Today is Friday, May 13. Friday the 13th is known as an unlucky day in western superstition and is also the premise of the slasher movie franchise set at the fictitious Crystal Lake but is actually based on a real unsolved 1960 murder of three teens at Lake Bodom in Finland. The film series hasn’t continued since 2009 over copyright laws. Here’s what else should be on your radar this morning.
Twitter on Hold. Elon Musk tweeted that his $44 billion deal to acquire Twitter is now on hold. The Tesla CEO and rocket man said he wants to do a deep dive into the social media platform’s monetizable daily active users and the number of spam accounts on the site. Twitter reported that fake accounts were less than 5% of its 226 million monetizable daily active users; Musk wants to see the calculations. READ MORE
Crypto Lightning. Former Meta executive David Marcus raised $175 million for his new cryptocurrency payments startup on the Lightning Network called Lightspark. Marcus headed the Facebook team for the stablecoin first called Libra, then Diem, along with a crypto wallet, Novi. Lightspark working on infrastructure to boost speed and efficiency for the blockchain protocol Lightning Network. READ MORE
Cash Flow Magic. The conversion about the “how” of making payments is being driven by customers dictating their preferred method and businesses striving for optimization. Jennifer Acosta, J.P. Morgan managing director, industry head, technology, media and telecom speaking told PYMNTS’ Karen Webster that the B2B space is lagging in innovation compared to the B2C sector. READ MORE
Soup to Nuts. Indoor dining is back but that doesn’t mean customers have dropped their desire for doorstep delivery of restaurant meals. Eateries are now tasked with figuring out the best way to leverage technology to thrive in an omnichannel world. Andrew Robbins, CEO of Paytronix, told PYMNTS that digital platforms are now a critical tool for boosting engagement and loyalty. READ MORE
ICYMI. Electronic DJ and production duo The Chainsmokers is launching 5,000 non-fungible tokens (NFTs) on Tuesday (May 17) that will be given to fans at no charge as a way to offer them a percentage of the streaming royalties from their new studio album “So Far So Good.” The VIP list of recipients will be devised from superfans and frequent concert ticket buyers. READ MORE
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