News and Buzz

• Clock Ticks On TikTok, WeChat Bans – And eCommerce May Suffer

  September 18, 2020 Sunday looms as a red-letter day for TikTok and Tencent’s WeChat – and tens of millions of users who use the apps to conduct commerce. Here in the States, the government ...

• Mobile Banking Firm Chime Gets $14.5B Valuation With New Funding

  September 18, 2020 Mobile banking upstart Chime has completed funding that has provided the firm with a $14.5 billion valuation, CNBC reported. Chime, which CEO Chris Britt co-founded in 2013, provides clients mobile banking ...

• Paytm Briefly Removed From Google Play Over Alleged Gambling Violations

  September 18, 2020 Paytm, India’s eCommerce payment platform, was removed from Google’s Play Store after the global technology company alleged Paytm violated Google’s gambling policies, India.com reported, but the app was later reinstated. “We ...

• Trump Administration Announces TikTok And WeChat Bans To Start Sunday

  September 18, 2020 President Donald Trump will follow through on his pledge to ban downloads of TikTok and WeChat starting Sunday (Sept. 20).  The U.S. Commerce Department announced on Friday (Sept. 18) that the ...

• Crate And Barrel On Weathering The Pandemic-Driven Push To Omnichannel

  September 18, 2020 With brick-and-mortar retailers reopening worldwide, consumers are heading back to stores — and they’re taking their newfound digital shopping and payment habits with them, says Joan King, senior vice president ...

• Report: Helping QSRs Fight Food Fraud

  September 18, 2020 Competing in the quick-service restaurant (QSR) space gets more difficult each year, as restaurants fight to retain the attention of consumers hunting for convenient meals. The ongoing pandemic has only heightened ...

• Jacksonville Jaguar Fans Can Now Pay Via QR Codes

  September 17, 2020 The Jacksonville Jaguars are now allowing QR-based mobile payments at retailers and concessions at the TIAA Bank Field Stadium through a mobile Jags Pay wallet in the official team app, ...

• AT&T Eyes Ad-Supported Billing Options

  September 17, 2020 AT&T is considering new phone plans in which the customer could get a discount for letting the company put ads on their smartphone, Reuters reported. CEO John Stankey said the new ...

• EU Could Force Apple To Share Payments Tech With Competitors

  September 17, 2020 The European Union (EU) could pass new laws that would make it mandatory for Apple to share the payments technology in its iPhones, according to a report from Bloomberg. The new ...

• Order Aggregators Driving The Action In Delivery Sector

  September 17, 2020 It was Napoleon Bonaparte who purportedly said, “an army marches on its stomach” or words to that effect. As go armies, so go nations. Witness America’s insatiable appetite for fresh ...

• Sam's Club To Bring Scan & Go Fuel To 518 Stations

  September 17, 2020 Sam’s Club is rolling out its mobile pay-at-the-pump Scan & Go Fuel experience at over 70 locations throughout the nation in September, with a “full-scale” launch to 518 gas stations ...

• How ‘Pandenomics’ Will Drive Mobile Check Deposits

  September 17, 2020 “Pandenomics” may usher in a new age for mobile check capture and deposits. In an interview with Karen Webster, Mike Diamond, general manager of digital banking at Mitek, said it’s unlikely ...

• Crate And Barrel: Personalizing The Shopping Experience For A Digital-First Buyer

  September 17, 2020 Consumers were shopping, transacting and interacting with merchants via online or mobile channels well before the COVID-19 pandemic’s onset, but the global health crisis has dramatically accelerated this trend. Customers ...

• Why The Customer Experience Is A Program, Not A Project

  September 17, 2020 The pandemic has reshaped how we interact with merchants — and what we expect, as customers, from those increasingly digital interactions. Call it the transformation of CX, shorthand for the customer ...

• Odds Are That Online Sportsbook Wins Big Post-COVID

  September 16, 2020 It’s been said that “gamblers find things to gamble on.” Online sportsbooks have been beneficiaries of that dictum ever since COVID-19 eradicated most live sports, leaving millions of fans and ...

• Apple: Fortnite Can Return But Without In-App Payment System

  September 16, 2020 In the ongoing conflict between Apple and Epic Games, Apple’s newest filing accuses Epic of sabotaging itself. The Verge reported that the court documents from Apple said Epic “started a fire, ...

• Circle, Dapper Labs Team To Add Stablecoin Payments For Digital Collectibles

  September 16, 2020 Dapper Labs will be partnering with peer-to-peer firm Circle to help add payment methods for digital collectibles using credit and debit card payments to settle in the stablecoin USD Coin ...

• Today In How We Eat: Starbucks Sweetens Loyalty And Meal Kit Subscriptions Soar

  September 16, 2020 Consumers’ appetite for change as to how they feed themselves has been particularly busy of late, pushing Starbucks to sweeten its loyalty offerings to customers and meal kits to rise ...

• Today In Digital-First Banking: Tesco Bank Introduces Digital Payment Platform; Square Rolls Out On-Demand Payroll

  September 16, 2020 In today’s top news in digital-first banking, Tesco Bank has introduced an online payment platform for credit card customers, and Square has rolled out on-demand payroll. Plus, Monit is rolling ...

• PayPal’s Jim Magats: How The Last Six Months Has Changed The Future Of How Consumers Will Shop

  September 16, 2020 When stay-at-home orders first went out in mid-March, consumers didn’t really see it as the start of a major shift in their lives. Most thought the pandemic was going to ...

