Meta’s facing international growth challenges: Legal inquiries and fines from South Africa and Ireland are the latest hurdles the social media leader must contend with.

Meta is facing new legal challenges on a number of fronts in South Africa and Ireland, per TechCrunch and AP News. The big takeaway: It's not unusual for large companies to get hit with lawsuits and fines, and Meta is no exception—but it’s the kind of challenges the social giant is facing that are putting it in a tricky position. Read the specifics of Meta's fines around the world. 2.

Visa forged several deals that helped fuel payments growth, like partnering with Vodacom South Africa, which strengthened its presence in the increasingly cashless African market. Combined with previous partnerships with firms like M-PESA Africa and Safaricom, the Vodacom deal helps Visa reach 130 million customers in the region.

The alliance with bp allows Uber Eats to grow its convenience offering in key markets such as Australia, South Africa, the US, and Poland. By partnering with a supermarket chain, Gopuff can spend less on inventory and fulfillment centers, and focus on building the logistical network required to implement fast delivery. Plus: BJ’s is the first wholesale club to join DoorDash’s marketplace.

That was also true in Egypt, South Africa, and Turkey. Across most of Europe, though, social media occupied fewer than 2 hours per day. This is a small sample of the granular information the report provides.

The BNPL provider bought South Africa-based Payflex to establish a presence in the region, which remains largely untapped and where point-of-sale financing solutions have strong growth potential.

The focus of partnerships, mergers, and acquisitions will be on Nigeria, South Africa, and Kenya—sub-Saharan countries with the largest GDPs. The biggest beneficiaries will be micro-, small, and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs)—more than 40 million operate in Nigeria alone, per PwC. These heavily cash-dependent merchants lack the payments infrastructure required to connect to consumers.

Investment will be spread unevenly across the continent, with Nigeria, South Africa, Kenya, and Egypt likely to continue taking the lion’s share of funding in 2022. New technology will promote bank and fintech integration and aid commerce across the continent. By 2025, Africa will be home to 1.5 billion people, per The Economist, most of whom will have grown up with the internet.

Developing countries such as Nigeria, South Africa, Egypt, India, and Indonesia have been some of fastest-growing countries for Facebook in recent years, with annual increases ranging from 10% to above 27% in 2020. But this year, none of these countries will grow more than 5.7%.