dbsdisruptiondaily.com Open in urlscan Pro
67.227.153.249 Public Scan

Back to summary

URL:
https://dbsdisruptiondaily.com/
Submission: On February 14 via api (February 14th 2023, 10:32:11 am UTC) from SG — Scanned from SG

Form analysis
2 forms found in the DOM

POST https://dbsdisruptiondaily.com/quick-search-results/

<form data-sf-form-id="127158" data-is-rtl="0" data-maintain-state="" data-results-url="https://dbsdisruptiondaily.com/quick-search-results/" data-ajax-url="https://dbsdisruptiondaily.com/?sfid=127158&amp;sf_action=get_data&amp;sf_data=results"
  data-ajax-form-url="https://dbsdisruptiondaily.com/?sfid=127158&amp;sf_action=get_data&amp;sf_data=form" data-display-result-method="shortcode" data-use-history-api="1" data-template-loaded="0" data-lang-code="en" data-ajax="1"
  data-ajax-data-type="json" data-ajax-links-selector=".pagination a" data-ajax-target="#search-filter-results-127158" data-ajax-pagination-type="normal" data-update-ajax-url="1" data-only-results-ajax="1" data-scroll-to-pos="0" data-init-paged="1"
  data-auto-update="1" action="https://dbsdisruptiondaily.com/quick-search-results/" method="post" class="searchandfilter" id="search-filter-form-127158" autocomplete="off" data-instance-count="1">
  <ul>
    <li class="sf-field-search" data-sf-field-name="search" data-sf-field-type="search" data-sf-field-input-type=""> <label><input placeholder="Quick Search …" name="_sf_search[]" class="sf-input-text" type="text" value="" title=""></label> </li>
  </ul>
</form>

POST https://dbsdisruptiondaily.com/quick-search-results/

<form data-sf-form-id="127158" data-is-rtl="0" data-maintain-state="" data-results-url="https://dbsdisruptiondaily.com/quick-search-results/" data-ajax-url="https://dbsdisruptiondaily.com/?sfid=127158&amp;sf_action=get_data&amp;sf_data=results"
  data-ajax-form-url="https://dbsdisruptiondaily.com/?sfid=127158&amp;sf_action=get_data&amp;sf_data=form" data-display-result-method="shortcode" data-use-history-api="1" data-template-loaded="0" data-lang-code="en" data-ajax="1"
  data-ajax-data-type="json" data-ajax-links-selector=".pagination a" data-ajax-target="#search-filter-results-127158" data-ajax-pagination-type="normal" data-update-ajax-url="1" data-only-results-ajax="1" data-scroll-to-pos="0" data-init-paged="1"
  data-auto-update="1" action="https://dbsdisruptiondaily.com/quick-search-results/" method="post" class="searchandfilter" id="search-filter-form-127158" autocomplete="off" data-instance-count="1">
  <ul>
    <li class="sf-field-search" data-sf-field-name="search" data-sf-field-type="search" data-sf-field-input-type=""> <label><input placeholder="Quick Search …" name="_sf_search[]" class="sf-input-text" type="text" value="" title=""></label> </li>
  </ul>
</form>

Text Content

* Skip to main content
* Skip to header right navigation
* Skip to site footer

Daily Innovation Briefing

Daily Disruption

Menu
* Home
* Daily Reports
* Sign In
* Search
* *

* Home
* Daily Reports
* Sign In
* Search
* *

LATEST NEWS 14/02/2023

Chinese tech firms working on ChatGPT-style technologyNew

BAIDU: Baidu Inc would complete internal testing of a ChatGPT-style project
called “Ernie Bot” in March. ALIBABA: Alibaba Group is developing a
ChatGPT-style tool currently in internal testing. TENCENT: Tencent Holdings is
conducting research on the ChatGPT-tool technology and the firm will continue to
invest in AI research based on its current technical reserves in foundation
model, machine learning algorithms and natural language processing. JD.COM:
E-commerce company JD.Com plans to launch a product similar to ChatGPT that it
said will be called ChatJD and will be aimed at serving other businesse.
NETEASE: Gaming firm NetEase plans to deploy large language models technology to
serve its education business. 360 SECURITY TECHNOLOGY INC: 360 Security
Technology possessed language model technology but that it could not give a
clear indication on when it would launch any related products. KUAISHOU
TECHNOLOGY: Short video app Kuaishou Technology is conducting research on large
language models, which it will use to improve its products such as AI customer
service. NSPUR ELECTRONIC INFORMATION INDUSTRY: Inspur Electronic Information
Industry said on its investors relation website that it has long invested in
AI-Generated Content (AIGC) from arithmetic, algorithms to the application of
the technology. KUNLUN TECH: Beijing based-mobile games firm Kunlun Tech said it
planned to launch a Chinese version of ChatGPT this year whose code will be open
source.

Read Article

Save to Favourites
Green Link Digital Bank eyes Chinese market after strong start in S’poreNew

Green Link Digital Bank (GLDB), one of Singapore’s two wholesale digital banks,
is setting its sights on China’s vast micro, small and medium-sized enterprise
market even as it gains a foothold here. The bank, owned by Chinese developer
and state-owned enterprise Greenland Group and Hong Kong-listed supply chain
financing platform Linklogis, was up and running in October after a soft launch
in June. Customers include those with generic cash and loan requirements, and
firms engaged in trade between Singapore and China. They largely comprise
businesses in the commodity, trade and infrastructure sectors, government
suppliers, as well as high-tech companies and start-ups. Greenland holds a
majority stake in GLDB. The group uses a supply chain platform that serves as a
bridge to connect buyers and suppliers from around the world and within China.
The lender is currently supporting its expansion here by growing its workforce –
largely made up of local staff – by 50 per cent to 130 people this year, hiring
in areas such as risk management, compliance and business development. GLDB
lends to firms that might not have the credit history or collateral needed to
borrow funds from traditional banks. Its platform, which taps technologies such
as artificial intelligence and the blockchain, allows it to collect data about
these companies by tracking their role in supply chains. This gives it a more
accurate picture of the firms’ revenue, profit and other financial data.

Read Article

Save to Favourites

Grab Indonesia inks partnership with SRCIS for digital servicesNew

Continuing Grab’s long-term commitment in accelerating the digitalization for
local micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs), Grab Indonesia has inked a
partnership with PT SRC Indonesia Sembilan (SRCIS). Both parties said in a
statement last week that the collaboration enables various digital services from
Grab and OVO’s ecosystem to be integrated into AYO SRC application, a digital
platform developed by Sampoerna Retail Community (SRC). This MSMEs partnership
on digitalization was carried out through the availability of OVO QRIS at SRC
stores and GrabExpress delivery service in the AYO SRC application, was kicked
off with a memorandum of understanding (MOU) signed by both parties in Jakarta
on Jan 31. Contributing to more than 60 percent of Indonesia’s gross domestic
product (GDP), Grab and SRCIS recognize that MSMEs played a very significant
role for the country’s economy. However, only 19.5 million MSME were digitalized
or equal to around 30 percent from the total of 64 million MSMEs. As an
important part of Indonesian MSMEs, they said the local retail stores need to be
empowered, especially to remain competitive in the burgeoning digital era.

Read Article

Save to Favourites

Sequoia Capital Southeast Asia backs cross-border payments startup TazapayNew

Tazapay, the Singapore-based fintech, which enables cross-border payments in
more than 170 markets, has raised $16.9 million in Series A funding led by
Sequoia Capital Southeast Asia. Other participants included EscapeVelocity,
PayPal Alumni Fund and angel investor Gokul Rajaram. Existing investors
Foundamental, January Capital, RTP Global and Saison Capital also returned for
the round. Tazapay was created to solve those problems. Its API covers more than
170 markets for card payments, and 85 markets for local payments collection,
which means its customers can accept payments in different countries without
having to set up local entities. Shinghal said the service supports a wide range
of customers, including B2B operations, e-commerce platforms selling directly to
consumers and B2B2C. Some of the startup’s customers include B2B marketplace
IndiaMART, which claims more than 7.4 million sellers and 165 million buyers on
its platform; live-learning platform BrightCHAMPS; used trucks marketplace WTX;
travel platform Rezlive; and employee engagement SaaS platform Advantage Club.
It is also partnered with Standard Chartered, the British multinational bank, to
offer digital escrow services. The funding will be used to scale Tazapay’s
business in Asia and expand in regions like the Middle East and Europe. The
startup plans to apply for payment licenses and add more local payment methods
to serve its verticals, which include cross-border e-commerce, edtech, SaaS and
travel.

Read Article

Save to Favourites

Trust in Singapore banking industry increases for second straight yearNew

The annual Banking Trust Index for Singapore (BTIS) showed that trust in the
Singapore banking industry has increased for the second consecutive year. 4% out
of the over 3,500 Singaporean respondents have “high trust” in the banks whereas
4% of respondents indicated that they have “low trust” in the country’s banks.
The remaining respondents – 20% of them – either have moderate views or don’t
have a view on Singapore banks. Respondents surveyed said that their trust came
from the banks’ resilience as seen in their “strong business and financial
performance through the pandemic”. At the same time, respondents noted and
appreciated the efforts that the industry put in to help customers guard
themselves against scams. The banks’ handling of customer data were also noted
to be with “integrity”. Furthermore, there was a greater acknowledgement that
banks in Singapore have not been associated with scandals and wrongdoing. The
survey also found that the public is confident on the banking industry’s ability
to advance using technology and innovation to offer convenience and security to
its customers in the next three to five years. This is done via the “necessary
measures to curb re-occurrence of past errors” and raising customer awareness to
protect their bank accounts from fraud. Based on the survey’s findings, banks
could further strengthen public trust by being more forthcoming about their
business values and positive contribution to the wider community.

Read Article

Save to Favourites

HK plans first digital green bond offering, said to target US$102 million
proceedsNew

The Hong Kong government is preparing to sell its first digital green bonds as
early as this week, a move that one top official said will test the city’s
existing legal and regulatory framework amid a push into sustainable financing
and virtual assets. Proceeds from the proposed local-currency notes will be used
to finance or repay eligible projects under the city’s green bond framework,
Fitch Ratings said in a note on Sunday. A blockchain-underpinned technological
platform is involved in relation to the issuance of the securities. The
government hopes to raise HK$800 million (US$102 million) and has asked the Bank
of China, Credit Agricole, Goldman Sachs and HSBC to hold investor calls on
Monday. The interest earned on the tokenised notes will be recorded on a
blockchain platform provided by Goldman Sachs. Digital bonds are a relatively
new concept. Singaporean bank DBS was the first in Asia to automate bonds, while
the European Investment Bank is also among notable lenders to have offered them.
Chan had earlier indicated that the offering would be relatively small and that
the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) will provide guidance for future issuers
to scale up. The tokenised debt will be launched under the Government Green Bond
Programme, the biggest of its kind in Asia. Fitch Ratings assigned Hong Kong’s
proposed tokenised green bonds an F1+ rating. That indicates the strongest
capacity for timely payment of short-term financial commitments, and the lowest
default risk relative to others in the same country or denomination. Hong Kong’s
government sold US$5.75 billion of green bonds last month, denominated in US
dollars, euro and renminbi. The HKMA has recently announced several policies
aimed at boosting the city’s goal of becoming Asia’s digital assets capital,
including the introduction of a mandatory stablecoin licensing regime before
2024.

Read Article

Save to Favourites

14/02/2023

Walmart takes on Amazon by retooling external space to get BOPIS buyers in and
out more efficientlyNew

Evolving online search tools and a growing consumer shift toward faster pickup
options are raising the digital stakes between Amazon and Walmart. Whether it’s
curbside or in-store, the 2-day delivery model is clearly facing increased
pressure. For Walmart’s part, the path to putting products into customers’ hands
more quickly is clearly going to go through its US Supercenters. While that
physical location advantage is clear, compared to the digitally dominant and
door-step delivery advantage of Amazon Prime, maximizing and streamlining that
response will take a major effort and investment. Walmart has already begun the
rollout of its new store format that focus on helping customers find what they
need more quickly and also retools external space to get BOPIS buyers in and out
more efficiently.

Read Article

Save to Favourites

Neobank Current onboards ex-credit strategy lead at Fifth Third as Chief Risk
Officer ahead of credit product launchNew

Current has announced the addition of Siva Gowrishankar as the firm’s new Chief
Risk Officer. Gowrishankar joins after spending about two decades driving
success at a variety of financial services firms. The addition of Siva
Gowrishankar as Chief Risk Officer aligns with the company’s goal to launch a
credit product. Previously, Gowrishankar was Head of Credit Strategy and
Optimization at Fifth Third Bancorp for half a decade, as well as GreenSky,
Capital One, Barclays and SallieMae.

Read Article

Save to Favourites

FIS is to spin off Worldpay Merchant Services Business acquired in 2019New

FIS is reportedly planning to spin off Worldpay, the merchant services business
it acquired in 2019. The payments giant is apparently looking to undertake a
tax-free spinoff of its merchant operations, the bulk of which comes from
Worldpay, Reuters reported. FIS, based in Jacksonville, FL, could announce the
spinoff this week as the company reveals the outcome of a strategic review it
conducted last year under pressure from hedge funds D.E. Shaw and JANA Partners.

Read Article

Save to Favourites

Smart Money podcast tests ChatGPT to deliver money adviceNew

Machine-learning chatbots promise straight answers in conversational language.
The Nerds over at the Smart Money podcast have put ChatGPT to the test with some
interesting results. Should I use my tax refund to pay down debt, put it in
savings or invest it? “It depends on your financial goals and the specifics of
your situation,” ChatGPT said. That’s a prudent disclaimer. “If you have
high-interest debt, paying it down can be a good way to reduce the amount of
interest you pay over time, which can save you money in the long run.” ChatGPT’s
200-word response also mentioned: Building up emergency savings if you have low
or no debt. Splitting the tax refund between debt and an emergency fund.
Investing in a diversified portfolio if you have long-term goals.

Read Article

Save to Favourites

SOCi’s OpenAI integration enables instant intelligent responses to online
reviewsNew

Marketing platform SOCi, Inc., has announced the integration of OpenAI’s ChatGPT
natural language model into SOCi’s review response management tool to enable
instant intelligent responses to online reviews. The release is the first in a
line of “Genius” products to be released by SOCi that enable highly intelligent
and automated workflows across numerous major marketing channels like search,
social, reviews, ads, and more. SOCi’s latest release integrates with major
review sites, including Google, Facebook, and Yelp, and utilizes advanced
machine learning algorithms to provide fast and accurate responses to customer
reviews in real-time. The integration with ChatGPT enables the tool to promptly
respond to reviews in a way that is personalized, engaging, and highly relevant
to each customer, helping businesses to build better relationships with their
customers and increase customer satisfaction. SOCi’s review response management
tool is powerful, with all the workflow, approval, and analytics tools a
multi-location enterprise needs, yet is incredibly easy to use, with a
user-friendly interface and now best-in-class automation features.

Read Article

Save to Favourites

Google is working to bring Bard AI chat to ChromeOSNew

Google has begun working to bring Bard to ChromeOS. ChromeOS will ditch the
built-in search features of the launcher (which searches files, apps, and the
web) and replace it with a chat with Bard. Things are still very much in a
work-in-progress state, so it’s possible this design could change before launch.
Bard on Chromebooks will appear as its own separate page of the ChromeOS bubble
launcher — like how Google Assistant appears today — with a scrollable
conversation history and a search bar, presumably used to start a new
conversation. It will be interesting to see the places that Google chooses to
integrate Bard or any other conversational experience into its existing
products. In the case of ChromeOS, Bard seems to be directly replacing the
launcher’s Google Search integration, though there’s certainly a case to be made
for Bard being integrated with Assistant.

Read Article

Save to Favourites

INNOVATIONS BY TOPIC

* AI & Machine Economy
* APIs-Open Banking
* Authentication & Identity
* Channels & Supply Chains
* Cloud Computing

* Companies
* Cybersecurity
* Data Economy & Privacy
* Demographic Change
* Futurism

* Green Banking
* Mobility & Last Mile
* Neo-Banks & Challengers
* Payment Gateways & Card Services

* Reality
* Regulatory & Reg Tech
* Retooling Talent
* Robos & Wealth
* User Interface

AI & Machine Economy, Innovation Topics
Smart Money podcast tests ChatGPT to deliver money adviceNew
AI & Machine Economy, Innovation Topics / 13/02/2023

Read Article

Save to Favourites

Amex and Microsoft partner for AI that understands the company’s own T&E policy
AI & Machine Economy, Innovation Topics / 10/02/2023

The new system will implement an AI-powered decision engine that understands the
company’s own travel and expense (T&E) policy and how it applies to submitted
expenses. It will use that understanding along with other factors — like the
employee’s purchase and payment history — to categorize and assign a risk score
to individual transactions. To make this work, the employee will be prompted to
snap a photo of their receipt after paying with their Corporate Amex card. The
system will then apply one of three risk scores: red, yellow or green, based on
whether the expense is recommended for automatic approval or not, or if it needs
another look. This information is passed along to the company’s expense
management system with the receipt details attached to automatically generate
reports for managers and auditors to use in their own decision-making.

Read Article

Save to Favourites

Google’s Bard can generate a bullet-point list and preformatted questions to
elicit further information
AI & Machine Economy, Innovation Topics / 10/02/2023

Google showed a brief demonstration of how a user could use Bard to suggest
criteria to consider when trying to buy a new car, or places to visit for a
scenic road trip. The company also gave more detail about how it plans to
integrate generative AI into search results by focusing on what it calls “no one
right answer” queries, which the company refers to as NORA. In a demonstration,
the company showed how such a query might generate a bullet-point list, and
below it some preformatted questions to elicit further information. Another
feature Google announced will expand users’ ability to query the search engine
based on images and videos they are looking at on their phones if they use
Google’s Android operating system, allowing a user to identify, say, a local
landmark.

