December, 2017

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Passport, the technology business for city transit systems, raises $43 million

PYMNTS

Passport, company that’s managing much of the technical aspects of how people pay to use public transportation resources in cities like London, Miami and Los Angeles, has just raised $43 million. The money, from Bain Capital Ventures, will go to help the company expand its payment and transaction services nationally and internationally. Read More.

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Big Data For Big Returns At Retailers Big And Small?

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“Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is, I don’t know which half.”. That’s a quote from department store maven John Wanamaker, illustrating a conundrum for retailers (and merchants in general): Namely, you’ve got to reach out to consumers if you are going to convince them to buy your wares. But reaching out involves time and money — both precious commodities.

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eBay Mulling Accepting Bitcoin As A Payment Method

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Online retailer eBay , following in the footsteps of Overstock.com, is contemplating allowing bitcoin as a payment method. In an interview with Yahoo Finance , Scott Cutler, SVP of eBay Americas, said the eCommerce retailer is “seriously considering” accepting bitcoin payments but noted the company is “not quite there yet.” He noted that eBay is currently focused on the holiday shopping season, which is turning out to be a strong one for online retailers. .

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Learning About Machine Learning  

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And now, the rise of the machines — or, at least, machine learning. This movement has been a long time coming, as artificial intelligence (AI) is moving ever-farther into real-world business applications where once it was too expensive (or too conceptual) to embrace. Through improving technology and decreasing costs, AI and Big Data are now combining to help firms in the financial sector prevent payments fraud.

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Less Stress, More Success: Accounting Best Practices & Processes for 2025

Speaker: Amanda Adams, Fractional CFO, CPA

Are you ready to elevate your accounting processes for 2025? 🚀 Join us for an exclusive webinar led by Amanda Adams, a seasoned fractional CFO and CPA passionate about transforming back-office operations for finance teams. This session will cover critical best practices and process improvements tailored specifically for accounting professionals.

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Why savvy investors should focus on Kazakhstan (and other frontier markets)

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If I told you that you could travel back in time, to the end of the nineteenth century, and invest in a country that was recently war-torn, and in great transition, would you do it? You’d need to know that the government was primarily one ethnic group, but immigrants with different languages, customs, and religions were arriving in that country, at unprecedented levels, crowding the cities and looking for jobs.

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Using AI And Machine Learning To Make Payments Faster, Safer

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What do track and field stars, NASCAR drivers and millions of businesses owners around the United States have in common? They all have an appreciation for speed. While more speed may mean more endorsement money for athletes, it means faster settlements and more efficient business for commercial banking customers. With a growth in demand, banks and FinTechs are working to give business owners the speed they need.

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Payment Rails Latest To Roll Out API-Enabled Global Business Payments Platform

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Payment Rails is making its official step into the cross-border payments market through the launch of its application program interface (API) and payment platform, the company said Thursday (Dec. 7). In a press release , Payment Rails said its white label platform supports business payments sent to more than 220 countries in more than 135 currencies.

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TRENDING: IBM On The New Rules Of The ‘API Economy’

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The emergence of APIs is doing more than just changing the way banks and FinTechs operate. It’s forcing them to create new marketplaces and ecosystems where innovations are traded and, in the process, upending the traditional rules of the financial services market. With the market rapidly evolving, is it time for traditional financial institutions (FIs) to learn the rules of the new API economy?

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In B2B Payments, Speed Is Only Part Of The Package

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As the financial services industry takes a look back at 2017, a few milestones stand out: the progress of faster and instant payment initiatives. The evolution of blockchain-based services. Collaboration between FinTechs and banks. And, much to the relief of corporates, the continuing focus on B2B payments innovation. Businesses have begun to shed the notion that they are slow to embrace new technologies, and that means the disruptive services and solutions coming out of the financial services s

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How FIs Compete In The ‘API Economy’

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Banks and FinTechs may have had frosty relations in the past , but new open API ecosystems are now enabling former competitors to collaborate and grow their respective businesses. While collaboration is often seen as the more appealing approach, an open banking ecosystem invites its own challenges for traditional banks. Specifically, these financial institutions (FIs) must learn how to collaborate and innovate at a considerably faster pace.

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Avoiding Lease Accounting Pitfalls in 2025: Lessons Learned from Spreadsheet Errors

Speaker: Abdi Ali, Sr. Lease Accounting Consultant

Join this insightful webinar with industry expert Abdi Ali, who will discuss the challenges that can arise from managing lease accounting with spreadsheets! He will share real-world examples of errors, compliance issues, and risks that may be present within your spreadsheets. Learn how these tools, while useful, can sometimes lead to inefficiencies that affect your time, resources, and peace of mind.

