Boost Says B2B Payments Need Answers, Not More Data
Boost Payment Solutions’ CTO Rinku Sharma told PYMNTS that B2B payments firms must move from hoarding data to extracting actionable answers. The company is building an analytical layer that turns transaction signals into real‑time intelligence, enabling faster decisions, smarter interchange optimization and automated remittance. AI is compressing processing time from days to milliseconds while lowering the cost of model development. Boost’s ambition is to evolve from a payments processor into the intelligence layer that answers supplier and buyer questions instantly.
Why The Anchorage CEO Wants 3,999 Crypto Bank Competitors
Anchorage Digital CEO Nathan McCauley told PYMNTS he wants Anchorage to serve as the crypto‑banking infrastructure for 3,999 of the roughly 4,000 U.S. commercial banks. Rather than defending a monopoly, the firm is adopting an AWS‑style model, offering regulated custody,...
Travel Checkout Has Become the New Departure Gate
Travel companies are moving the checkout experience to the center of the booking flow by embedding digital wallets and other finance tools. A PYMNTS Intelligence and Marqeta survey of 30 U.S. firms shows 93% now offer at least one embedded...
US Real-Time Payments Hit High-Growth Phase as Use Cases Multiply
The United States is entering a high‑growth phase for real‑time payments, with projected transaction volumes of 8 billion by 2026 and nearly 13.9 billion by 2028, a CAGR above 30%. Adoption is moving beyond peer‑to‑peer transfers to bill payments, refunds, payroll, gig...
Only 25% of Consumers Say Their Cost-Cutting Plans Still Work
A PYMNTS Intelligence survey of 2,747 U.S. adults shows that 51% find daily expenses hard to manage and only 25% consider their cost‑cutting tactics highly effective. While 60%‑75% of consumers across all ages have reduced spending, younger cohorts combine cuts...
AI Spending Drives Business Equipment Investment to 6-Year High
U.S. core capital‑goods orders jumped 3.3 % in March, the strongest rise since mid‑2020, driven largely by AI and data‑center spending. The increase far exceeded economists’ 0.5 % forecast, signaling renewed confidence after a year of policy‑related caution. Major tech firms such...
New Square AI Agent Automates Daily Tasks for Main Street Sellers
Square, a Block subsidiary, has launched Managerbot, an AI‑powered business agent, in open beta for U.S. non‑franchise food, retail and health‑beauty merchants. Integrated directly into the Square Dashboard, Managerbot goes beyond the conversational Square AI by monitoring operations, surfacing insights...
Smart Firms Treat Vendor Risk Like Their Own
Artificial intelligence is accelerating the discovery of third‑party software flaws, turning vendor risk into a frontline concern for enterprises. Microsoft’s April 14, 2026 patch cycle addressed 167 Windows vulnerabilities, illustrating how quickly weaknesses can surface. Mid‑market firms, heavily reliant on cloud and...
Polymarket Seeks End to CFTC Trading Ban
Polymarket has formally asked the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to lift the ban that prevents U.S. customers from accessing its prediction‑market platform. The company has been “technically banned” in the United States since a 2022 settlement that included a $1.4 million...
Google and Mastercard Contribute Agentic Commerce Standards to FIDO Alliance
The FIDO Alliance announced two new technical working groups to create open standards for AI‑agent authentication and commerce. Google donated its Agent Payments Protocol (AP2) and Mastercard contributed its Verifiable Intent framework to the Payments Working Group. The Agentic Authentication...
Everything Is AI Now. And It’s Reshaping Banking Core Cloud Contracts
Banks are confronting a new reality as artificial intelligence moves from a peripheral tool to the core of their operations. Legacy cloud contracts, originally negotiated around storage, uptime and predictable compute, no longer accommodate the massive compute and data‑flow demands...
Sereact Raises $110 Million to Scale AI Robotic Brain
German startup Sereact announced a $110 million Series B round to accelerate its AI‑driven robotics platform. The funding will fuel U.S. expansion and the rollout of Cortex 2.0, a vision‑language‑action model augmented with a world model trained on more than a billion real‑world...
