News

Artificial Intelligence
Companies and Regulators Scramble to Counter the Threat of AI Deception
August 25, 2023

How do we decide whether a human, artificial intelligence (AI) or a combination of the two created a piece of text? Some studies find that more than half of individuals cannot accurately identify content made by AI chatbots such as ChatGPT. The implication for regulators,...

Retail
Amazon Poised to Overtake Walmart in Health and Beauty Spending
August 25, 2023

Amazon’s strategy of overtaking Walmart in key retail categories may finally come to fruition. The competition between the world’s top two retailers for shares of consumer spend is fierce. Walmart currently dominates in the food and beverage category with an 18% share of consumer spend....

Fintech Investments
FinTech IPO Index Dips 0.1% as Earnings Season Wanes
August 25, 2023

The FinTech IPO Index barely budged this past week, giving up a slight 0.1% through the past five sessions. A bit less than three months from now, earnings season will be in full swing again, and we’ll see if the lending picture has brightened, if...

eCommerce
Shoppable Content Is Complicated; Its Future Shouldn’t Be
August 25, 2023

One of the more compelling stories to come out of the pandemic was the idea of shoppable content. The hyper-convenient purchase moment and context of shoppable content, along with its emergent cousins like social shopping and live selling, seemed poised to take off. Click-through to...

Retail
Nordstrom Says 90% of Loyalty Members Shopped Its Anniversary Sale 
August 24, 2023

In March, PYMNTS reported on Nordstrom’s shift from its prior reputation of luxury and exceptional service to utilizing substantial discounts to manage inventory, resulting in decreased sales and profits during the fourth fiscal quarter. Today, has the narrative evolved?   While the retailer asserts a more...

Retail
Rolex to Acquire Watch Retailer Bucherer
August 24, 2023

Luxury watchmaker Rolex plans to boost its presence in the retail space by acquiring watch merchant Bucherer. This acquisition will ensure the continuation of Bucherer’s success and strengthen the close ties between the two companies that have been nurtured since 1924, Rolex said in a Thursday (Aug. 24)...

IPO
Waystar Plans to Take Healthcare Payments Company Public
August 24, 2023

Healthcare payments firm Waystar Technologies is ready to become a public company. Waystar announced Thursday (Aug. 24) that parent company Waystar Holdings had confidentially submitted a draft registration statement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for proposed initial public offering (IPO). “The number of shares to be...

Investments
Citi Backs Peruvian FX FinTech Rextie to Focus on Small Business Transactions
August 24, 2023

Citi says it is investing in Peruvian foreign exchange (FX) FinTech Rextie.  “The investment makes Rextie Latin America’s first FX FinTech to receive an investment from one of the largest banks in the world,” Citi said in a news release Thursday (Aug. 24). In addition to the investment,...

Artificial Intelligence
Meta Continues AI Push With Code Writing Tool
August 24, 2023

Meta said its latest artificial intelligence (AI)-related venture will help developers write code. “Today, we’re releasing Code Llama, a large language model (LLM) that can use text prompts to generate and discuss code,” the social media giant wrote in a Thursday (Aug. 24) blog post. “Code Llama...