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Saturday Feature
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716RetailMay The Star Wars Merch Be With You
As you may have heard, there is a new Star Wars movie coming out in a little under a week. If you haven’t...
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3.3KRetailCan The Santa Experience Save Brick-And-Mortar Retail This Holiday Season?
Some holiday traditions are easy to explain — things like wrapping presents, drinking hot chocolate and baking cookies are all neatly summed up...
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2.9KInnovationCan Digital Upgrades Save Monopoly (And Other Board Game Classics)?
The holiday season isn’t only about retail and payments. It’s about family and friends – and killing time with those relatives and...
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3.0KRetailShattered Glass: The Tesla Cybertruck And Other Product Launch Stunts/#FAILS
It wasn’t supposed to happen that way. That’s the thought that came to mind this week in the PYMNTS Bureau of Failed...
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4.6KRetailWhy, In The eCommerce Era, Catalogs Are Cool Again
While Sears Roebuck gets all the credit for inventing the mail order catalog business in the United States, in historical terms they...
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2.6KPayment MethodsHave Pillow, Will Trade? How Digital Is Stirring A New Age Of Bartering
What’s old, of course, always becomes new again. That holds especially true this month for the prehistoric practice of bartering. Indeed, it...
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7.5KInnovationWhy Smart Cities Of The Future Won’t Be Built In A Day
While smart cities have been in the public consciousness for a long time, we’ve been writing about them here at PYMNTS since...
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3.7KCommerceThe Modern-Day Cost Of The Excalibur Sword — And Other Holy Grail Treasures
How much would you pay for the Sword of Excalibur? That, of course, is the legendary sword used by the legendary King...
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3.0KSocial CommerceThe Lucrative Advertising Life Of Instafamous Kids
On June 3, 2019, a star was born. Her name is Alessi Ren Luyendyk. If you are wondering why a random four-month-old...
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5.3KInnovationWearables That Read Your Mind
The fact that our connected devices are getting to know us pretty well is, by now, well-known. A phone that can unlock a hotel room...
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4.3KRetailWhy Libraries Are Giving Up On Late Fees
It has happened to all but the most organized among us. We’re minding our own business, cleaning out a closet or reorganizing the...
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5.3KRetailThe Big Bucks Behind Sleep (Or Lack Thereof)
The benefits of a good night’s sleep can’t be overstated – nor the negative consequences of not getting one. The average human...
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5.5KRetailWhy Treehouses Rule The Airbnb Roost
Pop quiz: When you read the words “most popular Airbnb listing in history,” what is the first thought that pops into your mind?...
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3.0KInnovationInside The Race For Flying-Taxi Liftoff
This might still sound like science fiction to many people, but the race for flying-taxi dominance is on and is gaining fresh...
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4.0KRetailThe Sharpie’s Indelible Mark On Commerce (And, Well, #SharpieGate)
September is always a big month for the Sharpie. With back-to-school in full swing, Sharpies are popular favorites on supply lists nationwide. That means...
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4.5KCommerceBurning Man: Silicon Valley’s Hottest Perk?
As Labor Day 2019 rolls in, the residents of the Eastern shore of Florida are gearing up for what is increasingly looking...
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4.2KDigital PaymentsFootball Season To Kick Off New Payments Plays
It’s that’s time of year again – football season is upon us. As diehard baseball geeks pout about having to share TV time...
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4.4KRetailWhat To Expect From Back-To-School Shopping
There is no set national date for the beginning of school in the United States because there is no set date to go back...
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4.4KDigital PaymentsMoney-Inspired Music And Why Hip Hop Tops The Charts
It used to be all about the Benjamins, all about the cold hard cash – in this case, U.S. $100 bills, as...
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4.6KRetailTo Dream The Impossible Meatless Dream?
In the year 2000, if one had stood on a street corner and predicted that in two decades, the biggest craze to...
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7.0KRetailThat Inexplicable In-N-Out Burger, And Marketing Stunt #Fails
This week, the world was presented with a truly unusual retail mystery: The Case of the Inexplicable In-N-Out Burger. The story starts...
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4.8KInnovationCan Elon Musk Turn The Human Brain Into A Connected Device?
It can never be said that Elon Musk has a problem thinking big. That can be seen from his early days as one...
