PYMNTS
JULY 4, 2016
Abra , the bitcoin remittance app, has made its way to the U.S. — via the iPhone and Android app options. What that means is that Abra customers in the U.S. or the Philippines can send money to each other using the app’s digital wallet that works with their bank accounts. The company noted in its release that this is the first move in helping it expand globally.
PYMNTS
JULY 8, 2016
In this week’s edition of PYMNTS’ Weekly Tech Center Roundup , we find ourselves back in Europe, where Brexit is all anyone can talk about. But we are heading to France, where the country’s capital city is making a name for itself as a booming tech center. Before we jump into the post, here are a few quick facts about Paris and its tech scene: Paris has an estimated population of 2,241,346.
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PYMNTS
JULY 4, 2016
Ridesharing firm Lyft has been getting ready to capitalize on investor desire to delve into transports and has been exploring raising additional funding or even selling itself to outside interests, Reuters has reported. The newswire said that the firm has been working with investment bank Qatalyst Partners, which is based in Silicon Valley. Reuters cited unnamed people familiar with the dialogue.
PYMNTS
JULY 8, 2016
It was only a decade or two ago that you’d be laughed out of the room for suggesting someone buy clothes or shoes online without trying them on first. Now that that barrier has fallen, though, might there be opportunities to sell more traditional products in nontraditional spaces ? Dawn Dickson thinks so, and she had something of a proof of concept in Flat Out of Heels , her company that sells rollable flats out of vending machines aimed at the female consumer who can’t spend another
Speaker: Victor C. Barnes, CPA, MBA
In the climb from contributor to leader, the rules quietly change. But if you’re aiming for the summit, the air gets thinner, and what got you here won’t be enough to get you to the top. 🗻 What made you successful early in your finance career—technical accuracy, sharp analysis, flawless execution—won’t be what carries you to the next level. The higher you go, the more your effectiveness depends on how you connect, adapt, and communicate.
PYMNTS
JULY 4, 2016
Amazon may be making it easier for Sprint users to add on the Amazon Prime loyalty service. Android Authority reported late last week that Amazon and Sprint now have an exclusive deal that will allow Sprint users to pay for their Amazon Prime subscription by tacking the fee onto their monthly bill. With an additional monthly charge of $10.99, Sprint customers can subscribe to Amazon Prime, and for a limited time, they can also receive Amazon Prime for free for 60 days.
PYMNTS
JULY 8, 2016
Time and time again, hackers have proven to be one step ahead. From bitcoin ransoms to EMV security, there are few areas that are out of bounds for the clever crew. A recent research study out of Binghamton University now suggests another potential target for hackers: wearable technology. Wearable technology has been a notable trend since the launch of the Apple Watch in April of 2015, but does donning the trendy tech also put the user at risk of getting their ATM PIN hacked?
Accountant Advocate brings together the best content for small business accounting professionals from the widest variety of industry thought leaders.
PYMNTS
JULY 8, 2016
Is retail heading to the dogs? Seriously. Have you noticed lately how ridiculous some of the concepts for new retail stores are getting? A renowned New York City chef recently teamed up with Kellogg’s to open a trendy cereal-themed restaurant near Times Square and is selling Fruit Loops and Frosted Flakes for $8 or more a bowl. An entire cottage industry has sprung up, both in eCommerce and brick-and-mortar locations, exclusively dedicated to men’s beards and the “art” of grooming them.
PYMNTS
JULY 8, 2016
MasterCard is partnering with 100 Resilient Cities — Pioneered by The Rockefeller Foundation (100RC) in order to push digital payments as part of its “ Smart Cities ” initiative and leverage its technologies to create more sustainable urban centers. As part of this partnership, MasterCard will be working with 100RC to push its digital payments agenda in cities by helping people understand the risks associated with a cash-based economy, along with the opportunities that digital paym
PYMNTS
JULY 8, 2016
The payday lending market is at a bit of a crossroads as regulators flex their regulatory muscles and look to establish new rules for the payday lending industry. While much has been written — on these pages and beyond — about that debate, there are three universal truths about these short-term, small dollar lending products. First, consumers need them and use them.
PYMNTS
JULY 6, 2016
Apple might generate long lines at its stores every time it releases an iterative iPhone, but there’s no doubt that, when it comes to OS market share, Android has been stealing Apple’s lunch money lately. In May, Kantar Worldpanel confirmed that Q1 2016 sales of Android phones had grown in just about every major market that matters — 7.1 percent in Europe, 7.3 percent in the U.S. and 6 percent in China.
Speaker: Kim Beynon, CPA, CGMA, PMP
The most overlooked, yet most critical, element of transformation is preparing people for change. Automation and AI aren't just technical upgrades, they’re cultural shifts which can challenge identities. That’s why change management isn’t a side project—it’s the foundation. In finance, where precision and process rule, navigating change can feel especially disruptive.
