May, 2019

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Amazon Hit With Cyberattack; Money Stolen From Sellers

PYMNTS

Amazon was the target of an “extensive” cyberattack in which hackers stole money from merchant accounts and funneled them into their own, according to a report by Bloomberg. The attacks occurred between May and October of 2018. Amazon said the hackers compromised about 100 seller accounts, taking cash from either loans or sales and putting it into their own accounts.

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State & Local Tax Update: Indiana Increases Business Personal Property Tax Exemption

Katz,Sapper&Miller

As is the case after every legislative session, taxpayers will see gains and losses. When it comes to business personal property tax in Indiana, taxpayers will certainly gain.

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Wallets Versus Stored Credentials: How Consumers Shop And Pay With Smartphones

PYMNTS

Mobile commerce might just be the key to saving brick-and-mortar stores. Consumers use their smartphones to shop for everything, everywhere – including using them to help them shop in-store. What’s more, consumers who use their smartphones while shopping in-store visit them more often than consumers who don’t. As much as 81.5 percent of consumers who do say they visit brick-and-mortar shops every day or every week.

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PayPal Hits $10B SMB Lending Milestone

PYMNTS

Businesses of a certain size — and in industries as varied as construction and restaurants — know the pain of wondering if they will have enough capital to fund operations, inventory, expansion and other mission-critical business activities. They know the uncertainty of going to traditional financial institutions (FIs), even those rooted in their communities, that might not want to take on the risks or economics of extending smaller lines of credit to small businesses (SMBs), with fortunes that

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Building a Business Case for Finance Automation

Speaker: Danny Gassaway and Wayne Richards

Finance leaders are prioritizing efficiency and digital transformation, yet many hesitate to automate due to uncertainty. Without a clear understanding of its impact, organizations risk falling behind competitors who are leveraging automation to drive productivity and cost savings. Join Wayne Richards and Danny Gassaway from AvidXchange for a practical guide on bringing accounts payable (AP) automation to your organization.

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Toast Launches Payroll Software For Restaurants

PYMNTS

Restaurant management platform Toast has launched Toast Payroll & Team Management, a payroll and HR solution designed for the restaurant industry, the company said in a release. The new service makes payroll easier by automating it, and it also streamlines onboarding and reduces compliance risk. If combined with Toast Point of Sale, the new product integration will let owners instantly onboard and manage employees, keep track of hours throughout all locations, and make sure everyone is paid

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Online Retailers Face New Threats From Hackers

PYMNTS

Death, taxes and data breaches – those are perhaps the only sure things in life, and new evidence is emerging that hackers are finding increasing profit in targeting online retailers. The news comes amid yet another online retail cyberattack, this one targeting Japan’s Fast Retailing, the company that owns the Uniqlo retail chain. A recent report from KrebsonSecurity said that “until quite recently, credit card data stolen from online merchants has been worth far less in the cybercrime undergrou

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Visa EVP Of Tech: AI Should Go Narrow And In Layers

PYMNTS

Artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to change lives, literally – aiding in the detection of diseases, for example – while in commerce, it has the potential to stop bad transactions. We’re getting there, but bringing AI into everyday life is an evolutionary process that differs markedly from the breathless portrayals in the movies, where the rise of sentient computers and robots bodes well, or ill, for humanity, depending on what you’re watching.

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Airlines Say Wheels Up To Pay-By-Bank Payments

PYMNTS

Payments don’t always have to be just about the cards. That’s the big message being sent throughout the payments world as PSD2 and other FinTech efforts spark innovation and give consumers, companies and other organizations more methods to pay — methods that better match the preferences of those participants, payments that feature more speed and less friction than was often the case before.

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Fundbox, Brandwise Execs: How Net 60 Helps B2B – And Why They’re Joining Forces  

PYMNTS

B2B payments are mired in delays, in errors, in an imbalance in funds flow and credit terms. Simply put, buyers stretch out payments and suppliers play the waiting game – at least as well as it can be played with checks and cards. The result is a cash flow crunch. Access to financing (trade finance, that is), especially online, can level the playing field a bit.

