PYMNTS
MARCH 20, 2020
A police department in California is going to use drones equipped with loudspeakers to help enforce the state lockdown orders imposed due to the coronavirus, according to a report by the Financial Times. The Chula Vista PD has purchased two drones worth $11,000 each. They’re made by DJI, a Chinese company, and the department plans to also add night vision cameras to the flying vehicles.
Katz,Sapper&Miller
MARCH 18, 2020
On March 18, the Internal Revenue Service issued Notice 2020-17, which provides additional details and important clarifications related to the extended tax payment deadline. In particular, the notice clarifies that the extended tax payment deadline applies to both 2019 balance-due payments and 2020 estimated income tax payments that are due April 15, 2020.
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PYMNTS
MARCH 19, 2020
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation ( FDIC ) gave the green light to an application from the FinTech firm Square to create a de novo industrial bank in Utah, the agency said on Wednesday (March 18). Square Financial Services will originate commercial loans to the retailers that use Square for payments. The headquarters will be in Salt Lake City, Utah.
PYMNTS
MARCH 20, 2020
Banking technology FinTech Finastra was hit with a security breach on Friday (March 20), and was forced to shutter key systems and send employees home, according to a report by KrebsonSecurity. Although the company’s statement doesn’t mention the type of attack specifically, Krebs believes it is likely a ransomware attack based on the reaction. Two sources forwarded internal notices about the outage.
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PYMNTS
MARCH 17, 2020
Facebook wants to help small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) survive the coronavirus pandemic, and is offering $100 million in grants to 30,000 companies in over 30 countries. Sheryl Sandberg, chief operating officer of Facebook, said on her page and in a blog post on Tuesday (March 17) that the social media giant wants to “do our part” to help with the “enormous challenge in front of us.”.
PYMNTS
MARCH 20, 2020
To honor staffers who are maintaining stocks of supplies on shelves as shoppers visit locations in droves, Walmart said it would pay almost $550 million in bonuses to hourly workers. The retailer has experienced an increase in sales as consumers stock up on toilet paper, food, hand sanitizer and other products as they get ready to remain in their residents with increasing COVID-19 cases, CNBC reported.
Accountant Advocate brings together the best content for small business accounting professionals from the widest variety of industry thought leaders.
PYMNTS
MARCH 16, 2020
A new Goldman Sachs deal will allow more companies to work with with the wide swathe of businesses using SAP’s Ariba Network , which boasts trillions of dollars in commerce transactions annually, according to a press release. Goldman Sachs’ capabilities for cross-border payments and tech-savvy achievements that simplify payments as reasons why SAP is also getting something out of the deal.
PYMNTS
MARCH 17, 2020
Speed drives innovation, particularly in payments. In this week’s look at payment rails innovation, PYMNTS finds a slew of new markets around the world adopting entirely new payment networks that can support their demand for real-time transactions. While some geographies have opted to collaborate with the private sector to develop their own national instant payment networks, others are adopting solutions like RippleNet and SWIFT gpi to modernize their banks’ capabilities.
PYMNTS
MARCH 16, 2020
Select Starbucks mobile app customers are now seeing a payment choice of “Bakkt Cash,” CoinDesk reported. A spokesperson for Starbucks told the outlet, “We are currently conducting a limited test for our customers, using the Bakkt payment method. Customers can see Bakkt as an option but the test is only available at this time.”. Intercontinental Exchange, the parent firm of Bakkt, had first made it known in the summer of 2018 that Starbucks was eyeing the retail use of digital currency payments.
PYMNTS
MARCH 19, 2020
JPMorgan Chase is temporarily closing 1,000 branches — about 20 percent of its locations — in the wake of the coronavirus, according to a report in The Financial Times citing an internal memo. It is the largest retail bank to shutter branches because of the pandemic. A JPMorgan Chase official sent a memo to workers on Wednesday (March 18) that announced the closing of about a fifth of their branches, with the exception of drive-through windows.
