Sat.Apr 28, 2018 - Fri.May 04, 2018

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Turning To APIs To Bridge The Gap Between Old And New Tech

PYMNTS

From mom-and-pop retail shops to the world’s largest companies, nearly every business is looking to offer the latest technology to its consumers. For many in the financial services world, though, implementing innovations is easier said than done. So, what’s standing in the way of FIs, the largest of which come to the table armed with big budgets and endless resources?

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Why Amazon Targets B2B eCommerce’s ‘Tail Spend’

PYMNTS

In some sense, B2B eCommerce offerings have had a customer base for longer than they’ve actually had their own hub on Amazon, Martin Rohde, head of commercial customers for Amazon Business, told Karen Webster in a recent conversation. First founded about three years ago in 2015, Amazon Business – the firm’s B2B eCommerce marketplace – has grown up quickly.

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Socure’s New CEO On Digital Identity’s Future

PYMNTS

It’s like the band is back together. Thirty-three years ago, Tom Thimot, the newly appointed CEO of Socure , collaborated with founder Sunil Madhu on a business specializing in physical identity verification and access solutions: Netegrity, which was ultimately sold in 2005 to CA Technologies for $430 million. From there, Madhu worked for Cisco and founded Hopskoch and Socure, while Thimot built a number of businesses that straddled data and security in some way.

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More Banks See Value In Faster Payments And APIs, Finds ACI Worldwide

PYMNTS

A new survey by ACI Worldwide and Ovum found evidence that financial institutions (FIs) are more willing to open up their data via API and are embracing real-time payments initiatives. The report, published on Monday (April 30), found nearly three-quarters of banks surveyed (73 percent) said they would be willing to open up data to third-party developers via API.

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Why Tech-Forward Tax and Accounting Firms Have the Inside Track to the Future

Speaker: Joe Wroblewski, Sales Engineer Manager

Automating time-consuming manual tasks can save your firm hundreds of hours–and thousands of dollars. But it can also have longer-lasting benefits, like helping you attract and retain the next generation of CPAs, and we don’t need to tell you how important that is amid the current generational staffing crisis in the tax and accounting profession. You'll want to save your seat for this new webinar with industry expert Joe Wroblewski, where we'll explore how to: Maximize ROI with Cost-Effective Te

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Ripple Partners With Five European And Asian Payment Providers

PYMNTS

Ripple has announced that five new customers across Europe and Asia will use xVia to power payments over RippleNet, its blockchain network. The companies partnering with Ripple are FairFX (U.K.), RationalFX (U.K.), Exchange4Free (U.K.), UniPAY (Georgia), and MoneyMatch (Malaysia). xVia is an API solution enabling payment originators (those sending a payment on behalf of a customer, but not actually processing and paying it out) to access RippleNet.

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Chef’d CEO: Why The Existing Meal Kit Model Doesn’t Work

PYMNTS

Get ready for a shift in the meal kit landscape, according to Chef’d CEO Kyle Ransford. In the latest Topic TBD with PYMNTS’ Karen Webster, which explored the preparation and delivery of food rendered as a service, Ransford predicted that “I think the subscription meal kit as it’s been known will be vastly diminished in the next two years. It won’t be something that you hear a lot of or get marketed to a lot.

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The Interoperability-Integration Debate: Where APIs Fit

PYMNTS

New technology and solutions powered by APIs are hitting the financial services market every day, brought on by new innovations or industry regulations. But introducing tech to stay compliant with new regulations and expecting easy adoption in a competitive space is a steep hill to climb – one made even tougher by outdated or legacy technology and IT infrastructure. .

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The (eCommerce) Race Is To The Swift

PYMNTS

Going too slow these days is a costly error to make, as consumers don’t have the patience to wait for their merchants to catch up. If a purchase takes too long to complete, customers will migrate to another site where things move more smoothly, according to this month’s Checkout Conversion Index. And while it’s an exaggeration to state that customers are all turning to Amazon , the eCommerce giant’s latest earnings release indicates a lot of them are.

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Treasurers Overconfident On Cyber Defenses

PYMNTS

With a threefold increase in the number of corporates who had been hit by a ransomware attack in the last year compared to a year prior, corporate treasurers have been forced to swallow the large, uncomfortable pill of the threat of cyberattacks and fraud on their organizations in a short amount of time. But Strategic Treasurer , which highlighted that statistic in its latest Treasury Fraud & Controls survey report sponsored by Bottomline Technologies, found an impressively high level of opt

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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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Oh, Baby: The Sharing Economy Comes To Childcare Equipment

PYMNTS

Millennials love to share. Ridesharing, home-sharing, bike-sharing — you name it, they probably share it. They are proportionally comfortable using gig economy services that provide these things, with about a third of millennials working some sort of gig position themselves. This generation also loves to travel, and many delay starting families (or forego it altogether) to continue exploring the world or otherwise pursue self-fulfillment.

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The Biggest Banking, Regulatory Challenges For Today’s Entrepreneur

PYMNTS

National Small Business Week is this week in the U.S., and finance experts are celebrating with new data on the state of the entrepreneurial community. The verdict, overall, is quite good: Small business optimism is, again, at new heights. But analysts from Bank of America, Square, Navcom and the National Association for the Self-Employed warn that challenges for some SMBs have reached new heights, too.

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Mapping The Black Box: A Look Inside Machine Learning’s Powers And Quirks

PYMNTS

“Machine learning is the answer to the financial inclusion problem.”. So said Douglas Merrill, founder of ZestFinance. It’s a bold statement, considering that the lending space is still trying to articulate what, exactly, the financial inclusion problem is — and everyone else is still trying to figure out what, exactly, “machine learning” means and why it matters to them.

