Today In Data: Increased Shipping, Bitcoin Whirlwind And GDPR Non-Compliance

Today in PYMNTS’ data, delivery firms will ship more packages than ever this holiday shopping season, bitcoin is having another whirlwind week, financial institutions (FIs) are working toward better innovations to create higher customer satisfaction, B2B digital procurement tools are not being used to their fullest potentials and the upcoming General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) might leave some businesses non-compliant.

Here are the numbers:

1.6 billion | The number of packages that major delivery services like the United Parcel Service (UPS) and the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) are expected to ship this year — more than were delivered last year. To make deliveries possible, supply chain application program interfaces (APIs) are helping merchants meet their delivery needs during the holidays and year-round.

$16,835 | Value of a single bitcoin as of the close of trading on Wednesday (Dec. 13). It’s been a newsworthy week for bitcoin, with agencies around the world concerned with a potential bubble involved in cryptocurrency. In fact, in the last 24 hours, the virtual currency has seen investigations into illegal exchanges, regulators around the world issuing warnings about its volatility, worries about fraud and also real estate transactions intended to be made only in bitcoin.

214 | The number of banks surveyed in the PYMNTS Bank Innovation Readiness Index, in collaboration with payments solutions provider i2c. The survey, which excluded the top 25 banks, was comprised of regional banks, smaller commercial banks, community banks and credit unions, the majority having assets between $500 million and $5 billion. It also included banks outside this profile and represents a broad range of FIs reflective of the market.

83 percent | Percentage of 168 surveyed businesses that are not using some of the most innovative digital procurement tools to their full potential, according to comprehensive spend solutions provider Jaggaer’s “Digital Procurement: Just Hype or the New Standard?” report, in conjunction with the Austrian Association for Supply Chain Management, Procurement and Logistics. Those innovative digital tools include blockchain, chatbots and robotic process automation, three technologies that analysts say could have big implications for procurement digitalization.

21 percent | Portion of consumers who actually know what the upcoming GDPR rules are and what they mean, according to Pegasystems research, which released a finding this week that awareness of the rules is low. Half of businesses affected by GDPR will find themselves non-compliant by the end of 2018, according to separate research from Gartner, and that includes companies outside the European Union.