will be re-
leased next Tuesday.
The software update ar-
rives just before the new
iPhones themselves hit the
Apple store and other retail-
ers in the U.S. and more than
30 other countries, accord-
ing to the company. In addi-
tion to the $699 iPhone 11, a
follow-up to last year’s
iPhone XR, there are the
$999-and-up 11 Pro and 11
Pro Max, which I reviewed
this week.
Throughout the past
week, using iOS 13 on the
new phones and an older XR,
I’ve encountered minor but
frequent bugs. The Messages
app will sometimes flicker
and the cursor can often get
stuck; the Camera app peri-
odically opens to a black
screen and gets sluggish;
apps—including those devel-
oped by Apple—have crashed
unexpectedly.
Apple has acknowledged
the bugs and says it will re-
lease iOS 13.1 next Tuesday.
This will include some addi-
tional features, such as the
previously announced Air-
Pod audio sharing, ETA-
sharing in Maps, and im-
provements to AirDrop, and
will also include bug fixes.
It’s always good not to
rush into an OS update. In
this case, unless you don’t
mind some bumps in the
road, I suggest waiting until
next week to do the down-
load.
If you have automatic
software updates turned on,
you can turn it off by going
to Settings > General > Soft-
ware update and turning off
Automatic Updates.
(Dow Jones & Co., pub-
lisher of The Wall Street
Journal, has a commercial
agreement to supply news
through Apple services.)

Gun maker Colt Defense LLC

said it would stop producing

semiautomatic rifles for civil-

ians, citing a glut in the market.

The company, whose history

dates back to the 1830s, is

known for its trademarked

AR-15 rifle, which is available to

civilians. AR-15 style rifles have

been used in many of the dead-

liest mass shootings, including

attacks at a country music con-

cert in Las Vegas in 2017, and a

high school in Parkland, Fla., in

2018.

“The market for modern

sporting rifles has experienced

significant excess manufactur-

ing capacity” in recent years,

Chief Executive Dennis Veilleux

said in a statement Thursday.

“Given this level of manufactur-

ing capacity, we believe there is

adequate supply for modern

sporting rifles for the foresee-

able future.”

The West Hartford, Conn.-

based company said it would

continue to manufacture its ri-

fles for the military and law-en-

forcement agencies. Colt said

those contracts are absorbing

all of the company’s current

manufacturing capacity for ri-

fles. Colt will continue to sup-

ply its revolvers and pistols to

consumers, the company said.

Messages left for Mr. Veil-

leux weren’t returned.

The move comes as the gun

industry has come under in-

creasing pressure in recent

months. Walmart Inc. and

Dick’s Sporting Goods Inc. have

stopped selling AR-15s and sim-

ilar rifles and put other restric-

tions on gun and ammunition

sales, such as raising the pur-

chase age to 21 in their stores.

Shares of gun makers Sturm,

Ruger & Co., Vista Outdoor Inc.

and American Outdoor Brands

Corp. each declined 1% or more

on Thursday. Over the past 12

months, Sturm Ruger shares

have fallen 37%, Vista Outdoor

63% and American Outdoor

62%.

A number of Democratic

lawmakers have called for ban-

ning AR-15 style rifles and

other semiautomatic rifles.

A bipartisan group of U.S.

senators recently met with

President Trump to discuss ex-

panding background checks

during gun sales, The Wall

Street Journal reported. How-

ever, in an interview with Fox

News Thursday, Mr. Trump said

negotiations are going very

slowly.

“No, we’re not moving on

anything. We’re going very

slowly in one way, because we

want to make sure it’s right,”

Please turn to page B2

BYALEXANDERGLADSTONE

Colt Ends

AR-15

Rifles for

Civilians

INSIDE

BUSINESS

Olive Garden,

LongHorn Steakhouse

boost results

at Darden B2

HEARD ON THE

STREET

An AT&T sale of

DirecTV wouldn’t be

easy or worthwhile B12

Banks’ Short-Term Funding Strains

Spur Fed to Weigh Portfolio Growth

Reserves of banks and other

depository institutions

0

1

2

$3 trillion

2009 ’19

Required

Excess

Sources: Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis (reserves, assets); Refinitiv (cost of borrowing)

WhyashortageofbankreservesisroilingakeyinterestrateB10

Reserves

Central-bankmoneyusedbybanks,

governmentsandsomeinstitutions

Private money

Createdbyordinarybanks,

usedbyordinarypeople

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Payee’sbank

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Bank transfers

Government transactions

Government-bond sales

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Federal Reserve’s total assets

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3

$4 trillion

2009

Sept. 3 19

’19

Cost of borrowing overnight

using repurchase agreements

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0

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S&P 3006.79À0.002% S&P FIN g0.40% S&P IT À0.21% DJ TRANS g0.68% WSJ $ IDX g0.10% LIBOR 3M 2.159 NIKKEI (Midday) 22142.42À0.44% See more at WSJ.com/Markets

were among the investors be-

hind the $250 million invest-

ment, the company said

Thursday. The $35 billion valu-

ation, up about 50% from an

early 2019 funding round, puts

Stripe above Silicon Valley

darlings Airbnb Inc. and Pal-

antir Technologies Inc.

Stripe’s technology allows

internet companies and online

marketplaces to accept credit

cards for their goods and ser-

vices and pay out money to the

people and firms that sell on

their platforms. It processes

hundreds of billions of dollars

in payments annually for mil-

lions of users, including con-

sumer apps and websites such

as Airbnb and The RealReal Inc.

Investors view payments

companies like Stripe as a way

to get exposure to a basket of

fast-growing public and pri-

vate tech companies, since

Stripe’s revenues are tied to

its customers’ growth. The

market for payments services

is also expanding as more

commerce moves toward digi-

tal storefronts.

“Stripe is more than ever a

bet on the internet as an eco-

nomic engine,” said Will Gay-

brick, Stripe’s chief product

officer. Founded in 2010,

Stripe is middle-aged by Sili-

con Valley standards, but Mr.

Gaybrick and Stripe president

John Collison said it had no

plans to go public. It has

raised around $1.2 billion over

the past nine years.

Still, a raft of younger start-

ups, such as Checkout.com, are

raising hundreds of millions of

dollars in venture capital to

challenge Stripe. Traditional

payments processors, mean-

while, are selling themselves to

larger financial institutions in a

bid to bulk up their digital-pay-

ments offerings.

Some of those companies

have had success picking off

business from Stripe’s custom-

ers. Dutch payments company

Adyen NV said that it started

processing some payments for

delivery company Postmates

Inc., a longtime Stripe user.

Lyft Inc., one of Stripe’s largest

customers, disclosed in its IPO

prospectus that it added an ad-

ditional payments processor

last year and may create its

own payment products in an

attempt to lower its costs.

Stripe Inc. climbed closer
to the top ranks of the high-
est-priced U.S. startups after a
new fundraising round valued
the financial-technology com-
pany at $35 billion.
Venture-capital firms Se-
quoia Capital, General Cata-
lyst and Andreessen Horowitz

BYPETERRUDEGEAIR

Stripe Gets $35 Billion Valuation

Fintech company

surpasses Airbnb and

Palantir after its latest

fundraising round

 Airbnb expects to go public

next year...................................... B5