Новости за 19.03.2024

With the wild success of its summer and fall Prime Day events, Amazon is looking to bring in a similar boost in the spring. The company recently announced its Big Spring Sale, running Wednesday through Monday (March 20-25), offering deals on seasonal items including cosmetics, sports gear, outdoor products, apparel and electronics. The move could […]

The EMEA DisrupTech conference in London, convened by Citigroup, reportedly spotlighted the burgeoning environment for mergers and acquisitions (M&A) in 2024. The event assembled 48 private companies from the EMEA region, including unicorns like BlaBlaCar, EcoVadis and Zilch, to discuss the increasing interest in dealmaking and the resurgence of substantial initial public offerings (IPOs), Bloomberg […]

Professional services firm Accenture has acquired supply chain logistics specialist Flo. The deal, announced Tuesday (March 19), will move Flo’s 280 employees to the Accenture Oracle Business Group, strengthening its ability to help clients prepare for the supply chain’s digital transformation. Headquartered in the Netherlands, Flo chiefly works with enterprise clients in Europe in an array of industries […]

In an increasingly interconnected world, the proliferation of connected devices has become ubiquitous, reshaping the way people live, work and interact with technology. From wearable gadgets to sophisticated smart appliances, the Internet of Things (IoT) has permeated nearly every aspect of consumers’ daily routines. According to research from PYMNTS Intelligence, the average consumer now owns six connected devices, with […]

Microsoft has reportedly named DeepMind Co-founder Mustafa Suleyman to head its consumer AI unit. The tech giant has also hired most of the staff of Suleyman’s Inflection AI startup, Bloomberg News reported Monday (March 19), which notes that his hiring marks the first time all of Microsoft’s consumer artificial intelligence (AI) business will be under a single leader. As the report notes, while Microsoft […]

Goldman Sachs has reportedly been making significant strides in the cryptocurrency industry. A recent surge in cryptocurrency prices, with bitcoin hitting an all-time high of $73,794 last week, has been primarily driven by retail investors, but institutional interest is growing, Mathew McDermott, the global investment bank’s head of digital assets, said Tuesday (March 19) at […]

Shell is offloading retail locations in a shift to B2B, as across the convenience retail industry, key players are feeling the impacts of ongoing economic challenges.  The London-based oil and gas company shared in its recent Shell Energy Transition Strategy 2024 publication that it plans to divest 500 of its owned and joint venture retail locations […]

Miami-based trade finance platform Marco has raised $12 million in a Series A round. The funding will help support the company’s mission of helping small and medium-sized entrepreneur (SME) exporters in Latin America, according to a Tuesday (March 19) news release. “Through my own journey as an SME exporter, I’ve experienced the struggle of securing essential financing for […]

Google Health has announced some of the latest strides it has made in the healthcare industry with its use of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) models. Last year, the company introduced Med-PaLM 2, a large language model (LLM) specifically fine-tuned for healthcare, Yossi Matias, vice president of engineering and research at Google, wrote in a Tuesday (March 19) blog […]

Collective has debuted an artificial intelligence (AI)-powered accounting platform designed for one-person operations. “As freelancers delve into the administration needed to properly pay their taxes and keep their books up to date, they’ve been shocked by their choices: pay expensive local accountants and bookkeepers that often leave them in the dark, or spend hours on DIY finance,” […]

Nordstrom’s founding family is reportedly mounting another effort to take the retailer private. The department store chain is in negotiations with banks on the deal, Reuters reported Tuesday (March 19), citing unnamed sources. In 2017, Nordstrom put together a special committee to consider a buyout deal, discussing the option with several private equity firms. In 2018, the […]

Earned wage access firm Instant Financial released a new mobile app and updated mobile wallet. “Understanding that over 50% of Americans would likely avoid major financial pitfalls if they could instantly access a portion of their pay after every day’s work, the new Instant mobile app is narrowing this financial gap by placing financial empowerment directly into the hands […]