PYMNTS
JULY 8, 2016
Would you ride in a car driven by a computer? As cool as the idea and concept of automated driving sounds, there are still many people who feel uncomfortable with such a notion or who argue that it will never truly be 100 percent safe. Arguments that were thrust back into the spotlight last week after Tesla revealed that a driver using the Autopilot feature on its Model S was killed on a Florida highway in May after the vehicle drove into a tractor-trailer.
PYMNTS
JULY 8, 2016
Apple isn’t resting on its laurels when it comes to expanding its mobile payment service beyond the U.S. The company announced Thursday (July 7) that Apple Pay has officially entered the Switzerland market. . This marks the first country in Europe outside of the U.K. to start accepting Apple Pay as a payment method. Currently, the service is available in the U.S., Canada, Australia, China and Singapore.
PYMNTS
JULY 8, 2016
It looks like the use of profitable malware fraud attacks is helping cybercriminals to remain one step ahead of authorities. In the release of its first Cyber Crime Assessment report on Thursday (July 7), the U.K.’s National Crime Agency (NCA) said that police and businesses are losing the “cyber arms race” to these sophisticated criminals. According to the data, the most significant and advanced threat to the U.K. is actually from a small group of international crooks that use “highly pro
PYMNTS
JULY 7, 2016
As the Brexit fallout continues, it looks as though Berlin may be stepping up to replace London as Europe’s top FinTech capital. With the U.K. making its monumental decision to exit the European Union last week, The Financial Times reported today (July 7) that Germany is hoping to bring England’s startups and entrepreneurs into the fold. “London has committed suicide as a leading FinTech center,” Jochen Siegert, COO of Frankfurt-based payments platform Traxpay, is said to have tweeted.
Speaker: Mark Gilham, FCCA, CPP
Finance used to be the function that counted, now it's the one that’s counted on. 📊 For accounting firms, controllers, and finance leaders, expectations are rising faster than headcount. Businesses want agile forecasts, granular analysis, seamless reporting, and smart automation—often without added resources while demanding uncompromised accuracy and compliance.
PYMNTS
JULY 4, 2016
As most retailers know, few things can threaten a business’ or a product’s integrity like counterfeiting. But makers of high-end Swiss watches, which can sometimes run upwards of $10,000 or more, now have a new tool to help them guard their brand’s supremacy and fend off would-be counterfeiters — tiny, nanoscopic watermarks that are invisible to the naked eye, impossible to fake and only visible under an ultraviolet light as a hologram.
PYMNTS
JULY 4, 2016
Alexa , the voice-activated assistant for Amazon’s Echo, got mad skills, yo. Literally. Amazon revealed last week that Alexa has now learned more than 1,400 skills , everything from ordering Ubers to helping you organize a new playlist for the gym. Now you can add another skill to Alexa’s exponentially growing list: the virtual assistant can now be used to orders millions of items from Amazon itself, anything from batteries to deodorant, according to CNET.
PYMNTS
JULY 4, 2016
Over the past eight weeks PYMNTS has cast a weekly global spotlight on one of the many tech hubs fostering innovation and tech advancements across the world. With big plans to continue growing out the weekly series, we thought it would be a great time to take a look back at all of the tech hubs we’ve highlighted so far. The U.K.’s Technology ‘Hotbed’ Picks Up Steam.
PYMNTS
JULY 8, 2016
Apple Pay is officially in play in another country: Switzerland. For Apple, this is the first country in Europe outside of the U.K. to start accepting Apple Pay as a payment method. Currently, the service is available in the U.S., the U.K., Canada, Australia, China and Singapore. As for the latest figures that have been shared about how Apple Pay’s growth is coming along, we’ve gathered them in today’s Daily Data Dive 5-in-1. $10.9 Billion | Apple Pay’s usage volume in 20
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PYMNTS
JULY 8, 2016
The onset of the EMV liability shift last October didn’t just make ripples in the U.S. market – it also caught the attention of mPOS players across the pond. The massive payment infrastructure overhaul, which came with an estimated $8.65 billion price tag, led U.K based- payleven and SumUp , two mobile point of sale solution providers, to invest in the U.S. market.
PYMNTS
JULY 4, 2016
Matchmakers are the type of business that dares to go where many other businesses refuse to even try: as the intermediary that matches customers with a need with customers who can meet their needs. It only looks easy. Uber, Google, Visa, Airbnb, Facebook, Westfield Malls, NASDAQ and Microsoft are all matchmakers who’ve cracked the code on getting a critical mass of customers on board.
