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Western Union, the global payment services company, announced Wednesday (Dec. 7) it is enhancing its relationship with Viber, the mobile messaging app that counts 745 million unique users around the globe. In a press release , Western Union said it is enhancing its existing relationship with Viber by enabling Viber users in the U.K. to send money domestically and internationally to more than 200 countries and territories via the Viber app.
Katie Culp, president of KSM Location Advisors, appeared alongside Vox Global senior partner, Mike Marker, and Ivy Tech‘s statewide diversity and community outreach executive director, Doran Moreland, on the recent Inside INdiana Business’ INsiders panel.
It’s not easy being big. Or being big and regulated. Among other things, it makes running a footrace with FinTech startups — tough. Big and regulated banks — especially these days — are not set up to sprint. Decades of legacy infrastructure and a web of regulations make it tough to adopt a “move fast and break things” mantra — even if the regulators would allow it.
Botnet attacks are not only growing in popularity among hackers, but they are also delivering a new level of sophistication and danger to businesses and consumers worldwide. In this week’s Hacker Tracker , PYMNTS caught up with security experts at digital security products provider Avast Software to gain insight into the rise of Crimeware-as-a-Service and why the industry should be taking notice of the growing threat of malicious botnets, like Avalanche and Mirai.
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.
The American Express that exists today would look pretty foreign to its first employees of 166 years ago — since, to state the obvious, a lot has changed over that period of time. Long before American Express was a credit card issuer and a closed loop payments network, it was in the business of moving mail (and other things) quickly from one coast to the other.
The ancient Minoans were a happy and productive society, which, among other things, was an early pioneer of cross-border commerce. The civilization that emerged and flourished on the island of Crete from 2000 BC to roughly 1500 BC was defined by artisans, farmers and traders — and a surprising degree of entrepreneurship for a civilization obsessed with Greek gods and fearful of the mythical Minotaur.
There are pivots and then there are wholesale about-faces. Circle’s choice to halt bitcoin trading in favor of doubling down on more traditional mobile pay certainly counts as a bit more of the latter than the former. Circle launched three years ago mostly as a consumer finance firm built on a bitcoin backbone. Customers were able and encouraged to buy and sell bitcoin on the platform — and as a blockchain-based firm, Circle was able to snap up around $70M in investor funds.
There are pivots and then there are wholesale about-faces. Circle’s choice to halt bitcoin trading in favor of doubling down on more traditional mobile pay certainly counts as a bit more of the latter than the former. Circle launched three years ago mostly as a consumer finance firm built on a bitcoin backbone. Customers were able and encouraged to buy and sell bitcoin on the platform — and as a blockchain-based firm, Circle was able to snap up around $70M in investor funds.
The automotive industry just had a head-on collision — with technology. That’s what Marques McCammon , GM for connected vehicle solutions at Wind River , thinks anyway. He explained that the automotive industry is the one place where the concepts of IoT can be made very real to the mass market — where they will be able to see it, understand it and really feel its impact.
Chinese B2B eCommerce platform DHgate.com is upgrading its payments infrastructure to promote faster payments for businesses transacting on the site. Reports Friday (Dec. 2) said DHgate.com revealed plans to upgrade its platform payment infrastructure to ensure that every transaction will take six seconds or less. According to reports, through optimizing existing infrastructure and acquiring additional servers across the globe, the site was able to accelerate page loading times and support faste
At a time when the IRS is trying to find out the identities behind bitcoin users, the Pennsylvania Allegheny County District Attorney’s office revealed it had to use bitcoin to pay a ransom to get its data back. According to a report by Forbes , the ransom was only $1,400, but the fact that a government agency paid a ransom and used bitcoin is something not seen before.
Scotland’s economy has excelled in industrial industries such as shipbuilding, steel and petroleum, but the country is turning its attention to developing a rising digital tech scene. In this week’s installment of PYMNTS’ Weekly Tech Center Roundup , one of the country’s thriving tech clusters, Glasgow, takes center stage. Before we jump into the post, here are a few quick facts about Glasgow and its tech scene: Glasgow it the largest city in Scotland and the third largest in the U.K., with an e
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.
Venture capital has hit a plateau, according to some analysts. “After $100M+ checks flowed freely to VC-backed companies through much of 2015, the mega-round trend has settled into a lower range through 2016,” concluded KPMG and CB Insights in their Q3 2016 venture capital report. Data suggests the trend is global: North America VC investments for the quarter were fairly flat compared to Q2, and while Europe saw an increase in the number of deals for VC funding, there was a decline i
A chatbot is on the horizon for regular users of the Starbucks mobile app. Called My Starbucks Barista, the new technology’s announcement came out during an event for investors where current and future CEOs of the firm, Howard Schultz and Kevin Johnson, outlined the company’s five-year growth plan. During the investor event, Starbucks premiered a demo video of the technology, with a customer speaking into the phone to interact with a chatbot that asked contextual follow-up questions.
Between the Instagram selfies, Twitter hashtags and Facebook posts, millennials seem to overshare. Their life is an open book on social media, and even the tiniest of details are never too much to provide. But when it comes time to hand over information to authenticate themselves to conduct a financial transaction, that door slams shut. “The more information that’s asked of them, the less likely it is that [millennials] will finish the application,” said Johnny Ayers, cofounder of Socure.
Vantiv and iModerate know that the word wallet has come to mean much more than just the accessory thrown in a purse or back pocket. Today, the word can also describe a mobile app that stores digital versions of a person’s payment cards, loyalty cards, gift cards and even coupons — enabling payment to take place with just a tap or scan. While mobile wallets can be a quick and convenient option to help consumers expedite checkout, keep their information secure, and streamline retailer discounts an
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.
