Sat.Sep 03, 2016 - Fri.Sep 09, 2016

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PayPal And MasterCard Announce New Strategic Partnership

PYMNTS

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Mastercard and PayPal have inked a strategic partnership similar to the one that PayPal and Visa inked earlier this year. As part of this partnership, Mastercard will be presented as a visible payment option to PayPal customers, with prominent issuer branding, implying that PayPal will no longer encourage Mastercard customers to link their bank accounts to PayPal via ACH.

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There Are Fewer Unbanked Americans, According To The FDIC

PYMNTS

With increasingly few exceptions, the ranks of the unbanked seem to be on the decline, according to new data released by the FDIC. The percentage of Americans going without banking services fell to 7 percent in 2015 from 7.7 percent in 2013. According to FDIC data, unbanked American consumers peaked toward the end of the Great Recession in 2011 at 8.2 percent.

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The Uber For Aerial Shots

PYMNTS

Looking for that ultra-sexy flyover video of your business? Shootly is the mobile app to shoot for. Dubbed the “Uber of photography and droneography,” Cofounder and CEO Garrett Henricksen says he already has more than 25 photographers and a dozen drone pilots ready to meet your photography needs. Whether you’re a real estate agent looking for the flyover money shot, an event planner looking to show off the glitz from tonight’s red carpet production or just a regular joe looking for s

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Meet Revuze, The Startup Bringing Artificial Intelligence To Brand Management

PYMNTS

Let’s face it, data analysis can be a costly and time-consuming affair and can sometimes take weeks or months of scouring through troves and troves of data from a number of channels, like sales, surveys, customer reviews and social media, to even interpret how consumers might be responding to a certain brand or product. Then, of course, there’s always the chance that human error or bias could lead to the wrong interpretation or understanding of the data as well.

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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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New App Makes It Easier For People In Vancouver To Pay For Meals

PYMNTS

Residents in Vancouver are getting a little more convenience in their lives thanks to a new app that lets them pay for their meals. According to a report , the co-creator of PayByPhone, a parking app that lets you use your mobile phone to pay for parking, has launched Glance Pay , a mobile app for people who eat out. The app enables diners to pay for dinner at 46 restaurants in Vancouver.

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200 Fake Ecommerce Companies Identified

PYMNTS

Spying a fake company is difficult, even for India’s Ministry of Consumer Affairs, which just disclosed efforts around identifying about 200 fake commerce companies. The names of each company have not been released to the public, but the Ministry has escalated the matter up to the Department of Industrial Promotion and Policy (DIPP) for further action.

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Everybody Runs On Dunkin’, Dunkin’ Now Runs On Bitcoin

PYMNTS

Bitcoin is going a bit more mainstream and may be part of your daily morning jolt. As NewsBTC reported, eGifter , the online gift card platform, is supporting Dunkin’ Donuts cards, and as part of that support, customers can pay with bitcoin. Thus, distributed ledger technology is making inroads across payments technology and crullers, too. The bitcoin payments option is offered across the spectrum of eGifter’s prepaid card pantheon, encompassing more than 200 brands.

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Samsung’s Smart Belt — Called Welt

PYMNTS

In its ongoing efforts to expand the bounds of what can — or should — be a wearable, Samsung’s latest possible edition is currently being vetted by the sober minds at Kickstarter. Called the Welt, the smart belt made its first public appearance at the Consumer Electronics show in January — it’s now on Kickstarter with an estimated date of delivery in January of 2017.

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Bitcoin Blushing With Secret Admirers

PYMNTS

Who knew that Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, known for their early involvement in Facebook, were in love with bitcoin? And do you care? You might, when you find out that they were the first to file for a bitcoin Exchange-Traded Fund (ETF) with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Some think that bitcoin ETFs will provide the ignition that bitcoin has been looking for.

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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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Tackling The Two Rs Of X-Border Payments

PYMNTS

Puppies and cute. Dentists and dread. Cross-border money transfer and murky. That’s often — and unfortunately — the word that most businesses associate with the process of receiving money from a sender from another part of the world. It’s a dimension of money transfer that is increasing in frequency and value as more people seek the services of institutions outside of their home country.

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Bitcoin’s Fall Forecast

PYMNTS

Bitcoin activity has been relatively calm again this week, but that doesn’t means that there is a shortage of updates and opinion on its latest moves. A cryptocurrency engineer is creating a social media platform to allow content writers to be paid in bitcoin — a “Bitcoinbook” for Reddit users, if you will. Also, two bitcoin experts responded to central bank calls for assistance in lifting the global economy and suggested that cryptocurrencies are less risky than central bank fiscal policies.

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Why Silicon Valley Has Its Eye On Nigeria

PYMNTS

Facebook Founder Mark Zuckerberg visited sub-Saharan Africa for the first time in August, shining a huge spotlight on the growing tech center within Nigeria. Not only did Zuckerberg’s visit bring a boost to Nigerian startups, but it solidified that the tech scene in Lagos may be one to watch out for. In this week’s edition of PYMNTS’ Weekly Tech Center Roundup , we take our first trip to Africa and check out the bursting tech ecosystem growing in Nigeria.

