Sections
Saturday Feature
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2.8KPayments InnovationBeyond Flying Cars: Predictions That Weren’t Necessarily On The Money
Welcome, valued PYMNTS readers, to the weekend. No doubt you worked hard, and chances are you put in more than 40 hours...
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3.4KRetailWhy The Dollars Are Actually The Greatest Show On Turf
Rumor has it, there is some sort of football competition happening in Atlanta this weekend. We are mostly kidding about that. As PYMNTS is Boston-based,...
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4.0KInnovationBitcoin And Dented Radishes: This Week’s Hype Penalty Box Nominees
“Hype” is defined by Webster’s Dictionary as “to promote or publicize (a product or idea) intensively, often exaggerating its importance or benefits.”...
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3.8KRetailWhy The Sweet Smell Of Tech Success Can Be Rife With Failure
In 1946, a few weeks before Christmas, Frank Capra’s Christmastime classic “It’s a Wonderful Life” was released in theaters. It was mostly...
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4.5KRetailBots And Outside-The-Bots, CES 2019: Payments And Commerce Highlights
There was a lot about CES in Las Vegas last week that was predictable. Google and Amazon competed for voice-activated mindshare. There...
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6.3KRetailHow Fortnite Turned ‘Free’ Into $3B In Profits
Until extremely recently, the word “fortnight” was a fancy way to say “two weeks” – and it wasn’t likely to come up...
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4.9KEconomy2018: The Year Of The Confident Consumer
What a difference a decade makes. Ten years ago, consumer confidence had slipped to an all-time low, and consumer spending followed it...
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5.8KRetailThinking Outside The Holiday Gift Box
The Christmas countdown is upon us. And with just single-digit shopping days left, the countdown is on to find that perfect gift...
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5.7KGig EconomyCan The Gig Economy Stress-Bust The Holidays?
While the holiday season is officially known as the most wonderful time of the year, for the majority of American consumers, it...
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4.6KPayments InnovationAre QR Codes The Salvation Army’s Digital Salvation?
Pull any list of “top 10 Christmas carols” from the web, and it will quickly become obvious that bells are deeply important to people...
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9.0KeCommerceThe Art And Science Of Making Embarrassing Purchases More Private
These are amazing times to be a consumer who suffers from retail embarrassment. Both science and digital technology are making it easier...
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5.2KRetailGuess What? Black Friday Started The Day After Halloween.
Once upon a time, the holiday shopping season had a very, very well-defined start date. The day after Thanksgiving has been known...
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4.9KRetailThis Weekend’s $25B Shopping Event
When Singles Day launched nearly a decade ago, the then-fledgling eCommerce brand Alibaba didn’t really think they were changing the face of...
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5.6KDataThe $5B Midterm Elections And The Big Costs Of Big Data
Politics is not our normal beat here at PYMNTS. But the 2018 midterms has changed our thinking, and for one reason: 2018 will...
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4.9KCommerceTrick Or Treat (Payments And Commerce Style)
Halloween is the scariest day of the year for children and parents alike – though for very different reasons. For kids, the proliferation...
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4.9KCommerceHappy Birthday To PYMNTS
On this day in history in the year 2009, the world of payments and commerce was changed forever. The skies parted, the...
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4.5KArtificial IntelligenceIt’s Not Smart Tech If It’s Foolish
When English mountaineer George Mallory was asked in 1923 by The New York Times why he wanted to attempt to climb Mount Everest...
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4.2KMerchant InnovationWhy Tech Fails Can (Sometimes) Be Inconveniently Fun
Some failures of technology are very serious. On Jan. 13, 2018, an emergency alert text went out all over Hawaii telling residents...
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3.2KDataData’s Influence And Contactless Vending, In Style At Fashion Week
This week, New York celebrated its 75th fall Fashion Week, with all the pomp, glamour, celebrity and hype that defines the event. The city was...
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4.5KRetailThe Kaepernick Controversy And Nike’s High-Risk Strategy
With 12 words, one photo and a tweet, Nike has managed to capture the news cycle this week – and much of...
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4.1KRetailDriving, Grilling And Surfing (For Deals) — Labor Day Weekend’s On
The unofficial end of summer is upon us. But before everyone can contentedly begin sipping their pumpkin spice latte and start Christmas...
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3.9KRetailThe Esoteric Economics Of Feeling The Burn
The Burn is upon us. This weekend, the hippest, coolest, most connected and most creative will converge on Nevada’s Black Rock desert...
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4.5KCashWhy Cash Was King For The Queen Of Soul
“Oooh, your kisses, sweeter than honey/ But guess what? So’s my money.” Writing about Aretha in a 2016 profile for The New Yorker, writer...
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3.8KArtificial IntelligenceThe Rumor-Filled Race For The Connected Car Future
Americans do a lot of driving. According to the latest edition of the American Driving Survey, each Americans spends about 290 hours a...
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3.5KSubscriptionsIs There Still A Happy Ending For MoviePass?