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Cybersecurity Co Kaspersky Lab Details Malware Aimed At Mobile Banking

PYMNTS

Kaspersky Lab, a cybersecurity and anti-virus company, has reported a rise in a specific malware intended to steal money and credentials from people’s bank accounts. The company found 29,841 files of the malware in Q1 of 2019, which is up from 18,501 in Q4. Attacks on upwards of 300,000 users were detected. Kaspersky Lab released its IT threat evolution in its Q1 2019 report.

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Fall In Love With the Month-End Close

It's the time of year to give our close process some TLC. Join us in this one hour webinar where we discuss how to adopt leading practices and infuse technology into the month-end close process to improve our experience and increase our productivity during month-end and quarter-end close. Learning Objectives: This course's objective is to understand how the month-end close can be improved with automation and adoption of leading practices.

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Will The Stars Align For Facebook’s Project Libra?

PYMNTS

The news last Friday that Facebook has plans to launch its own global crypto-based payments rails is déjà vu all over again. Déjà vu because it was 10 years ago, in May of 2009, that Facebook launched the alpha version of Facebook Credits. Credits was a virtual currency and payments platform used to power in-app purchases on Facebook. It shut down in 2012, 15 months after its official launch.

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Post-Merger, NXGEN And Payscape Eye SMBs’ Digital Shifts

PYMNTS

The path to the payments deal started about three or four years ago when Adam Bloomston, CEO of Payscape , and Thomas Nitopi, CEO and founder of NXGEN , first met. As they talked about their respective payment services firms, they realized, in Bloomston’s words, “that both of our companies didn’t really compete with each other in multiple areas.”. However, they both understood the opportunity: to further their global presence and create what Nitopi, in a PYMNTS interview, called “a global sales

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Why AP Draws The Innovation Short Straw

PYMNTS

Accounts payable operations are essential to ensuring that payments to a firm’s partners and suppliers are processed and delivered on time. These processes prevent companies from missing payments and running the risk of souring business relationships and hurting their partners’ bottom lines in the process. However, despite their importance to keeping businesses afloat, old school practices like physical paperwork are still the norm for many AP departments.

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Internet Of Things, A Thing Gone Global

PYMNTS

Digital assistants. Smart fridges and thermostats. Security devices, too. The Internet of Things (IoT) has gone global, an ever-expanding ecosystem that touches consumers in every facet of their daily lives. The latest Intelligence of Things Tracker shows some pretty big numbers in terms of the billions of devices already out in the field, and the billions of dollars already being spent on those devices … and it seems like things are just getting started.

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Navigating Payroll Compliance: Future-Proofing Payroll in an Evolving Regulatory Landscape

Speaker: Jennifer Hill

Payroll compliance is a cornerstone of business success, yet for small and midsize businesses, it’s becoming increasingly challenging to navigate the ever-evolving landscape of federal, state, and local regulations. Mistakes can lead to costly penalties and operational disruptions, making it essential to adopt advanced solutions that ensure accuracy and efficiency.

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Is Real-Time Payments A Threat To Credit Cards?

PYMNTS

Faster, faster, faster — that’s the motto driving so much of payments innovation today. Real-time payments offers promise for both small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) and consumers. That holds especially true for the Asia-Pacific region, as InstaReM CEO and Co-Founder Prajit Nanu discussed with Karen Webster in a new PYMNTS podcast interview.

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Cash Still Finds Favor In A Digital World

PYMNTS

Rumors of the death of cash – as in complete extinction – are greatly exaggerated. Even as digital payments gain ground, cash still remains part of the payments landscape – and its place may be permanent. A new report from Square underscores the resiliency of bills and coins. That comes even as, Square estimates, the percentage of U.S. consumers using cash for purchases below the $20 threshold dipped from 46 percent to 37 percent.