JustPaid has added several accounts receivable (AR) and accounts payable (AP) reporting features to its platform that helps small- to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) manage their finances. These new features join the company’s artificial intelligence (AI)-powered platform that helps businesses make, receive and track payments; understand their finances; and identify opportunities, JustPaid said in a Tuesday […]

Nvidia is rolling out a new series of artificial intelligence (AI) products at its annual developer conference in San Jose, California, as it strives to strengthen its reputation as the top choice for companies specializing in AI technologies.  On Monday (March 18), Nvidia unveiled its latest generation of AI chips and software designed to power […]

A banking glitch in Ethiopia reportedly let customers withdraw unlimited funds. Now, state-owned Commercial Bank of Ethiopia (CBE) is trying to recover the $40-plus million that was withdrawn or transferred to other banks over the weekend, CNBC reported Tuesday (March 19). The glitch let customers pull more than their total balance, with a large portion of the money being […]

Bottomline expanded the availability of its legal bill review service for property and casualty (P&C) insurance carriers and corporate legal organizations. The service is now available to organizations using any legal spend or legal eBilling system, rather than being exclusive to customers using Bottomline’s platforms, the business payments company said in a Tuesday (March 19) press release. “Our extended service, […]

Australian Payments Plus (AP+) has chosen Swift to assist in improving the country’s payment capabilities. Swift will build a service to reduce misdirect payments and boost defenses against payment fraud, the global payments network announced Tuesday (March 19) in a news release emailed to PYMNTS. AP+ picked Swift to “build confirmation of payee, which is a […]

ISO 20022 migration is increasingly top of mind for the world’s payments players. That’s because the open global standard for financial messaging is fast approaching several different, and staggered, timelines and compliance deadlines for varying market infrastructures around the globe, including a new Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications’ (SWIFT) November 2024 deadline in the […]

As direct-to-consumer (D2C) brands look to drive long-term loyalty in the crowded, highly competitive category, johnnie-O is seeing personalized communications keep shoppers engaged over the long term. In an interview with PYMNTS, John Collins, the brand’s CEO, discussed the risk that D2C brands face when they do not segment their messaging. “We really want to make sure that […]

For closed-loop systems — merchant-specific cards — split-payment options may spark both interest and momentum. Less than a year ago, PYMNTS Intelligence found that more than a quarter of consumers had store cards in hand, and private-label card originations were increasing at a high single-digit percentage point rate. Consumers who owned private-label cards owned an average of […]

Nvidia and data and artificial intelligence (AI) company Databricks have deepened their collaboration. The partnership aims to optimize data and AI workloads on the Databricks Data Intelligence Platform utilizing Nvidia’s accelerated computing and software, the companies said in a Tuesday (March 19) press release. “From analytics use cases through AI, Nvidia has already powered our […]

Wonder has raised $700 million to continue building “the super app of mealtime.” Marc Lore, the serial entrepreneur and former Walmart executive who is founder, chairman and CEO of Wonder Group, announced the fundraise in a Tuesday (March 19) post on LinkedIn. Wonder allows customers to order from 30 restaurants and have the meals brought […]

A top federal prosecutor is reportedly targeting startups that defraud investors ahead of going public. Ismail Ramsey, U.S. attorney for the Northern District of California, told Reuters in an interview published Tuesday (March 19) that his office’s proximity to Silicon Valley and its investor community makes it uniquely positioned to go after artificial intelligence and other tech […]

Singapore’s ShopBack is cutting a quarter of its staff as it exits the BNPL space. CEO Henry Chan announced the cuts in a message to employees Tuesday (March 19), saying the layoffs — which will impact 195 workers, or 24% of staff — come after a sustained period of other cost-cutting measures, including salary freezes and leaving some roles unfilled. […]

Social media is very much under the microscope lately due to the controversy surrounding a potential TikTok ban and various cases regarding its regulation in front of the Supreme Court. And with that attention, another issue more central to the payments industry comes to the fore: the use of social media as a source of financial interactions and […]