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
MARCH 18, 2020
The United States has reached a tipping point on COVID-19, with federal state and local governments implementing new restrictions on where consumers can travel, how many can gather in any given location and requiring restaurants and bars to shut their doors in the hopes of slowing the spread. But for all the actions these governmental bodies have taken to restrict consumers’ movements, most consumers had already changed their routines to avoid it, on their own free will.
PYMNTS
MARCH 19, 2020
Tackling B2B payments friction is a journey, but when corporates take their transactions global, finding a remedy for cross-border B2B payments is a much more complicated process. The current climate of innovators appears to be up for the challenge, however. FinTechs and banks continue to develop new solutions to address many of the biggest pain points of global business payments, from speed to foreign exchange.
PYMNTS
MARCH 20, 2020
Open banking’s impact on small- to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) continues to proliferate as traditional financial institutions (FIs) embrace the opportunity to unlock data for third-party platforms. FinTechs continue to push the envelope to see how far open banking frameworks can go in improving the SMB banking experience, and increasingly, SMB lending is shifting to the center of these collaborative efforts.
PYMNTS
MARCH 14, 2020
With the coronavirus putting eCommerce front and center, it has unfortunately been joined by its cousin: online retail fraud. Conservative estimates put online sales at $630 billion this year. At the same time, a new report shows that fraudsters will take more than $12 billion off the table. That doesn’t count alienated customers who are ready to pull the trigger on social media with a bad review.
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
MARCH 17, 2020
A big part of SoftBank ’s bailout plans for office sharing company WeWork could be in jeopardy after SoftBank backed away from a plan to buy $3 billion worth of the company’s shares, according to a report by The Wall Street Journal. On Tuesday (March 17), WeWork shareholders were sent a message from SoftBank claiming that several regulatory probes into WeWork were being done by not only the Department of Justice (DOJ), but also the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
PYMNTS
MARCH 17, 2020
To stay competitive, especially with digital startups unencumbered by legacy systems, traditional financial institutions (FIs) need to deliver seamless customer services to individual consumers and enterprise customers alike. To that end, Vincent Caldeira, chief technologist for FSI in APAC for Red Hat told PYMNTS, FIs — especially incumbent FIs — are facing rapid changes in payments that demand they modernize payments processing, embedding new functionality along the way.
PYMNTS
MARCH 20, 2020
Fraud attacks’ frequency and complexity will likely continue to rise despite merchants’ best efforts to prevent them. Bad actors are tapping into personally identifiable information (PII) gathered from previous hacks to orchestrate their increasingly sophisticated efforts, including data purchased from the dark web to hide their tracks or pieces cobbled together from several victims to create difficult-to-detect synthetic identities.
PYMNTS
MARCH 18, 2020
While fast, explosive and unexpected change is almost impossible to miss — the global domino effect the coronavirus has kicked off being the most obvious recent example — change that happens more quietly and incrementally doesn’t quite set off the same type of alarm bells. Such is the situation in financial services, where the capabilities that have been unlocked by digitization have rather radically changed consumers and preferences — although perhaps in ways that don’t stand out as obvious.
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
MARCH 17, 2020
When all is said and done, when the pandemic is over, when we emerge on the other side of this, it’s safe to say that who we are – no matter where we live – will have changed a bit. So will the ways in which we prove we are who we say we are. In an interview with Karen Webster, Philipp Pointner, chief product officer at Jumio , said the coronavirus may hasten a shift from paper and plastic documents toward digital ID verification.
PYMNTS
MARCH 18, 2020
JPMorgan said it will to donate $50 million to groups and organizations that provide support and supplies to people affected by the coronavirus all over the world, according to a report by Reuters. . The first $15 million will go to groups directly dealing with how the virus is affecting people directly, with $5 million to institutions that handle community development, to dole out low- or no-interest loans.