Read Article

Save to Favourites

Voice-controlled digital assistants are best served by merger of Siri and
ChatGPT type functionality
AI & Machine Economy, Innovation Topics / 10/02/2023

Apple’s voice assistant is very little help when it comes to broad, vague
questions. ChatGPT is much better — it gave useful analysis of the strengths of
Babe Ruth and Reggie Jackson, for example. And a good digital assistant needs to
be able to handle follow-up questions: “When is Avatar playing tonight?” and
then “How about tomorrow?” OpenAI’s creation understands questions in the
context of a conversation, while Siri doesn’t. A merger of Siri and ChatGPT
would be far closer to what people expect from a voice-controlled digital
assistant. Of course, even that would fall short of what a good human assistant
can do. But ChatGPT is tremendously closer to that goal than Siri on its own.

Read Article

Save to Favourites

APIs-Open Banking, Innovation Topics
Finzly Launches API giving developers access to FedNow service
APIs-Open Banking, Innovation Topics / 10/02/2023

Finzly, the banking and payment technology firm, which is a pilot participant in
the FedNow Service, said in a press release that it has launched an API
connection that enables developers to access the new U.S. instant payment rail.
“Finzly APIs and its direct connection to the FedNow service will accelerate the
adoption of instant payments in several use cases,” CEO Booshan Rengachari said.
“We are excited about being the world’s first player to offer access to FedNow
service via an API.” With Finzly’s API connection, developers can access the
sandbox environment connected to the pilot version of FedNow Service to build
and test payment experiences that transact on the service. This will enable them
to embed the FedNow Service in their platforms, apps or digital banking tools.

Read Article

Save to Favourites

Blobr offers API monetization product that handles usage, billing, updates
alerts and tracking usage over time
APIs-Open Banking, Innovation Topics / 10/02/2023

Blobr acts as a proxy to access your API. Whenever someone makes a call to a
Blobr-powered API, it will first reach Blobr’s servers and then be redirected to
your own servers. The startup’s customers can then create DNS rules to make the
transition to Blobr as transparent as possible. Once this is done, Blobr helps
you generate a branded developer portal with different tiers and price points.
Developers who want to use an API can then explore the documentation, select the
product that they want, enter their payment information and start implementing
the API. Blobr handles usage, billing, API updates alerts and more. The startup
also automatically generates invoices and can send consumption alerts to track
usage over time.

Read Article

Save to Favourites

Nordic bank SEB invests in Baas offerings as an avenue to tap into
non-traditional data
APIs-Open Banking, Innovation Topics / 09/02/2023

The first driver that SEB flags is that the way in which BaaS is being received
and pushed within the market, is tied to customer engagement. “We enable our
BaaS customers to create loyalty and engagement with their own customers through
the use of financial services.” SEB Embedded tries to do this by offering
products and services that allows the BaaS customer to strengthen and prolong
relationships with their clients, because keeping customers engaged on these
channels can increase the frequency with which the company can deliver its
services. Second, SEB notes that BaaS throws open the doors to a whole range of
data that wouldn’t otherwise be accessible within the typical financial services
relationship. New revenue streams is another highly attractive driver of BaaS
solutions, as companies now realise the huge advantage in being able to
capitalise on their customers’ needs for financial services, and provide as much
of this internally as possible.

Read Article

Save to Favourites

GoCardless launches white-label product enabling bank-to-bank instant one-off
and recurring payments
APIs-Open Banking, Innovation Topics / 09/02/2023

GoCardless has launched a solution that enables third-party payment providers to
allow bank-to-bank payments. The new GoCardless Embed is a white-label product
that integrates the firm’s global bank payment network into payment providers’
platforms while enabling them to keep control of the customer experience. The
GoCardless integration is delivered via an API that provides access to bank
payment systems in the United Kingdom, Eurozone and United States, enables
end-to-end payment processing capabilities, and delivers account verification
and fraud prevention. In the U.K., the API also allows instant one-off and
recurring payments and other features powered by open banking.

Read Article

Save to Favourites

Authentication & Identity, Innovation Topics
Cisco turns to contextual risk-based authentication to make MFA and zero trust
practical
Authentication & Identity, Innovation Topics / 08/02/2023

New risk-based authentication approaches such as those released by Cisco Duo aim
to address the inconvenience of MFA by providing a login process tailored to
each individual user. Cisco Duo can adjust authentication requirements for users
in real time, based on contextual risk. The solution uses a machine learning
(ML)-based risk analysis engine to dynamically assess risk based on user
“signals” such as location, behavior, security posture of the device, Wi-Fi
network and the use of known attack patterns. The idea is to enable low-risk
users to log in with a simple authentication process that can meet the needs of
a zero-trust environment, while giving high-risk users additional steps in the
form of one-time passcodes or biometric login data to reduce the chance of
breaches.

Read Article

Save to Favourites

Trulioo unites business and personal identity verification in one platform
Authentication & Identity, Innovation Topics / 01/02/2023

Identify verification company Trulioo has launched a unified global platform for
personal and business verification which provides real-time access to company
filings from official registers and run checks on ultimate beneficial owners.
The service also tries to identify a company’s ownership structure by pulling
data from more than 400 vetted sources. Its personal identification service
conducts a similar matching process and allows applicants to provide documentary
evidence such as government-issued identity cards and photos. The service is
used for payment verification and onboarding of financial services customers in
identity-sensitive businesses such as cryptocurrency exchanges. The company also
introduced a no-code workflow builder and low-code integrations. Customers will
now be able to use a single platform for identity information matching, document
verification, utility data for proof of address, business verification,
watchlist screening and monitoring and anti-fraud capabilities. The low-code
tools can be used to integrate Trulioo’s service into existing workflows as well
as to build new ones.

Read Article

Save to Favourites

BeyondTrust Expands Privilege Management Capabilities with Support for Linux
Desktops and Azure Active Directory (AD)
Authentication & Identity, Innovation Topics / 24/01/2023

BeyondTrust Privilege Management for Unix and Linux enables admins to easily set
up policies that allow and deny actions and use policy-based controls to elevate
privileges as needed. In its latest release, the solution integrates natively
with sudo via Sudo Manager feature. This native integration gives customers
unprecedented granular control over Linux workstations through centrally managed
sudo policies while extending protection to their entire Linux estate.
BeyondTrust Active Directory Bridge now enables users to authenticate to an
Azure AD tenant in addition to Active Directory in a hybrid mode. With this
capability organizations can leverage a seamless single sign-on (SSO) experience
using their existing Active Directory infrastructure, reducing management
complexity and improving the organization’s identity security posture.
BeyondTrust AD Bridge enables customers to leverage their existing investment in
Active Directory to consistently manage and secure on-premises and cloud-based
Linux resources. Extending familiar and effective Active Directory controls and
policies to Linux enables organizations to unify their environments and drive
consistency to support governance and compliance.

Read Article

Save to Favourites

New bill aims to allow digital driver’s licenses in Washington state
Authentication & Identity, Innovation Topics / 12/01/2023

A new bill in this year’s legislative session aims to establish groundwork to
allow digital driver’s licenses in the state of Washington. The bill asks the
state’s Department of Licensing to come up with an implementation plan by the
end of 2023, including assessing technical infrastructure to “maximize
interoperability, utility, and privacy protection.” Arizona, Colorado, and
Maryland already allow their residents to use digital driver’s licenses, while
several other states have plans to do so. TSA this year began accepting digital
licenses at select airports.

Read Article

Save to Favourites

Channels, Innovation Topics
Walmart takes on Amazon by retooling external space to get BOPIS buyers in and
out more efficientlyNew
Channels, Innovation Topics / 13/02/2023

Read Article

Save to Favourites

Albertsons launches online pharmacy experience connected to activity trackers to
log vitals and set goalsNew
Channels, Innovation Topics / 13/02/2023

The Sincerely Health offers an online pharmacy experience, including tools for
managing prescriptions, scheduling vaccine appointments and connecting users
with general practitioners via telehealth services. Users also can link activity
trackers such as Apple Health, Fitbit and Google Fit as well as log their vitals
and medication regimen. Customers can then set small, achievable goals to
improve their health score, track their progress and get actionable insights and
rewards for achieving their objectives. The user experience begins with a brief
questionnaire designed to measure a customer’s health score across seven
dimensions of well-being.

Read Article

Save to Favourites

Uber Eats readies post-checkout ads to its slate of advertising offerings for
Super Bowl LVII launchNew
Channels, Innovation Topics / 13/02/2023

Uber is expanding its slate of advertising offerings with the addition of
post-checkout ads within its Uber Eats app, according to information shared with
Marketing Dive. The feature is set to go live during Super Bowl LVII, which will
take place Sunday, Feb. 12. Brands such as Paramount+ will be able to reach
consumers as they check out during one of the busiest weekends of the year for
the delivery service.

Read Article

Save to Favourites

Walmart is pitching its own private-label products as less-expensive
alternatives to shoppersNew
Channels, Innovation Topics / 13/02/2023

Walmart Inc is warning major packaged goods makers that it can no longer stomach
their price hikes, pitching its own private-label products to shoppers as
less-expensive alternatives to suppliers’ name-brand goods. For the world’s
biggest retailer, any increase in prices — even by just a few cents — can have
negative effects, prompting some shoppers to look for bargains at dollar stores
or warehouse chains such Costco . Walmart, which touts its “Everyday Low Price”
policy, raised prices last year on milk, frozen meals and Tide detergent, to
name a few, as its suppliers battled soaring costs of everything from chemicals
to wheat and fuel.

Read Article

Save to Favourites

Cloud Computing, Innovation Topics
BBVA ports its investment banking platform to AWS
Cloud Computing, Innovation Topics / 07/02/2023

BBVA is moving its complex investment banking operations to Amazon Web Services.
The Spanish bank is tapping AWS’ High-Performance Computing to speed up number
crunching for complex financial markets calculations. HPC enables millions of
calculations to be performed at the same time, resulting in more accurate and
faster valuation processes for corporate and institutional clients. The
collaboration will equip traders, data scientists and analysts with the
elasticity needed to have the cloud technology resources fully adjusted to
real-time needs and demand at any given moment. This includes short periods of
time to perform valuations of complex operations or risk scenarios. BBVA says
the pay-per-use platform will significantly reduce service costs.

Read Article

Save to Favourites

Cloud infrastructure market share- Microsoft (23%) gains share from Amazon (33%)
and Google (11%)
Cloud Computing, Innovation Topics / 07/02/2023

Synergy Research found the cloud infrastructure market exceeded $61 billion for
the quarter with the 12 month trailing revenues of over $212 billion, a hefty
sum by any measure, even with the slowdown. While each of The Big Three saw
growth slow in Q4 2022 from the previous quarter, Microsoft still managed to
gain market share ground on Amazon. Microsoft increased its share from 23%, up
from 21% the prior quarter, while Amazon fell from 34% to 33% and Google
remained steady at 11%. The Big Three cloud providers accounted for 66% of
worldwide cloud revenue. That comes out to approximately $20 billion for Amazon,
$14 billion for Microsoft and $7 billion for Google. Per usual, this is looking
at IaaS, PaaS and hosted private cloud services. It doesn’t include SaaS, which
is measured separately.

Read Article

Save to Favourites

Red Hat brings enterprise Linux to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure with easy
migration
Cloud Computing, Innovation Topics / 01/02/2023

Red Hat, Inc., provider of open source solutions, and Oracle announced a
multi-stage alliance to offer customers a greater choice of operating systems to
run on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI). With this strategic collaboration,
certified configurations of OCI flexible virtual machines can now run Red Hat
Enterprise Linux, and customers can also migrate existing workloads already
running on Red Hat Enterprise Linux to Red Hat Enterprise Linux on OCI with
greater confidence. OCI flexible virtual machines can scale in increments as
small as a single CPU to optimize price-performance and minimize wasted
resources. Customers can also contact both Red Hat and Oracle support to help
resolve potential issues, with an expanded transparent, joint support agreement.

Read Article

Save to Favourites

Salad’s fully managed container service offers affordable, plug-and-play
alternative to serverless container products from hyperscale providers
Cloud Computing, Innovation Topics / 23/01/2023

Salad Technologies, a distributed cloud-computing startup, has launched Salad
Container Engine, a more affordable, plug-and-play alternative to serverless
container products from hyperscale providers. The fully managed container
orchestration platform is powered by tens of thousands of gaming PCs from around
the world. Developers using Salad Container Engine can securely deploy stateless
container workloads across a global cloud infrastructure network powered by
privately owned devices. By sustainably leveraging latent computing resources
and data-transfer bandwidth from consumer machines, Salad empowers everyday
people to compete directly with incumbent cloud services. The startup is now
leveraging its competitive price advantage to onboard customers building
CPU-intensive compute applications for use cases such as distributed data
analysis and AI inference. Salad will soon unveil deployment integrations for
privately hosted container images and expand its resources portfolio with
dedicated GPU support in order to answer a growing waitlist of customers running
generative AI workloads and other computationally intensive applications that
require 3-D acceleration by such hardware.

Read Article

Save to Favourites

COMPANIES

Apple, Companies and Organizations
Apple CarPlay to integrate Uber Driver app on the car’s dashboardNew
Apple, Companies and Organizations / 13/02/2023

The Uber Driver app (which is the one used by drivers working for the company)
will soon get integration with. Currently, Uber drivers need an iPhone or
Android app to view and accept rides, as well as check the map and see areas
with surge pricing. Of course, doing this on a phone is not exactly convenient
when you’re driving. That’s why Uber announced integration with Apple CarPlay
coming to its app for drivers. In an email sent to Uber partners, the company
confirmed that drivers will have access to these same features directly from
CarPlay. To do this, drivers will need to open the Uber Driver app on their
iPhone, connect their iPhone to their car via cable or wirelessly, and then
CarPlay will show the Uber app on the car’s dashboard.

Read Article

Save to Favourites

Second-hand device market looks set to bring even more first-time iPhone buyers
into Apple’s ecosystemNew
Apple, Companies and Organizations / 13/02/2023

iPhones account for around 82% of the second hand device market, according to
CCS Insights and hold value for longer even in that market. The analysts note
that a growing range of iPhone models are being made available at the company’s
refurb store across multiple nations. Though stocks are low, they note: “By
reaching for a larger piece of the second-hand market, the company looks set to
bring even more first-time iPhone buyers into its ecosystem who may not be able
to afford a brand-new device.” Of course, once it has someone hooked into its
ecosystem, the company has other hardware products, accessories, and services to
enhance the customer experience.

Read Article

Save to Favourites

Apple’s Pay Later could slow down the new customers sign up growth for Affirm
and Klarna
Apple, Companies and Organizations / 10/02/2023

Looking at the US market share, Apple’s iPhone has around 50 percent of the
smartphone market. If Apple Pay Later is already built into the smartphones of
half the potential market, you take notice. Apple users tend to spend more than
Android users as well, which means that not only are competitors missing out on
potential customers but potential customers that spend more. Even though Apple’s
offering may not draw customers away from Affirm, Klarna, or Afterpay, it will
probably slow down the rate at which new customers sign up. Pay Later being
built directly into the Wallet app as a payment method gives Apple an entrenched
position, meaning it won’t have the same struggles as other buy now, pay later
services.

Read Article

Save to Favourites

BIS leader says the current approach is not adequate to regulate Big Tech’s push
into financial services
Apple, Companies and Organizations / 09/02/2023

Agustín Carstens, BIS general manager, says: “As Big Techs continue to push into
financial services on the back of their data-driven business model, it is
increasingly evident that the current regulatory approach is not fully fit for
purpose to address related policy challenges. While Big Techs can initially
bring greater competition, he says, network effects allow them to quickly build
positions of dominance in specific market segments, for example by increasing
user switching costs or raising barriers to entry. As systemic entities, they
may also become ‘too big to fail’, raising fears for financial stability.

Read Article

Save to Favourites

Amazon, Companies and Organizations
Amazon is the latest threat to Facebook as ad targeting suffers; reports $38
billion and 19% year-over-year growthNew
Amazon, Companies and Organizations / 13/02/2023

Amazon’s increased advertising offerings for the millions of brands that sell on
the site coupled with Facebook’s diminished targeting capabilities that resulted
from Apple’s privacy changes have produced a significant realignment in the
digital ad market. Until a year ago, Amazon didn’t even disclose the size of its
advertising business, leaving analysts and investors to guess how much the
company was making in allowing sellers and brands to promote their wares on the
site and apps. Now, the company’s ad division is a $38 billion annual business,
and last week reported 19% year-over-year growth in the fourth quarter to $11.6
billion. Facebook parent Meta meanwhile reported a 4% annual decline in revenue
for the quarter to $32.2 billion, shrinking for a third consecutive period.

Read Article

Save to Favourites

With RxPass Amazon further expands its share of the consumer wallet and gets new
data on purchases
Amazon, Companies and Organizations / 07/02/2023

Amazon’s new RxPass prescription service further increases the downward pressure
on the cost of generic drugs, the Wall Street Journal reports. While the
response to RxPass was underwhelming, it was a “tricky, good move,” according to
Betsy Stanley, senior director at business strategy consultancy firm for
Pinkston Strategy. Amazon further expands its share of the consumer wallet and
gets new data on their purchases, Stanley said. It could also set up direct
competition with specialty brands like Hims and Ro by selling generic Viagra,
she said. “I think RxPass is more of a stepping stone into normalizing Amazon’s
brand into health care,” Stanley said. “Compared to previous efforts Amazon made
in health care, this is getting a reaction of ‘This just makes sense. This
doesn’t feel like a big deal’ … We’re all normalizing health care and Amazon.”