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FinTech Firms Tackle PCI Burdens With Hosted Checkout

PYMNTS

PCI compliance is top of mind for many organizations, with a burden and commitment from the chief financial officer (CFO) suite that is not nominal — and quite capital intensive. FinTech firms, however, are looking to lessen that work through their offerings: Modo , in one case, has a Modal component to its /Checkout product. “We allow a merchant to come in and offload their PCI requirements” by hosting the capture of sensitive data, Modo Chief Product Officer Ryan Lee told PYMNTS in an intervie

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As P2P Payments Spreads Its Wings, Challenges Loom

PYMNTS

The spotlight burned brighter for peer-to-peer (P2P) payment services in the first quarter of 2019, with those payment methods finding popularity among more consumers. However, P2P’s future growth will depend on solving problems related to data privacy and other issues — at least, according to some observers. Perhaps the biggest story in P2P, though, is the ongoing battle between P2P providers Zelle (operated by Early Warning Services ) and Venmo (owned by PayPal ).

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Next-Level Fraud Prevention: Strategies for Today’s Threat Landscape

Speaker: Sierre Lindgren

Fraud is a battle that every organization must face – it’s no longer a question of “if” but “when.” Every organization is a potential target for fraud, and the finance department is often the bullseye. From cleverly disguised emails to fraudulent payment requests, the tactics of cybercriminals are advancing rapidly. Drawing insights from real-world cases and industry expertise, we’ll explore the vulnerabilities in your processes and how to fortify them effectively.

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Visa: EMV Rollout Continues; Counterfeit Fraud Down 76 Pct.

PYMNTS

Visa said this week that as acceptance of EMV cards has gained traction in the U.S., counterfeit fraud, measured in dollars for these card present transactions, has dropped precipitously. The latest stats show that the continued upgrade to chip card acceptance – which began in 2015 – has led to a decrease in counterfeit fraud dollars on the order of 76 percent, as measured in December of 2018 vs.

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Tim Berners-Lee On Building The World Wide Web 2.0

PYMNTS

For Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the man credited with inventing and giving away the World Wide Web protocol that shaped the internet as we know it today, the web at its best has always been about being decentralized. “The decision to make the Web an open system was necessary for it to be universal. You can’t propose that something be a universal space and at the same time keep control of it,” Berners-Lee famously noted in 1998.

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Vodafone: How 5G Will Impact IoT’s Future

PYMNTS

There is a tendency when talking about the Internet of Things (IoT) — and all the miraculous things it will power in the future — to lose sight of the fact that it’s not really a conversation about the future. While it is still the early days of the connected era, Ludovico Fassati, head of IoT for Vodafone Americas , told Karen Webster in a recent conversation that we are unmistakably in the era of the IoT right now — as of spring 2019.

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How 45 Pct Of Old-School SMBs Plan To Innovate

PYMNTS

In today’s digital economy, with shopping as easy as the tap of a finger on a smartphone screen, brick-and-mortar retail businesses have no choice but to innovate to keep and grow their clientele. A large percentage of all retail businesses recognize this reality, but, in some quarters of the economy, the implementation of innovative technologies has been slow-going.

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Cash Flow Secrets Every Upskilled CPA Should Know

Speaker: Debra L. Robinson

CPAs know the drill: taxes, compliance, rinse, repeat. But what about the sneaky cash flow that’s quietly messing with your organization’s success? It’s time to step into the spotlight and expose the “dirty little secrets” of cash flow to fuel strategic growth. By upskilling your accounting practices and shifting focus from tax compliance to the strategic movement of money, you can transform your role from reactive accountant to proactive financial strategist.

