Five At Five: Birchbox’s Buyer And Robot-Prepared Pizza

Welcome to Five at Five, your late look at some of the freshest payments news of the day. Today’s stories include details about Birchbox’s future and why retailers are looking to digital technologies. Additionally, Costco serves up robot-prepared pizza, PayPal wins high marks for its conversion rates and Fiserv reports Q1 growth.

Birchbox Finds A Buyer
No, it’s not QVC. Birchbox has been on the market since last summer, and reports indicated the company had been in talks with a wide range of retailers, including Walmart, to see if a match could be made.

Retailers Look To Digital Technologies After Beating The Street
Retailers and retail landlords are reporting strong first-quarter earnings results, beating analysts’ expectations in many cases. Buoyed by strong consumer spending and its resilience in the U.S. and abroad, companies such as McDonald’s are off to a positive start in 2018.

Fiserv’s 1Q Results Marked By Internal Revenue Growth, 25 Percent Growth In Mobiliti
Financial services technology firm posted results on Tuesday (May 1) that met on the top line, beat on the bottom and showed continued traction in internal revenue growth and digital efforts.

PayPal Checkout Has Conversion Rate Of 88.7 Percent
A comScore study compared online conversion rates for PayPal and other payment methods based on the checkout options available for 20 merchants across industries. The data showed that other digital wallets measured in the study had a combined checkout conversion average of 55.3 percent.

Costco Serves Up Robot-Prepared Pizza
A mechanical saucing process distributes tomato sauce over the base of the pizza — making it easier to create pies in bulk — while spreading the sauce evenly and all the way to the crust.