Read Article

Save to Favourites

Amazon pauses Fresh grocery expansion as it tinkers with format
Amazon, Companies and Organizations / 07/02/2023

Amazon is freezing its Amazon Fresh grocery expansion. Amazon has been
experimenting with the store format and expects to continue to work on it in the
future, but it decided over the past year it won’t open any more Fresh stores
until “we have that equation with differentiation and economic value that we
like, but we’re optimistic that we’re going to find that in 2023.” Amazon hasn’t
disclosed how many stores were closing or being delayed.

Read Article

Save to Favourites

Amazon’s advertising business grew 19%, unlike Google, Meta
Amazon, Companies and Organizations / 03/02/2023

Amazon’s online advertising business continues to grow fast, increasingly
challenging digital ad titans like Meta and Google. The advertising unit is
still a small fraction of the overall $149.2 billion it recorded in sales for
the fourth quarter. The unit brought in $11.6 billion in sales for the fourth
quarter, representing a 19% year-over-year increase. Amazon now holds 7.3% of
the overall online ad market, trailing Alphabet’s Google, and Meta-owned
Facebook and Instagram, which respectively have 28.8%, 11.4%, and 9.1%, of the
digital ad market.

Read Article

Save to Favourites

Companies and Organizations, Google
Google is working to bring Bard AI chat to ChromeOSNew
Companies and Organizations, Google / 13/02/2023

Read Article

Save to Favourites

AMEX and Capital One help to propel Google Pay’s focus on virtual cards
Companies and Organizations, Google / 10/02/2023

Google has added several security features as part of its recent payments
revamp, including one that’s designed to combine streamlined checkout with an
authentication method that isolates individual transactions from outside
parties. Google this week started making virtual cards available for American
Express’s consumer, business and corporate clients, joining Capital One
Financial among financial institutions that support Google’s virtual cards.

Read Article

Save to Favourites

Google debuts new AI powered ‘multisearch’ for queries that combine an image
with text
Companies and Organizations, Google / 09/02/2023

Google’s search engine is receiving a new AI-powered feature called multisearch.
According to the company, the feature provides the ability to create search
queries that combine an image with text. A user could, for example, create a
query that comprises a photo of a chair and the phrase “matching table.” In
response to such a query, Google could surface tables that are available for
purchase online and have a similar design as the chair in the photo. Google Maps
is also receiving a set of new AI features. Immersive View generates building
models using an AI technique known as neural radiance fields or NeRF. The
technique enables a neural network to create a 3D model of an object from a few
two-dimensional images. In the case of Immersive View, building models are
generated using a combination of Street View footage and aerial photos. Another
new addition to Google Maps is an indoor version of the service’s existing Live
View tool.

Read Article

Save to Favourites

Chrome could get option to require your fingerprint before filling in passwords
Companies and Organizations, Google / 08/02/2023

Desktop Chrome already supports biometric confirmation before auto-filling
payment information, and is now getting the option to require your fingerprint
to enter saved passwords. Chrome is “adding the option to use biometric
authentication (to verify it’s you) before filling your saved password” on
“supported computers.” This will take advantage of your existing fingerprint
unlock stored by Mac or Windows. Once rolled out, you’ll be prompted by a
“Protect passwords with your screen lock” prompt to set it up: “If you share
this device with others, you can use your screen lock to verify it’s you
whenever you use a saved password.”

Read Article

Save to Favourites

Essential Guidance, Facebook
Shopify Tax is intended to help its merchants better understand their sales tax
obligations
Essential Guidance, Facebook / 18/10/2022

Shopify announced a new product called Shopify Tax, intended to help its
merchants better understand their sales tax obligations in the US. The product
is built directly into Shopify’s platform and includes features that help
merchants track their upcoming tax obligations, categorize their products by tax
rate, and charge customers sales tax based on their precise location. The launch
of Shopify Tax comes as collecting sales tax has grown increasingly complex for
Shopify merchants — and for the company’s e-commerce rivals, like Amazon, which
didn’t collect sales tax on its third-party marketplace sales for years. That
strategy gave it an advantage when it came to setting low prices for goods. But
new laws for marketplaces have changed Amazon’s responsibilities regarding sales
tax.

Read Article

Save to Favourites

Innovation Topics, Instagram, Others
New Tiller is the only automated personal finance service built on Microsoft
Excel and Google Sheets
Innovation Topics, Instagram, Others / 01/06/2022

Tiller’s personal finance service now offers a full suite of tools for customers
to manage their financial lives with the power of Microsoft Excel. Tiller is the
only automated personal finance service built on Microsoft Excel and Google
Sheets, combining the ease of an app with the power of spreadsheets. Tiller
provides customers with a clear view of all their finances in one place,
flexible templates, a vibrant user community, US-based customer support, strict
privacy, and no ads. Tiller’s newly upgraded service connects 21,000 banks to
Excel and imports daily financial data with a click. Customers can easily track
their daily spending, account balances, budgets, and net worth in their Excel
workbooks without data entry or logging into multiple accounts. Working with
Microsoft, Tiller is offering Microsoft 365 customers a special 60-day trial of
the service. Additional personal finance features exclusive to Tiller include
prebuilt templates, daily account update email, user Community, and top-rated
customer support. This summer Tiller will release AutoCat, the first fully
customizable transaction auto-categorization engine for Excel. With full support
for Excel, customers can more easily manage their money, their way, with all
their accounts updated in one place, flexible reporting, customizable
categories, and uncompromising privacy.

Read Article

Save to Favourites

Cybersecurity, Innovation Topics
Sendmarc offers an SPF and DMARC standards based email protection from phishing
attacks and email impersonation
Cybersecurity, Innovation Topics / 10/02/2023

Companies have lost over $10 billion due to business email compromises globally.
Sendmarc helps its customers solve this problem by locking down their email
domains and monitoring for attempted abuse. The company’s tech is based on email
authentication methods, such as the Sender Policy Framework (SPF) and the
Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance (DMARC), global
email security standards that protect domains against spoofing and that are used
by companies such as Google, Microsoft, Meta, LinkedIn, and PayPal. Sendmarc
says its subscribers have access to these same tools that implement, monitor and
maintain these global email and domain security practices.

Read Article

Save to Favourites

ARMO applies ChatGPT to ensure Kubernetes clusters are secure and correctly
configured
Cybersecurity, Innovation Topics / 08/02/2023

ARMO, an open source security provider and creator of Kubernetes security tool
Kubescape, announced the release of a new ChatGPT integration within the ARMO
platform. The new integration enables security teams to build custom controls
with ARMO based on Open Policy Agent (OPA), which can be run to ensure
Kubernetes clusters and CI/CD pipelines are secure and correctly configured.
More broadly, the integration highlights that ChatGPT has the potential to be a
force multiplier for security teams, which they can use to deploy security
controls across the cloud within containerized environments. ARMO’s new
integration demonstrates that ChatGPT can also be applied to secure Kubernetes
deployments. In this particular use case, security teams can generate code and
controls in the uncommonly used Repo language by entering queries with natural
language.

Read Article

Save to Favourites

Cisco introduces business risk scoring solution to better protect hybrid work
and multi-cloud environments
Cybersecurity, Innovation Topics / 07/02/2023

Cisco customers can now access new risk-based capabilities across Cisco’s
security portfolio to better protect hybrid work and multi-cloud environments.
Finding the balance between usability and security is now easier than ever with
the general availability of Risk-Based Authentication – giving users the access
they need, secured by real-time contextual signals. A significant advancement in
its applications strategy, Cisco has announced the introduction of
industry-first Business Risk Observability, an enhancement of Cisco’s Full-Stack
Observability application security solution. Available through Cisco Secure
Application, which is integrated into Cisco AppDynamics, it provides a business
risk scoring solution which brings together Kenna Risk Meter score distribution
and Business Transactions from Cisco AppDynamics, and also integrates with
Panoptica for API security and Talos for threat intelligence.

Read Article

Save to Favourites

Hackers are exploiting two-year-old VMware flaw to launch large-scale ransomware
campaign
Cybersecurity, Innovation Topics / 07/02/2023

Reports emerged that VMware ESXi servers left vulnerable and unpatched against a
remotely exploitable bug from 2021 were compromised and scrambled by a
ransomware variant dubbed “ESXiArgs.” ESXi is VMware’s hypervisor, a technology
that allows organizations to host several virtualized computers running multiple
operating systems on a single physical server. Italian cybersecurity officials
warned that the ESXi flaw could be exploited by unauthenticated threat actors in
low-complexity attacks, which don’t rely on using employee passwords or secrets,
according to the Italian ANSA news agency. The ransomware campaign is already
causing “significant” damage due to the number of unpatched machines.

Read Article

Save to Favourites

Data Economy & Privacy, Innovation Topics
Banks face avalanche of data demands ahead of CRA, CFPB final rules
Data Economy & Privacy, Innovation Topics / 09/02/2023

The CRA Notice of Proposed Rulemaking issued by the FDIC., the OCC, and the
Federal Reserve Board suggests a particularly heavy lift. The proposed rule adds
another type of assessment area, based on mortgage and small business loan
activity rather than branch locations; new metrics by which to measure loan
distribution; and new tests related to retail lending, retail products and
services, community development financing and community development services.
The requirements necessitate that banks, depending on their size, collect and
report new categories of data or get further into the weeds on existing
categories. That may include information about multifamily loans, open-end home
mortgages (which let the borrower take out additional funds in the future) auto
loans, small business and small farm loans, digital and delivery systems such as
online banking, deposit data on the county level, community development services
and a deeper understanding of where their customers are located. The highest
burden is on banks with more than $10 billion of assets. “This will be
challenging for institutions because it’s not the kind of data they would store
in their existing systems in a lot of cases, or they are collecting it
differently than the agencies want it reported under CRA,” said Tracy Basinger,
senior advisor at Klaros Group. Banks should start analyzing how they might fare
against the new metrics based on available information, including how current
loan systems could be used for data collection, analysis, and reporting, and
whether additional systems or automation would be needed to maintain
compliance.

Read Article

Save to Favourites

Onehouse raises $25M as it targets data interoperability with new Onetable
offering
Data Economy & Privacy, Innovation Topics / 06/02/2023

Onehouse’s data lakehouse is a relatively new kind of offering that enterprises
can use to extract insights from their data more efficiently. It’s said to
combine the best features of data warehouses and data lakes within a single
platform. The company’s lakehouse service is a cloud-based offering that’s
designed for ease of use. Traditionally, setting up a lakehouse environment
takes months of implementation work and technical expertise, but Onehouse says
it can eliminate all that and get its platform up and running within minutes.
The platform is based on the open-source Apache Hudi offering, which was created
by Onehouse founder and Chief Executive Vinoth Chandar while he was working as a
data architect at Uber Technologies Inc. Uber uses Apache Hudi to process about
500 billion data points each day. Other users of Apache Hudi include Amazon.com
Inc., Walmart Inc. and General Electric Co.’s aviation business.

Read Article

Save to Favourites

Samooha launches with tech that lets companies securely share data
Data Economy & Privacy, Innovation Topics / 03/02/2023

Samooha, a startup developing a “cross-cloud” data collaboration platform lets
businesses securely share, collaborate on and gain insights from their and their
partners’ data, regardless of the underlying cloud and data stack. To the extent
Samooha’s differentiated, it leans heavily on the Snowflake ecosystem — which
isn’t exactly surprising given Snowflake’s involvement in the startup’s
fundraising. A native app on Snowflake, Samooha provides a no-code UI customers
can use to access and build clean room apps. Samooha intends to go after
verticals it believes might be especially underserved, like healthcare,
financial services, advertising, retail and entertainment. Media in particular
could prove to be lucrative; Gartner predicts that by 2023, 80% of advertisers
with media budgets of $1 billion or more will use data clean rooms.

Read Article

Save to Favourites

Audience IQ customer data platform helps auto dealers improve customer lifetime
value metrics
Data Economy & Privacy, Innovation Topics / 31/01/2023

Audience IQ is a full-scale customer data platform (CDP) to help auto dealer
groups improve their customers’ experience and increase marketing effectiveness
and advertising return on investment. The platform collects, cleans, manages and
analyzes first party customer data to provide a comprehensive view of auto
customers’ preferences, behaviors and interactions with a dealership. Dealers
can segment customers and send them relevant, personalized communications and
offers, building stronger customer relationships and driving loyalty and repeat
business. The platform tracks all marketing KPIs, lead conversions and in-store
visits and provides full end-to-end attribution for every dollar investment a
client makes in their marketing mix. This allows the Force Marketing team to
review performance and make optimization decisions quickly for dealerships to
further maximize both sales and service return on ad spend (ROAS).

Read Article

Save to Favourites

Demographic Change, Innovation Topics
Gen Zers know they’re stereotyped as ‘snowflakes’ but say they’re resilient,
having lived through the pandemic
Demographic Change, Innovation Topics / 23/01/2023

Generation Z members are well aware they are referred to as “snowflakes,” but
say that, by contrast, they are resilient, a report by US consulting firm Oliver
Wyman found. Gen Z disagrees with these stereotypes, according to the report.
Having lived through the 2008 financial crisis, a global pandemic, and the
opioid epidemic, among other crises, this generation considers itself to be
unsentimental, resilient, and practical, the report said. Gen Z is the most
resilient generation so far because of all the devastation that has happened in
their lives, per the Oliver Wyman report. As a result, they’ve become a
generation of activists who fight for what they believe in, it added. Although
Gen Zers feel the most stress after such adversities, they’re more proactive
than other generations about their health and will try out various methods to
improve their wellbeing, including social-media trends.

Read Article

Save to Favourites

StartOut and J.P. Morgan welcome new cohort of LGBTQ+ owned companies to growth
lab accelerator
Demographic Change, Innovation Topics / 19/01/2023

StartOut and J.P. Morgan welcomed a new cohort of ten high-performing companies
to the Growth Lab accelerator, a six-month program that helps LGBTQ+
entrepreneurs grow their businesses through networking, mentorship, and
education. Now in its sixth year and eleventh cohort, Growth Lab has helped 65
early-stage companies raise more than $763 million in funding and create more
than 3,650 new jobs across the United States. This incoming cohort of businesses
brings together innovators from across the U.S. and Australia, specializing in
fields ranging from healthcare and climate to fashion and education. J.P. Morgan
serves as the co-lead sponsor of Growth Lab, providing expert mentors and
educational materials to support participating companies. Additionally, J.P.
Morgan is making the newly launched Capital Connect, a digital platform that
directly connects founders and investors, available to eligible cohort members.

Read Article

Save to Favourites

30 million consumers born between 1990 and 2000, Zillennials bridge the gap
between millennials and Gen Z
Demographic Change, Innovation Topics / 17/01/2023

A cohort of the 30 million United States consumers born between 1990 and 2000,
zillennials bridge the gap between millennials and Generation Z. They are the
very first generation of consumers to have never known a world without the
internet, and using connected devices comes as naturally to them as breathing.
PYMNTS’ research reveals that this connection to the internet is only the
beginning of what makes zillennials unique.

Zillennials are among the most connected of any generation. They are nearly two
and a half times more engaged in the ConnectedEconomy™ than baby boomers and
seniors are, and they are 36% more engaged than Generation X.

Young adults have been living with their parents longer, and zillennials are no
exception. One-third of zillennials still live with their families to split or
reduce expenses, while 58% live with a romantic partner.

Zillennials are 6% less likely to live paycheck to paycheck than millennials and
bridge millennials. Zillennials may have more disposable income than their elder
siblings or peers because they have fewer expenses than either millennials or
bridge millennials.

Gig marketplaces are especially important to the zillennial work force. Fifty
percent of them reported finding work these platforms, as did 59% of Gen Z. Just
38% of consumers overall use them.

Read Article

Save to Favourites

Corecore TikTok’s newest trend may be a genuine Gen-Z art form
Demographic Change, Innovation Topics / 17/01/2023

At first glance, #corecore videos seem to be a meaningless collage of videos
that connect to a shared message. However, it is the idea of corecore and what
it can (or could) represent that has given rise to what some consider a genuine
form of art by Gen-Z. Corecore is an aesthetic trend on TikTok that derives its
name from an ironic use of the -core suffix. So through its name, corecore makes
itself sound like the antithesis of genre itself; its content can be anything
and its creators can use any type of media to convey a central premise. Corecore
is essentially an anti-trend that can be loosely defined as similar and
disparate visual and audio clips that are meant to evoke some form of emotion.
When done right, a creator can, in sequence, splice together clips to create a
compelling impression that hints at meaning, but may not be anything more than a
feeling. This is what makes corecore so interesting: one’s feelings that
couldn’t be expressed through words are instead presented through images. In a
corecore post, individually the snippets don’t make sense, but when connected
the video gives them a shared context, and therefore a certain power. The
hashtags for corecore sits at around 600 million views, making it an
increasingly popular trend on TikTok.

