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British Consumers’ Complaints About Banking Sector Rise Amid Record-High Fraud
British consumers have more complaints about the banking sector across the board than they did a year ago. Complaints about the sector reached their highest level in at least a decade, with all the most complained about products seeing year-over-year increases in cases, the United Kingdom’s Financial Ombudsman Service said in a Friday (July 12) press release.
House Financial Services Hearing Warns of Regulatory ‘Ambiguity’ Governing FinTech-FI Partnerships
Prudent regulation is needed in helping to define the risks and rewards in emerging partnerships between financial institutions and banks — but current regulatory efforts may be too vague, critics charged at a Congressional hearing held Friday (July 12). A “field hearing” held by the House Financial Services Subcommittee...
Amazon Makes GenAI-Powered Shopping Assistant Available to All US Customers
Amazon’s generative artificial intelligence-powered conversational shopping assistant, Rufus, is now available to all U.S. customers in the Amazon Shopping app. Introduced in February, Rufus answers questions on various shopping needs and products, the company said in a Friday (July 12) press release. “Since introducing Rufus, we’ve been thrilled to...
Paris Olympics Draws 18% More Sponsor Spending Than 2021
U.S. companies are reportedly looking to this summer’s Paris Olympics to put them ahead of their competitors. Event sponsors have spent 18% more on the upcoming Olympics than they spent on the 2021 summer Olympics, Reuters reported Friday (July 12), citing Comcast’s NBCUniversal. Detailing the ways U.S. firms...
JPMorgan Sees Strong Card Spend Despite ‘Weakness’ From Lower-Income Consumers
JPMorgan’s latest results, released Friday (July 12), showed that consumers continued to use their cards in full force, for both debit and credit payments. And though there are pockets of weakness in spending from lower income cohorts, according to management, spending trends are still strong — and there remain opportunities to grow presence in the card market.
Almost All of AT&T’s Wireless Customers Hacked as Snowflake Breach Snowballs
Gaining a deeper understanding of the threat landscape and the top tactics, techniques and procedures (TTPs) of ransomware gangs is increasingly crucial for firms. News broke Friday (July 12) that a fraudster “unlawfully accessed and copied AT&T call logs” impacting “nearly all of AT&T’s wireless customers and customers of mobile virtual network operators … using AT&T’s wireless network.”
Army & Air Force Exchange Service, Discover Expand MILITARY STAR Card Acceptance
Army & Air Force Exchange Service (Exchange) has teamed up with Discover Global Network to expand the acceptance of and add new technology to its MILITARY STAR card. With this collaboration, the MILITARY STAR card will be accepted by more on-installation merchants and have fresh technology including EMV® chip technology, tap-to-pay and mobile wallet capabilities, the Exchange said in a Tuesday (July 9) press release emailed to PYMNTS.
AT&T Says Call, Text Records of ‘Nearly All’ Customers Stolen
AT&T said Friday (July 12) that records of calls and texts of nearly all its wireless customers and others using its network were stolen in a cybersecurity incident. The stolen records identify the telephone numbers with which the wireless numbers of AT&T or mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs) using AT&T’s wireless network interacted between May 1 and October 31, 2022, and on January 2, 2023, AT&T said in a Friday filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Signet Jewelers Cultivates Customer Loyalty Through Service
Signet Jewelers, the world’s largest diamond retailer, faces a distinct challenge in creating customer loyalty. Unlike frequently purchased consumer goods, jewelry purchases tend to be less frequent, necessitating a focus beyond transactional sales. “For jewelry brands, the focus transcends transactions,” Lisa Walker, president of jewelry services at Signet, said...
Winning Top Of Wallet: How Banks Compete in the Embedded Finance Era
Past performance doesn’t always guarantee future results, but it can inform them. That’s particularly evident when it comes to the payments and commerce landscape, which has witnessed a sea of change in just the first half of the year, driven by technological advancements and evolving consumer expectations. Against...
Walmart Taps Automation in Bid to Broaden Grocery Lead Over Amazon
As Walmart looks to hold its own against Amazon’s growing lead in retail, the company is leaning into its food and beverage stronghold, leveraging automation to scale its omnichannel grocery presence. On Wednesday (July 10), the retail giant announced plans for the future of its grocery network, which include...
How the World Does Digital: Italy Posts Solid Scores In Online Shopping
While the Colosseum evokes gladiatorial battles, and Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel frescoes hold timeless beauty, modern Italy is embracing the digital age. Today’s Italians are increasingly turning to mobile wallets and online shopping, showcasing a blend of tradition and digital innovation. In PYMNTS Intelligence’s “How the World Does Digital”...
FinTech IPO Index Surges 3.5% on Partnership Announcements Ahead of Earnings Season
Earnings season’s about to begin – on Friday, but the FinTech IPO Index’s 3.4% rally these past five sessions came amid several new partnership announcements. Upstart shares gathered more than 16% through the week. Upstart announced that Texans Credit Union, one of the largest credit unions in Texas with more than 123,000 members and $2.2 billion in assets, has struck a par partnership with Upstart to offer personal loans to consumers.
Trending: Next Steps for Apple as It Opens Its Ecosystem in Europe
For Apple, the iPhone and the App Store have historically been linchpins for its ecosystem — where the hardware is an onramp to a broad range of services that forge a continuum of commerce, content and payments. But Apple’s opening its payments tech and its App store to rivals...
OpenAI Defines Five Steps From AI to AGI
OpenAI has reportedly developed a way to track its progress toward building artificial general intelligence (AGI), which is AI that can outperform humans. The company shared a new five-level classification system with employees on Tuesday (July 9) and plans to release it to investors and others outside the company in the future, Bloomberg reported Thursday (July 11), citing an OpenAI spokesperson.
Skild AI Raises $300 Million to Build ‘General-Purpose Brain’ for Robots
Skild AI has raised $300 million in a Series A funding round to build an artificial intelligence (AI) model for robotics. The company will use the new capital to expand its team and to continue scaling its model and training datasets in preparation for future commercial deployment of its technology, Skild AI said in a Tuesday (July 9) press release.
House Committee Votes to Aid Defense of TikTok Ban
The U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee reportedly voted Thursday (July 11) to give the Justice Department a transcript of a closed-door hearing about threats posed by TikTok. The release of the transcript is meant to help the Justice Department defend a law that requires TikTok’s China-based owner, ByteDance, to...
Audible Says New Royalty Model Monetizes More Content
Amazon-owned online audiobook and podcast service Audible is rolling out a new royalty model that will enable creators to monetize more types of content. The model will also allow listeners to access more storytelling, the company said in a Thursday (July 11) blog post on its website. In the new...
Zone & Co Adds OCR Capabilities With Staria Flow Acquisition
Zone & Co has acquired Staria’s accounts payable (AP) automation solution, Staria Flow. This acquisition will add enterprise optical character recognition (OCR) capabilities to Zone’s procure-to-pay solution, the companies said in a Thursday (July 11) press release. It follows Zone’s acquisitions of financial reporting solution provider Solution 7...
Instant Payments Versus Stablecoins: The Race to Rule Real-Time Transactions
The future of money movement is accelerating globally. With real-time payments on the U.S. RTP® Network and in Europe setting new usage records, and awareness of instant payments growing in the U.S. since the launch of the FedNow® Service last July, organizations and observers may wonder whether the benefits of instant payment rails will render blockchain-based solutions, like stablecoins, obsolete.
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