• Spotify Slams New Apple One Service, Claims It's Anticompetitive

  September 15, 2020 Spotify, the music streaming giant, criticized tech rival Apple over a new subscription bundle that allegedly favors the company’s own Apple Music service over others, Reuters reported. The Apple One bundle ...

• Digital Exercise Brands Get Pumped Up As In-Person Fitness Loses Muscle

  September 15, 2020 Just when it seemed America was starting to actually use gym and fitness studio memberships that so often fall dormant after a few visits, COVID-19 shut down the workout industry ...

• WorldRemit Debuts App That Tracks Money Transfers

  September 15, 2020 Global digital payment company WorldRemit has launched the WorldRemit Transfer Tracker mobile app to help recipients track their remittances, according to a press release. The app is currently available in Nigeria, ...

• Starbucks' Big Payments Pivot To Boost Customer Loyalty

  September 15, 2020 The pandemic gave quick-service restaurants (QSRs) incredible motivation to get their digital acts together. When in-house dining ceased to be an option, QSRs found they needed to pivot to make it ...

• Report: TikTok, Oracle Deal Could Be Signed Tuesday

  September 15, 2020 The President Donald Trump administration has given the green light for TikTok to become a U.S. company, and the White House could approve the deal as soon as Tuesday afternoon ...

• Today In How We Eat: Drone Deliveries Take Off, Walmart vs Amazon Prime

  September 15, 2020 Today in how we eat, the world of delivery gets a close-up as drones prepare to take to the skies to drop groceries off at our homes. And Amazon Prime ...

• Personal Loan Apps Ranked During Recovery

  September 15, 2020 Cash is still in short supply for millions of Americans and small businesses living out 2020 on a mix of unemployment, side hustles and on-again/off-again government stimulus. For many, personal ...

• Ticketmaster, VenueNext Team Up On Mobile Ordering Tech

  September 15, 2020 When stadiums and concert venues open up once again, fans may find themselves in a whole new technological ballgame. This includes touchless payments and mobile ordering technology. Industry giant Ticketmaster and ...

• Tesco Bank Debuts Digital Payment Platform For 2.6M Credit Card Customers

  September 15, 2020 Scotland-based Tesco Bank has announced that it’s the first financial institution (FI) in the United Kingdom to introduce technology that allows its 2.6 million credit card customers to more easily ...

• The Pandemic’s Push For The FI/FinTech ‘Win-Win’

  September 15, 2020 Anecdotal evidence has shown that the digitization of consumer habits began the day stay-at-home orders effectively shut down in-person interaction in the real world. Necessity being the mother of invention, consumers ...

• GIACT On Getting Ready For Nacha's Debit Account Validation Changes

  September 15, 2020 The old saying goes: Faster payments, faster fraud. To that end, in an interview with PYMNTS, Kimber Johnson, executive vice president of strategic alliances at GIACT, said account validation is of ...

• What To Expect From Apple’s Big Tuesday Event

  September 15, 2020 Fall is here, a fact made obvious if not by the weather than by the rapid proliferation of pumpkin spice-flavored products, the legion of cottage core enthusiasts knitting scarves and ...

• Gaming Platforms Betting On ‘The Metaverse’ As Next Internet

  September 14, 2020 Our first glimpse of the not-so-distant future of handheld tech was ‘the communicator’ on TV’s “Star Trek” in the late 1960s, providing science fiction’s vision of the smartphone. Earthbound versions ...

• Today In How We Eat: Digital Shift Powers Kroger, Chipotle’s Digital Sales Leap, Whole Foods Sees Future With Less In-Store Shopping

  September 14, 2020 Digital advancement is the theme in the news from the world of food right now, with digital upgrades powering recent strong earnings results for Kroger and Chipotle. Whole Foods also ...

• Goldman’s Marcus Adds Personal Finance Management Tools

  September 14, 2020 Goldman Sachs just launched a new personal finance tool for customers of average means, CNBC reported on Monday (Sept. 14). The 150-year-old Wall Street powerhouse, known widely as an investment bank serving ...

• Uber Eats Updates Its App To Pay Tab While Dining In

  September 14, 2020 Uber Eats has introduced a contactless ordering feature that will work when diners are eating in a restaurant as the fight against COVID-19 continues. USA Today reported the “Uber Eats Contactless ...

• NEW REPORT: Universities' Digital Onboarding Orientation

  September 14, 2020 Universities are still adjusting to the COVID-19 pandemic’s wide-ranging effects on educational systems across the United States. Remote learning has become a much larger part of student life since the ...

• Online Retail’s Next Phase: From Adapt To Accelerate

  September 14, 2020 Overnight changes in consumer habits are usually rare, with inertia and habit difficult to overcome under normal circumstances. But circumstances have been far from normal this year, making consumers receptive to ...

• Oracle Looks Victorious As Clock Tick-Tocks Down On Deadline For A TikTok Sale

  September 14, 2020 Oracle appeared to win the TikTok “sale or no sale” negotiations Sunday night, as several sources reported it had been chosen over Microsoft for U.S. control of the controversial social ...

• ByteDance To US: TikTok's Code Isn't For Sale

  September 13, 2020 China-based ByteDance has said in boardroom discussions that it won’t be selling its essential algorithm for the video-sharing app TikTok in any manner, according to sources quoted by the South ...