December, 2016

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Viber UK Users Can Send Money Thanks To Western Union

PYMNTS

Western Union, the global payment services company, announced Wednesday (Dec. 7) it is enhancing its relationship with Viber, the mobile messaging app that counts 745 million unique users around the globe. In a press release , Western Union said it is enhancing its existing relationship with Viber by enabling Viber users in the U.K. to send money domestically and internationally to more than 200 countries and territories via the Viber app.

Leverage 105
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Mastercard And Visa Tag-Team Tokens

PYMNTS

Tokenization as a global standard for securing transactions in a digital world gets turbocharged today. In a mutual commitment to accelerating the adoption of an open digital wallet, global card networks Mastercard and Visa announce their agreement to allow each network to request tokenized credentials from the other when consumers are transacting across any digital medium — in app, online and in store.

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How Citi FinTech Is Living Up To Its Name

PYMNTS

It’s not easy being big. Or being big and regulated. Among other things, it makes running a footrace with FinTech startups — tough. Big and regulated banks — especially these days — are not set up to sprint. Decades of legacy infrastructure and a web of regulations make it tough to adopt a “move fast and break things” mantra — even if the regulators would allow it.

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Walmart Launches Blockchain Technology For Pork And Produce

PYMNTS

Blockchain has officially entered the grocery aisles. Walmart has announced that it is now testing new blockchain technology to track and trace produce in U.S. stores and pork in China. PYMNTS covered the testing and lead-up to the kickoff back in November. Now, the technology and use of it are even closer. It’s a pilot program, where sliced apples and cut broccoli will be used to test the blockchain database technology for four months starting in the first quarter of 2017.

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Live Demo - Supercharge your Month End Close

Automation generally supercharges any process and brings its value to the forefront. See how infusing automation such as ART (our month-end close solution), into your close can get you to the next level of closing. We will share a live demo of SkyStem's solution, ART and share the key elements of month-end close automation. Through ART, we'll take a look at: What month-end close automation entails Which process steps can and should be automated Benefits of achieving process automation, and Why i

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Visa Acquires CardinalCommerce

PYMNTS

Visa announced today that it will acquire eCommerce payment authentication leader CardinalCommerce. The move is expected to enable Visa’s global clients and partners to accelerate, scale and secure digital commerce as payments expands to include billions upon billions of connected endpoints. Mark Nelsen, senior vice president of risk and authentication products at Visa, said that the “strategic acquisition combines Visa’s industry expertise and Cardinal’s critical role in payment authentication

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Amex Acquires InAuth

PYMNTS

The American Express that exists today would look pretty foreign to its first employees of 166 years ago — since, to state the obvious, a lot has changed over that period of time. Long before American Express was a credit card issuer and a closed loop payments network, it was in the business of moving mail (and other things) quickly from one coast to the other.

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The Coming Millennial FinTech Crisis

PYMNTS

It’s a fact. While they enjoy many FinTech innovations, most millennials don’t have a snowball’s chance of earning more than their parents — ever. How big the income gap between those 70 million people and their parents depends on a few things, including how well-heeled their parents are. Not surprisingly, hardest hit are the kids born to middle and lower middle-income families — so, roughly 70 percent of the U.S. population.

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Sleepless In 2017: The Eight Big Shifts That Should Keep FIs, Retailers and Payments Execs Up At Night

PYMNTS

The ancient Minoans were a happy and productive society, which, among other things, was an early pioneer of cross-border commerce. The civilization that emerged and flourished on the island of Crete from 2000 BC to roughly 1500 BC was defined by artisans, farmers and traders — and a surprising degree of entrepreneurship for a civilization obsessed with Greek gods and fearful of the mythical Minotaur.

Retail 86
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PayPal, Citi, FIS Partnerships Drive Digital Ubiquity

PYMNTS

PayPal’s made it pretty clear that enabling consumer choice means giving consumers the ability to use their preferred method of payment inside of their PayPal wallet anywhere they’d like to shop — in-store, online and in-app. Its deals earlier this year with Mastercard and Visa underscored its commitment to giving issuers new tools to drive a co-branded experience inside of the payment app.

Banking 85
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Mid-Year Review: How to Ignite Employee Potential Through Meaningful Feedback

Mid-year performance reviews aren’t just boxes for HR to check. Paycor’s toolkit empowers leaders to: Identify high-potential team members. Boost engagement with meaningful feedback. Support struggling employees. Nurture top talent to drive results. Learn how to ignite employee potential through meaningful feedback. When you nurture top talent, everybody wins.

