News

Mobile Commerce
Apple Teams With LG to Expand Smart Home Offerings
October 07, 2026

Apple’s new smart home hub will reportedly extend beyond the confines of the home.  The tech giant is teaming with LG Electronics to develop products including outdoor security cameras, floodlight cameras, indoor security cameras, doorbells, thermostats and smart deadlock bolts, Bloomberg News reported Tuesday (Oct....

Artificial Intelligence
AI Agents Turn Permission Into Payments’ New Control Point
October 07, 2026

Agentic commerce is creating a new transaction type before the payments industry has fully created the rules for accepting it. While payment stacks have become fine-tuned for transaction authorization, agentic commerce inserts a new question. Not, “should this transaction be authorized,” but; “was this machine...

Payment Methods
5 Ways Missing Payment Options Send Shoppers Elsewhere
October 07, 2026

A shopper who reaches checkout has already selected what to buy. For tens of millions of consumers, however, the available ways to pay can still determine whether the purchase happens. PYMNTS Intelligence’s “The Hidden Cost of Checkout Gaps: What 56 Million Abandoned Carts Mean for...

Retail
Just 11% of Retailers Measure Embedded Finance Success by ROI
October 07, 2026

Embedded finance is delivering measurable benefits for retailers, but the way they judge whether it works reaches beyond the revenue line. The PYMNTS Intelligence report “Retailers Expand Embedded Finance to Unlock Control and Customization” found in November 2025 that just 11% of retailers gauged embedded...

Artificial Intelligence
Meta and Sierra Build Standard for How Personal Agents Interact With Businesses
October 06, 2026

An open standard that defines how personal agents interact with businesses is being developed by Sierra, Meta, Genesys, Instinct, Rocket, Shopify, Stripe and Walmart, Sierra Co-Founders Bret Taylor and Clay Bavor said in a Tuesday (Oct. 6) blog post. Set to be published by the...

Artificial Intelligence
CarMax Lets AI Take the Call, Not the Sale
October 06, 2026

A shopper who calls a CarMax store to ask about hours or whether a car is still on the lot now reaches an artificial intelligence agent first. The agent asks clarifying questions, answers what it can and hands the rest to an associate. CarMax has...

Investments
Lambda Targets $14.5 Billion Valuation in Final Pre-IPO Round
October 06, 2026

Cloud computing company Lambda is raising as much as $4 billion in a funding round that will value the company at $14.5 billion, excluding the money raised, the Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday (Oct. 6), citing unnamed sources. Lambda is raising this funding in a final round before a...

Artificial Intelligence
Anthropic Expands Discounts and Support for Founders
October 06, 2026

Anthropic expanded its Claude Startups program to more founders, the company said via its Claude account in a Tuesday (Oct. 6) post on social platform X. The Claude Startups program is expanding to more founders. Members can get a year of Claude Team, API credits,...

Artificial Intelligence
AI Power Users Spend Like Small Businesses
October 06, 2026

Artificial intelligence (AI) has become a mainstream consumer technology. But paying for it remains a much narrower habit. The consumers who do spend heavily on AI, however, are opening their wallets at levels that look less like entertainment subscriptions and more like business software budgets....