Read Article

Save to Favourites

Futurism, Innovation Topics
D-Wave Announces New Commercial Customer Engagements, Cross-Platform Product
Enhancements at Qubits (Aithority 01/18)
Futurism, Innovation Topics / 19/01/2023

D-Wave shared progress toward its next generation Advantage2 annealing quantum
computing system, which is expected to feature 7000+ qubits and 20-way
connectivity, and will be implemented in a new lower-noise fabrication stack,
all to enable customers to solve more complex problems with greater precision,
including:

Improvements in qubit coherence: A significant 4x reduction in noise was
demonstrated for qubits within prototype processors fabricated from a newly
developed lower noise fabrication process. This means higher coherence qubits
and is expected to lead to additional performance gains for the Advantage2
quantum system, beyond those already achieved and released in the Advantage2
experimental prototype that was made available in the Leap TM quantum cloud
service in June 2022

Launch of new problem visualizer: The OceanTM SDK and problem visualizer are now
updated to reflect the higher Advantage2 connectivity (20-way), highlighting
more compact embedding that enables larger, more complex problems and better
solutions

Read Article

Save to Favourites

IBM is on track to achieve quantum advantage by 2026 using error mitigation
Futurism, Innovation Topics / 08/12/2022

IBM currently looks at quantum error management through the lens of three
methods: error suppression, error mitigation, and error correction. Setting
aside error correction for the moment, let’s consider the other two approaches.
Error suppression is one of the earliest and most basic methods of handling
errors. It typically modifies a circuit, uses pulses of energy to keep a qubit
in its quantum state longer, or directs pulses at idle qubits to undo any
unwanted effects caused by neighboring qubits. These types of error suppression
are known as dynamic decoupling. Error mitigation is the method that IBM
believes will bridge the gap between today’s error-prone hardware and tomorrow’s
fault-tolerant quantum computers. Error mitigation’s interim purpose is to
enable early achievement of quantum advantage.

Read Article

Save to Favourites

Q-Ctrl and Classiq partner to help developers build faster and more efficient
quantum algorithms
Futurism, Innovation Topics / 28/11/2022

Q-Ctrl announced a partnership with quantum algorithm development software
startup Classiq to integrate Classiq’s Quantum Algorithm Design platform with
Q-Ctrl’s quantum control techniques designed to boost hardware performance. The
integration will provide a single interface where developers can use both
solutions to create algorithms and run them with high-performance
error-reduction techniques, simplifying the end-to-end process of getting useful
insights from quantum computers. The technologies developed by both companies
aim to reduce the need for users to possess deep quantum computing expertise,
allowing developers to focus on domain-specific applications that matter most to
them. Users will be able to develop in Classiq’s platform while incorporating
Q-Ctrl’s hardware-enhancing tools “under the hood.” Classiq’s Quantum Algorithm
Design platform can take high-level functional models and transform them into
quantum circuits, which will be automatically optimized by Q-Ctrl’s
infrastructure software.

Read Article

Save to Favourites

D-Wave focuses on annealing to address optimization and gate for quantum
computing
Futurism, Innovation Topics / 28/11/2022

D-Wave offers a cloud service called Leap through which users can access its
capabilities: quantum computers, hybrid solvers and software development tools.
D-Wave also offers professional services to help clients with things like
problem formulation or job submission, where expertise is not available
in-house. D-Wave’s core offering is also available via AWS Marketplace. In
addition, D-Wave has a more targeted offering on AWS Marketplace: feature
selection for machine learning. Finding a small set of strong classifiers from a
big set of weak classifiers is a very hard optimization problem, and one in
which D-Wave’s system does well. This is often used in fraud detection. Other
parts of the machine learning process pipeline are not addressed by D-Wave at
this point, because neither its quantum computer nor any of the gate model
systems are yet capable of beating GPUs. Overall, the quantum ecosystem is
defined by the annealing vs. gate models divide. There is a fundamental
technology divide in quantum computing, which CEO Alan Baratz explained is the
source of both D-Wave’s place in the market as well as the hype. “We’re the only
company in the world that does annealing to address optimization. Now we’re
doing gate as well. So, we’ll be the only company in the world that can address
the full market for quantum,” he said.

Read Article

Save to Favourites

Green Banking, Innovation Topics
JP Morgan just bought a massive forest as lumber prices rise on the back of a
potential rebound in the U.S. housing market
Green Banking, Innovation Topics / 02/02/2023

JPMorgan Chase had bought 250,000 acres more of timberland across three sites
in the Southeastern U.S. for $500 million. The woodlands will be managed by JP
Morgan’s Campbell Global, an investment manager with three decades of experience
in natural resource management. The bank’s investment will likely provide
returns to JPMorgan as lumber prices rise on the back of a potential rebound in
the U.S. housing market. But another reason lies in the value of keeping the
trees standing, rather than cutting them down. “The properties will be
continuously managed for both carbon capture and timber production to meet
growing demand for sustainable building products and other uses,” JPMorgan
wrote, as the bank and other institutional investors like it start piling into
the rapidly-growing market for carbon sequestration. The 250,000 acres of
forested land now managed by Campbell Global, for instance, includes around 120
million standing trees holding 18 million metric tons of stored carbon dioxide
equivalent, according to JPMorgan. By ensuring a portion of those trees remain
untouched and continue absorbing carbon for longer, investors are reaping more
tradable carbon offsets which, because they are in increasingly short supply,
can be very valuable. Long-lived real assets like standing trees can even
provide a more resilient hedge against inflation than other commodities.

Read Article

Save to Favourites

Fujitsu, Mizuho Bank partner to improve ESG data
Green Banking, Innovation Topics / 01/02/2023

The deal will combine Mizuho Bank’s customer networks and knowledge of ESG
solutions with Fujitsu’s cloud services for visualising CO2 emissions across the
entire supply chain. This will allow the two companies to calculate, visualise
and analyse greenhouse gas emissions to support customers in reducing their
carbon footprint. By making it possible to manage various ESG data, including
energy consumption, waste management, occupational health and safety and CSR
activities, companies will be able to meet regulatory requirements.

Read Article

Save to Favourites

More standardization in the ESG disclosure framework for banks is expected in
2023
Green Banking, Innovation Topics / 01/02/2023

Environmental, social and governance considerations are growing in importance at
banks and credit unions. Gary Levante, who heads the ESG effort at Berkshire
Bank, says banks should view embracing ESG as a way to gain a competitive edge.
Levante expects to see is more standardization in the ESG disclosure framework
for banks and also that the issue will become more politically divisive around
the country. He advocates for a couple of other ESG-related initiatives: More
focus on capital deployment to underserved communities and more work to promote
a low-carbon future. First and foremost, there needs to be standard disclosure
requirements for all financial institutions, all banks, regardless of whether
they are publicly traded or not. That is a critical enabler for all the other
work that needs to be on the ESG agenda for 2023. There needs to be an even
higher focus from banks on how they’re deploying that capital to truly lift up
and elevate historically marginalized groups, as well as neighborhoods that have
been often overlooked. Whether those are called a “low- and moderate-income
neighborhood” or an “opportunity zone,” that’s something that’s got to be on the
bank ESG agenda. And the third topic is banks can play such an important role
working with their customers and helping to build a more sustainable and
low-carbon future. And banks, with their capital, can really help their clients
usher in that era where we get closer to net zero, we get closer to stopping the
impacts of climate change.

Read Article

Save to Favourites

Fed to measure banks’ exposure to climate risk
Green Banking, Innovation Topics / 19/01/2023

The six largest US banks have been tasked by the Federal Reserve to analyse the
impact of trial scenarios for both physical and transition risks related to
climate change on real estate assets in their portfolios.The banks under
scrutiny are Bank of America, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan
Stanley, and Wells Fargo. The exercise – first signposted last year – will
gather qualitative and quantitative information over the course of the pilot,
says the central bank, including details on governance and risk management
practices, measurement methodologies, risk metrics, data challenges, and lessons
learned. The pilot exercise includes physical risk scenarios with different
levels of severity affecting residential and commercial real estate portfolios
in the Northeastern United States and directs each bank to consider the impact
of additional physical risk shocks for their real estate portfolios in another
region of the country. For transition risks, banks will consider the impact on
corporate loans and commercial real estate portfolios using a scenario based on
current policies and one based on reaching net zero greenhouse gas emissions by
2050.

Read Article

Save to Favourites

Innovation Topics, Mobility & Last Mile
Jack Henry touts FedNow launch
Innovation Topics, Mobility & Last Mile / 09/02/2023

Jack Henry & Associates expects to be the first payments processor to go live
with FedNow when the Federal Reserve’s real-time payments service debuts in
July. Jack Henry has been working with the Federal Reserve for more than two
years to prepare for the debut of the FedNow service, and somewhere between 25
and 30 financial institutions will be part of Jack Henry’s initial launch.

Read Article

Save to Favourites

New Oracle Banking Payments provides a single engine for real-time payment
processing
Innovation Topics, Mobility & Last Mile / 08/02/2023

Oracle Banking Accounts Cloud Service provides highly scalable demand deposit
account processing on Oracle Coherence Datagrid Infrastructure. Oracle Banking
Payments provides a single engine for real-time payment processing, including
cross-border, high-value, bulk, retail, and 24×7 payments. Oracle Banking
Enterprise Limits and Collateral Management enables banks to gain a holistic
view of their exposure by centralizing the limits definition process and
collateral management. Oracle Banking Origination offers streamlined processes
and automated decisioning that helps bankers deliver tailored onboarding and
originations experiences for retail and small business customers.

Read Article

Save to Favourites

FedNow says features will help banks ‘raise the bar’ on fraud management
Innovation Topics, Mobility & Last Mile / 02/02/2023

The Federal Reserve’s FedNow Service, is expected to catalyze broad access to
instant payments for consumers and businesses. When it launches later this year,
the 24/7 service will come equipped to support popular use cases such as
account-to-account (A2A) transfers and bill pay, in addition to features that
help mitigate fraud. One feature under consideration, for example, would enable
FIs to activate a control setting that rejects payments that exhibit unusual
frequency patterns or cumulative value over a period of time. This could address
fraudsters’ efforts to work around transaction limits by originating large
numbers of low-value payments in a short window. Later potential features could
provide the ability to fine-tune controls for different types of customers and
screen non-value messages, such as requests to send payments to potential bad
actors. Other updates under consideration would leverage the FedNow Service
network to monitor for aggregated concentrations of inbound and outbound
activity (a sign of potential mule activity) and use machine learning to score
transactions. The FedNow Service is also positioned to add new features on a
“fast-follow” basis right after launch, and then on a continuing basis as market
needs evolve.

Read Article

Save to Favourites

Yves Saint Laurent launches NFT rewards that include a gift voucher
Innovation Topics, Mobility & Last Mile / 25/01/2023

Yves Saint Laurent (YSL) Beauty announced its latest NFT campaign, “Black Opium:
The Night is Ours”. The campaign release involves a two-part NFT series. Chapter
one contains 2014 NFTs and will be provided alongside purchases of the Black
Opium fragrance, starting from January 30 in the UK, US, France and Australia.
While the initial NFTs are a reward that includes a gift voucher, it also
provides access to purchase a second tranche of NFTs, the Night Masters.
Proceeds will go towards the Abuse Is Not Love charity program.

Read Article

Save to Favourites

Innovation Topics, Neo-Banks & Challengers
PayPal prioritizes checkout with passwordless, one-click native in-app
experienceNew
Innovation Topics, Neo-Banks & Challengers / 13/02/2023

Even as PayPal remains mired in a global e-commerce sales trough, the company
this year aims to modernize its checkout technology by driving toward
passwordless, one-click native in-app experiences as well as deploying the next
generation of checkout using data and AI. To help support these initiatives,
PayPal will further pare costs — beyond the 7% workforce reduction the company
announced less than two weeks ago — with more incremental cuts to spending on
external vendors and real estate, with the goal of achieving total cost savings
of nearly $2 billion through 2023.

Read Article

Save to Favourites

Neobank Current onboards ex-credit strategy lead at Fifth Third as Chief Risk
Officer ahead of credit product launchNew
Innovation Topics, Neo-Banks & Challengers / 13/02/2023

Read Article

Save to Favourites

FIS to spin off Worldpay Merchant Services Business acquired in 2019New
Innovation Topics, Neo-Banks & Challengers / 13/02/2023

Read Article

Save to Favourites

Affirm and lending platforms lead fintech IPO Index 8% lower
Innovation Topics, Neo-Banks & Challengers / 10/02/2023

Affirm’s 17% loss spearheading the spate of decliners, and offering up a
microcosm of what’s been shaking up FinTechs amid earnings season. The lenders
and platforms led the FinTech IPO Index down in a week, which logged an 8% loss.
But for the group, overall, things are still in positive territory year to date,
with a 24.6% surge. Affirm’s growth rates are decelerating, leading the company
to slash staff and shutter some operations — notably its crypto initiative.
Consumers are pulling back, and as a result, these companies are finding all
manner of challenges to top-line growth. And in many cases, they’re being forced
to right-size operations.

Read Article

Save to Favourites

PAYMENT GATEWAYS & CARD SERVICES

Amex brings more transparency to credit card applications
AMEX, Companies and Organizations / 23/11/2022

American Express is piloting an application process that lets prospective
customers find out whether they’ve been approved for an Amex card without
hurting their credit score. Amex will roll out the new application process to
its co-brand partners and make it available for existing cardholders applying
for other Amex cards. The application involves a soft credit check; a hard
credit check is done only if customers accept the card after application
approval. Credit card applications often involve hard credit checks, which can
lower credit scores by as much as five points, per FICO—even if applicants end
up being rejected. Hard inquiries stay on credit reports for two years but the
effect they have on credit scores usually goes away after a year. The effects
that credit card applications can have on credit scores are less severe than
missed payments or maxed out credit cards. However, these temporary effects may
still hurt consumers’ ability to access things like auto loans or mortgages.

Read Article

Save to Favourites

Visa teams with fintech to improve international small-business payments
Companies and Organizations, Visa Checkout / 23/11/2022

Fintech Thunes working with Visa to expand into digital wallets in multiple
markets. The partnership covers both consumer transfers and small business
payments. Streamlining international connections between banks, consumers and
merchants has become a prominent focus for payment companies, particularly as
more small businesses seek international suppliers and customers.

Read Article

Save to Favourites

Visa direct transactions surge 36% as real time money movement gains ground
Companies and Organizations, Visa Checkout / 26/10/2022

Three years into the pandemic, and Visa’s Tap to Pay continues its steady march,
with real-time payments and faster payouts — through Visa Direct — also proving
popular on an increasingly complicated global stage. To that end, the payments
network showed that total payments volume surged by 10% in its fiscal fourth
quarter with credit outpacing debit. Supplemental materials released by the
company show that debit volume was up 5% in constant currency to $1.45 trillion;
that performance was far outpaced by credit volumes, which grew by 20% to $1.48
trillion. Drilling down into the particulars of U.S.-based spending, payments
volume was up 12% year over year, or 145% of 2019 volumes. Cross-border volumes,
on a constant basis, excluding intra-Europe volumes, were 49% higher. Total
cards in force grew by 9% to a bit more than 4 billion in the most recent
quarter. Debit cards grew by 10%, followed by credit card growth of 7%. Merchant
locations including locations from payment facilitators grew 11%, indicating an
expansion of network acceptance. But within those spending patterns lies
evidence of the continued digital shift — and a movement of the payments network
well beyond simply enabling that spend, but towards making it more secure (and
faster) too.

Read Article

Save to Favourites

Visa’s DPS embeds a customizable PCI-compliant fraud and risk management
solutions
Companies and Organizations, Visa Checkout / 24/10/2022

Helix by Q2, a cloud-native core purpose-built for embedded finance, announced
it has embedded its finance platform with Visa Debit Processing Service’s data
and fraud solutions. The multi-tenant architecture of the Helix solution,
combined with Visa fraud tools including Risk Services Manager (RSM), provides
customers with permissions-based, PCI-compliant fraud and risk management
solutions. This allows each Helix customer to customize its risk management
approach while saving hundreds of thousands of dollars in compliance expenses.
Visa risk tools enable each customer to create, test and execute custom fraud
rules across their entire portfolio or thoughtfully apply risk strategies in a
personalized approach to just a segment of their cardholders.

Read Article

Save to Favourites

PayPal accounts are breached in large-scale credential stuffing attack
Companies and Organizations, PayPal / 20/01/2023

According to a PayPal notice of security incident dated January 18, attackers
got unauthorized access to the accounts of thousands of users between December 6
and 8, 2022. The total number of accounts that were accessed by threat actors
using a credential stuffing attack is reported as being 34,942. PayPal itself
hasn’t been breached. but thousands of customer accounts have. While PayPal has
no evidence of unauthorized transactions being made, the attackers did, it says,
potentially have access to personal data, including “name, address, Social
Security number, individual tax identification number, and/or date of birth.”
PayPal is offering affected customers two years of free access to identity
monitoring services provided by Equifax.

Read Article

Save to Favourites

Mastercard Data shows inflation’s impact on holiday shopping- 11% of shoppers
looked for BNPL options.
Companies and Organizations, Mastercard / 03/01/2023

Inflation changed the way Americans did their holiday shopping this year
Mastercard’s latest Spending Pulse report shows. According to the report, the
7.6% year-over-year increase — which is not adjusted for inflation — was
recorded between Nov. 1 and Dec. 24, and measured in-store and online retail
sales across all forms of payment. The report also found that online sales
increased 10.6% versus last year, with eCommerce making up 21.6% of total sales
this year, up from 20.9% in 2021 and 20.6% in 2020 as consumers put greater
stock in convenience and discounts and turned to online shopping to get it.
Pressure was too much for some holiday shoppers, with half of the consumers we
surveyed saying they were cutting back on spending this year simply because they
don’t have the money. Another 56 million consumers were choosing not to shop at
all this year. But of those consumers who did shop this year, about half of them
said they planned to pay for their purchases using credit cards, loans, or BNPL
options. Extrapolate the data somewhat, and that means about 98 million U.S.
consumers planned to pay for at least one holiday purchase using one of those
options. As many as 23% of holiday shoppers — or 48 million consumers — intend
to use these methods to finance more than half of their holiday gift-giving. And
when it comes to factors that determine consumers’ choice of retailers, PYMNTS
research found that 60.4% of shoppers sought out discounts or sales, 48.3%
wanted free shipping, and 11.4% looked for BNPL options.