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Taco Bell To Open ‘The Bell’ Hotel

PYMNTS

To provide consumers with an immersive way to experience its brand, Taco Bell is launching The Bell: A Taco Bell Hotel and Resort in Palm Springs, California for a limited time this summer. The property’s amenities, from poolside cocktails to guest rooms to breakfast choices, will boast a “Taco Bell twist,” the quick-service restaurant (QSR) chain said in an announcement , which described the concept as a “tacoasis.” Taco Bell ‘s Chief Global Brand Officer Marisa Thalberg said

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Bank Of England Mulls Blockchain Amid ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution’

PYMNTS

The digital revolution comes to the land where the industrial revolution was born? To that end, Invest In Blockchain reported that Mark Carney, governor of the Bank of England, said that the central bank should gear up for a “fourth industrial revolution” that includes at least some impact to payments, chiefly through blockchain and decentralized systems.

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In India, Faster Payments Deliver ‘Instant Gratification’ To Migrants

PYMNTS

Migrants make up a substantial portion of the economy in India. By some recent accounts , more than 100 million migrants are participating in the nation’s workforce — one-fifth of the nation’s workforce. Many of these workers travel from rural, low-income regions, hoping that work opportunities in urban areas will enable them to support their families.

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IBM Launches Supply Chain Anomaly Detection Tool

PYMNTS

IBM announced the launch of a new supply chain management solution deploying artificial intelligence (AI) to detect anomalies in the supply chain. In a press release issued Tuesday (May 14), IBM announced its Business Transactional Intelligence tool is now available to mitigate the risk of supply chain disruptions. As part of IBM’s Supply Chain Business Network, the BTI tool facilitates access to data of supply chain processes, including procure-to-pay and order-to-cash interactions.

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Profit in the Details: Rethinking Spend for Monumental Impact

Speaker: Aaron Berson

Managing spend is more than a cost cutting exercise – it's a pathway to smarter decisions that unlock efficiency and drive growth. By understanding and refining the spending process, financial leaders can empower their organizations to achieve more with less. Explore the art of balancing financial control with operational growth. From uncovering hidden inefficiencies to designing workflows that scale your business, we’ll share strategies to align your organization’s spending with its strategic g

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Why FIs Are Laser-Focused On Corporate Credit Innovation

PYMNTS

Innovation has been the name of the game for financial institutions (FIs) large and small in recent years. While the overall pace of innovation has cooled somewhat over the past two years, as FIs have been slower to market with new products, they are increasingly channeling their energies into tried-and-true product lines. For 85 percent of FIs, this means corporate credit products.

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What 98 Pct Of Consumers Miss About Protecting Their Cards From Fraud

PYMNTS

From finding a nearby restaurant to finding a date, smartphone location controls are used by consumers for many cases. These mobile controls, however, also offer consumers a powerful tool for dealing with arguably higher stakes: the risk of credit card fraud. Location controls can be used to prevent merchants from charging consumers’ credit cards if their smartphones aren’t close by, and restrict purchases to a particular geographic area or country.

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WhatsApp Pay India Debut Targets Paytm Users

PYMNTS

With the digital payments market heating up in India as major players enter it, Facebook-owned WhatsApp Pay is expected to be a game-changer. According to a report in the Economic Times of India , since Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg revealed in April that WhatsApp Pay is coming to India, the marketplace has been bracing for the latest entrance.

Gaming 77
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Mastercard, Interac Team On Canada Cross-Border Payments

PYMNTS

Mastercard and Interac, the global and domestic payment networks, announced Wednesday (May 22) they are collaborating to offer customers in Canada a fast and easy way to send money internationally. In a press release , the companies said Interac is using Mastercard Send, a push-payments service to send money cross-border, on the Interac eTransfer platform.

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Navigating Bleisure Travel: A Guide for Mid-Sized Companies

Bleisure travel — where employees combine work and leisure — has been around since the advent of corporate travel and is here to stay. Successful bleisure policies strike a balance between employee preferences and company goals — workers report a 64% improvement in work-life balance, while companies benefit from reduced travel costs and increased workforce innovation.