Sat.Mar 07, 2020 - Fri.Mar 13, 2020

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Space Coast Business – Women in Business

SMBAccountant

Shannon Bloom featured in SCB’s Women in Business. Shannon continues to impress! Check out her feature in Space Coast Business – Women in Business issue! Be on the lookout for more articles as she continues to grow SMB Accounting and Consulting. View the Article Online.

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The Innovative ‘Green Shoots’ Growing Out Of COVID-19’s Scorched Earth

PYMNTS

There seem to be countless sources of collateral damage associated with the unexpected appearance of COVID-19 in early 2020 – the shutdown of production in China, the ripples through the global supply chain, the virtual zeroing out of the travel and events vertical and the carnage on Wall Street. The uncertainty injected into the market, as Ning Wang, co-founder and chief business officer at PingPong , told Karen Webster in a recent conversation, is having undeniable effects worldwide – which ar

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COVID-19 Update: An Important Message to Our Clients and Friends

Katz,Sapper&Miller

As Katz, Sapper & Miller continues to closely monitor the novel coronavirus outbreak (COVID-19), the health and safety of our people, clients, families, and communities remain a top priority for us. With this situation rapidly evolving, we feel it is important to update you about the steps we are taking across our firm to manage through this crisis.

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What Employers Need to Know About Taxable Wages

Patriot Software

Part of being an employer is withholding taxes from your employees’ wages before giving them their paychecks. That’s why you need to understand taxable wages before you run payroll. Remember how surprised you were when you saw the chunk of cash taken out of your first paycheck for Uncle Sam? Fortunately for workers, not all […]. The post What Employers Need to Know About Taxable Wages appeared first on Patriot Software.

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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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Space Coast Business – Women in Business

SMBAccountant

Shannon Bloom featured in SCB’s Women in Business. Shannon continues to impress! Check out her feature in Space Coast Business – Women in Business issue! Be on the lookout for more articles as she continues to grow SMB Accounting and Consulting. View the Article Online.

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French Court Says Bitcoin Is Money

PYMNTS

A French court has decided that bitcoin is money, the first time a court in France has issued such a ruling, according to a report from Les Echos Sunday (March 8). The decision came about following a clash between the Bitcoin marketplace Paymium and the crypto investment company BitSpread. The result of the ruling could lead to more activity in the French bitcoin market.

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Biometrics: The Key To Overcoming Contactless Payment Limits?

PYMNTS

Digital identity solutions are becoming more and more commonplace, especially as consumers grow increasingly aware of the weaknesses of authentication methods like passwords. A recent study found 32 percent of security incidents in 2019 involved phishing and 29 percent involved stolen credentials, both of which would have been much more difficult had secure digital ID systems been in place.

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Apple Resumes Operation Of All China Retail Locations

PYMNTS

After it was forced to shutter its retail locations in China because of the spread of COVID-19, Apple Inc. has reportedly put all of them back into operation. The closures were one of the main reasons the tech company cited for removing its March quarter sales outlook, Bloomberg reported. Apple has been slowly reopening the locations, with 38 of the 42 shops open for business as of last week.

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Making Invisible Payments More Than A Buzzword

PYMNTS

From cash and coins to mobile wallets to wearables … to invisible payments. About 90 percent of purchases are still being made in-store, but the payment modalities are changing — and rapidly. To that end, said Matt Good, senior vice president and general manager of Elan Advisory Services , in an interview with PYMNTS, fledgling ways to pay — where wearables are wielded as payment instruments, and where mobile wallets replace leather ones — will soon become everyday methods.

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Joust To Finance Freelancers’ Outstanding SXSW Invoices

PYMNTS

Joust, a banking app in Austin, has announced it will pay users on their unpaid SXSW invoices to help them deal with the cancellation of the huge yearly festival, according to a release. Joust, which was a finalist for the 2020 SXSW Innovation Awards, said it will offer any affected users zero payment processing fees on its FDIC-insured free bank account.

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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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How JD.com Uses AI To Connect Consumers With Commerce

PYMNTS

There is nothing worse than trying to get customer service from a less than fully functional chatbot or automated voice system. Ask it a question it gives an answer, just perhaps not a relevant one to the question asked. Re-phrase and re-ask, and the consumer might do better — but it’s likely they get the same bad answer, or the bot digs deep and finds a way to give a worse one.