For the team at MoviePass, it’s been an interesting few weeks – or few months, depending on how one looks at it....
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5.1KRetailThe Shopper’s Brain On Bargains
Everyone loves a bargain, and there is something uniquely satisfying about not only getting whatever product one is after, but also getting...
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3.5KRetailWhy Publicity Stunts Go Wrong So Easily
When planning a large-scale marketing push or publicity stunt, it can be easy to overlook the fact that getting attention is hard,...
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4.6KRetailPutting A Price On Puppy Love
Here at PYMNTS, we see it all, often in the form of press releases – most of which claim to be the next big thing...
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4.1KRetailThe Lebron Effect On Payments
PYMNTS may not have the greatest sports experts in the world, but even we understood the big deal concerning the addition of Lebron James to the...
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3.7KMerchant InnovationThe Sounds Of Summer Gone Subscription
Every summer needs at least one song. In 1960, it was the Brian Hyland classic “Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka-Dot Bikini.”...
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7.7KMobile CommerceIn Praise Of The Selfie And The Commerce It Drives
National Selfie Day has passed into the history books once again. For those us who need a few days to let go...
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3.9KRetailFather’s Day Commerce: Shopping For, With And To Be More Like Dad
Father’s Day has always had some trouble engendering the kind of enthusiasm for gift giving that Mother’s Day does — and we mean always....
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3.8KInternationalAround The World With World Cup Commerce
In one week, the FIFA World Cup Men’s Soccer competition will kick off in Russia. For most of the world that is big...
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4.2KRetailQ12018’s Big Retail Chill
“Blame It On the Rain” is more than the song that ended the musical career of early 90s sensation Milli Vanilli. The...
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4.0KMerchant InnovationMayochup, Beet-B-Qs And Rosé Marshmallows — The Summer Of 2018 In Strange Eating
It’s been called many things: Fry Sauce, Go Sauce, Russian Dressing, Dutch Sauce, Golf Sauce. On occasion, it’s called nothing in particular....
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5.5KRetailHow Toys R Us Kids Became Amazon Adults (And What’s Next)
There have been a number of great commercial jingles in the history of commercials — tunes so catchy that they stick, almost forever,...
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4.4KeCommerceDigital Magic And The Modern Mom
Mothers are special people. Moms kiss scraped knees, edit term papers, cook meals, clean rooms and listen to Disney soundtracks on repeat...
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4.5KMerchant InnovationTesla, Elon Musk And Much Ado About Earnings
Some things in life are predictable. The passage of seasons, the flow of time and, of course, quarterly earnings reports. Rain or...
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3.2KRetailBritain’s $2B Royal Commerce Boon
Spring has been called the season of renewal — new birth and new life — and it doesn’t get much better than the announcement...
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5.1KAmazonWeird Stuff People Buy On Amazon
In 2012, American internet entrepreneur, angel investor, author and blogger Jason Calacanis gave a pretty bold prediction about Amazon Prime — then in...
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5.4KTaxesWhy Timing Is Everything On Tax Day
Tax Day for Americans is here, or at least it will be on Tuesday, April 17. This year is a bit of an unusual year as...
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6.1KArtificial IntelligenceWhere Are Our Robot Butlers?
It’s fair to say we live in the future. A vast majority of Americans carry a super-computer in their pockets that can...
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4.4KCommerceHippity, Hoppity – Easter Commerce Is On Its Way
Americans spend a lot on Easter - collectively almost $20 billion on Easter with $2.6 billion on candy alone. That’s a lot...
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4.5KRetailWe’ve Seen The Future (It’s Mostly Full Of Drones And Crocs)
Though you couldn’t tell on the East Coast this week — following the latest round of blizzard-y weather — spring has officially sprung. And...
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3.0KRetailCounting Out The Green On St. Patrick’s Day
Irish Americans outnumber the Irish of Ireland by quite a lot. There are 4.7 million people in Ireland and about 33 million...
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4.9KRetailDaylight Losing Time: How Changing The Clocks Hurts Retail
When Daylight Saving Time (DST) starts and ends, most Americans lose or gain an hour of sleep — and while this can...
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5.8KCommerceThe Oscars: Who’s Spending What (And Where)
The Oscars have become one of Hollywood’s most glamorous events over the past nearly nine decades, with stars spending millions on red...
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4.2KPayments InnovationFeb. 24: The Unsung History Book Hero
Some days will always be remembered — Oct. 29, 1929, for example (a.k.a. the Wall Street Crash of 1929). Others are symbolic...
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4.0KMerchant InnovationWhy Retail Wishes Every Year Could Be The Year Of The Dog
Yesterday marked the beginning of the Chinese New Year, and this year it’s the Year of the Dog. The Chinese zodiac is a bit...
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4.3KInternationalMedaling, Outside The Olympic Arena
The Winter Olympics are in full swing in Pyeongchang, South Korea. Opening ceremonies took place Friday night, local time (early Friday morning...
