PYMNTS
DECEMBER 26, 2019
The Central Bank of the Bahamas is planning to start a rollout of its new digital currency on Friday (Dec. 27) in Exuma. Called Project Sand Dollar, the name of the currency will also be the sand dollar, according to a press release. The move is long-awaited and comes after years of work through the Bahamian Payments System Modernization Initiative (PSMI), which began in the early 2000s.
Patriot Software
DECEMBER 22, 2019
Unhappy with your current payroll provider? Most business owners (68%) agree that running payroll is their most difficult business task. With payroll being such a complicated but necessary business function, it makes sense that you’d want a simple solution. But, isn’t switching payroll companies hard? Eh, there’s a little footwork, particularly when changing payroll providers […].
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PYMNTS
DECEMBER 23, 2019
Policy advisers at a leading think tank said that China should introduce a regulatory framework for artificial intelligence in the finance sector, according to a report from Reuters on Sunday (Dec 22). The same framework should be in place to improve technology used by regulators in efforts to strengthen supervision throughout the industry, the think tank also says.
PYMNTS
DECEMBER 24, 2019
Exceeding forecasts , Dec. 21, the last Saturday shopping day before Christmas 2019, has been confirmed as the single biggest retail sales day in U.S. History. According to retail research firm Customer Growth Partners, consumers on Super Saturday spent a total of $34.4 billion and that exceeded 2019 Black Friday sales by 10 percent. “Paced by the ‘Big Four’ mega-retailers — Walmart, Amazon, Costco and Target — Super Saturday was boosted by the best traffic our team has seen in years,” Craig Jo
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.
PYMNTS
DECEMBER 23, 2019
Visa is teaming up with TD Bank to introduce a new solution to ease money transfers between Canadian and U.S. accounts, Visa announced Monday (Dec. 23). . Powered by Visa Direct, the latest solution — TD Bank (US) to TD (Canada) Transfer — enables real-time transfers for Canadian users to move money from their U.S. TD Bank accounts quickly and easily. .
PYMNTS
DECEMBER 24, 2019
Past is prologue. For the annual holiday exercise at PYMNTS (describing the 12 main or most exciting ways to pay in 2019), it is clear that what has happened this year will have big implications for the new decade. Here are the 2019 payment trends that made the biggest splash, and promise to make even bigger splashes in the new decade. #1: Voice — And Now, With Emotion.
Accountant Advocate brings together the best content for small business accounting professionals from the widest variety of industry thought leaders.
PYMNTS
DECEMBER 27, 2019
Italy, which has one of the lowest rates of credit card use in Europe, may start to see that change soon as the government will give bonuses to those who use electronic payment services over cash. The government put aside $3 billion to finance the bonuses for the next fiscal year, according to The Financial Times. By offering the incentive, they hope to cut down on black market deals and fraud, they say.
PYMNTS
DECEMBER 23, 2019
The Federal Bureau of Investigation is working firsthand with companies to outsmart cybercriminals by deploying decoy data, Ars Technica reported on Friday (Dec. 20). The FBI program IDLE (Illicit Data Loss Exploitation) has companies plant decoy data as a way to confuse thieves looking to hack valuable information. The fake data is mixed with real information to make it appear authentic.
PYMNTS
DECEMBER 27, 2019
Sales taxes empower governments to maintain critical public services, but they can also make medical essentials too expensive for those who need them. Campaigns against taxing obligatory items are spreading across the United States, forcing states to rethink their revenue generation decisions. Many governments historically lower or remove taxes on items they wish to make easier to purchase.
PYMNTS
DECEMBER 24, 2019
The People’s Bank of China said that China’s cryptocurrency, the digital yuan, will not need a currency basket to keep its value, according to a Monday (Dec. 23) report by Coindesk. Changchun Mu, head of the PBOC digital currency research subsidiary, shared the news at the China Finance Association Academic Annual Meeting, and China Finance Forum Annual Meeting in Beijing. .
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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.