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3.8KInnovationMonopoly Goes Cashless And Board Games Gain Popularity
In this age of live multi-player online gaming, and virtual reality, and all things digital, it can be easy to think of...
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2.7KRetailStranger Summer Payments Things
While there are many things to love about summer – vacations, the beach, BBQs, fireworks, amusement parks and so on – in...
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8.4KInnovationeCommerce … The 1950s Way
Despite the fact that eCommerce has become a way of life in the last two decades, it is harder than it might...
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2.7KInnovationInnovative Approaches To The $4.2T Health And Wellness Market
It seems every firm is trying to find a way into the expansive — and ever-growing — “health and wellness” market. As...
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2.7KTravel PaymentsAdventure Travel And Beyond — Summer Vacation’s New Norm
Summer is here and while schools nationwide are emptying, families across the U.S. are readying for the annual pilgrimage to beaches, national...
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1.8KCashWhy Cash Is Still King On Graduation Day
For the last several weeks, and for a few more to come, students at the nation’s high schools and colleges are donning their gowns...
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2.5KRetailOutside The Box (And Inside The Storage Container) Solutions To Sky-High Rent
More American adults own their homes than rent them – fewer than two-thirds own, while a little over one-third rent. Those numbers have been relatively...
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1.9KRetailThe Unofficial Guide To Buzzworthy Grilling And Beyond
This weekend, Americans will celebrate Memorial Day – the official recognition of all who have served in the U.S. armed forces and lost their...
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4.8KInnovationHave Consumers Fallen Out Of Love With Robots?
We confess: We hate doing household chores, cooking and running errands – and we suspect you do, too. And the promise of a modern-day version...
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5.7KRetailWhen QSRs Think Really Outside The Box In The Innovation Race
The realm of quick service restaurants (QSRs) is and actually always has been a pretty innovative space. The drive-thru window, for example,...
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2.7KSubscriptionsPayments Goes To The Movies
There were two very different stories about the American movie business floating around in the media this week. One was big and...
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5.3KInnovationSpring Break Goes High-Tech
From smart bags to social media, spring break is becoming a surprisingly digital and high-tech travel period in the U.S. The words...
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5.0KRetailWhat’s Your Commerce Horoscope?
There are many mechanisms in the market designed to help match consumers to offerings that are suited to them. Better algorithms, visual...
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7.0KRetailWhat ‘The Simpsons,’ Art And Millennials Have In Common
The art world can be a strange place. While this is a fact well-known to art collectors, even non-collectors got a taste of just...
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6.8KRetailPutting A Famous Face To A Product
Celebrity-backed brands are nothing new. As PYMNTS has previously reported, the original celebrity-endorsed products date back as the far as the 1760s, when the...
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4.3KRetailSpace: The Final Travel Commerce Frontier
“Space: the final frontier. These are the voyages of the Starship Enterprise. Its continuing mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek...
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7.1KInternet of ThingsThe Great Facebook Fumble – And The Economic Damage Done
Every day, in nearly every corner of the world, 1.4 billion people log onto Facebook and 500 million people log onto Instagram. On Wednesday (March...
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5.5KInternationalThe Tie That Binds? The Royal Instagram And Brexit Preppers
Over the centuries, the British have gained a reputation for a certain steadiness of character, best epitomized via the “Keep Calm and Carry...
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8.3KRetailCracking Down On The Counterfeit Culture
All Deborah Copaken really wanted was a warm coat. A good coat. A Canada Goose coat. Sure, it cost more than $900...
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9.6KNewsVenmo, Girl Scouts And Bitcoin: The Week In Unexpected Upsides
Usually when we talk about unintended consequences here at PYMNTS, we are talking about something that has gone terribly wrong, or at...
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5.1KNewsAmazon HQ2, JPM Coin And The Weird, Wild Week Of Payments’ Left Turns
There is no such thing as a boring week in payments, of course. Every seven-day period is good for at least one unexpected twist....
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5.4KPayments 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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5.0KRetailWhy 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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5.8KInnovationBitcoin 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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5.2KRetailWhy 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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6.2KRetailBots 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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9.0KRetailHow 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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6.0KEconomy2018: 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...