Agentic Commerce Forces a Rethink of Card Infrastructure
Agentic commerce—AI agents that initiate purchases—is moving from concept to reality, with nearly 50% of consumers expressing interest in autonomous shopping. Existing payment card infrastructure, built for human‑driven, linear transactions, struggles to handle the speed, scale, and parallelism of machine‑initiated...
Affirm: Agentic Credit Rewrites the Rules of Consumer Lending
Affirm is championing "agentic credit," a model that underwrites each purchase in real time using AI and cash‑flow data, replacing the legacy revolving‑credit paradigm. By pricing loans at the point of sale and displaying the full cost upfront, the company...
Maverick Says Data Without Intent Is Just Expensive Storage
Maverick Payments’ Vice President of Product Justin Downey told PYMNTS that merely hoarding data is no longer a competitive advantage; intent‑driven use is. He highlighted how AI‑powered underwriting can eliminate redundant steps and create “smart friction” before a first transaction,...
AI Agents Move From Demo Day to Desk Work
Agentic AI is transitioning from proof‑of‑concept demos to everyday tasks in financial services. Banks, insurers and asset managers are piloting software agents to handle data gathering, document verification, signal monitoring, routing approvals and drafting recommendations. Snowflake promotes an Ecosystem Agent...
63% of Firms Face Check Fraud as Paper Payments Linger
According to a PYMNTS Intelligence report with The Clearing House, 63% of firms report check fraud while only 2% encounter fraud on real‑time payment rails such as RTP and FedNow. Despite lower fraud rates, 85% of U.S. payments professionals anticipate...
Visa Says Payouts Should Move at the Speed of Need
Visa argues that real‑time payouts must move at the speed of need, not just faster. A recent incident where a bank mailed a paper check despite a digital transfer highlighted lingering legacy processes that delay funds. Visa says its network...
Love, Lust and Loose Screws: The Weekender’s 10 Best AI Movies of the Past 20 Years
The Weekender curated a subjective list of the ten most impactful AI‑themed films released over the past two decades, ranking them by cultural stickiness, emotional payoff, and rewatchability. The list spans from early classics like WALL‑E and Her to recent...
Gas Prices Drive Consumer Sentiment Index to All-Time Low
The University of Michigan’s Index of Consumer Sentiment fell to 49.8 in April, marking the lowest reading in its 73‑year history. The drop of 3.5 points was driven by a sharp rise in gasoline prices tied to the Iran conflict....
Wisconsin Sues 5 Prediction Markets, Alleging Illegal Sports Betting
Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul filed lawsuits against five prediction‑market platforms—Kalshi, Robinhood, Coinbase, Polymarket and Crypto.com—accusing them of illegal sports betting disguised as event contracts. The state seeks a declaration of public nuisance and both preliminary and permanent injunctions to...
Banks Can’t Outsource Judgment to Algorithms
Regulators including the OCC, FDIC and the Federal Reserve have issued revised inter‑agency model risk management guidance that moves compliance from periodic reviews to a continuous, embedded function. The new framework demands ongoing validation, governance and real‑time monitoring of both...
Farmer Finance: What Agriculture’s Working Capital Shift Reveals for B2B
The FDIC’s 2026 Risk Review reveals a fundamental shift in agribusiness financing, moving from income‑based lending to collateral‑based structures that lean on farmland equity. Farmers with weak cash flow are still securing credit by pledging land and other tangible assets,...
Google Doubles Down on Anthropic With New $40 Billion Investment
Google announced a $40 billion investment in AI startup Anthropic, front‑loading $10 billion at a $350 billion valuation and earmarking an additional $30 billion contingent on performance milestones. The funding deepens Anthropic’s reliance on Google Cloud and TPU hardware, with 5 GW of compute capacity...