PYMNTS
DECEMBER 23, 2019
Payments company PayPal recently acquired Chinese payment platform GoPay, and it wants to continue to complete such deals, according to a report by The Wall Street Journal. The company wants to pursue acquisitions throughout 2020. “There’s a lot of opportunities to acquire companies inorganically,” Chief Financial Officer John Rainey said. The GoPay deal, which was the acquisition of a 70 percent stake in the company, was completed Dec. 19.
PYMNTS
DECEMBER 26, 2019
Some of the largest U.S. banks, like JPMorgan Chase , Bank of America (BoA) and Citigroup , gained as consumers spent during a robust holiday season, according to a report by Bloomberg. BoA gained 1 percent to its highest point since October 2008, and Cit saw a gain of 1.5 percent, which is the biggest jump since January 2018. Wells Fargo and Truist Financial Corp. also gained.
PYMNTS
DECEMBER 26, 2019
In an historic day, fueled by gains in tech shares, the Nasdaq Composite Index moved past 9,000 for the first time, Bloomberg reported. The new Nasdaq record is attributed to key performers, including Amazon , as the online commerce juggernaut reported their 2019 holiday sales broke previous records. European markets were still closed for Christmas.
PYMNTS
DECEMBER 27, 2019
Up until recently, business travel and hospitality would take a few general forms. Perhaps a fancy hotel downtown. Or less fancy digs near the airport. Or maybe a relatively bland extended-stay operation right off the interstate. But digital technology and the sharing economy, already the disrupters of so much, are now challenging the status quo when it comes to corporate housing.
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.
PYMNTS
DECEMBER 27, 2019
Ignition of a new technology or idea in payments and commerce is always something of a tricky balancing act because consumers need a really good reason to change their well-entrenched habits. When they get that good reason, it doesn’t always take that long for that switch to make that which was once status quo into history. But, novelty alone, as we’ve seen over and over and over again in the 2010s, won’t move the needle for enough consumers to matter.
PYMNTS
DECEMBER 24, 2019
All that’s left now, more or less, is the rush of returns that will all but overwhelm some retailers. Christmas Eve is upon us, and the last gifts are making their way from basements, attics and bedroom closets to stockings and trees. So, what kinds of products will people be getting this year? To get a better sense of what’s coming (and to have some holiday fun), PYMNTS recently caught up with Akash Garg, CTO of Afterpay — a company that offers flexible payment terms, and essentially serves a d
PYMNTS
DECEMBER 24, 2019
To separate hype from hope, and to separate both from reality…. To quote a line from the Watergate scandal movie, “All the President’s Men:” Follow the money. And for blockchain, a few warning signs have been flashing that all may not be as rosy as some observers may have hoped, had wanted. And so, for a jumping-off point to examine whether the peak has been seen: Follow the money.
PYMNTS
DECEMBER 26, 2019
There’s an old saying, ascribed variously to the old proverbs, baseball great Yogi Berra and physicist Niels Bohr: Predictions are difficult, especially when they’re about the future. Regardless of the source, the sentiment rings true. The farther one looks out over the horizon, the hazier the picture becomes. That’s especially true in payments, where technology can lead to seismic shifts in the way we pay, where we pay and even when we pay, as commerce becomes ever global and a 24/7 activity.
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.
PYMNTS
DECEMBER 24, 2019
In its ongoing attempts to fix its privacy standards, Facebook will no longer use phone numbers to determine who one sees on their “people you may know” list, according to Reuters. The move is an attempt by the company — which has been dogged by privacy scandals for years now — to correct misuses of peoples’ data. When it was revealed last year that Facebook was using peoples’ personal phone numbers for two-factor authentication for advertising, privacy advocates were outraged, sayin
PYMNTS
DECEMBER 23, 2019
A 22-year-old Turkish man from London was convicted of attempting to blackmail Apple out of $75,000 in cryptocurrency or a thousand $100 iTunes gift cards by falsely claiming he had access to iCloud and other Apple accounts, various outlets reported on Monday (Dec. 23). The National Cyber Crime Unit of the U.K.’s National Crime Agency (NCA) arrested Kerem Albayrak at his London home on March 28, 2017.
