Today in the Connected Economy: Twitter Taps Paytm for Help With Tips

Today in the connected economy, Twitter turns to Indian’s Paytm to help with its Tips function, and Airbnb reports on how the pandemic has affected the length of customers’ stays.

Also, Veho’s Itamar Zur talks with PYMNTS’ Karen Webster about the changing world of B2B deliveries, and the World Bank’s Wendy Teleki discusses how her organization supports female entrepreneurs in emerging markets.

Twitter Adds Paytm for Tips Payments

Twitter will let users make Tips payments to people and organizations in India with the help of Indian payment gateway Paytm, according to a report in The Hindu Business Line.

Twitter launched the Tips option in a beta test last May for “influential and diverse voices on the service, including journalists, creators and more,” allowing people to send and receive cash. Twitter made Tips available to all users 18 and older in India in November 2021.

Airbnb Moves Deeper Into the Connected Economy as Blended Live/Work Bookings Expand

Airbnb Co-Founder and CEO Brian Chesky used the home sharing platform’s fourth-quarter and full-year 2021 earnings announcement this week to discuss how pandemic patterns have reshaped guest and host experiences.

The shape of what 2022 might look like began to form last November, when Airbnb began promoting its “Live Anywhere” mantra, which rose from its discovery that one-fifth of stays are now one month or longer, making long-term stays the platform’s fastest-growing category.

And remote work is having a greater impact on how users search for and value Airbnb locations. Travelers used the platform’s “Wi-Fi” search filter more than 288 million times last year while Wi-Fi and pets-allowed searches increased 270%, indicating guests want to stay in places where they can work.

Payrailz Makes Payments More Engaging Through Alkami Digital Banking Platform

Digital payments company Payrailz says its payment services are now available through the Alkami platform, which lets financial institutions (FIs) deliver Payrailz’s payment experience to its end users.

The companies say Alkami will offer customers Payrailz’s bill pay and P2P solutions, including real-time payments capabilities, while Payrailz will give users payment recommendations based on payment history data.

GreenBox Forms BaaS Partnership With Cross River

Payments solutions provider GreenBox POS has launched a licensing partnership with Cross River Bank to create its first banking-as-a-service (BaaS) initiative.

The partnership lets GreenBox use Cross River’s infrastructure and access to payment rails to open accounts for its customers, who can manage those accounts with tools powered by Cross River. GreenBox CEO Fredi Nisan called the partnership a “game changer” for his company.

“Not only will we eventually be able offer all our existing merchant clients cutting-edge banking services, but we can also open these solutions to strategic partnership, and enterprises seeking white-label solutions,” he said. “We expect this to be a significant driver of revenue growth.”

Logistics Tech Unicorn Helps eCommerce Brands Crack Next-Day Delivery Challenge

While studying at Harvard Business School, Itamar Zur found himself searching for a lost package, bouncing between customer service reps to find the whereabouts of a delivery that never arrived.

Not sure what else to do, he founded Veho, a next-day delivery platform. Speaking with PYMNTS’ Karen Webster, Zur said, “shipping providers in the past designed their businesses around large package delivery B2B businesses. Volume was flat throughout the week. You needed the same number of trucks. You needed the same number of drivers every day of the week. That’s not the world we are living anymore.”

World Bank Uses Data, Digital Tools to Support Female Entrepreneurs in Emerging Markets

“Societies aren’t fully tapping their potential if they’ve got half of the population on the sidelines.”

So says Wendy Teleki, head of The Women Entrepreneurs Finance Initiative (We-Fi) Secretariat at the World Bank, referring to women – in particular women who own small and medium-sized enterprises (WSMEs) in emerging economies.

These women, Teleki tells PYMNTS, have long gone unrecognized and constrained, keeping them from success while also depriving the world of their contributions.

“And that is a huge problem for our society because we don’t get the growth and the innovation that we can see coming from these markets,” Teleki said.

From Refugee Camps to Indian Coffee Farms, Digital ID Already Gets The Poorest Paid

Privacy advocates in the blockchain world see digital identity as a tool that will give people control over who sees information about them, and what they see. Others see digital ID as a way to provide documentation to the unbanked to let them be a part of the financial system.

And then there’s Building Blocks, a blockchain-based program the UN’s World Food Program uses to distribute funds to refugees, while also making it easier to eliminate waste and make sure people don’t slip through the cracks of a cash-based payment system.

The UN has used this system at refugee camps in Jordan and Bangladesh — home to the world’s largest refugee camp in the world — while a host of aid organizations have employed Building Blocks in Beirut to help distribute $56 million in disaster aid in the wake of a massive port explosion.