Read Article

Save to Favourites

PayPal is testing is a teen account for users of its Venmo P2P service
Companies and Organizations, PayPal / 29/11/2022

PayPal is counting on its digital app to boost business as it focuses more on
customer engagement and less on adding new customer accounts. To that end, one
new service the company is testing is a teen account for users of its Venmo
peer-to-peer payment tool. PayPal is also working with Apple to create a
tap-to-pay function with iPhones in its digital wallet. In addition, a new
PayPal rewards program offering users cash back is another way the company is
trying to enhance its wallet offering. When PayPal can convert customers to
using its mobile app they provide 50% more revenue to the company, on average
per user, because app users have 60% more transactions than non-app users.
PayPal expects that better engagement with its customers will mean lower churn.
That should also mean more users.

Read Article Save to Favourites

Using Venmo to pay at Amazon makes consumers miss out on card rewards
Companies and Organizations, PayPal / 23/11/2022

Paying for Amazon through Venmo isn’t necessarily a good idea. Here’s why: When
you pay with your Venmo balance or a checking account, you won’t earn rewards on
your purchase. You probably won’t earn rewards with your debit card, either — or
even if you do, it’ll be the same rewards as had you paid directly with Amazon.
You’re paying with either a checking account or debit card, and you want to add
a layer of encryption to your purchase. By using Venmo as a middleman, Amazon
won’t receive any of your account information such as your debit card or
checking account number.

Read Article

Save to Favourites

Innovation Topics, Reality
Mastercard enables seamless in-game redemption and gifting of loyalty pointsNew
Innovation Topics, Reality / 13/02/2023

Mastercard and Xsolla will work together to enable innovative card and
account-based solutions and services to improve digital experiences in payments
and beyond for gamers. To kickstart this game-changing partnership, for the
first time, Mastercard cardholders will be able to use Pay with Points to
seamlessly redeem their loyalty points for in-game purchases – this solution
will be integrated into Xsolla’s Pay Station product. Players will also have the
opportunity to gift in-game currency to friends and family. The companies are
partnering to solve challenges in the gaming industry and prioritize consumer
protections, including using Mastercard’s authentication and fraud detection
capabilities to give parents control before their child makes in-game purchases.

Read Article

Save to Favourites

Mastercard enables seamless in-game redemption and gifting of loyalty points
Innovation Topics, Reality / 10/02/2023

Read Article

Save to Favourites

Walmart, Gucci And Coke have created complete virtual destinations and the sales
are real
Innovation Topics, Reality / 09/02/2023

Coca-Cola developed its Zero Sugar Byte flavor in the metaverse and then
transformed the digital beverage into a limited-edition product, making it
consumable in both real and virtual lives. Walmart in 2021 purchased the virtual
fitting room Zeekit, and in 2022 rolled the technology out to the Walmart app
and Walmart.com, as “Be Your Own Model.” With it, users can dress upload images
of themselves to see how clothing items might look. The tool is expected to make
it easier for customers to hit that “buy” button. Gucci has created a complete
virtual destination, Gucci Town, on the gaming app Roblox. In addition to social
spaces, the town importantly features a Gucci store where gamers can purchase
digital Gucci goods, including outfits for their Roblox avatars.

Read Article

Save to Favourites

Roblox Metaverse from QSR Dave & Buster’s offers purchase of power drinks for
greater speed and in-game skill
Innovation Topics, Reality / 09/02/2023

The entertainment/restaurant chain Dave & Buster’s is opening “Dave & Buster’s
World” on the Roblox gaming platform. This metaverse environment enables
visitors to play a variety of multi-user games, as well as unlock hidden “secret
experiences.” Dave & Buster’s World includes virtual versions of all the
attractions from a brick-and-mortar Dave & Buster’s restaurant. Users can
purchase power drinks for greater speed, strength, and skill in arcade games,
while The Winner’s Circle, Dave & Buster’s prize shop, has been recreated in the
metaverse. Metaverse customers can also trade in their tickets for in-game
customizations like trails and descriptors or purchase premium add-ons that
enable them to personalize their experience through features such as outfits,
pets and accessories.

Read Article

Save to Favourites

Innovation Topics, Regulatory & RegTech
Facctum releases open access platform to combat financial crime
Innovation Topics, Regulatory & RegTech / 29/11/2022

Facctum, a RiskTech company, has launched an open-access search version of its
FacctView platform. This technology allows users to search business
relationships and determine areas of potential sanctions compliance risk.
FacctView was designed to deliver financial crime risk management tools as a
SaaS. It leverages high-speed Ab Initio parallel processing technology in
combination with a cloud-native product to help detect financial crime risks. Ab
Initio provides Facctum with clustering and matching capabilities based on 12
technology patents – an approach supported by over 40 matching algorithms. Ab
Initio provides transparent, detailed evidence to understand the cause of every
potential alert, making compliance decisions easy to explain. Facctum integrates
these Ab Initio capabilities into specialised screening solutions that are
capable of processing large data volumes in real time to cluster, search,
filter, and score potential risks. With open access, Facctum is making the
technology accessible to companies with sanctions risks or compliance
obligations. Open access FacctView provides an alternative that is simple to use
and delivers effective compliance outcomes.

Read Article

Save to Favourites

McAfee called on to offer fraud protection to Mastercard business card users
Innovation Topics, Regulatory & RegTech / 03/11/2022

McAfee and Mastercard have partnered to offer Mastercard personal and SMB
cardholders access to online protection solutions. McAfee Total Protection for
Mastercard 5 Devices gives 30-day free trial that includes protection for up to
5 devices and a complimentary one-year subscription to McAfee TechMate (which
optimizes device functionality) with a paid subscription at a first-year
discounted price of $29.50 (a 75% discount) for consumers. McAfee Total
Protection for Mastercard 10 Devices gives 30-day free trial that includes
protection for up to 10 devices for small and medium-sized businesses and a
complimentary subscription to McAfee TechMate with a paid subscription at a
first-year discounted price of $34.50 (a 75% discount) for small and medium
sized businesses.

Read Article

Save to Favourites

CISA urges organizations to implement phishing-resistant MFA
Innovation Topics, Regulatory & RegTech / 03/11/2022

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has published two
fact sheets designed to highlight threats against accounts and systems using
certain forms of multi-factor authentication (MFA). The first of the two
documents describe multiple methods threat actors have used to gain access to
MFA credentials, including phishing, push bombing (AKA, push fatigue),
exploitation of Signaling System No. 7 (SS7) protocol vulnerabilities and SIM
swap. To defend against these threats, CISA has recommended deploying
phishing-resistant MFA solutions based on FIDO/WebAuthn and public key
infrastructure (PKI). Regarding app-based authentication, CISA mentioned
one-time passwords (OTP), mobile push notifications with (or without) number
matching and token-based OTP.

Read Article

Save to Favourites

a16z backed Rewind creates a searchable recording of Zoom meetings
Innovation Topics, Regulatory & RegTech / 02/11/2022

Startup Rewind uses nifty tech to record how someone scrolls and chats through
their day. It creates a searchable recording of what happened when, who said
what during that Zoom meeting and every instance someone has ever brought up
expense reporting hacks. The startup “uses APIs to determine the specific app
that is in focus at any given time,” and then creates a timeline of that
behavior. It also uses an API to allow deep linking to websites, so people can
open in Chrome directly from search results. Users don’t need to integrate with
Gmail, Dropbox or Slack, but instead just can download and “rewind” to start
capturing the apps. Rewind claims that it compresses raw video recording data up
to 3,750x times without a loss of quality. The recordings are stored locally on
individuals’ Mac computers.

Read Article

Save to Favourites

Innovation Topics, Retooling Talent
Goldman Sachs adds ‘verbal dexterity’ training for Private Wealth Advisors
Innovation Topics, Retooling Talent / 14/01/2022
* Goldman has added a new layer of schooling for its up-and-coming private
wealth advisors that focuses on the softer arts of finance, like how to
communicate with business founders and other multimillionaires, as well as
estate planning. The program, which lies between the analyst and advisor
roles, is not available to everyone. Only about 25 to 40 analysts from the
private wealth division are picked for the two-year training course after
working for three years as analysts. Estate planning and client interactions
are core to the program.
* Analysts who are selected for the program are known as business development
professionals, or BDPs, until they graduate into full-fledged private bank
advisors. The work of the BDP is divided between typical private wealth
analyst duties, such as monitoring portfolio holdings and executing trades,
and helping a private wealth team service clients and bring in new ones.
These BDPs are already familiar with investment services, so learning about
non-investment topics, particularly estate planning, and interacting with
clients are core to the program. There are monthly mentorship calls, and each
trainee is assigned a mentor for one-on-one support. Each year, Goldman
selects four to five of their top-performing advisors to be “champions” and
mentor the BDPs through the entire two years.
* Bringing in active advisors helps keep the training up to date with current
practices. Experts from both inside and outside Goldman Sachs come in to lead
weeklong sessions on capital market fundamentals, family office services, and
other topics. Participants also undergo ‘verbal dexterity training.’ In
breakout sessions of five to 10 people, trainees are asked questions about
the week’s topic with the goal of answering in way that would be relatable to
non-finance professionals. The last step is regional training, including case
studies and mock clients. After the New York training, the BDPs are sent to
their assigned regions just after Labor Day for a four-week stint, where they
work on three case studies. The course culminates in a written exam with
questions formulated by the experts who led lessons, as well as a one-on-one
oral exam with the trainee’s mentor. After successful completion, they are
eligible for promotion to private wealth advisor. Though the case study
projects and quizzes are graded, this is not a pass-fail program. Trainees
are given opportunities to study specific topics again and retake the exams.

Read Article

Save to Favourites

“Virtual office” displays a combination of all the distributed offices and
employees “seated” for all to collaborate
Innovation Topics, Retooling Talent / 13/01/2022

Gereon Hammel, vice president for business development at Deutsche Telekom, says
companies with hybrid work environments can create the all-important culture and
connection necessary for a business’s success. Deutsche Telekom has taken the
opportunity to set up a virtual office that makes team members feel like they’re
working together, despite the distance. They’ve created a web-based application
which represents a combination of all the distributed offices. Agents log on in
the morning and take their seat in the virtual office. Everyone who’s logged on
can see other employees who are logged on, and easily start collaborating
through the app’s tools and features. There’s business value in creating these
connections, sharing knowledge, and building relationships. They looked into 3D
tools and 2D tools like Sococo, which enables the use cases they need in
customer service. They implemented four functionalities, including the ability
to see other employees’ availability. They also use a chat functionality with
prioritization and routing within teams. If an employee has a question for a
colleague, it will be routed through the chat to the next available agent.
One-to-one video or text chats are also available for simple coaching requests
and team meetings. Finally, they brought back the spontaneous interactions in
virtual form.

Read Article

Save to Favourites

Platform assembles all workforce data in one central location for better and
equitable compensation decisions
Innovation Topics, Retooling Talent / 12/01/2022

Assemble, an early-stage startup has created a system of engagement for
compensation decisions. “This is a system that assembles all that compensation
and workforce data in one central location that usually lives in disparate
systems, and then makes it not only accessible but actionable and easy to
understand for various stakeholders across the company,” co-founder Enrique
Esclusa said. Co-founder, Lisa Wallace said that companies typically don’t
consider equity in a direct way as they build an organization, then go back and
try to fix it, a process that requires consultants to pull the information from
various systems. Assemble is designed to build equity into the compensation
system from the start. “It’s not just about running a pay equity analysis in one
place, or providing one-off visibility to managers in another place. It’s about
truly having a layer of engagement across your organization that works from
multiple stakeholders that are touching compensation because there are so many
different stakeholders and so many different objectives, and it’s really easy to
go off the rails,” she said. Since compensation doesn’t live on its own inside
an organization, Assemble works in conjunction with HR and payroll software
tools like WorkDay, Gusto, ADP and Bamboo HR.

Read Article

Save to Favourites

Tech simplifies creating try before you buy demo creation to embed snippets into
websites, blogs and tweets
Innovation Topics, Retooling Talent / 12/01/2022

Arcade, an interactive demo company, which is now launched to the public, is
making it easier for companies to create demonstration videos, called “arcades,”
that walk people through how their tools work. Arcade remembers what you click
on so users can make a version of their demo and then embed snippets of the
product into websites, blogs and tweets so that people who haven’t used the
product before can see it before signing on for a trial. Historically, selling
involved hiding behind the demo, and once the company got the person’s
information, it was more of a “gotcha” moment. One of Arcade’s customers,
Clockwork, which works with financial professionals, often asks potential users
to connect their invoices to the product so users can see how Clockwork
operates, but that is a big ask. By utilizing Arcade, Clockwork is able to give
potential customers a taste of what their platform is like without uploading
that data. Carta is another customer that is deploying arcades across its social
media. The idea of getting on a Zoom or a call with a sales rep in order to try
out a vendor’s product feels disruptive to a users’ needs and flow. It should be
much easier to for users to simply see an instance of their data on a vendor’s
landing page. Arcade is empowering creators to develop magical experiences and
for them to feel proud of their work.

Read Article

Save to Favourites

Innovation Topics, Robos & Wealth
Lloyds trials personalised monthly limits on gambling spend
Innovation Topics, Robos & Wealth / 22/11/2022

Lloyds Bank is trialling a feature which enables customers to set a limit on how
much they can spend each month on gambling using their debit card. Available
within the Lloyds banking app, users will be able to set a monthly debit card
gambling limit of any amount to the nearest whole pound, when spending online,
in person or over the phone. Research carried out by Lloyds Bank found that 50%
of people would like banks to take further action to help prevent gambling harm,
with monthly gambling limits being one of the most supported features amongst
respondents. The addition of setting monthly limits, which gives customers more
control in budgeting how much they are spending on gambling, can be adjusted or
removed at any time and will automatically roll on each month, until the limit
is removed.

Read Article

Save to Favourites

Bento Engine utilizes CRM based alerts to provide advisors and their clients
with financial advice targeted to specific ages
Innovation Topics, Robos & Wealth / 22/11/2022

Fintech Bento Engine will debut its Children & Wealth program which consists of
educational, client-ready, age-based financial advice, developed with the
assistance of respected experts, designed to help caring parents introduce their
children to the important concepts of money and wealth. The Children & Wealth
program utilizes client relationship management (CRM)-based alerts to provide
advisors and their clients with financial advice targeted to specific ages
during a child’s formative years, from ages 4 to 18. This new program
complements Bento’s existing milestone-related financial guidance opportunities,
Life in Numbers and Life Events, which deliver relevant, timely and actionable
information based on life milestones and age markers. Bento’s solutions can help
advisors create an enhanced client experience, better outcomes through more
informed decision making, increased client satisfaction and loyalty, higher
referral rates and greater share of wallet.

Read Article

Save to Favourites

Squirro’s app directly delivers the latest allocation strategy information to
asset managers
Innovation Topics, Robos & Wealth / 15/11/2022

Squirro, the Augmented Intelligence solutions provider, has launched a new app –
Allocators Insights – that directly delivers the latest allocation strategy
information to users, such as asset, fund, wealth, portfolio, and investment
managers. The app is a game-changer, providing deep insight into CIO strategies
and macro trends and allowing investment professionals to stay informed in a
volatile market. Allocators Insights is a ready-to-use solution from Gartner
Magic Quadrant Visionary Squirro’s ‘Out of the Box’ range. It provides the
deeper insight into market trends and fluctuations that’s so essential when
making investment decisions, particularly Chief Investment Officer (CIO)
statements. The Allocators Insights app is based on the Squirro Insight Engine.
This improves access to information by connecting all data sources and applying
natural language processing and machine learning to deliver the right
information to users at the right time. Users choose the allocators they wish to
monitor, and the Allocators Insights App provides actionable insight based on
CIO strategy changes and macro trends across regions and asset classes. This
automatic tracking is presented via easy and intuitive dashboards, helping to
improve investment strategy and giving back hundreds of hours previously spent
on manual research.

Read Article

Save to Favourites

Bento Engine offers a “Life Events” data service to financial advisors on
milestones of customers
Innovation Topics, Robos & Wealth / 27/10/2022

Fintech Bento Engine has launched a new offering focused on Life Events. Life
Events arms financial advisors with the ability to get relevant, timely and
actionable guidance into the hands of clients and their prospects during
“Moments That Matter.” The need for this advice and the associated opportunity
for financial professionals is enormous. Every year, almost four million babies
are born in the United States, more than six million homes change hands
(resulting in 12 million buyers and sellers needing advice) and about three
million people move across state lines. This means that across these three Life
Events alone, there are around 20 million additional opportunities for advisors
to lead with guidance.

Read Article

Save to Favourites

Innovation Topics, User Interface
CES 2023: Sony unveils controller for disabled gamers
Innovation Topics, User Interface / 09/01/2023

Sony has teamed up with accessibility experts to announce a PlayStation 5
controller for disabled gamers. Project Leonardo is a “highly customisable kit”
of different buttons, triggers and sticks that lets players create a set-up that
suits their needs. It would work “out of the box” to help gamers play “more
easily, more comfortably and for longer periods”. Components can be removed and
switched around, with buttons able to receive input as if more than one button
had been pressed.