Insurance Quoting Enters the AI Conversation Layer
Simply Business, a Travelers subsidiary, introduced a ChatGPT‑based insurance app on April 23 that lets U.S. small‑business owners obtain an indicative quote by entering just three data points: business type, estimated annual revenue and ZIP code. The conversational interface delivers...
Morgan Stanley Supports Stablecoin Issuers With New Fund for Reserves
Morgan Stanley Investment Management has launched the Stablecoin Reserves Portfolio (MSNXX), a government money‑market fund tailored for stablecoin issuers to hold reserve assets. The fund invests exclusively in cash, U.S. Treasury securities with maturities of 93 days or less, and...
The Privacy Problem Institutions Can’t Ignore in Stablecoins
Stablecoins provide internet‑native money that moves instantly, but the public nature of blockchain ledgers reveals every transaction. This radical transparency clashes with institutional needs for confidentiality, exposing supplier relationships, treasury positions and strategic plans. As a result, large corporates and...
Treasury Chief Says Smarter AML Starts With Better Identity
Treasury Assistant Secretary Jonathan Burke told a House subcommittee that the U.S. AML framework must evolve to keep pace with faster, digital payments and sophisticated fraud. He urged a shift from volume‑driven alerts to risk‑based supervision, emphasizing better digital identity...
FedNow Fortifies Security for Instant Payments
On April 28, the Federal Reserve’s Financial Services arm will roll out a network intelligence API for FedNow participants. The tool supplies receiver‑level account data and leverages historical FedNow transactions to generate instant risk insights before payments are executed. After...
Activist Hedge Fund TCIM Pushes Voya Toward Sale
Activist hedge fund Toms Capital Investment Management (TCIM) has built a stake in Voya Financial and is urging the asset manager to either sell its entire pension and insurance business or divest the health‑insurer arm. Voya reported a $10 million operating...
FASB Wants Companies to Reveal Stablecoin Holdings
The Financial Accounting Standards Board voted to propose that companies disclose the dollar value of any stablecoins held as part of cash equivalents each fiscal year. The rule would require firms to break out material stablecoin balances alongside traditional cash‑equivalent...
Insurance Denials Meet Their Match in AI-Powered Appeals
AI startups are reshaping the healthcare appeals landscape by automating denied‑claim letters and filing processes. Claimable, founded in 2023, uses a curated large‑language model to generate appeal letters for 28 conditions and 90 treatments, charging $50 per case. The company...
Amazon and Walmart Push AI Deeper Into the Shopping Aisle
Amazon and Walmart are racing to dominate the emerging "decision layer" of retail, where AI‑driven recommendation engines, conversational agents, and dynamic pricing shape what shoppers see and buy. Walmart is pairing generative AI tools with its vast network of physical...
OnePay Adds Credit-Building Card to All-in-One Financial App
OnePay announced the Builder Card, a credit‑building product embedded in its all‑in‑one financial app. The card requires no credit check, security deposit, interest or late fees, and automatically sets aside cash from the user’s OnePay Cash balance to cover purchases...
BIS Report Warns Banking Services From Crypto Firms Carry Risk
The Bank for International Settlements warned that cryptocurrency exchanges acting as multifunction cryptoasset intermediaries (MCIs) are offering banking‑like services—such as lending and yield products—without the capital, liquidity and prudential safeguards that traditional banks must meet. The report cites the 2022...
Block and Uber Expand Partnership Across Several Global Markets
Block and Uber announced an expanded global partnership that adds Cash App Pay as a payment option on Uber rides and Uber Eats in the United States, giving Uber access to roughly 59 million monthly Cash App users. The deal also...
OpenAI Pledges $1.5 Billion to PE Enterprise AI Project
OpenAI is committing up to $1.5 billion to a private‑equity‑backed enterprise AI joint venture, beginning with a $500 million equity infusion and an option for an additional $1 billion. The partnership, valued at $10 billion, also draws $4 billion from PE firms such as TPG,...
