5 Things to Start Your Day: Checkout as an Experience; Remote Work to the Rescue; Balancing Payments, Regulation; Crypto Wallet Automation; AI and the Human Touch

It’s Tuesday (April 12), and while the Labor Department has no good news to share — prices were 8.5% higher in March than a year ago — there is always a silver lining somewhere. Like in technology and in cryptocurrency wallet automation, for example. Read on to add a little ray of hope to an otherwise dreary forecast.

Checkout as an Experience

Sephora has quite the retail resume, with 500 physical stores in the United States, 600 store-in-store locations at Kohl’s, a website, a mobile app and 14 years of digital experience. Chief Technology Officer Sree Sreedhararaj told PYMNTS that checking out in the future will be as much as a positive experience for consumers as the act of shopping itself. READ MORE

Remote Work to the Rescue

The pandemic-forced pivot to remote work has shown that not only does it lend itself to productivity, it’s actually preferred by employees even in the best of circumstances. Companies trying to fill tough slots like engineering roles could attract top talent by dangling options like work-from-home in front of would-be candidates. READ MORE

Balancing Payments and Regulation

In the latest Payments Orchestration Playbook, PYMNTS takes a look at merchant compliance in the face of PCI DSS, 3D Secure, and other mandates. The report analyzes how payments orchestration can help businesses overcome these frictions while launching new products and giving their clients a smooth experience. READ MORE

Crypto Wallet Automation

Cryptocurrency payments processor BitPay set out to create a top-shelf customer experience, CEO Stephen Pair told PYMNTS. The BitPay Protocol is used in the company’s own BitPay Wallet, as well as more than 100 third-party wallets, which can offer users a better payment experience. READ MORE

AI and the Human Touch

Depict.ai Founder and CEO Oliver Edholm capitalized on the knowledge that 35% of Amazon’s sales came from product recommendations, but few (if any) competing eCommerce players have recommendation technology to rival them. He told PYMNTS that Depict.ai’s disruptive innovation is creating a recommendation engine that any eCommerce site can integrate to provide quality recommendations without as much data and with much better value.