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Nearly Two-Thirds Of Americans Already Own An IoT Device

PYMNTS

The Internet of Things may be a burgeoning industry, but according to a new survey by IAB, nearly two-thirds of American consumers, or 62 percent, already own at least one IoT device. What’s more, 65 percent of those surveyed who own IoT devices said they are willing to receive ads on their IoT screens. In a press release highlighting the survey results, IAB said 62 percent of survey respondents said they already see ads on IoT -connected gadgets.

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The Millennials Are Coming (To Get A Mortgage)

PYMNTS

Millennials just aren’t buying homes — they are the first generation of Americans since World War II who will meaningfully move away from that vision of the American Dream. Millennial homeownership rates — for those 75.4 million or so young adults between the ages of 19 and 35 — was far below historical averages and about a fifth of home ownership rate in the same age group at the turn of the 21st century.

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IBM Creates Blockchain Ecosystem

PYMNTS

IBM is getting into the blockchain game, announcing Friday (Dec. 9) it launched a blockchain ecosystem aimed at accelerating the creation of blockchain networks. In a press release , IBM touted blockchain, saying it has the potential to transform the way all sorts of industries conduct business transactions. In order for it to take off, IBM contends there needs to be a complete ecosystem of industrial players all working together.

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Why Visa Bought CardinalCommerce

PYMNTS

To the average consumer, payments looks pretty simple and straightforward — especially when paying online. Enter a card number, hit buy and a millisecond later, the countdown to getting the goods begins. For those that use a mobile wallet, it’s even simpler. And while building all that simplicity for consumers is a good thing, actually making it simple — and secure — is basically what makes the digital commerce world go round.

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Your Accounting Expertise Will Only Get You So Far: What Really Matters

Speaker: Victor C. Barnes, CPA, MBA

In the climb from contributor to leader, the rules quietly change. If you’re aiming for the summit, the air gets thinner—and what got you here won’t be enough to get you to the top (a concept first popularized by Marshall Goldsmith in his book What Got You Here Won’t Get You There ). What made you successful early in your finance career—technical accuracy, sharp analysis, flawless execution—won’t be what carries you to the next level.

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Bitcoin Tracker: Coinsource

PYMNTS

The price of bitcoin has continued its December climb this week. Bitcoin is at its highest value since early Feb. 2014. After a drop into the mid-760s on Sunday (Dec. 11), bitcoin rose to a weekly peak of $788.49 on Tuesday afternoon. The remainder of the week was spent lolling about in the mid to upper 770s. The current value of bitcoin at the time of writing was $777.14. —.

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Keeping Pace With Supply Chain Evolution

PYMNTS

Just as businesses need to keep pace with the change of technology, the technology providers that help businesses remain successful need to stay ahead of the curve themselves. Corporations are scaling globally, integrating complex supply chains, working with small suppliers, ensuring international compliance and gaining access to more data than ever before.

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Circle Says Bye-Bye To Bitcoin

PYMNTS

There are pivots and then there are wholesale about-faces. Circle’s choice to halt bitcoin trading in favor of doubling down on more traditional mobile pay certainly counts as a bit more of the latter than the former. Circle launched three years ago mostly as a consumer finance firm built on a bitcoin backbone. Customers were able and encouraged to buy and sell bitcoin on the platform — and as a blockchain-based firm, Circle was able to snap up around $70M in investor funds.

Finance 81
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DHgate.com Promises 6-Second B2B Transactions

PYMNTS

Chinese B2B eCommerce platform DHgate.com is upgrading its payments infrastructure to promote faster payments for businesses transacting on the site. Reports Friday (Dec. 2) said DHgate.com revealed plans to upgrade its platform payment infrastructure to ensure that every transaction will take six seconds or less. According to reports, through optimizing existing infrastructure and acquiring additional servers across the globe, the site was able to accelerate page loading times and support faste

B2B 80
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The Hidden Science Behind Why Finance Teams Resist Change—And How to Fix It

Speaker: Kim Beynon, CPA, CGMA, PMP

The most overlooked, yet most critical, element of transformation is preparing people for change. Automation and AI aren't just technical upgrades, they’re cultural shifts which can challenge identities. That’s why change management isn’t a side project—it’s the foundation. In finance, where precision and process rule, navigating change can feel especially disruptive.