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Hackers Behind Mirai Botnet Plead Guilty

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Three computer hackers behind the Mirai botnet, which kicked websites offline last year in cyberattacks, have pleaded guilty to cybercrime. Citing court documents, Reuters stated on Wednesday (Dec. 13) that former Rutgers University student Paras Jha pleaded guilty in federal court in New Jersey to charges, including writing code that enabled him to infect and control devices.

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Holiday Tunes with a T1D Spin

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We asked our readers to give their favorite holiday tunes a T1D spin. Here are some lyrics for all to enjoy: The Night Before Christmas with Type 1 Diabetes. ‘Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house, Not a creature was stirring, till the CGM alarm did rouse; The testing supplies were stocked by the bedside with care, In hopes that a finger prick soon would be there.

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Mozilla Patches Critical Bug in Thunderbird

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Mozilla has patched one critical vulnerability in its Thunderbird email client along with two bugs rated high.

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Payments Innovation: Brand Of Choice Driven By Consumer Experience

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Not innovating is not an option. Perhaps in the early days of digital banking and mobile apps, innovative technology was a “nice to have,” but that is no longer the case. Today, it is a must-have for financial institutions (FIs) — that is, if they want their payment products to be the first one for which customers reach at the point of sale, whether physical or digital.

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Back to Basics with Reconciliations

Join us in this webinar, where we share best practices on how to think about the reconciliation work each month, when best to do reconciliations, how they should be prepared, and some common pitfalls to avoid. Learning Objectives: This course objective is to understand how to properly prepare and review balance sheet reconciliations and its impact on the financial statements.

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The Mainstream Retail Future Of AR/VR

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Augmented and virtual worlds have long been touted as the future for all kinds of things — gaming, healthcare, travel, tele-learning. They’re experiences where being there counts in a lot of important ways, but virtualizing the experience and making it consumable digitally catches most of that in-person benefit, without the hassle of in-person travel.

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How The Subscription Boom Can Detail Expense Management

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Employee fraud is a monumental issue, especially for small businesses (SMBs) without resources to track every penny workers spend. But that fraud is only part of the problem stemming from a lack of visibility into corporate spend. In addition to employee expenses, another key challenge for companies is the money they spend, and sometimes waste, on subscription services.

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Person Present: The Future Of Card Not Present Identity Verification

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“Who are you?”. It’s a philosophical question with a million different answers depending on who’s asking. In payments, it is a practical question with just as many answers depending on the use case. Identity verification and user authentication are hot spaces right now, and only getting hotter as merchants, financial institutions (FIs) and consumers demand more foolproof protection against fraudsters.

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The Digital Small Markets Of The Future

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Timing is everything, as the saying goes. It’s also the story of a startup named Poly, and its visual identification software, says its CEO, Alberto Rizzoli. Two years ago, Rizzoli began developing an AI platform capable of seeing an object – or person – and “visually” identifying it, with a high degree of accuracy. The use case, then, was the ability to enable smartphones to be more accessible for the visually impaired.

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Usage-Based Monetization Musts: A Roadmap for Sustainable Revenue Growth

Speaker: David Warren and Kevin O’Neill Stoll

Transitioning to a usage-based business model offers powerful growth opportunities but comes with unique challenges. How do you validate strategies, reduce risks, and ensure alignment with customer value? Join us for a deep dive into designing effective pilots that test the waters and drive success in usage-based revenue. Discover how to develop a pilot that captures real customer feedback, aligns internal teams with usage metrics, and rethinks sales incentives to prioritize lasting customer eng

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TRENDING: mPOS Goes Globetrotting

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It’s tempting for small merchants to see cash through rose- (or should we say green-) tinted glasses, but major industry players think it’s time to break up the love affair — or, at least, give both parties some distance. Players like Mastercard are encouraging micro businesses to give mobile payment acceptance a whirl, hoping they’ll feel the attraction.

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Standardizing Digital Payments Standardization

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The age-old question is: How do you create a standard that works for every digital payments innovator – and the consumers and businesses they serve – when the starting points for those innovations reflect their very different origins and digital strengths? It’s a question that’s very top of mind across the payments and commerce ecosystem, and particularly relevant in mobile and desktop commerce.

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Mastercard Selects Diverse Group For Latest Start Path Program

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Mastercard has announced the list of startup companies chosen to participate in its Mastercard Start Path program, a group the company is calling its “most diverse class” ever. Mastercard revealed the list in a recent announcement, including startups that span a range of verticals. Those partaking in the program, which aims to support later-stage FinTech and technology startups, total 11 firms selected from five countries.