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Alipay Launches Strategy For Massive Digital Evolution In China

PYMNTS

Ant Financial , a division of China’s eCommerce giant Alibaba, has launched a three-year strategy to make its Alipay mobile app platform available to 40 million service providers so they can digitize their offerings, Alipay said in a press release on Tuesday (March 10). Alipay, the biggest payment platform worldwide, is aiming to solidify its position in China.

Legal 99
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Santander Purchases Majority Stake In Mercury TFS With €30M Investment

PYMNTS

As part of its digital plans to speed up growth by purchasing shares in companies, Banco Santander is buying a majority stake in Mercury TFS. The bank is making an investment of €30 million in the firm, which automates as well as digitizes management of trade finance transactions for corporate clients from start to finish, according to an announcement.

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Latest AI Playbook: Many FI Systems Are Too ‘Artificial’

PYMNTS

For all the talk about artificial intelligence (AI) in financial circles at present – it seems everything is “AI-powered” – it turns out there’s a lot less genuine AI in place than we might have imagined. The March 2020 Unlocking AI Playbook: FI Edition , a PYMNTS and Brighterion collaboration, explains that while the use of AI solutions by banks and financial institutions (FIs) skyrocketed 70 percent in a single year (2018-2019), less than 10 percent of all banks say they use AI today.

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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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How Hospitals Use AI To Triage The Triage

PYMNTS

Unless one is having a medical emergency, going to an ER, in general, is often not the best way for a patient to receive care for more minor ailments. It is expensive, especially for the uninsured, but increasingly for the insured with a high deductible as well. It’s also incredibly time-consuming; ERs by nature of what they are triage patients in order of need, meaning if one is not profusely bleeding, unconscious, actively having a heart attack or a baby, the wait can be long.

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Can FinTechs Get Through A Turbulent Market?

PYMNTS

There are bad days on the market — and in the wake of COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus , which has spent the last month gaining more and more global ground, there have been more than a few of those of late. Then there are bloodbaths, where things go from bad to a sea of red in the face of a selling frenzy triggered by a massive wave of general uncertainty breaking and crashing through the markets.

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Amazon To Deliver Coronavirus Test Kits In Seattle

PYMNTS

To assist in bringing at-home testing kits for COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus , to homes of Seattle-area residents, Amazon Care is reportedly in discussions with local health groups, according to a CNBC report. The talks have been occurring for over a week, according to unnamed sources. Amazon Care rolled out last fall as an experimental effort to provide employees and dependents in the area of Seattle with high-quality health care.

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Airbnb Sees 40 Percent Drop In Bookings; Delays IPO

PYMNTS

The toll of the coronavirus on businesses has hit everything from tourism to large gatherings like concerts and conventions. With those goes the value of Airbnb , which saw its bookings fall by 40 percent, according to published reports Thursday (March 12). According to independent data from analytics group Airdna, the drop was largest in China (previously the fastest-growing market for the rental platform) and parts of Europe where the virus has hit the hardest.

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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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How To Compete With Banks: Start With First Principles

PYMNTS

Aristotle may have originated the notion of first principles thousands of years ago, but it would take Elon Musk to add a contemporary business flair to that method of analyzing business problems. First principles is the discipline of going back to the rudimentary sources of truths for any problem or situation, and then designing a solution only after truly understanding those foundational elements.

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Fiserv On Why 2020 Is ‘The Year Of P2P’

PYMNTS

Will this be the year that real-time payments — and, especially, peer-to-peer (P2P) — reach critical mass in the United States? In an interview with PYMNTS, Matt Wilcox, senior vice president of payments innovation at Fiserv , said recent data points show that an increasing number of financial institutions (FIs) are determined to satisfy a real demand for real-time transactions.