PYMNTS
MARCH 17, 2020
With new mobile app Revolut Junior, global finance platform Revolut wants to get children into the money business, according to a press release. Revolut Junior will be targeted at children from the ages of 7 to 17, and will aim to teach them about finances, saving money and more. Revolut Junior Product Owner Aurelien Guichard said in the release that the drive behind the project is the basic idea that financial literacy and knowledge has to sprout first from a child’s home.
PYMNTS
MARCH 20, 2020
Banking giant HSBC and Cainiao Network Technology, which is a logistics arm of Alibaba Group , have announced they will offer rapid finance approvals to online merchants that use Chinese shopping site Tmall, according to reports. The South China Morning Post reported that the firms will offer seven-day approvals for loans up to $500,000, and 1,800 Hong Kong Tmall merchants will be eligible.
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PYMNTS
MARCH 18, 2020
There are many benefits to corporates’ digitization initiatives and cloud migrations – yet as today’s global markets are quickly realizing, there is one critical advantage: the ability to quickly adjust to work-from-home recommendations and mandates. With so many processes still based on paper, accounts receivable (AR) departments within organizations that are less advanced in their digitization journeys are facing added friction as workers are sent home.
PYMNTS
MARCH 18, 2020
CoinZoom has officially rolled out an exchange and a CoinZoom Visa card, according to an announcement. Customers will have the ability to purchase, sell and spend digital currencies on the exchange with the rollout. The card, which is directly connected to client accounts, lets clients instantly change their digital currency balances to fiat that they can spend at merchants around the globe.
PYMNTS
MARCH 16, 2020
Cross-border payments via Swift’s ISO 20022 migration, originally set to roll out by November 2021, have now been set back a year and are expected to come by the end of 2022 instead, according to reports. The move is the company’s answer to banks having trouble with decommissioning and preparing their infrastructure for the move. ISO 20022 is set to make changes to the payment landscape as a whole, according to the company.
PYMNTS
MARCH 19, 2020
To help address financial challenges brought about by the coronavirus, Texas Governor Greg Abbott put into place a waiver that lets restaurants deliver alcohol with food orders, ABC 13 reported. Eateries with a mixed drink permit can offer wine, beer or mixed drinks for delivery if they are bundled with a food order from the establishment. The governor also asked the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission to waive specific stipulations to let alcoholic beverage wholesalers, retailers and manufact
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
MARCH 19, 2020
The gig economy is rapidly becoming more attractive to more professionals worldwide: 68 percent of all gig workers joined this economy in the last five years, for example. These workers appreciate the flexibility ad hoc work brings to their schedules, but the less structured nature of the work can also mean facing certain payments challenges. Many of these workers want to be paid as quickly as possible, something that is not always easy when a client is based in a market outside of their own.
PYMNTS
MARCH 19, 2020
Phone scammers claiming to be from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) are saying they have a vaccine to cure the coronavirus (COVID-19), and are asking for credit card and Social Security numbers from unsuspecting victims to reserve it, according to a report by The Verge. One California police department recently warned its residents on Twitter about the malicious scam.
PYMNTS
MARCH 17, 2020
U.K. challenger bank Monzo has launched business bank accounts this week after a year-long trial period in which 2,500 customers got early access, according to a TechCrunch report. There will be two options aimed at small- to medium-sized businesses (SMBs): a free account and a paid premium account which costs 5 pounds ($6.06) per month. The free account, called Business Lite, will have similar features to the regular Monzo accounts, along with providing web access and mobile banking from an app
PYMNTS
MARCH 15, 2020
Rapper Akon is launching the cryptocurrency, Akoin, that he says will financially power “Akon City” in West Africa. His whitepaper indicates that Akoins will work as “atomic swaps” between cryptocurrencies, fiat currencies, and mobile phone credits on the Akoin network. “The Akoin Utility Token is the exclusive currency of the Akoin ecosystem. Our proprietary Atomic Swap technology enables immediate trade between major cryptocurrencies, our partners’ alternative currencies, and fiat currencies —
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.
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