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The Power Of Bringing Better Data For The Holidays

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Arguably, the internet’s premier destination for auctions is eBay, which is not an unfair statement, given the sheer volume of said auctions going on via its website at any given moment. But as massive and instantly associable as auctions are, eBay has spent the last several years growing up, and growing past its old model. In fact, eBay is one of the web’s largest online marketplaces — with an estimated 168 million buyers in total — Customers eBay has spent much of 2017 trying to convince not t

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Harness the Potential of Your Enterprise Knowledge

The first Market Momentum Index: AI and Unstructured Data Management, conducted by Deep Analysis with support from AIIM and M-Files, surveyed 500 enterprises across various industries to assess their readiness to employ AI. The results reveal that AI is already far more embedded into organizations' operations than previously realized. These findings and more insights have been brought to you in the "Market Momentum Index: AI and Unstructured Data Management.

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Uber’s Rough Ride Of A Week

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We are reasonably sure that Uber will be happy to see 2017 come to an end. Scandals of one form or another buffeted the company throughout the early part of the year, leading to the departure of its founder, CEO Travis Kalanick , in late June. But the year’s earlier rough ride might now be viewed as a walk in the park when compared to the news of the last two weeks.

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Using Communication To Make Your Brand Unforgettable in 2018

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Image courtesy of Pixabay Today I am pleased to share with you a guest post by Julian de Sevilla with PATlive. An effective customer service solution has always been a tool that helps businesses stand out. However, customers recently have come to expect more from businesses in terms of service, forming a landscape that’s saturated with options, and thus hyper-competitive.

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Meeting Consumer Demand With Speed-Of-Life Payments

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The digital economy is here and, for many consumers, it has become a way of life. Direct deposits, push payments, eWallets, same-day ACH transfers, PayPal, Zelle and myriad other platforms and tools are now second nature. But, with this progress comes friction in the form of a payments patchwork. It has these newer, faster methods running across core payments infrastructure that was not built to support so many, so fast.

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VCs Back Bitcoin For B2B Payments, AI For Enterprise Analytics

PYMNTS

In total, B2B venture capitalists placed (or announced plans to place) $85 million in funding to businesses, with startups in the U.S., Asia and the Middle East taking the lead this week. It was a mixed bag of funding, with a few startups working in more traditional B2B technology, including expense management and SaaS. The others, however, are working with more cutting-edge tech, including bitcoin and artificial intelligence (AI), and just so happened to see the largest funding rounds of the we

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Solve Your Firm's Automation Complexities Once and For All

Speaker: Mark Stovel

When it comes to automating, many firms focus on finding the latest tech, believing that efficiency is something achieved through new tools. Yet true efficiency is achieved by delivering real value to clients, not merely by upgraded systems. Without a clear approach, no level of automation can overcome the complexities of serving every client’s needs.

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Payments Testing One, Two, Three

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Modern consumers have high expectations for technology. If something doesn’t work perfectly, they’re quick to grow frustrated and abandon it as junk. “Our generation is a little bit spoiled,” said Bart van Hoek, head of Innovations with UL Transaction Security — and he said that is all the more true with payments tech. Imagine going out for breakfast only to find that the point-of-sale (POS) terminal isn’t working.

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IKEA Gamifies Store Openings With VR

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IKEA has already done some early work to embrace augmented reality in its brick-and-mortar stores. Through a recent design collaboration with Wavemaker, the company is taking the next step by using virtual reality (VR) to help shoppers more fully experience IKEA and learn more about what they’re buying. IKEA’s newest retail concept got its first test run at a Dallas store opening.

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The Future of Customer Experience: Top 10 Trends for 2018 and Beyond (Infographic)

PYMNTS

Over the recent years customer experience has dramatically grown in value to supersede product quality and price. Companies that deliver outstanding customer experience can truly win over the competition, retain more loyal customers and improve their bottom line. So what’s trending in the world of CX today? Since customer expectations are changing just as rapidly as technology advancements, improving customer experience has become an ongoing goal for most companies.

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Ignorance Of Cyber Threat Creates Conundrum For Small Business Data Security

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McAfee Labs recently published its 2018 Threats Predictions report , and after a year of high-profile cyberattacks and data breaches, analysts say the threat won’t let up in the new year. A rising challenge for the enterprise is the fact that cyberattackers are becoming increasingly sophisticated in their methods. According to McAfee, while companies are embracing innovations like machine learning to safeguard their systems, attackers, too, are using these same tools.

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Travel and Expense Policy Success: Your Essential Checklist

Setting the stage for successful organizational change always begins with clear, thoughtful communication. When it comes to rolling out a new travel and expense (T&E) policy, establishing a well-structured communication plan is key to ensuring that all employees understand the changes and their impact. By following a step-by-step approach, you can guide your organization through the transition, fostering smooth adoption from the outset and improving compliance.