Read Article

Save to Favourites

FCA warns stock trading apps to review game-like designs
Innovation Topics, User Interface / 25/11/2022

The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has written to stock trading apps to warn
them about the use of gamification or game-like mechanics in their apps. In
particular, the FCA points to examples like falling confetti to celebrate a
stock trade, trader leaderboards, frequent push notifications with market news
and pre-filling the default amount fields for investing. It cautions that while
these mechanics might encourage more consumer engagement, the FCA also found
that they could mislead users or lead to poor outcomes and problem behaviours.
“Some product design features could be contributing to problematic, even
gambling-like, investor behaviour,” said Sarah Pritchard, executive director of
markets at the FCA. “We expect all firms that offer stock trading to consumers
to review and, where appropriate, make improvements to their products based on
these findings.” As well as its warning, the FCA published a new study based on
a survey of 3,000 users across four trading apps that used game-like mechanics,
and one traditional trading app with no gamification. The results showed that
all four of the ‘gamified’ apps had a higher percentage of customers investing
potentially beyond their risk appetite, with two of the apps having nearly 50%
of customers trading in this way.

Read Article

Save to Favourites

Microsoft introduces New Sign Language View, accessibility preferences pane For
Teams
Innovation Topics, User Interface / 18/11/2022

Microsoft announced a new feature for its popular Teams videoconferencing
software called Sign Language View. The addition is another step on the road to
creating a “best-in-class experience” for Deaf and hard-of-hearing people using
Teams. Sign Language View is meant to give prominence to interpreters and other
signers in one consistent location. When enabled, the feature automatically
streams the appropriate video(s) in the highest possible quality. Sign Language
View can be on persistently or used on a whim, depending upon one’s needs and
tolerances. Notably, Microsoft says the feature is personal to the user; Sign
Language View is invisible to the other participants of the call.

Read Article

Save to Favourites

Microsoft’s new Surface devices feature digital ink on the screen that feels
like writing with pen and paper
Innovation Topics, User Interface / 14/10/2022

Microsoft commences pre-orders for new Surface products, including the Surface
Pro 9 and the Surface Laptop 5. Surface Pro 9 features edge-to-edge 13”
PixelSense display, with up to 120Hz refresh rate. Underneath the display is an
HD camera, Omnisonic speakers, directional microphones, and Microsoft’s custom
G6 chip that takes inking to the next level with tactile signals. Combined with
the new Ink Focus in Microsoft OneNote, or the new GoodNotes app for Windows 11,
digital ink on the screen feels like writing with pen and paper. Surface Pro 9
offers a choice of processors. Surface Laptop 5 provides all-day battery life6
and now features Thunderbolt™ 4. Powered by the latest Intel® Evo™ platform,
Surface Laptop 5 is over 50% more powerful than its predecessor.

Read Article

Save to Favourites

ADDITIONAL READING

Afterpay produces 800 million hybrid data streaming events for the data analysis
team with Cloudera
Companies and Organizations, Other Topics / 08/02/2023

Harnessing the analytics capabilities of Cloudera Data Platform (CDP) Public
Cloud, Afterpay’s engineers are now able to produce up to 800 million hybrid
data streaming events and batch features for the data analysis team to perform
fraud and predictive analytics for more data-driven and accurate insights.
Afterpay further reinforced its fraud detection programme by adding Cloudera’s
advanced machine learning capabilities onto its data platform. The data analysis
team can now anticipate fraud activities by finding sequence patterns in valid
transactions and flagging irregular transactions as potentially fraudulent. This
resulted in a successful fraud rate reduction by 5%.

Read Article

Save to Favourites

Retailer Albertsons adds health and wellness platform accessible on its grocery
app and websites
Uncategorized / 07/02/2023

Albertsons has debuted Sincerely Health, a digital health and wellness platform
accessible on 16 of its grocers’ apps and websites, including Safeway, Vons,
Acme and Albertsons itself. The platform lets users link to activity trackers
like Fitbit or Apple Health and log their vital signs and medication schedules.
It also offers online pharmacy services, such as prescription management tools
and a telehealth portal to connect with general practitioners.

Read Article

Save to Favourites

Intuit’s AI enhancements of virtual expert platform streamlines expert-assisted
tax filing
Uncategorized / 03/02/2023

Fintech Intuit has introduced artificial intelligence (AI) enhancements for its
Virtual Expert Platform to drive highly-personalized experiences, connecting
consumers with experts and reducing tax filing time with its portfolio of
TurboTax Live products. Enhanced and optimized AI advancements include-
Sophisticated AI models that accelerate and optimize real-time matching and
routing of customers to the right expert at the right time, tailored to
customers’ specific needs and experts’ profiles, capacity, and past performance.
Intelligent digital assistance tools to more quickly and effectively deliver
personalized experiences, such as automating repetitive tasks to save time and
drive efficiencies throughout the tax filing process. Real-time information and
suggestions during customer conversations, on a voice call or on chat, based on
consented customer data, previous and current conversations, and in-product
activity.

Read Article

Save to Favourites

Unbanked and Mastercard to accelerate DeFi card issuance based on Litecoin
Innovation Topics, Other Topics / 31/01/2023

Unbanked, the leading provider of white-label crypto card issuance and program
management service for Web3 companies has partnered with Mastercard, to
accelerate DeFi card issuance in Europe. Through this initiative Unbanked and
Mastercard are committed to enabling the issuance of cryptocurrency powered card
programs focused on simplicity, security, and consumer protections. Unbanked has
worked with the Litecoin Foundation to offer the Litecoin Card to residents of
the United States for more than two years. With the Unbanked and Mastercard
partnership, the Litecoin Card program will be made available to residents in
the UK and Europe – reaching approximately 84% of Europe’s population. Litecoin
is one of the oldest and most used cryptocurrencies on a global scale, and was
specifically designed to provide fast, secure and low-cost payments by
leveraging the unique properties of blockchain technology.

Read Article

Save to Favourites

Apple, Companies and Organizations, Covid-19 Impact & Scenarios
Digital skins for payment cards on Google Pay and Apple Pay can help banks to
create a fun way for customers to connect
Apple, Companies and Organizations, Covid-19 Impact & Scenarios / 09/01/2023

Customization of the digital skins of payment cards can bring the following
benefits for the bank: It provides the possibility to create a relevant and fun
way to connect with the customers and to maintain a close relationship with
them; It is a powerful marketing tool that can help to demonstrate the
uniqueness and originality of the brand; It brings profits and improves mobile
payment adoption. The experience of Ukrainian banks (Privatbank, A-Bank, and
Monobank) demonstrated that after card customization, customers’ card payments
increased by 18%; It provides the opportunity to collaborate more with other
brands. The designs of digital cards can be presented in different consumer
segments, leading to higher relevancy, better loyalty, and wider engagement; It
improves the purchase path for the client, increasing customer acquisition and
transaction frequency; It increases the users’ involvement in the product – they
can not only customize the functionality but also change how the service looks,
which sounds very appealing.

Read Article

Save to Favourites

Read Article

Save to Favourites

“Virtual office” displays a combination of all the distributed offices and
employees “seated” for all to collaborate
Innovation Topics, Retooling Talent / 13/01/2022

Read Article

Save to Favourites

Platform assembles all workforce data in one central location for better and
equitable compensation decisions
Innovation Topics, Retooling Talent / 12/01/2022

Read Article

Save to Favourites

Tech simplifies creating try before you buy demo creation to embed snippets into
websites, blogs and tweets
Innovation Topics, Retooling Talent / 12/01/2022

Read Article

Save to Favourites

CES, Innovation Topics
Amazon’s ambient Alexa vision weaves together smart homes, TVs and cars; offers
fully branded design
CES, Innovation Topics / 10/01/2022

Amazon deluged CES 2022 with new Alexa upgrades and extensions applicable to
almost anywhere people might go. The company’s vision of Alexa as ambient AI
knits the disparate news of startup investment, smarter alarm systems, TVs in
cars, and other highlights. Stellantis will embed custom Alexa assistants in
millions of cars starting in 2024. The conversational AI platform supports
creating a voice assistant tailored to a particular brand but supported by the
same technology as Alexa. The developers can customize the new assistant’s wake
word, features, voice, and other components to match their brand. The STLA
SmartCockpit currently under development will embed Alexa’s AI in 14 major
vehicle brands like Dodge and Jeep. Alexa will also be adding new features to
cars through Fire TV. The updated version will be available in a handful of
Jeep, Ford, and Lincoln models. The revamped car version of Fire TV will allow
touch or voice controls and access to most of the streaming content available.
The update will also serve to integrate Alexa in the car to the home with
personalized settings syncing between the two and enabling someone to pause a
show at home and start watching it in the car.

Read Article

Save to Favourites

Nvidia is proposing a “connective tissue” for creating and managing virtual
worlds, like HTML in Web 1.0
CES, Innovation Topics / 07/01/2022

Nvidia’s Omniverse platform is now generally available as a free download for
individual Nvidia Studio users of the company’s GeForce RTX and Nvidia RTX GPUs.
Nvidia, has described the platform has providing the common “connective tissue”
for creating and managing virtual worlds in the same way that HTML did so for
content development years ago. This week’s move from beta to general
availability will put that theory to the test, although the platform already has
been downloaded by almost 100,000 users since the beta program went into effect
about a year ago. Nvidia also announced some new features coming to Omniverse,
including:

* Omniverse Nucleus Cloud, which Kerris described as a
“one-click-to-collaborate” feature allowing individual creators in different
locations to share and cooperate on designing, changing and updating large
Omniverse 3D scenes without requiring massive data set transfers–similar to
something like Google Docs, but for 3D scene design.
* New support for the Omniverse ecosystem from 3D marketplaces and digital
asset libraries, including TurboSquid by Shutterstock, CGTrader, Sketchfab
and Twinbru. The release of more Omniverse-ready assets will make 3D content
creation much easier, Kerris said.
* Omniverse Machinima for RTX users working on game designs. This feature
includes storyline development tools such as free characters, objects and
environments from game titles like Mechwarrior 5 and Shadow Warrior 3 to
speed the development of new games
* Omniverse Audio2Face, an application that uses AI to analyze audio samples
and apply a “blendshape” capability that matches facial animation to the
audio expressions. Kerri said this will be critical in the design of
meta-humans for metaverse use cases.

Read Article

Save to Favourites

Volvo Cars to launch a direct integration with the Google Home ecosystem and
voice controls with Assistant
CES, Innovation Topics / 06/01/2022

Google unveiled at CES a range of new ways to keep its Android devices
connected, and that includes cars. One exemplar of this phenomenon is Volvo
Cars, which will launch a direct integration with the Google Home ecosystem in
the coming months, both Volvo and Google announced on Wednesday. The integration
should allow car owners to turn their car on and off, control the temperature
and get car information like battery life by issuing voice commands to Google
Assistant-enabled home and mobile devices. Once customers pair their Volvo car
to their Google account, they also can talk directly to Google while in their
car. This feature will be available in the United States and in European
markets, like Sweden, Norway, Germany, Italy, France and Spain, with others soon
to follow, according to Google. In addition, because newer Volvo car models have
Google built-in, they will soon be able to serve as a platform on which to
download YouTube, thus enabling video streaming in cars, according to the
automaker. YouTube will be available via Qualcomm’s Snapdragon digital cockpit
infotainment system, which Volvo announced would be implemented into its
upcoming electric SUV.

Read Article

Save to Favourites

GM aims to sell personal autonomous vehicles by mid decade following a robo-taxi
launch
CES, Innovation Topics / 06/01/2022

General Motors will sell personal autonomous vehicles by “the middle of the
decade,” the company’s CEO and Chair Mary Barra said during her 2022 CES keynote
presentation Wednesday.

While the company expects its self-driving subsidiary Cruise to be the first to
launch a robotaxi service, Barra said the company is also pursuing personal AVs.
This is not the first time Barra has mentioned a goal of personal AVs. Barra
first disclosed during an earnings call last May that it was exploring the idea
of selling personal AVs by leveraging technology from its self-driving
subsidiary Cruise. Cruise, in which GM holds a controlling interest, is working
on shared, electric, autonomous vehicles that will operate in dense urban areas
and shuttle people and likely packages. The company testing its technology on
public roads in San Francisco and late last year started giving employees access
to hailing driverless (so without a human) rides. The service has yet to open to
the public. It’s unclear exactly what vehicles would be autonomous — or more
importantly how GM is defining autonomy — and if Cruise would still be involved
in the effort.

Read Article

Save to Favourites

Innovation Topics, IoT AV & the Shared Economy
USAA prioritizes telematics, IoT and ML-enabled insurance underwriting for its
digi roadmap
Innovation Topics, IoT AV & the Shared Economy / 18/06/2021

USAA has accelerated its digital roadmap as the pandemic served as an innovation
incubator, finding new ways to serve its members in a rapidly evolving world.
These new solutions will help keep USAA members safe and ultimately save them
money and time through technology and automation.

* Telematics: Following increased member demand for more personalized auto
insurance, USAA plans to acquire insurtech company Noblr, Inc. to offer
usage-based insurance to its members. Additionally, USAA’s behavior-based app
SafePilot will launch in the majority of states in 2021, enabling more
members to save up to 30% off their auto insurance policies through safe
driving. SafePilot provides members more control over their cost of insurance
by creating personalized pricing and more opportunity for savings.
Enrollments grew over 200% in 2020 and in May 2021, for the third consecutive
month, over half of new policyholders enrolled in SafePilot.
* HOVER: USAA recently began utilizing HOVER, an app that enables smartphones
to capture exterior measurements and derive 3D models of a home from a series
of images. The traditional inspection process can take hours for a trained
adjuster but with HOVER technology can be completed in minutes. For example,
aerial roof measurements can take up to four hours to receive; HOVER can
deliver roof measurement reports within 30 minutes. Eventually, this
technology will be placed directly in the hands of members for self-service
if desired.
* Connected Home: Water Loss Detection. USAA is working with Resideo to offer
member discounts to those who use the company’s Wi-Fi Water Leak Detector in
their home. These devices can be installed near appliances and if a leak is
detected, the user is alerted.
* Telematics Enabled Auto Claims: Crash Detection: USAA completed a pilot where
field adjusters were given augmented reality (AR)-enabled glasses that
enabled their managers to see what the adjusters were seeing and give
real-time feedback during physical inspections. The pilot eliminated 160
hours of travel time for four adjusters over the course of three months. USAA
is now entering a production-level test period with 250 pairs of AR-enabled
glasses distributed to adjusters.
* Machine Learning-Enabled Life Insurance Underwriting: USAA is now utilizing
machine learning to digitize paper medical records and build summaries for
applicable life insurance underwriting. This results in a significant
reduction in time; where manual summaries took up to five days, machine
learning has reduced to one day with improved accuracy. Additionally, USAA
continues to move forward on its blockchain subrogation solution alongside
State Farm and vehicle claims machine learning solution alongside Google
Cloud to improve the claims experience.

Read Article

Save to Favourites

Nuro’s street-legal bots to deliver packages for FedEx
Innovation Topics, IoT AV & the Shared Economy / 16/06/2021

FedEx and autonomous driving tech developer Nuro are launching a “long-term”
partnership that will use its small robotic vehicles that look a bit like
toasters on wheels to handle last-mile parcel deliveries. The program is an
expansion for Nuro into same-day parcel deliveries from groceries and food
orders. Initial testing began in Houston in April. Unlike competing self-driving
tech programs at Alphabet’s Waymo and GM-backed Cruise, Nuro focuses solely on
deliveries and logistics, rather than robotaxis. Its electric R2 vehicle,
designed to haul packages, groceries and food orders for companies including
Walmart, Kroger and CVS, is about half the size of a conventional car and
travels at relatively low speed. The FedEx program follows Nuro’s start of a
pizza delivery pilot with Domino’s, also in Houston. The Nuro program will test
multiple stops and appointment-based deliveries.

Read Article

Save to Favourites

Usage-Based Insurance (UBI)- 34% of auto insurance customers are willing to try;
16% are already using
Innovation Topics, IoT AV & the Shared Economy / 16/06/2021
* The auto insurance industry voluntarily returned more than $18 billion in
auto insurance premiums to customers in 2020 to address the sharp decline in
miles driven during the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite the magnitude of this
historic relief effort, overall customer satisfaction with auto insurers is
flat, following four consecutive years of improvement. Overall customer
satisfaction with auto insurance providers is 835 (on a 1,000-point scale)
this year, unchanged from a year ago. As of March 2021, just 52% of auto
insurance customers were aware of their insurer’s COVID-19 premium relief 34%
of auto insurance customers say they are willing to try usage-based insurance
(UBI), which uses telematics technology to track customer driving patterns
and includes discounts based on safe driving and fewer miles driven.
* Currently, 16% of customers say they are already using the technology, which
is double the volume seen just five years ago and is the largest
year-over-year increase to date. 45% of auto insurance customers say they
would switch if they could receive a savings of $200 or less. Of those who
recently switched due to a premium increase, 57% did so for increases of $200
or less.