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Blockchain.com Unveils ‘Borrow’ Service

PYMNTS

To allow users to borrow against their holdings, digital currency wallet and exchange company Blockchain.com unveiled a “Borrow” Service. The offering will provide loans in stablecoins that are denominated in U.S. dollars against bitcoin holdings kept in the Blockchain Wallet, Coindesk reported. Blockchain Co-Founder and CEO Peter Smith said per the report, “Institutional and retail investors have the same financial goals — grow wealth and manage risks — but the tools at their disposal are vastl

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The Real-Time Disruption Of Banking And Business

PYMNTS

Faster payments are only one example of the effects of a world moving toward real-time everything, with growing customer demands driving change in the way banks and businesses operate themselves. As such, the consequences of real-time payments aren’t solely impacting consumers’ peer-to-peer ( P2P ) transaction activity. Indeed, services like Zelle and The Clearing House’s RTP are impacting, both directly and residually, financial processes of banks, small- to medium-sized businesses (SMBs)

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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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How Blockchain Is Transforming The Supply Chain

PYMNTS

There are two terms seen a lot in juxtaposition to supply chain lately: coronavirus and blockchain. One is putting a lot of stress on the supply chain, while the other is ready to revolutionize it. Some new use cases and a new report put blockchain and the supply chain in perspective. First, it is becoming evident that blockchain is becoming something of a “safe deposit box” for retail data, offering a digital method for storing and sharing data between multiple stakeholders.

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How Headless Commerce Can Level The eCommerce Playing Field

PYMNTS

It’s a simple concept, but one that is quickly revolutionizing how consumers buy from eCommerce. It’s called headless commerce. Aside from the funny name, technically it’s a digital architecture that separates the back end and front end of a retail website to optimize search results, customer experience and the purchase journey. New research says it may be the key to leveling the future eCommerce playing field for Amazon competitors.

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The Clearing House’s Strategies To Drive RTP Uptake

PYMNTS

Even the most convenient, feature-filled payment rails will fall flat if nobody can be convinced to try them. Such systems can offer everything from swifter settlement times to easy payment status tracking, but such benefits require widespread adoption. Consumers and businesses do not want to use new payment networks unless they believe others are already using them, creating a chicken-and-egg problem.

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Amazon Covertly Working On Cold Vaccine

PYMNTS

Amazon has been secretly working for years to cure the common cold with an initiative called “Project Gesundheit,” according to a report from CNBC. The company has staffed more than 100 people in a research and development group called Grand Challenge, which exists under Amazon’s cloud computing division, AWS. A small part of that group is actively working to cure the common ailment.

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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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Bringing eCommerce – And The Shopping Cart Model – To Healthcare

PYMNTS

To solve the healthcare payments puzzle — look to eCommerce. In an interview with Karen Webster, Paul Ketchel, founder and CEO of MDsave , said that online platform models could help bring together patients seeking affordable care with providers and simplify billing and payments collection along the way. The conversation came against the backdrop, of course, where markets are roiling, there’s talk of recession, and no doubt the health of the consumer is top of mind.

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Amazon Introduces ‘Just Walk Out’ Technology To Merchants

PYMNTS

Amazon is introducing its “Go” concept to other merchants interested in its “Just Walk Out” technology, Reuters reported on Monday (March 9). The eCommerce giant is in talks with other retailers and has “several” signed deals with unnamed customers. The new business division aligns with Amazon’s scheme of turning internal capabilities into business-to-business (B2B) services.

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Today In Payments: Ant Financial Rolls Out Alipay Strategy; Retail Stocks Remain Market Bright Spot

PYMNTS

In today’s top payment news, retail remains a bright spot in the markets, Ant Financial has rolled out a strategy for digital evolution in China, and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) filed a suit against a Cincinnati-based bank. Payments Stocks Plummet While Retail Remains A Bright Spot. The stock market rout on Monday (March 9) left pretty much no one unaffected.

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Open Banking Expands Into SMB Lending, Smaller Banks

PYMNTS

Open banking and bank-FinTech collaboration can be an effective way for financial institutions (FIs) to launch new digital products. But the latest initiatives reveal a growing interest in transforming internal processes, particularly among smaller banks looking to upgrade their core infrastructure and elevate small business lending operations. Below, PYMNTS rounds up the latest tie-ups and data sharing efforts as institutions explore how open banking models might accelerate their modernization

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It Takes Two to Tango

With automation, you’ll reduce errors and save valuable time, allowing you to focus on what really matters: strategic analysis and insightful decision-making. Picture accurate financial reports ready at your fingertips, giving you the confidence to tackle business challenges head-on. Embracing automation not only boosts productivity but also elevates your role from number cruncher to closing rockstar.