Новости за 20.02.2026

Telecom operators’ relationship with artificial intelligence (AI) is now defined by results, not rhetoric. Nvidia’s 2026 State of AI in Telecommunications survey, which polled more than 1,000 industry professionals globally, found that 90% of operators say AI is driving positive return on investment (ROI) and boosting both revenue and cost efficiency, while 89% plan to […]

Global business platform Square continues to expand its partner ecosystem and now has almost 1,000 partners in its Square App Marketplace and its Square Specialists directory, the company said in a Thursday (Feb. 19) press release. The company’s partners offer tools that sellers can access on the marketplace and integrate with Square to help […]

OpenAI’s effort to develop artificial intelligence-powered devices involves more than 200 people, The Information reported Friday (Feb. 20), citing unnamed sources. The team is working on devices that include a smart speaker, smart glasses and a smart lamp, according to the report. OpenAI plans to release the smart speaker first, no earlier than February […]

Google is taking a step toward formalizing how artificial intelligence (AI) agents interact with the web, introducing WebMCP as an early preview feature inside Chrome. WebMCP, short for Web Model Context Protocol, enables websites to expose structured data (like product listings and availability) and defined, machine-readable actions directly to AI systems. Instead of parsing […]

For all the attention stablecoins have received in policy debates and crypto market cycles, they still remain mostly absent from most people’s daily financial lives. Particularly across the world’s major economies. Consumers are not paying rent in tokenized dollars, banks have not replaced ACH with distributed ledgers, and Fortune 500 corporate treasurers are not […]

Nvidia is close to finalizing a $30 billion investment in OpenAI that would replace the company’s earlier commitment to invest up to $100 billion, which was announced in September, Reuters reported Friday (Feb. 20). The Nvidia investment would be part of a funding round in which OpenAI is seeking to raise $100 billion at […]

For nearly a year, PYMNTS Intelligence has tracked the uncertainty confronting middle-market firms as tariffs, policy reversals and trade tensions disrupted forecasting, pricing and investment decisions. Policy debates evolved into an operational constraint, shaping how companies evaluated supply chains, working capital and consumer demand. Across multiple Certainty Project studies, executives described an environment in […]

An outage of an Amazon Web Services (AWS) service in one of the company’s two regions in China in December was caused by user error, not the company’s Kiro artificial intelligence coding tool, an AWS spokesperson told Reuters in a Thursday (Feb. 19) report. The outage was caused by “misconfigured access controls, not AI,” […]

Logistics is moving from a game of scale to one of smarts. As global trade shifts under the weight of ongoing uncertainty and geopolitical strain, knowing where goods are, what condition they are in, and how quickly they can move has become a strategic capability, not just an operational one. From FedEx to Caterpillar, […]

Payment services provider Worldline is preparing to expand the availability of its new omnichannel retail platform across Europe. The company first launched the One Commerce platform in the United Kingdom in January, according to a Jan. 7 press release. Next, Worldline will display the platform during the international retail trade fair EuroShop, which is […]

A FinTech can launch a polished banking app in months, but becoming a bank can take years. The difference isn’t marketing. It’s legal authority. It’s also one of the hottest financial stories of a young 2026. As they rush toward getting their own version of a bank charter, it’s important to note that most […]

Merchant surcharges are in the news as retailers, large and small, look for extra revenue and consumers rail against their existence. “Over the past few months, it feels like almost every place I eat at is adding a [3% to] 4% fee just for paying with a credit card,” read a November Reddit post. […]

Fraud is no longer a marginal cost of doing business. Instead, it is a fast-moving, adaptive threat that cuts across eCommerce, digital payments, account access and identity, growing in frequency and sophistication as commerce increasingly shifts into digital and mobile channels. What once appeared as isolated incidents now reflects systemic pressure on banks, merchants […]

Uncertainty is no longer a background condition for middle-market firms. It is now a measurable cost center. That was the central theme of “How Business Uncertainty Is Forcing a New CFO Playbook,” the latest installment of PYMNTS Intelligence’s The 2026 Certainty Project. Drawing on nine surveys of chief financial officers at companies in the […]

Job security may be improving across the U.S. workforce, but financial confidence tells a more divided story. “Wage to Wallet™ Index: Side Work Patterns in the Labor Economy” explores how roughly 60 million hourly workers earning $50,000 or less annually are navigating rising costs, uneven income timing and growing economic pressure. Higher-income, salaried professionals report […]

Picture three Americans staring at the same electric bill. The retiree sighs, turns down the thermostat and makes a mental note to skip dinner out next week. The 28-year-old opens three apps on her phone —one to split the payment into installments, one to pick up a freelance shift and another to transfer spare […]

As financial pressures intensify across the U.S., a growing number of consumers are shouldering an obligation that rarely shows up as a line item in household budgets: financial support for extended family members and friends. Even as incomes fluctuate and expenses rise, helping others remains one of the most durable financial commitments American households […]

The OpenClaw story went viral for the wrong reasons. Headlines fixated on AI agents forming a religion, encrypting their communications and building their own social network. The spectacle was real. So was the distraction it created from the more consequential story underneath it. OpenClaw, an open-source personal agentic assistant that links to any large […]

Anchorage Digital now enables licensed international banks to access stablecoin rails for U.S. dollar cross-border transfers and settlement. This capability is provided by the company’s new Stablecoin Solutions for Banks, which is a purpose-built offering under U.S. federal oversight, Anchorage Digital said in a Thursday (Feb. 19) press release. Stablecoin Solutions for Banks brings […]

Digital transformation is inherently disruptive. For legacy sectors such as automotive, adapting to a digital-first commerce model requires a period of recalibration as companies, partners and consumers adjust to new ways of buying and selling. CarGurus’ fourth quarter 2025 and full year earnings call Thursday (Feb. 19) only underscored this reality.  The company’s full […]

In identity verification, who someone says they are across financial services can often depends on where they live. In mature economies, financial identity is commonly anchored in banking relationships. Opening a bank account establishes identity, enables payments, and unlocks access to credit, savings and commerce. But across large parts of the world, including Africa, […]

Subprime borrowers drove unsecured personal loan originations and balances to record highs, TransUnion said in a Thursday (Feb. 19) press release. Unsecured personal loan originations reached a record of 7.2 million in the third quarter of 2025, according to the release, which highlighted findings from TransUnion’s Q4 2025 Credit Industry Insights Report. The company […]

JPMorgan Chase said in a Thursday (Feb. 19) court filing that it will seek a dismissal of President Donald Trump’s lawsuit that alleges the financial institution “debanked” him in 2021, Bloomberg reported Thursday. The bank also said in the filing that it seeks to have the case move from a Florida state court to […]

Conversations about the future of money have started to forget one fundamental thing. The cash itself. For all the rhetoric about tokenization, programmable finance, and digital wallets, the defining feature of physical cash is not its technology but its structure. Cash is a distribution system. It is bearer-based, universally accepted, settlement-final, and requires no […]

Badge raised $17.1 million to expand its wallet platform that enables businesses to interact with their customers through Apple and Google digital wallets. The company raised $13.8 million in a Series A round and $3.3 million in a previously unannounced seed round, according to a Thursday (Feb. 19) press release. Badge will use the […]