Read Article

Save to Favourites

Nuro’s street-legal bots to deliver packages for FedEx
Innovation Topics, IoT AV & the Shared Economy / 16/06/2021

Read Article

Save to Favourites

Companies and Organizations, Other Topics

New public, permissionless, open source DLT to enable real-time settlement at a
fraction of cost
Distributed Ledger & Blockchain, Innovation Topics / 21/05/2021

Provenance Blockchain Foundation has launched a new public, open source,
permissionless, decentralized, proof-of-stake blockchain, which is designed and
developed to support financial service industry needs by providing a ledger,
registry, and exchange across multiple financial assets and markets. Built using
Cosmos SDK/Tendermint, the new open-source Provenance reduces the need for
third-party intermediation, thus drastically reducing costs and freeing up
capital in financial transactions. Provenance will also promote greater
transparency and liquidity and allow for new kinds of financial engineering and
business opportunities. This new decentralized ecosystem will allow for a more
robust validator/staking framework including for market-driven pricing, and
real-time settlement. Provenance has significant competitive advantages in the
blockchain marketplace. Gas fees for transactions have risen sharply on other
platforms reducing, if not eliminating, the financial savings from blockchain.
Provenance will facilitate transactions at a fraction of the cost of these
legacy blockchain platforms. Provenance also builds on the successful ecosystem
of the original blockchain with a wide range of banks and funds expected to
actively participate on the blockchain in verticals such as loan origination,
financing and trading, banking and payments and securities exchanges. The
Provenance Blockchain Foundation will also be offering grants to developers in
order to accelerate growth in this new ecosystem.

Read Article

Save to Favourites

Savings app deploys higher interest rate lending to crypto trading desks to
offer 2.5% yield on deposits
Distributed Ledger & Blockchain, Innovation Topics / 21/05/2021

Fintech Eco is building a personal finance app for saving and spending money. It
also doesn’t want to position itself as a cryptocurrency business, yet its
revenue model directly depends on the volatile market. The primary service is a
digital wallet that pays 2.5% yields on deposits, up to 5% with friend
referrals, as well as 5% cashback at merchants including Amazon, Uber, DoorDash,
and, most recently, Instacart. These yields are substantially higher than the
national average interest rate of 0.07% for savings accounts as of March. Among
banks, Citi and Marcus by Goldman Sachs offer highest annual percentage yields
of 0.5%. Customers can also make in-app ACH deposits from their bank account,
similarly to many fintech products, or by connecting their payroll and routing a
portion or all of their paycheck directly in. Wire transfers for large deposits
are available as well. Eco makes money and can afford to pay these high yields
because it lends out customer deposits to crypto trading desks at even higher
rates (though Eco’s CEO Bromberg declined to specify). While this is good
business right now, it could force them to lower rates if loan demand drops or
more competitors enter the picture.

Read Article

Save to Favourites

Minu a wellness company offers 30 gamified benefits
Innovation Topics, Others / 06/02/2023

Minu is an employee wellness company, building out its gamified and rewards
features, including saving or completing financial education courses, while
improving retention for employers. Also new is a SaaS subscription model where
half of its revenue is now generated, paid for by employers so that it is free
for employees to take advantage of the now over 30 benefits that include health
and mental health access via telemedicine, insurance discounts, financial
education, bill payment and virtual fitness classes. In addition, Minu has a new
credit union-as-a-service that enables employers to offer savings starting at 8%
for fully liquid deposits and cheap agile loans. That compares to the 400%
annual percentage rate for a loan at a traditional Mexican bank. Employees who
consume the financial education or fitness and mediation content can get
rewards, like increased savings percentages and life insurance dollar amounts.

Read Article

Save to Favourites

Fiverr launches online recession hub tailored towards SMEs
Innovation Topics, Others / 04/01/2023

Fiverr International Ltd. has launched an online recession hub called ‘The
Lift.’ Geared toward entrepreneurs and owners of SMBs, the site features
on-demand help, articles, and guides from business experts. Topics range from
financial assessment to business strategy, talent outsourcing, and marketing
tactics. Fiverr has also joined forces with long-time partner Payoneer, the
commerce technology company powering cross-border payments, and Xero, the global
accounting software company for small businesses. Both are providing additional
insights and content on The Lift for business leaders looking to successfully
navigate a challenging economic period. As part of the partnership, Fiverr users
will get 50% off their Xero subscription for four months and earn $25 (£20.98)
cash back on Payoneer.

Read Article

Save to Favourites

Airbnb investors selling their properties and freed up supply could offer some
relief for homebuyers
Innovation Topics, Others / 12/12/2022

Few experts predict a full-on housing crash like the one we saw from 2008-2014,
in part because lending standards are much higher for residential mortgages now
than they were in the years leading up to 2008. Yet the loans supporting these
vacation rentals entrepreneurs could rest on shakier ground. Rather than being
inundated by foreclosures from underwater homeowners, the property market —
particularly in tourism-dependent areas — could get oversupplied by the very
investors who were snapping up houses throughout the pandemic: Airbnb landlords.
If Airbnb investors sold their properties and freed up supply, in other words,
it could offer some relief for harried homebuyers.

Read Article

Save to Favourites

Microsoft mulls ‘super app’ combining shopping, messaging, web search and
newsfeeds
Companies and Organizations, Others / 07/12/2022

Microsoft wants to ramp up its mobile efforts with a new “super app” for iPhone
that would combine a number of different features into a single app. According
to The Information, Microsoft’s hope is that such an app would help it break
further into mobile search, which is currently dominated by Apple and Google.
This so-called “super app” would combine things like shopping, messaging, web
search, newsfeeds, and more into a single app for iPhone and Android. This would
“emulate a mobile strategy that has worked for Tencent,” the report explains,
referring to the incredibly popular WeChat app. WeChat similarly combines things
like messaging, shopping, news, and games into a single app.

Read Article

Save to Favourites

Afterpay produces 800 million hybrid data streaming events for the data analysis
team with Cloudera
Companies and Organizations, Other Topics / 08/02/2023

Read Article

Save to Favourites

Unbanked and Mastercard to accelerate DeFi card issuance based on Litecoin
Innovation Topics, Other Topics / 31/01/2023

Read Article

Save to Favourites

Opencover analytics platform protects investors from Defi risk and exchange
hacks
Innovation Topics, Other Topics / 31/01/2023

OpenCover’s platform is the first to provide investors with standardized,
unbiased, and real-time data to understand and compare their risk mitigation
options. As the first platform to collect market and provider-level data for
DeFi insurance alternatives, OpenCover is helping investors understand their
options and choose the right products. OpenCover data is compiled directly from
on-chain events, smart contract state and transaction traces where access to
contract ABIs is possible with third-party indexing protocols (e.g. The Graph)
used as fallback. OpenCover tracks over 85% of industry activity by Total Value
Locked across Ethereum, Polygon, Arbitrum, Optimism, BNB Smart Chain and the
Avalanche blockchains.

Read Article

Save to Favourites

Dell acquires Cloudify cloud orchestration to juggle multiple infrastructure
management platforms
Innovation Topics, Other Topics / 26/01/2023

Cloudify’s tools cater to companies that have to juggle multiple infrastructure
management platforms. For instance, a company might use VMware Inc.’s vSphere
virtualization platform to manage its on-premises services, along with
Kubernetes in support of its public cloud deployments. Using Cloudify’s
software, it’s possible to tie these management platforms together via an
overarching orchestration layer. Thus, DevOps teams and administrators can
manage their entire on-premises and cloud-based infrastructure through a single
portal. Cloudify’s platform packages infrastructure, networking and automation
tools into certified blueprints that enable these heterogeneous environments to
be managed at scale, with automated provisioning and updates.

Read Article

Save to Favourites

Retailer Albertsons adds health and wellness platform accessible on its grocery
app and websites
Uncategorized / 07/02/2023

Read Article

Save to Favourites

Intuit’s AI enhancements of virtual expert platform streamlines expert-assisted
tax filing
Uncategorized / 03/02/2023

Read Article

Save to Favourites

P2P lending platform PeopleFund raises $20M Series C extension led by Bain
Capital
Uncategorized / 18/01/2023

South Korean marketplace PeopleFund, connects borrowers and investors to enable
lending. PeopleFund plans to use its new capital to continue to advance its
AI-powered risk management and credit scoring system for its users, which
includes borrowers and lenders. On top of that, the startup aims to launch a B2B
service this year to provide AI-enabled customized credit scoring system
services to financial institutions. Another reason for its runway extension is
to meet one of the requirements for a P2P lending license, according to industry
sources. In South Korea, P2P lending marketplaces must pass yearly requirements
to get a license from Financial Services Commission (FSC) to run their business.
To operate its business in 2023, PeopleFund, which reports that it is making a
profit loss, must own a minimum capital ranging from $400,000 to $2.4 million,
depending on its loan balance. PeopleFund’s loan balance was $264.3 million
(326.8 billion won) as of December 2022, the company said. That means the
outfit’s requirement capital is around $1.5 million to $2.4 million, according
to the industry sources and local media.

Read Article

Save to Favourites

Bank of America provides free financial tutorials at BetterMoneyHabits.com to
advance economic mobility
Uncategorized / 13/01/2023

Bank of America offers dozens of tutorials at BetterMoneyHabits.com to help
people improve their finances at any stage of life. Composed in both English and
Spanish, the website is free to everyone. The site walks users through a
five-step questionnaire to pinpoint their needs, priorities and goals. Then, it
recommends a series of topics for them to explore. Through artificial
intelligence, the site can serve anyone, from a high school student with a
part-time job to a senior who is approaching retirement. A third of users have
20% more funds in their checking accounts after going through the program, and a
fourth grow their savings by 20%. In addition, one in seven reduce their credit
card balances by at least 20%. Topics covered at BetterMoneyHabits.com include
credit, debt, saving and budgeting, mortgages, car loans, paying for college,
financial privacy and security, personal banking, filing taxes, retirement
planning, charitable giving, and estate planning, among other content. In
addition to the tutorials that the program suggests based on user responses,
people can search for and read about any financial subject they’d like to
explore. All of the material is designed to be easy to understand.

Read Article

Save to Favourites

TCH reschedules CHIPS ISO 20022 implementation to April 2024New
Additional Reading / 13/02/2023

TCH is rescheduling the CHIPS ISO 20022 implementation from November 2023 to
April 2024. The decision to move to a new implementation date is influenced by
similar decisions from other global payments network providers whose ISO 20022
implementation calendars precede the CHIPS migration and have also been
rescheduled. The new CHIPS migration date will allow CHIPS participants to
better manage the global transition to ISO 20022 payment message formats by
retaining sufficient timeframes between ISO migrations. The message format
conversion will place CHIPS messages in the same ISO 20022 format as other
global large high-value payment systems, substantially enhancing the efficiency
and information content of cross-border payments. The new migration date allows
CHIPS participants to manage and absorb changes from ISO 20022 conversions in
other jurisdictions, including TARGET2, EURO1, Lynx and SWIFT in March 2023, and
CHAPS in June 2023.

Read Article

Save to Favourites

Goldman’s Peeyush Nahar who was the last to run Marcus to leave the firmNew
Additional Reading / 13/02/2023

Peeyush Nahar, who joined Goldman Sachs in 2021 to lead the retail banking
business after having been an executive at Amazon and Uber, will take on an
advisory role. Less than two years ago, when Goldman Sachs Group Inc. still
aspired to someday dominate retail banking, the Wall Street firm roped in
Silicon Valley veteran Peeyush Nahar to lead the effort. Now, with that goal
abandoned, he’s exiting the firm. Nahar is the latest of several executives
recruited to aid in the retail banking effort who had left the firm and was the
last to run Marcus before it was broken up in a reorganization at Goldman Sachs.

Read Article

Save to Favourites

Goldman Sachs digital asset chief prioritizes tokenization and remaking the
plumbing of financial markets in Blockchain strategyNew
Additional Reading / 13/02/2023

Last year’s havoc in the cryptocurrencies space has allowed for a “flight to
quality” among crypto investors, Mathew McDermott, Goldman Sachs’ global head of
digital assets, said. McDermott pointed to the bank’s three key areas of focus
in crypto: tokenization, remaking the plumbing of financial markets and the
“profound” effect that digital money will have across markets. “One of the
things from my perspective that’s kind of been quite important is really
demonstrating that we can apply the technology across all the geographies,”
McDermott said. ” We wanted to provide something to the clients that gave them
the tools to kind of better analyze, and particularly those who are looking to
kind of think about investing, just give them that skill set, or certainly the
details to enable them to do it in a more intelligent way,” he said. McDermott
noted that Goldman Sachs has made investments in the digital asset space,
predominantly focusing on blockchain infrastructure and that the bank is “seeing
some interesting opportunities there of valuations that just look much more
sensible.”

Read Article

Save to Favourites

BAI’s Digital Funnel Pulse helps banks to understand their top-of-funnel
conversion metrics for deposit applicationsNew
Additional Reading / 13/02/2023

A new program from BAI called Digital Funnel Pulse helps financial institutions
understand their top-of-funnel conversion metrics for deposit applications that
result in open and funded accounts, and to allow them to compare their outcomes
to industry peers. The new DFP program is yielding insights for U.S. banking
institutions to fine-tune their digital application processes. Isio Nelson, head
of client engagement in BAI’s research division, says “There are two key leaks
in the digital funnel. The first is the customer experience. The second leak is
related to authentication. If banks do it right, they can have more engagement
with more customers if they personalize the onboarding experience to the digital
level that’s appropriate for the consumer originating the account. Most banks
are trying to improve one part of the funnel at a time to see which improvements
yield the most. So we’ll go through what I call the four F’s: fill, fraud, fund
and further expansion. For the fill side, banks are working with better consumer
experiences, including pre-fill dynamic questions and recognizing current
customers for different application fill requirements. For fraud, banks are
finding better ways to authenticate, including ID capture, selfies and various
authentication tools. For funding, the banks are working on steps to allow
consumers to fund accounts immediately, but still capping that exposure. And
further expansion—personalizing the digital experience in a way that doesn’t
come across as robotic or saturate your customer with messages. It’s such a
critical component for banks to digitize.

Read Article

Save to Favourites

TCH reschedules CHIPS ISO 20022 implementation to April 2024New
Additional Reading / 13/02/2023

Read Article

Save to Favourites

Goldman’s Peeyush Nahar who was the last to run Marcus to leave the firmNew
Additional Reading / 13/02/2023

Read Article

Save to Favourites

Goldman Sachs digital asset chief prioritizes tokenization and remaking the
plumbing of financial markets in Blockchain strategyNew
Additional Reading / 13/02/2023

Read Article

Save to Favourites

BAI’s Digital Funnel Pulse helps banks to understand their top-of-funnel
conversion metrics for deposit applicationsNew
Additional Reading / 13/02/2023

Read Article

Save to Favourites

Chase Card Services, Companies and Organizations
JPMorgan’s new Mastercard credit card offers enhances rewards on DoorDash
ordering
Chase Card Services, Companies and Organizations / 28/09/2022

JPMorgan Chase is launching a credit card with DoorDash Inc., the latest
addition to the bank’s ever-growing group of co-brand deals. The card,
DoorDash’s first, will operate on Mastercard Inc.’s network. The firms didn’t
disclose details on annual fee, launch date or perks beyond that cardholders
will be able to earn rewards on and off the DoorDash platform. The new card is
designed for those who love the convenience and options DoorDash provides and
want to earn more where they are spending, whether ordering from the broad range
of categories available on DoorDash or spending in-person at a favorite
neighborhood store.

Read Article

Save to Favourites

JPMorgan’s digital bank Chase UK hits 1mn customers
Chase Card Services, Companies and Organizations / 28/09/2022

JPMorgan’s UK digital bank Chase UK, has attracted more than 1mn customers and
above £10bn in deposits in the first year of its attempt to crack the country’s
retail market and take on rival Goldman Sachs’s app Marcus. In its first annual
update, Chase UK said it had accrued more than 1mn customers, surpassing the
750,000 that Marcus has attracted, and double the figure announced in May. Chase
said it had also processed about 92mn card and payment transactions. Chase’s 1mn
customers places it below UK digital banks such as Starling with 2.7mn customers
and Monzo with nearly 6mn, and well behind high street lenders such as Lloyds
with 26mn customers, HSBC UK with nearly 15mn and NatWest with 12.5mn. Its
deposit base of £10bn still lags behind Marcus, which has accrued £22bn.

Read Article

Save to Favourites

Instacart and Chase launch Mastercard unlocking new accelerated rewards
Chase Card Services, Companies and Organizations / 25/07/2022

Instacart, the leading grocery technology company in North America, and Chase,
launched the new Instacart Mastercard credit card, with Mastercard as the
exclusive payments network. The new Instacart Mastercard from Chase, a World
Elite Mastercard, offers cardmembers:

Accelerated Earning Opportunities on Groceries and Everyday Purchases

5% cash back on Instacart purchases made at more than 800 national, regional,
and local retail brands from more than 70,000 stores across more than 5,500
cities

5% cash back on travel purchased through the Chase Travel Center

2% cash back on restaurants, gas stations, and select streaming services

1% cash back on all other purchases

For a limited time, the first 10,000 consumers to apply and be approved for the
Instacart Mastercard will receive a $200 Instacart credit and one year of free
Instacart+ automatically upon approval. After the first 10,000 cardmembers,
every new cardmember will receive a $100 Instacart credit and one free year of
Instacart+. Instacart+ benefits include free delivery on orders over a certain
size; reduced Instacart service fees; credit back on eligible Pickup orders; and
exclusive benefits.

Instacart orders: cardmembers will, in the future, be able to use cash back
rewards to pay for all or part of an order in the Instacart App or on
Instacart.com, with no minimum rewards balance to redeem

Cash back: cardmembers can choose to receive a direct deposit or a statement
credit, with no minimum rewards balance to redeem

Travel: cardmembers can redeem cash back rewards for travel via the Chase Travel
Center, including flights, hotels, cruises, and car rentals.