PYMNTS
JULY 4, 2016
Tech giant Apple has issued a heated three-page response to a letter from streaming music company Spotify which had accused Apple of putting in place App Store policies that are ‘anticompetitive.’. Spotify had sent the ‘anticompetitive’ accusation letter to Apple earlier last week, after Apple blocked an update to Spotify’s iOS app, allegedly to thwart any potential competition to its Apple Music service.
PYMNTS
JULY 4, 2016
There may be one bright spot for Brazil’s financial services industry as political and economic turmoil rattle the nation. Reports by Newsweek on Friday (July 1) said entrepreneurs are looking to online funding, crowdfunding and alternative lending to start their businesses as Brazil endures its worst economic recession in decades. One company operating in this market is Kickante, whose founder, Candice Pascoal, said she was inspired by U.S. crowdfunding sites Indiegogo and Kickstarter b
Speaker: Cheryl J. Muldrew-McMurtry
Distributed finance teams are rewriting how the back-office runs, and attackers are taking notes. Disconnected workflows, process blind spots, and rising cyber threats are more than just growing pains—they’re liabilities. The challenge isn’t just going remote. It’s building resilient systems that protect accuracy, control, and speed across every transaction and touchpoint.
PYMNTS
JULY 4, 2016
Corporate treasurers and chief financial officers are on the hunt for a better way to make payments, especially internationally. That’s according to corporate software firm FIS , which published the findings of its latest survey on corporate payments needs last week. According to the data, more than half (53 percent) of treasurers said they have standardized at least three-quarters of their payments volumes.
PYMNTS
JULY 8, 2016
Ever had a UPS delivery that you’ve missed because you were working, out running errands, or had some other perfectly normal reason why you were not at home between the typical 9-5 hours? Or maybe you live in an apartment that UPS can’t access or an address that UPS doesn’t ship to. We all know how annoying missing a UPS package can be (because, of course, you have to drive miles and miles out of your way to the warehouse, which seemingly can only be accessed during certain late night and
PYMNTS
JULY 4, 2016
OK, let’s be honest, having a car that can pretty much (and literally) drive itself is pretty damn cool. Right now, however, unless you’ve got $80,000-plus to shell out on a Tesla , you’re pretty much out of luck. Self-driving technology is not yet widely available to the public at an affordable price. But BMW , Intel and Mobileye are hoping to change that.
PYMNTS
JULY 8, 2016
It’s not easy for nonprofits to advertise, particularly because of their tight budgets and often lean staff. It’s also not always easy to raise money. That’s why one charity, Water Is Life, wanted to use Venmo to collect small payment donations. There was only one problem: Venmo doesn’t enable advertisements on its app. But the team at Water is Life found a loophole, a little one that they have now dubbed the “Venmo Micro Hack.” And to be clear, the company di
Speaker: Frank Taliano
Documents are the backbone of enterprise operations, but they are also a common source of inefficiency. From buried insights to manual handoffs, document-based workflows can quietly stall decision-making and drain resources. For large, complex organizations, legacy systems and siloed processes create friction that AI is uniquely positioned to resolve.
PYMNTS
JULY 8, 2016
Sometimes buying direct pays — and that is increasingly true when traveling to certain hotels. In an effort to lower the payments hotels pay to online travel websites, Hilton Worldwide Holdings Inc. and Marriott International are offering exclusive discounts to members of their loyalty programs. According to a report in The Wall Street Journal , the discounts can be as high as 25 percent, granted the loyalty members book their stays through the hotel website instead of an online travel operator
PYMNTS
JULY 8, 2016
The travel and expense management space has earned a place as a top adopter of mobile solutions for the enterprise. But new data says other aspects of corporate finance are quickly joining the mobile solution bandwagon. Data released by Raddon Financial Group found an increasing demand for mobile banking solutions, especially among small businesses.
PYMNTS
JULY 8, 2016
Small businesses today have struggled to access working capital loans from traditional lenders, giving way for alternative and marketplace lenders to enter the sphere. The lag in small business lending by banks is no secret; earlier this year, the U.S. Federal Reserve found that, while bank lending to small businesses was up, it has yet to return to pre-recession levels.
PYMNTS
JULY 7, 2016
For every Facebook , there’s a Myspace; for every Google, there’s an AOL. What we’re talking about here are successful and, arguably, innovative startups that either dived into or invaded a burgeoning or niche market space and “perfected” and outpaced the product that came before it, to the point that AOL and Myspace were rendered completely irrelevant by Google and Facebook.
Speaker: Claire Grosjean, Global Finance & Operations Executive
Finance teams are drowning in data—but is it actually helping them spend smarter? Without the right approach, excess spending, inefficiencies, and missed opportunities continue to drain profitability. While analytics offers powerful insights, financial intelligence requires more than just numbers—it takes the right blend of automation, strategy, and human expertise.
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