[link]. Baseball is always a fecund place to find analogies about life. It’s also a great place to find analogies about life that apply to payments. Here’s one: “Never make predictions, especially about the future.” That one’s been attributed, of course, to Yogi Berra, as well as Hall of Famer Casey Stengel. And yet, we do all get into the predictions game, in every walk of life, across industries and personal endeavors, serving as roadmaps for the upcoming 12 months and beyond.
“Build a better mousetrap,” the expression goes, “and the world will beat a path to your door.”. Everyone knows the quote, including Chase Pay and LevelUp, and while not everyone knows it is a paraphrase of a longer quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson — “If a man can write a better book, preach a better sermon, or make a better mousetrap than his neighbor, though he build his house in the woods, the world will make a beaten path to his door,” — they know what it means.
SME accounting platform Xero has big hopes for artificial intelligence. A new report by IT-Online featured Xero South Africa Head of Accounting Colin Timmis, who mused on the topic of AI and how it can change accounting. “AI and smart machine-learning programs will be the next big thing, enabling automation to further disrupt the industry and the role of the accountant,” he said.
“Painfully.”. And so began this week’s episode of The Matchmaker Is In. Payoneer CEO Scott Galit used that word to respond to Karen Webster’s question about how marketplace suppliers were paid before digital payments and players like Payoneer who enable those payments existed. Though Payoneer is considered a pioneer in facilitating payments for suppliers whose services are procured via a digital marketplace, Galit explained that, for most of those marketplaces, the ability to pay providers of se
Great leadership development is the key to sustainable business growth. Are you ready to design an effective program? HR can use Paycor’s framework to: Set achievable goals. Align employee and company needs. Support different learning styles. Empower the next generation of leaders. Invest in your company’s future with a strong leadership development program.
For startups, 2016 wasn’t the best year in venture capital. Analysts say that investors’ wallets could be opening up as we enter 2017, though. “VCs used 2016 to manage costs, set priorities and valuations,” explained Rahul Khanna, managing partner at Trifecta Capital, in an interview with Business Standard published Wednesday (Dec. 7). “It was important for investors to pause, focus on the basics, which sent a message to the founders that raising money is not going to be easy.
Southeast Asia, including Singapore, Thailand and Indonesia, with its population of over 620 million, is predicted to be the next site of an eCommerce boom. The region’s internet economy is projected to become a $278 billion market by 2025 , with immense growth expected in all online sectors, but especially in mobile payments as companies across the region invest more in digital infrastructure.
The speed at which digital banking is being transformed by new technologies is rapidly increasing. From behavioral biometrics to new selfie technology, financial institutions are being presented with even more ways to distribute their services across digital channels to meet customers where they want to interact. Whether that’s on their mobile device on the go or in their kitchen while they make dinner.
Vantiv, a provider of payment processing services and technology for merchants and financial institutions, announced it, along with PPRO Group, a cross-border ePayment provider, are partnering up to provide international alternative payment methods (APMs) to Vantiv’s merchants. In a press release, Vantiv said the new relationship enables Vantiv customers to be able to offer non-card payment methods — including direct debit, bank transfers, cash-based ePayments and eWallets — to international c
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.
Quick response barcodes, or QR codes, are making their way to India, with the Indian government reportedly requesting payment providers in the country adopt a standard QR code. According to a report , the Indian government is asking RuPay, Mastercard and Visa, the three mobile payment providers in India, to adopt a standard QR code so that it can help with ePayments offline.
Same Day ACH, the faster payments initiative for banks and other financial institutions in the United States, seems to be popular. According to NACHA, the network processed nearly $5 billion in 3.8 million transactions, with an average transaction value of more than $1,000, in the month of October alone. But the U.S. still has a long way to go and plenty of faster payment lessons to learn.
The Mirai botnet strikes again. A new version of the Mirai computer worm knocked more than 900,000 German ISP Deutsche Telekom customers offline due to infected routers, Krebs on Security reported last week. A newly discovered vulnerability in the firmware of the devices is believed to be the entry point for the botnet, which then turns off the remote upgrade feature and complicates restoration efforts.
The Faster Payments scheme in the U.K. has changed the way payment service providers are approaching the immediate availability of funds. While the New Access Model provides the ability for payments players to offer their customers real-time payments 24/7, the initiative can still be a challenged for organizations that may not have enough resources and experience to run a payments system.
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.
The world is preparing to enter into a new year, and small businesses are getting their New Year’s resolutions lists in order. PYMNTS checks up on the health of the small business in the U.S., U.K. and Australia and finds a few spots that could be cause for concern. Luckily, analysts expect that, with the conclusion of the U.S. presidential election and a clearer vision of what SMEs will face from markets and regulators next year, there is also a lot to be optimistic about. $62 billion in
KPMG has tapped spend management firm Ivalua to enhance its procure-to-pay offerings. The companies said Tuesday (Dec. 6) that they have partnered to combine their perspective expertise in the procurement field. KPMG and Ivalua said they are looking to help procurement departments in companies of all sizes gain greater control of corporate spend, reduce procurement risk and add greater automation to their business processes. “This alliance will help clients deliver greater value from procu
Align Commerce has been gradually adding new markets connected into its B2B payments platform, and on Thursday (Dec. 8), the firm revealed its latest target. The U.K. is the newest country to link into the Align Commerce system, enabling SMEs to send and receive payments across borders to the more than 60 countries now integrated into its offering. Align Commerce offers multiple payment rails for international payments to streamline and accelerate the rate at which money is moved.
It may be easy to assume that the nearly 30 million–35 million consumers in the U.S. who can’t get a credit score through traditional scoring models are very different from those who can. But the truth is: Those impacted by exclusionary credit scoring models, also known as “unscorables,” actually have financial and credit capability profiles that are similar to those consumers who are able to obtain credit scores.
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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