Read Article

Save to Favourites

Chase and Mastercard to be exclusive for Instacart’s tailored rewards card
Chase Card Services, Companies and Organizations / 20/01/2022

Chase and grocery platform Instacart has expanded their existing partnership to
make Chase the exclusive issuer of Instacart’s first credit card. As a part of
this partnership, Mastercard will become the exclusive payments network for the
new offering. The new Instacart Mastercard® credit card will be the first Chase
co-branded card offering in the on-demand grocery delivery space. The card will
allow consumers to earn accelerated points on purchases across the Instacart
marketplace, which today includes more than 700 beloved national, regional and
local grocers and retailers. The card is expected to launch in 2022 and will
also offer a number of other benefits, perks and savings. The new Instacart
Mastercard is a prime example of the evolution of digital payments– a card
tailored to customers, that earns relevant rewards as they live their lives.

Read Article

Save to Favourites

Companies and Organizations, Square
Square is accused of selling access to users’ inbox but isn’t violating the
privacy laws
Companies and Organizations, Square / 26/10/2022

When COVID-19 forced Compass Coffee to close down its shops, Square gave Compass
the potential to reach out to its existing and potential customers. Square’s
parent company, Block, was selling access to customers’ inboxes, even if all we
do is elect to receive a receipt from a single transaction. The situation seems
to highlight how Block, as well as other payment processors and fintech
platforms, operate in a bit of a privacy gray zone. Sometimes that gray zone
leaves no one in charge of consumers’ data rights, and sometimes it means the
companies, deep within their terms of service, have legal loopholes that give
them room to use our information in ways we might not expect. Square provides
those merchants the ability to manage their campaigns. It also takes its vast
store of contact information — which a close reading of its terms of service
reveals it collects from consumers who want a receipt sent to them — and gives
smaller businesses access to those email and text inboxes. That includes the
ability to reach out to customers whose details the sellers never collected
themselves. All Square needs is for the targeted customer to have made a
purchase at some point from the merchant that wants to send that ad. Privacy
experts largely said Block probably isn’t violating the law — specifically,
California’s privacy rules, which act as a de facto national standard.
Square anonymizes email addresses when allowing a business to target consumers
whose information the merchants didn’t collect. That could just be a way for
Square to keep a tight grip on valuable information about its merchants’
consumers. The way Square takes in customer data on behalf of small merchants
and then quietly uses that same data to power a marketing platform seems to at
least violate consumers’ expectations. Although consumers might opt in to get a
tallied list of charges from the businesses they’re actually buying something
from, Square actually offered to send those receipts under its own initiative,
donning a legal label that then allowed it to reuse the data for any purpose,
including marketing.

Read Article

Save to Favourites

Square releases “growth of mobile and conversational commerce report” alongside
advanced features for Square messages
Companies and Organizations, Square / 29/09/2022

Square’s Growth of Mobile and Conversational Commerce Report, reveals
opportunities and challenges businesses face as they expand into new commerce
channels. Nearly 40% of businesses aren’t utilizing mobile commerce
technologies, despite vast benefits and increasing consumer usage. Younger
generations are most attuned to using phones to make purchases, with Millennials
and Gen Z more likely to prefer texting with a business at 41% and 40%
respectively. 98%, want to connect with businesses via their mobile devices,
with appointment reminders (66%) and order notifications (65%) being the most
common interactions. 30% of consumers expect to shop more through their mobile
devices over the next 12 months, with 38% of men expecting to increase their
mobile shopping compared to 27% of women. 60% of business owners use mobile
commerce to connect and sell to consumers, and another 20% are interested in
doing so. For the 97% of businesses using mobile commerce and reporting
noticeable benefits, 53% cite they’re better able to manage customer
relationships and 53% note they’re able to save time by automating their
business. With more than 53M messages sent between sellers and buyers, Square
Messages has seen a 3X increase in active merchants using the platform from the
end of March 2021 to the end of August 2022. With this in mind, Square is
announcing that within Square Messages, merchants have access to advanced AI
messaging features. The first, Suggested Replies, saves sellers time by
suggesting responses to a customer’s message, helping boost a buyer’s reply rate
by 10%. Square Messages also launched Suggested Actions, giving businesses the
ability to respond to buyers with one-click interactions, such as a prompt to
send an invoice or payment link.

Read Article

Save to Favourites

Square POS transactions will be reconciled daily automatically in Sage
Accounting
Companies and Organizations, Square / 09/09/2022

Sage, the accounting, financial, HR and payroll platform for SMBs, and Square,
announce new partnership. All sales and payment transactions processed through
Square POS will be reconciled automatically in Sage Accounting daily; Combining
Sage’s software with the option to add easy-to-use POS hardware to support
cashless selling, in-person, online or over the phone; Up-to-date, accurate
visibility of a business’ position, easily accessed; Ability to offer loyalty
programs and delve into the data to understand customer behaviour. Customers can
access 24/7 support when using the integration, through a service provided by
Amaka, accounting integration and automation software.

Read Article

Save to Favourites

Square POS transactions will be reconciled daily automatically in Sage
Accounting
Companies and Organizations, Square / 09/09/2022

Read Article

Save to Favourites

Companies and Organizations, PayPal
PayPal accounts are breached in large-scale credential stuffing attack
Companies and Organizations, PayPal / 20/01/2023

Read Article

Save to Favourites

PayPal is testing is a teen account for users of its Venmo P2P service
Companies and Organizations, PayPal / 29/11/2022

Read Article Save to Favourites

Using Venmo to pay at Amazon makes consumers miss out on card rewards
Companies and Organizations, PayPal / 23/11/2022

Read Article

Save to Favourites

With Amazon deal Venmo can leap over Cash App and Zelle and breakaway from
PayPal
Companies and Organizations, PayPal / 28/10/2022

Mercator research shows that Cash App and Venmo have similar share, 36% and 35%
respectively, with Zelle slightly behind at 29% in terms of peer-to-peer (P2P)
services that consumers have used. The Amazon deal would help Venmo
differentiate itself internally in comparison to parent company PayPal, with
Venmo acting as a pure consumer focused transactional platform and PayPal acting
as a broader consumer and commercially focused platform. One key area that
Amazon and Venmo need to clearly articulate is the ability of each to prevent
fraudulent activity in the purchase cycle.

Read Article

Save to Favourites

Companies and Organizations, Stripe
LTK and Stripe partner to power instant creator payments
Companies and Organizations, Stripe / 15/07/2022

LTK, the global influencer marketing platform, has partnered with Stripe, a
financial infrastructure platform for businesses, to power instant, simplified
and secure creator payments for the new LTK Connect self-serve solution. LTK
Connect is purpose-built to empower brands of all sizes and budgets to easily
build and scale programs with premier, commerce-focused creators that help drive
awareness and sales. The new partnership reduces the time from completed work to
payment from months to seconds for creators. LTK has a mission to empower
creative entrepreneurs – whether a creator or a brand. LTK creators drive more
than $3B in retail sales annually across more than 6,000 global retail partners.
With LTK Connect, many more brands, especially direct-to-consumer brands, can
tap into the power of creator-guided shopping through LTK. And, creators have
more opportunities to expand their brand partnerships, creating more ways to
monetize their content. Having a secure and reliable financial infrastructure is
critical to the success of the LTK Connect self-serve solution. Stripe’s suite
of products like Stripe Connect, Stripe Billing, Instant Payouts, and more will
allow for faster and simplified payments between LTK Connect brand partners and
creators.

Read Article

Save to Favourites

Companies and Organizations, Samsung Pay
Samsung’s digi card to offer 1-20% cashback on spend made using wallet-linked
debit or credit card
Companies and Organizations, Samsung Pay / 24/06/2021

Samsung has announced a newly launched proposition that empowers its customers
to earn from 1 to 20% cashback with hundreds of major UK brands, all through one
simple-to-use digital card: Samsung Pay+, powered by Curve. Stored in the
Samsung Pay wallet, Samsung Pay+ is a digital card that simplifies spending,
allowing customers to use any major UK bank card from their Samsung smartphone
or smartwatch, and earn cashback along the way. The new Samsung Pay+ cashback
programme is designed to help customers earn rewards on everyday spending, with
all offers tailored to the user’s spending history, meaning each customer enjoys
a personalised experience and a constantly evolving set of offers. Not only
that, it makes existing rewards schemes work harder, as Samsung Pay+ works
alongside any pre-existing rewards programmes already set-up on the credit or
debit cards used with Samsung Pay+ – giving customers more ways to be savvy
about their spending. By allowing users to roll all Mastercard and Visa debit
and credit cards into one place, Samsung Pay+ means customers earn cashback no
matter which card they spend on – making all their cards that much more
rewarding – without the need to switch banks and the worry of using the wrong
card. Samsung Pay+, powered by Curve, operates within Samsung Pay which is free
to set-up across Samsung Galaxy smartphones and smartwatches. It enables
customers to simplify their spending and gives them the choice and freedom to
keep tabs on their bank balance and transactions, while also earning them
cashback.

Read Article

Save to Favourites

Companies and Organizations, Visa Checkout
Visa teams with fintech to improve international small-business payments
Companies and Organizations, Visa Checkout / 23/11/2022

Read Article

Save to Favourites

Visa direct transactions surge 36% as real time money movement gains ground
Companies and Organizations, Visa Checkout / 26/10/2022

Read Article

Save to Favourites

Visa’s DPS embeds a customizable PCI-compliant fraud and risk management
solutions
Companies and Organizations, Visa Checkout / 24/10/2022

Read Article

Save to Favourites

Visa, Mastercard under fresh FTC investigation over debit card routing
Companies and Organizations, Visa Checkout / 18/10/2022

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission is investigating whether Visa Inc (V.N) and
Mastercard Inc’s (MA.N) security tokens restrict debit card routing competition
on online payments. The credit card giants are already being probed by the
Commission for allegedly blocking merchants from routing payments over other
debit card networks. The FTC has expanded its focus in recent months to examine
whether the companies’ security technology, which replaces sensitive account
information with a unique digital identifier called a token, further stifles
processing debit card transactions on rival networks. Both Visa and Mastercard
have faced increasing scrutiny for their dominance in the credit card market.
Visa, in 2019, had to settle a European Union antitrust probe over card fees.

Read Article

Save to Favourites

AMEX, Companies and Organizations
Amex brings more transparency to credit card applications
AMEX, Companies and Organizations / 23/11/2022

Read Article

Save to Favourites

Amex’s ‘Member-Able’ week offers a curated and immersive list of experiences,
discounts and perks
AMEX, Companies and Organizations / 06/10/2022

Amex is hosting Member Week, a curated and immersive list of experiences,
discounts and perks being offered to its users from Oct. 10-14. Each day will
focus on different experiences: shopping on Monday, dining on Tuesday,
entertainment on Wednesday, travel on Thursday and wellness on Friday. The
campaign is running on digital out-of-home and across Amex’s social channels,
plus influencer marketing. People can also visit an installation inside The
Oculus in New York that’s designed to look like the American Express logo. The
Blue Box features an overview of the offers and experiences cardmembers can
expect during Member Week. While the week promises a host of retail therapy
opportunities, it is arguably the feeling of going behind a blue velvet rope of
tangible bespoke experiences that will leave a lingering impression on
cardholders in a space otherwise saturated with confusing “points” jargon.

Read Article

Save to Favourites

American Express to offer fintechs credit cards via WebBank
AMEX, Companies and Organizations / 17/08/2022

American Express selected WebBank as one of its key issuing banks focused on the
fintech industry. WebBank is a Utah chartered Industrial Bank headquartered in
Salt Lake City, Utah. As “The Bank Behind the Brand®”, WebBank is a national
issuer of consumer and small business credit products through Strategic Partner
(Brand) platforms, which include retailers, manufacturers, finance companies,
software as a service (SaaS) and financial technology (FinTech) companies. The
Bank is a leading player in the digital lending space, driving innovation in
financial products through embedded finance with Strategic Partner platforms.
WebBank engages in a full range of banking activities including consumer and
commercial loan products, revolving lines of credit, credit cards, private-label
card issuance, auto-refinancing and more. The Bank provides capital in the form
of asset-backed lending and other credit facilities to Strategic Partner
platforms, credit funds, and other lenders with a targeted focus on specialty
finance assets. The Bank is also a leading provider of commercial insurance
premium finance products through its wholly owned subsidiary National Partners.

Read Article

Save to Favourites

AmEx retools no-fee card as customers feel pinch from inflation to include
rewards for online retail purchases.
AMEX, Companies and Organizations / 15/07/2022

American Express Co. is adding new perks to its no-fee Blue Cash Everyday card
as U.S. consumers face historic increases in prices. The card — which has long
offered cash back for spending at US supermarkets and gas stations — will now
also offer rewards for online retail purchases. It will also offer credits
toward a Disney streaming subscription and an online meal service. AmEx is
revamping the card as the Labor Department reported data this week showing the
consumer price index rose 9.1% from a year ago, the largest increase since the
early 1980s. The average national retail price of gasoline surpassed $5 a gallon
for the first time in June before retreating in recent weeks.

Read Article

Save to Favourites

Companies and Organizations, Mastercard
Mastercard Data shows inflation’s impact on holiday shopping- 11% of shoppers
looked for BNPL options.
Companies and Organizations, Mastercard / 03/01/2023

Read Article

Save to Favourites

Bump teams up with Mastercard and Highnote to launch the ‘Bump creator card,’
helping creators grow their businesses
Companies and Organizations, Mastercard / 22/11/2022

Bump, an all-in-one financial services platform with tools that help creators
better track and manage their money, is working with Highnote, a fully
cloud-native modern card issuance and program management platform, and
Mastercard to introduce the Bump Creator Card. The Bump Creator Card, in
partnership with Highnote and powered exclusively by the Mastercard network,
eliminates financial barriers that millions of independent creators – musicians,
content creators, influencers, and more – face and empowers them with the
resources they need to build successful businesses and brands. The global
creator economy has greatly expanded over recent years and is believed to
include approximately 200 million creators. This rapid growth has uncovered the
need for creators to use a solution like Bump to receive access to tailored
financial services that can support, monitor and track how much money they make
from assets like royalties and publishing rights, as well as discover all
sources of income so that creators have a true understanding of how much money
they are making. With a multitude of ways to earn income outside of the
traditional W2, creators need a new solution to access credit and financial
tools that can help them expand their businesses. The Bump Creator Card provides
creators with the following benefits: No Monthly Fees: With the Bump Creator
Card, creators are only responsible for paying their outstanding balance, a
one-time initial setup fee, and the nominal annual fee. No Credit Checks:
Creators do not need to present their credit score in order to obtain a Bump
Creator Card. Web3 Asset Consideration: When determining credit limits for
creators receiving the Bump Creator Card, Bump accounts for non-traditional
financial assets, including Web3 assets like cryptocurrencies and NFTs. Advanced
Security Features: The Bump Creator Card is contactless and features Mastercard
ID Theft Protection™ and Zero Liability Protection to detect fraud and protect
cardholders from unauthorized transactions.

Read Article

Save to Favourites

BONI and Mastercard partner to launch cross border payment services
Companies and Organizations, Mastercard / 04/11/2022

Bank of Nevis International Ltd. (BONI), a provider of holistic wealth
management, portfolio management, and FinTech services for clients worldwide,
has partnered with the global technology company, Mastercard, to allow secure
and seamless cross border payments. BONI customers can now send international
payments with certainty, speed, and security through a single point of access.
Transfers can be made to businesses and individuals in more than 100 markets and
over 60 currencies covering 90% of the world’s population. Transfers can be made
to bank accounts, mobile wallets, cards, and cash agents around the world.
Real-time payments are also possible in more than 40 countries. For BONI’s
private clients, this means sending money to loved ones worldwide in real-time,
paying for tuition, paying for travel and airline tickets, and covering urgent
medical fees in multiple countries and currencies with predictability and ease.
For our business clients, this means peace of mind with paying international
suppliers, sending earnings to global workers, or paying salaries and pensions
to overseas recipients.

Read Article

Save to Favourites

Adyen partners with Teamwork commerce to provide frictionless, integrated
payments for retailers
Companies and Organizations, Mastercard / 04/11/2022

Adyen, the global financial technology platform of choice for leading
businesses, today announced a partnership with Teamwork Commerce, a leading
mobile POS and OMS omnichannel retail solution, in the U.S. and Europe.
Integrating Adyen’s technology and Teamwork’s cloud-based mobile POS solution
will simplify payments for retailers, allows them to use one platform to manage
all sales channels which provides a unified commerce experience. Teamwork
Commerce’s integration into Adyen’s Terminal API allows retailers to leverage
flexible features to fit the needs of their business, including the ability to
save card tokens to customer profiles and to connect payment data across all
instore and ecommerce transactions. The integration also allows for the
acceptance of popular payment methods in addition to Pay-by-Link support.

Read Article

Save to Favourites

Copyright © 2023 Finnovate Research · All Rights Reserved · Privacy Policy
Finnovate Research · Knyvett House · Watermans Business Park · The Causeway
Staines · TW18 3BA · United Kingdom · About · Contact Us · Tel: +44-20-3070-0188

previousnextslideshow

dbsdisruptiondaily.com Open in urlscan Pro 67.227.153.249 Public Scan

Form analysis 2 forms found in the DOM

POST https://dbsdisruptiondaily.com/quick-search-results/

POST https://dbsdisruptiondaily.com/quick-search-results/

Text Content

dbsdisruptiondaily.com Open in urlscan Pro
67.227.153.249 Public Scan

Form analysis
2 forms found in the DOM