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SoFi Aims At A $500M Funding Round

PYMNTS

Online lender Social Finance Inc has clearly decided to embrace the “go big or go home” mantra with its latest push for funding in the face of generally waning enthusiasm about the whole tech-backed lending concept. SoF is is hoping to buck a recent trend by raising a whopping $500 million in equity to fund new growth initiatives among mass-market borrowers and international markets.

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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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Payworks: Precipitate Vs. Practical Growth

PYMNTS

Payworks ‘ gateway technology, Pulse, wants to provide the lifeblood to point-of-sale transactions for merchants using EMV, contactless and mobile wallets. The company just announced $4.5 million in Series A funding from investors Rumford, HW Capital and Speedinvest. PYMNTS caught up with CEO Christian Deger to find out what keeps Payworks “pulsing” away in the global payments market of gateway providers.

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PayPal And The Global Open Platform

PYMNTS

Over the last few years, PayPal has had the weird privilege of reading its own obituary an unusually large number of times — a somewhat surprising development given that the firm has been growing consistently for almost two decades. For a while there — particularly in the run-up to its split from long-time parent firm eBay and the immediate aftermath — there was a never-ending series of stories suggesting that Apple Pay would be PayPal’s demise or that the card networks/issuers were out to put

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From POS To POE

PYMNTS

There was once a time when the butcher in town knew you by name, because that’s where you would always buy your meat, and the baker would have your two fresh-baked rye loaves, still hot, sitting on the counter ready for you to pick up on a Monday morning, because that’s where you always bought your bread. ETailers have a leg-up on retailers because they are recreating the shopping experiences of old.

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YouTube Makes Changes To Video Monetization

PYMNTS

Aiming to increase transparency and fairness around its video monetization, YouTube announced changes in a blog post last week. According to YouTube, the company started rolling out improved notifications in Video Manager in an effort to make it fairer and clarify confusion in the creator community around its longstanding advertiser-friendly guidelines.

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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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Wearable Devices Present An Opportunity For Financial Services

PYMNTS

Financial services firms have an opportunity to expand mobile payments and account management capabilities thanks to growth in wearable devices. Wearable devices may be in their early stage of adoption, but they are set to grow. According to market research firm International Data Corp., worldwide shipments of wearable devices are targeted to reach 213.6 million units in 2020.

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UPS’ Coming Shipping Price Hike

PYMNTS

The United Parcel Service (UPS) plans to raise shipping rates but will wait until after the holiday shopping season to do so, according to Retail Dive. The 4.9 percent rate hike will take effect on Dec. 26 on ground and shipping services, while the freight division will raise its shipping rates on Sept. 19. “UPS continues to make investments in the speed, scope and coverage of our transportation network.

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Asia Closes In On UK In Forex Market Dominance

PYMNTS

For weeks now, analysts have warned that the U.K.’s dominance in FX trading is waning. Now, for the first time in more than a decade, the U.K.’s share of the global currencies trading market dropped to 37.1 percent, reports by Financial Times said late last week — that’s down from 41 percent in 2013. New data from the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) has also confirmed what analysts have been eyeing in recent months, too: Asia is rising to the top of the global FX trad

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Trade Groups Want Alibaba To Do More About Counterfeiting

PYMNTS

Despite recent efforts, it seems as though Alibaba ‘s counterfeiting controversy is determined to stick around. As of August, a variety of international trade groups have sent Alibaba a letter to inform it that its recent efforts are insufficient to quell the tidal wave of counterfeit goods that is currently flooding the various marketplaces Alibaba operates.

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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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UK Uber Rider Falls Asleep, Gets $111 Bill For Short Trip

PYMNTS

Falling asleep on public transportation can be dangerous. Falling asleep in an Uber car can be very costly. At least, that’s the experience of one Uber rider in the U.K. who got hit with a more than $100 bill for a short trip — all because she fell asleep. According to a report by Mashable , Hannah Warman, a London-based comedian, opted to take an Uber car home on Sunday (Aug. 28) night instead of making the short walk home.

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President Obama On The ‘Cyber Arms Race’

PYMNTS

President Barack Obama had a stern warning for the world this week: The potential for an all-out cyber arms race is upon us. At the G20 international summit in China, President Obama told the media that, as countries continue to build up their arsenals of cyberweapons, the chance for a “free-for-all” to break out in the cyberspace is likely, unless everyone starts acting responsibly — and fast. “[We] cannot have a situation where this becomes the wild, wild West, where countries [that] hav

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What Payments Did On Its Summer Vacation

PYMNTS

Summer is usually filled with torpor, slow movement and dreams of beaches and other idylls. Unless you’re in the payments space. No kicking back here. For us at PYMNTS, there was plenty to chew over and mull, and none of it came with ice cream, beach umbrellas or swizzle sticks. Some of the biggest headlines of the year came during the summer and involved marquee names that dominate eCommerce, many of which are in the midst of pushing into each other’s wheelhouses.

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Hispanic Millennials A Top Target For Mobile Wallet Players

PYMNTS

The Hispanic Millennial Project has found some patterns in the use of mobile payments technologies among this demographic. Reports on Friday (Sept. 2) said the research initiative revealed that Hispanic millennials, those aged 18–34, are embracing mobile payments technology. But there are other trends that emerge when the data is broken down even further.

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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.