NRF Releases Principles for AI Use in Retail Sector

The National Retail Federation (NRF) has released its Principles for the Use of Artificial Intelligence in the Retail Sector, providing a framework for retailers to govern and strategically plan their use of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies.

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    “As retailers of all sizes continue to expand their AI capabilities, these general principles for the use of AI are increasingly critical to the industry,” Christian Beckner, NRF’s vice president of retail technology and cybersecurity and executive director of the NRF Center for Digital Risk & Innovation, said in a Monday (Nov. 13) press release.

    The NRF’s principles fall into four high-level categories, according to the press release. The first is Governance and Risk Management, emphasizing the need for strong internal governance of AI tools and capabilities to manage risks and deliver expected benefits.

    The second category is Customer Engagement and Trust, urging retailers to be transparent about their use of AI that may significantly affect customers, the release said. It also emphasizes the importance of preventing unlawful discrimination and aligning consumer-facing AI applications with existing privacy, cybersecurity and data governance policies.

    The third category of NRF’s principles is Workforce Applications and Use, highlighting the need for ongoing oversight and review of AI applications that impact employees or are used by workers to support business needs, per the release.

    The fourth category is Business Partner Accountability, emphasizing the establishment of clear guidelines and expectations for business partners providing AI tools, data sets and services, according to the release.

    The NRF Center for Digital Risk & Innovation is leading the development of these principles, the release said.

    “The Center plans to develop reports and additional guidelines in the coming months that provide additional context and assist retailers with using these principles,” the NRF said in the release.

    PYMNTS Intelligence has found that retailers have turned to AI to enhance the customer experience with offerings like AI-powered self-service options.

    Beyond that, by deploying AI in both consumer-facing and back-end applications, the grocery industry, for example, could save $113 billion, according to “What Self-Service Retail is Teaching Banks About Self-Service Banking,” a PYMNTS and NCR Corp. collaboration.


    ACH Same-Day Q2 Volume Increases 15% to Nearly $1T

    The ACH Network says it has seen “significant” gains in same-day payments since last year.

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      Those transactions were up 15% during the second quarter compared to last year, helping drive overall growth of 5%, the payments network that underpins most U.S. payroll, bill pay and B2B invoices said Monday (July 21).

      “The continued robust growth of Same Day ACH shows how it is serving payments use cases for consumers, businesses, government agencies and other organizations,” Jane Larimer, president and CEO of Nacha, which operates the ACH network, said in a news release provided to PYMNTS. “As we enter the second half of the year, we expect to see this trend continue.”

      In all, ACH Network growth continued during the quarter, with 8.7 billion payments valued at $23.3 trillion, respective increases of 5% and 7.9% year over year. The network saw 336.4 million same-day payments, moving $980.3 billion in value, up 15% and 22% respectively. During the first half of this year, Same Day ACH handled 662.4 million payments valued at almost $1.9 trillion.

      “Business-to-business ACH volume grew apace, with more than 2 billion payments, up 10.6% from the same period in 2024,” the release added. “Claim payments to healthcare providers grew by 9.9% to 138.2 million payments.”

      The report follows a quarter in which the volume of Same Day ACH payments climbed 19.1% year over year to reach 326 million, with the value of those payments increasing 24.8%.

      In related news, PYMNTS explored the “speed-and-security paradox” surrounding faster payments in a recent conversation with Bill Wardwell, senior vice president of payments, treasury and supplier services at spend management platform Coupa, and Katie Elliott, senior risk and fraud officer at B2B payments network Bottomline.

      “I know it seems counterintuitive, but I’m going to say it: Slowing down is the best practice for faster payments,” Elliott said.

      She said her remedy is to introduce friction into high-risk moments like vendor onboarding or a change to routing instructions, while allowing an already vetted payment to proceed across real-time payment or same-day ACH rails. When urgency is not part of the equation, business email compromise schemes that rely on fear and deadlines lose their potency.

      The hidden enemy is fragmentation, Wardwell added. Pointing to a soon-to-be-published Coupa survey, he said that nearly 80% of the companies that suffered payment fraud were using multiple payment workflow systems.