PYMNTS
DECEMBER 23, 2019
Mastercard is purchasing artificial intelligence (AI) and analytics startup RiskRecon to accelerate the development of cybersecurity solutions, Mastercard announced on Tuesday (Dec. 23). Cyberattacks have become a critical issue for companies of all sizes and a threat to privacy and data security. Data breaches and ransomware attacks jeopardize customers’ records and trust.
PYMNTS
DECEMBER 22, 2019
Uber was ordered last Friday by a Colombian judge to stop securing business in their country via its popular ride-hailing app, according to a report from Reuters. The country’s Superintendency of Industry and Commerce (SIC) said Uber, with 2.3 active users and roughly 88,000 driver partners in Columbia, violated market rules. The decision follows a lawsuit filed against the company by COTECH SA.
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.
PYMNTS
DECEMBER 27, 2019
Daniel Pinto, the co-president and chief operating officer of JPMorgan Chase , told CNBC in an interview that 2020 will likely see sturdy economic growth of about 1.5 percent or 1.8 percent in the United States. That, he said, signaled an economy that is strong on consumer spending. He said things were not so solid in the realm of corporate spending as U.S. and China relations deteriorated this year amid a trade war and tariffs.
PYMNTS
DECEMBER 27, 2019
Danske Bank is facing another lawsuit from about 60 investors over alleged money laundering, according to a report by Reuters. . It’s the third lawsuit by investors against the bank, and the plaintiffs are seeking 1.5 billion crowns ($224 million). The other two lawsuits involve 232 pension funds, and separate investors are seeking claims of almost $800 million.
PYMNTS
DECEMBER 26, 2019
China is in the midst of planning to build out its blockchain cross-border pilot platform, according to Lu Lei, the deputy head of the State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE), as Reuters reported. Lei said the regulator will reinforce the fusion of FinTech and the foreign exchange market and will oversee the advancement of new technology. “We will gradually expand the scope of the pilot and the application scenarios of blockchain technology in cross-border financing and macro-prudential
PYMNTS
DECEMBER 26, 2019
The year is almost done — in less than a week the ball will be dropped and the new year and new decade will be underway. But before we shut the door on 2019, it bears taking a moment to note how much the world of retail has changed in the last year, a fitting capstone on a decade that has seen retail as the American consumer commonly knew it taken to the ground and rebuilt nearly from the foundations.
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
PYMNTS
DECEMBER 26, 2019
At the start of the 2010s, retail merchandising was, at base, a lot of guesswork. The fashion industry made decisions on its seasonal lines once or twice a year, production runs were ordered and goods were shipped. If things went well, and brands guessed right about consumer tastes, that was all well and good. If not, adjustments to the remainder of the stock would be made, and promotions and discounts were thrown out to motivate the consumer.
PYMNTS
DECEMBER 26, 2019
As demand for connectivity in vehicles grows, automakers are clamoring to put Amazon Alexa behind the wheel — or at least in the passenger seat, CNBC reported on Tuesday (Dec. 24). Demand for voice-activated technology is “through the roof” as 2020 rings in, according to Ned Curic, vice president of Alexa Auto. “Two and a half years ago, we had nothing,” he told the network last week, following a tour of Amazon’s Seattle headquarters.
PYMNTS
DECEMBER 26, 2019
This year, apps aimed to make it easier and more convenient for consumers to order their favorite foods and sundries, with restaurants and other retailers tapping into delivery. To help bring these options to more consumers, retailers and technology companies decided to join forces. Starbucks kicked off 2019 by adding additional cities to its delivery network through a partnership with Uber Eats.
PYMNTS
DECEMBER 24, 2019
With a specialized model of its TrulyNatural vocabulary speech-recognition and natural-language-understanding platform, Silicon Valley firm Sensory unveiled the release of its domain-specific assistant for smart appliances. The technology will help manufacturers make a new wave of smart kitchen appliances that don’t send voice requests to the cloud, the company said in an announcement.
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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.
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