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Will Amazon Eat Grocery Stores For Lunch?

PYMNTS

Retailers, already sweating bullets over the “ Amazon Effect ” on their business, now have one more reason to keep sweating. Amazon Go, Amazon’s new grocery store format in Seattle, opened last week. Right now, its only customers are Amazon employees, who are putting it through its paces, but that will change in early 2017, a spokesperson said. Few details have emerged as to how Amazon Go powers the experience that shoppers will find once they get inside the store, but the combination of the Ama

Sales 80
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When IoT And The Automotive Industry Collide

PYMNTS

The automotive industry just had a head-on collision — with technology. That’s what Marques McCammon , GM for connected vehicle solutions at Wind River , thinks anyway. He explained that the automotive industry is the one place where the concepts of IoT can be made very real to the mass market — where they will be able to see it, understand it and really feel its impact.

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Russia Will Send JPMorgan Hacker Home to US, Sources Say

PYMNTS

American fugitive Joshua Aaron, who is a suspect in the massive JPMorgan hack that took place back in 2014, arrived back in the U.S. from Russia this week. Aaron’s return to the U.S. and subsequent arrest comes after seven months of negotiations between U.S. authorities and a migrant detention center near Moscow, people close to the matter told Bloomberg.

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DA’s Office In Pennsylvania Pays Ransom In Bitcoin

PYMNTS

At a time when the IRS is trying to find out the identities behind bitcoin users, the Pennsylvania Allegheny County District Attorney’s office revealed it had to use bitcoin to pay a ransom to get its data back. According to a report by Forbes , the ransom was only $1,400, but the fact that a government agency paid a ransom and used bitcoin is something not seen before.

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Doing More With Less: The Modern Finance Miracle

Speaker: Mark Gilham, FCCA, CPP

Finance used to be the function that counted, now it's the one that’s counted on. 📊 For accounting firms, controllers, and finance leaders, expectations are rising faster than headcount. Businesses want agile forecasts, granular analysis, seamless reporting, and smart automation—often without added resources while demanding uncompromised accuracy and compliance.

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Scotland Sheds Industrial Rep For FinTech Focus

PYMNTS

Scotland’s economy has excelled in industrial industries such as shipbuilding, steel and petroleum, but the country is turning its attention to developing a rising digital tech scene. In this week’s installment of PYMNTS’ Weekly Tech Center Roundup , one of the country’s thriving tech clusters, Glasgow, takes center stage. Before we jump into the post, here are a few quick facts about Glasgow and its tech scene: Glasgow it the largest city in Scotland and the third largest in the U.K., with an e

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It’s B2B FinTech’s Time To Shine For Investors

PYMNTS

Venture capital has hit a plateau, according to some analysts. “After $100M+ checks flowed freely to VC-backed companies through much of 2015, the mega-round trend has settled into a lower range through 2016,” concluded KPMG and CB Insights in their Q3 2016 venture capital report. Data suggests the trend is global: North America VC investments for the quarter were fairly flat compared to Q2, and while Europe saw an increase in the number of deals for VC funding, there was a decline i

B2B 79
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The Virtual Barista Is In: Starbucks’ Chatbot

PYMNTS

A chatbot is on the horizon for regular users of the Starbucks mobile app. Called My Starbucks Barista, the new technology’s announcement came out during an event for investors where current and future CEOs of the firm, Howard Schultz and Kevin Johnson, outlined the company’s five-year growth plan. During the investor event, Starbucks premiered a demo video of the technology, with a customer speaking into the phone to interact with a chatbot that asked contextual follow-up questions.

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Millennials Reluctant To Give Personal Data, Businesses Depend On It

PYMNTS

Between the Instagram selfies, Twitter hashtags and Facebook posts, millennials seem to overshare. Their life is an open book on social media, and even the tiniest of details are never too much to provide. But when it comes time to hand over information to authenticate themselves to conduct a financial transaction, that door slams shut. “The more information that’s asked of them, the less likely it is that [millennials] will finish the application,” said Johnny Ayers, cofounder of Socure.

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Tariffs on the Table: How to Brief the Board and C‑Suite With Confidence

“What should we do about the tariffs?” There’s no straightforward answer — every leader has a different expectation. CFOs want numbers. COOs want action. CEOs want strategy. And supply chain and procurement leaders need to be ready with the right response — fast. That’s why GEP has created a simple three-part framework that will help CPOs and CSCOs brief the board and C-suite with clarity and confidence.