Podcast: Inside the $9 Billion DeFi Hack That’s Shaking Crypto’s Foundations
The Kelp DAO decentralized finance platform suffered a $292 million cross‑chain restaking exploit on April 18, sparking a chain reaction that erased roughly $9 billion from the sector’s largest DeFi lending protocol. Unlike prior attacks that targeted private keys or smart‑contract bugs, the...
Synchrony CFO Flags Momentum in Spending and Credit
Synchrony Financial reported a record $43 billion first‑quarter purchase volume, a 6% year‑over‑year increase, signaling continued consumer reliance on its credit cards despite higher living costs. CFO Brian Wenzel highlighted momentum across purchase volume, new accounts, and stable credit metrics, noting...
Commercial Loans Show US Economy Defies Sluggish Forecasts
U.S. banks reported robust growth in commercial loans during Q1, signaling resilience amid inflation, policy uncertainty, and a softening consumer market. Major lenders such as Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and JPMorgan posted double‑digit commercial loan gains, while consumer loan growth...
Agentic B2B Is Here. Are Your Contracts and Invoices Ready?
Zenskar announced a $15 million financing round to expand its agentic AI capabilities for revenue automation. The article argues that most B2B contracts and invoices are still designed for human interpretation, limiting AI agents’ ability to execute financial workflows autonomously. It...
The Web Is Gaslighting AI Agents and Nobody Can Tell
Researchers at Google DeepMind have identified a new class of threat called “AI Agent Traps,” where hidden instructions embedded in ordinary web pages can manipulate autonomous AI agents. The paper outlines six attack vectors, including content injection and semantic manipulation,...
OCC Enters the Interchange Fight and Raises the Stakes
The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) has stepped into the U.S. interchange fee debate by filing an amicus brief in the Seventh Circuit appeal of Illinois’ Interchange Fee Prohibition Act and by submitting a rulemaking proposal on...
Amazon Dismisses New Evidence in California Antitrust Suit
Amazon rejected the California Attorney General's newly disclosed evidence in the state's antitrust lawsuit, labeling the motion a tactical distraction. The AG, Rob Bonta, alleges Amazon pressures vendors and rivals to raise prices, citing three schemes that allegedly inflate consumer...
AI Finds Its Best Customer on Main Street
Small businesses are rapidly embracing AI, with over 75% already using or exploring the technology, according to the Reimagine Main Street survey. Owners are shifting from peripheral assistance tools to AI that handles core functions such as invoicing, scheduling, and...
Coinbase Opens Services Marketplace for Agentic Commerce
Coinbase has launched Agentic.Market, a services marketplace that lets developers and AI agents discover, compare, and integrate tools for autonomous commerce using the x402 protocol. The platform spans categories such as inference, data, media, search, social, infrastructure and trading, and...
Cursor Eyes $50 Billion Valuation as AI Coding Demand Surges
Cursor, the AI‑powered coding platform, is in advanced talks to raise about $2 billion, which would push its valuation past $50 billion. The startup last November closed a $2.3 billion Series D round at a $29.3 billion valuation and reported over $1 billion in annualized revenue....
Permitting Hurdles and Labor Shortages Threaten AI Data Center Timelines
Almost 40% of U.S. data‑center projects face schedule risk, and 60% of those slated for next year haven’t broken ground, according to satellite‑based analysis by SynMax. Executives cite permitting bottlenecks, local opposition, and shortages of labor, power and equipment as...
Amex Acquires Hyper to Boost AI and Expense Management Offerings
American Express announced it will acquire Hyper, a startup that uses AI agents to automate expense management. The deal adds Hyper’s autonomous expense‑categorization and policy‑enforcement technology to Amex’s commercial services platform. Hyper previously partnered with Amex to launch the Hypercard...
Issuers Face a New Reality as Credit Goes Real Time
Issuers are confronting a shift toward real‑time credit, where consumers expect financing to adapt instantly at the point of need. Stephen Bowe of Paymentology warns that rising credit demand can mask legacy technology shortcomings that impede flexible, transaction‑driven products. Traditional...