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GDPR & PSD2: A Silver Lining For Fraudsters?

PYMNTS

The deadlines for compliance with new European data regulations are right around the corner, and the impact of these changes won’t be limited to the European Union. According to Ethoca, neither should preparations for the shift. The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) goes into effect on May 25 of this year. Additionally, the strong customer authentication (SCA) mandated by the second Payment Services Directive (PSD2) goes into effect in September of 2019 — and yes, that too counts as “rig

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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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The Role Of Customer Service In Strengthening The Processor/Merchant Bond

PYMNTS

Customer service matters in all walks of business, to consumers and businesses alike, but especially so in payments. Troubleshooting issues when they arise, or anticipating them before they happen, can make all the difference in ensuring transactions and other business processes flow smoothly and voluminously. In an interview with PYMNTS, Latiffa Sharpe, vice president of merchant services for First American Payment Systems , said that merchants, in establishing relationships with their payment

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Synchrony Amazon.com Store Card Holders Can Now Check Balances Via Voice

PYMNTS

Synchrony , the financial services company, announced news on Wednesday (May 2) that customers can now use voice commands to manage their Amazon.com Store Card. In a press release , Synchrony said it is making this happen via a new skill for Alexa, dubbed the Store Card skill. Via voice commands, cardholders can check their account information, review recent purchases and charges, get payment details and even pay their bill.

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Starbucks’ US Traffic Flat In Q2 As Promos Fail To Take Off

PYMNTS

Starbucks promotional efforts, which it has been increasing recently, failed to resonate with customers, resulting in the company reporting lackluster store traffic in the U.S. for two quarters in a row. Reuters , citing the company’s second-quarter financial results, reported that same-store sales in the Americas — which is led by the U.S. — increased 2 percent in the second quarter.

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The Quiet Sea Change At QVC

PYMNTS

Home shopping used to mean something quite different in the United States than it does today. In the pre-digital, pre-web and pre- Amazon world, shopping at home meant shopping from the couch — from TV channels like QVC or HSN , but a similar model no matter which way one went. Each program would feature a genial host hawking directly to consumer wares, perhaps some “Diamonique” jewelry.

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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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Telegram Bags ICO

PYMNTS

After bringing in $1.7 billion from private investors, messaging app Telegram has called off its public initial coin offering (ICO). According to The Wall Street Journal , Telegram raised the money by selling newly created cryptocurrency to fewer than 200 private investors. The company will use the funds for a project, Telegram Open Network, which will expand its technology and further redevelop its messenger service, which has about 200 million users globally.

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TRENDING: Can Escrow Disbursements Ease Gig Worker Payment Woes?

PYMNTS

Whether it’s a full-time employee waiting for a regular paycheck, a gig worker expecting to be paid in short order or a borrower seeking a loan, payment frictions can be a roadblock to financial stability. And, if they aren’t cleared seamlessly, these hurdles can cause bills to be missed, expansion plans to be delayed and business relationships to crumble.

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Mulvaney Might Move CFPB To Cut Costs

PYMNTS

In a bid to save money, Mick Mulvaney is considering moving dozens of employees of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) to the basement of its Washington headquarters, while relocating the others to Dallas. According to American Banker , Mulvaney is looking to cut spending at the agency by tens of millions of dollars. “All options are on the table as we work to make the Bureau more efficient and effective,” said John Czwartacki, the CFPB’s chief communications office

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Senator Warren Wants More Answers From CFPB’s Mulvaney

PYMNTS

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, putting more pressure on acting Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) director, sent a letter asking Mick Mulvaney if he is helping the industries that he is supposed to be overseeing. The letter was prompted by Mulvaney’s comments last week that he would only talk to lobbyists who gave to his election campaign when he was a congressman.

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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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Startup Roundup: New Innovations In Bloom

PYMNTS

Sometimes, being a startup is about fixing the problem no one else will fix. Other times, it’s about improving on existing solutions to make something even better. Whether it’s streamlining workflows (like DadeSystems’ “Twitter for B2B” ), building a new product (like FitPay’s eVault for payment and ID cards) or creating a whole new way for the unbanked to manage their money (as nanopay observed in India), what seems to be true across the board is that these companies are always moving, always g

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FLEETCOR Reveals Gift Card Data Breach

PYMNTS

FLEETCOR Technologies , a provider of commercial payment services, reported a data breach as the company announced on Thursday (May 3) a 17 percent year-over-year revenue increase for the first quarter of 2018, beating analyst expectations. In its earnings statement, FLEETCOR said that on April 26, it “identified suspicious activity primarily on systems involving the company’s Stored Value Solutions gift card business.

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Amazon Business Adds Invoicing, Allowing Buyers To Delay Payment

PYMNTS

Amazon Business is introducing a new invoicing feature that could impose cash flow pressure on sellers, according to AuctionBytes. The blog posted excerpts from an email reportedly sent by Amazon Business to U.S. sellers on the B2B eCommerce platform, advising them of the launch of Pay by Invoice. The feature, which requires no action or onboarding on the part of the vendor, enables corporate buyers to make invoiced purchases.

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WhatsApp Founder Leaves Company Over Facebook Data Strategy

PYMNTS

The co-founder of WhatsApp, a messaging service owned by Facebook , announced he is leaving the company. Jan Koum, who co-founded WhatsApp with Brian Acton, is leaving the company after disagreements over the messaging service’s strategy, as well as Facebook’s attempts to use its personal data and weaken its encryption. “It’s been almost a decade since Brian and I started WhatsApp, and it’s been an amazing journey with some of the best people,” Koum, said in a post on his Facebook page, accordin

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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.