Sat.Dec 21, 2019 - Fri.Dec 27, 2019

article thumbnail

Central Bank Of Bahamas To Introduce Digital Currency

PYMNTS

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.

article thumbnail

Gender Lens Investing: A Sector Analysis

CFA Institute

What does the AUM-weighted sector distribution of gender lens equity funds look like?

Insiders

Sign Up for our Newsletter

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Trending Sources

article thumbnail

CFOs: Are these your top priorities?

Future CFO

Security, analytics and customer service tare op CFO concerns as leaders focus as much on strategy as operations, said Protiviti that recently unveiled results of its 2019 Finance Trends Survey. Today CFOs and finance executives are focused as much on strategic matters as operational issues. This is according to the recent 2019 Finance Trends Survey conducted by global consulting firm, Protiviti, which revealed that, when asked to rank focus areas, finance leaders picked data security and privac

Finance 52
article thumbnail

Chinese Finance Group Calls For AI Regulation In Ecosystem

PYMNTS

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.

Finance 81
article thumbnail

The Human Side of Finance: The Intersectionality of People, Culture, Adaptability, and Resilience

Speaker: Melissa Hurrington

Finance isn’t just about the numbers. It’s about the people behind them. In a world of constant disruption, resilient finance teams aren’t just operationally efficient. They are adaptable, engaged, and deeply connected to a strong organizational culture. Success lies at the intersection of people, culture, adaptability, and resilience. Finance leaders who master this balance will build teams that thrive through uncertainty and drive long-term business impact.

article thumbnail

Super Saturday Pulls In Record-Breaking $34.4B In Retail Sales

PYMNTS

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

Sales 74

More Trending

article thumbnail

12 Ways Consumers Will Pay (And Be Paid) In 2020

PYMNTS

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.

B2C 64
article thumbnail

JPMC Co-CEO Sees Big Tech As ‘Real Competitors’ In 2020

PYMNTS

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.

article thumbnail

Italian Gov’t To Pay Consumers To Ditch Cash For Digital Payments

PYMNTS

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.

article thumbnail

FBI Helps Businesses Outwit Fraudsters By Deploying Decoy Data

PYMNTS

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.

article thumbnail

Maximizing Profit and Productivity: The New Era of AI-Powered Accounting

Speaker: Yohan Lobo

In the accounting world, staying ahead means embracing the tools that allow you to work smarter, not harder. Outdated processes and disconnected systems can hold your organization back, but the right technologies can help you streamline operations, boost productivity, and improve client delivery. Dive into the strategies and innovations transforming accounting practices.

article thumbnail

When One State’s Tax-Exempt Necessity Is Another’s High-Tax Discretionary Purchase

PYMNTS

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.

article thumbnail

Bitcoin Daily: PBOC Says Digital Yuan Won’t Need Currency Reserves, Hackers Steal $480K From Nuls

PYMNTS

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. .

article thumbnail

PayPal Wants To Keep Acquiring Smaller Companies

PYMNTS

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.

article thumbnail

Big Banks Surge Amid Strong Holiday Spending

PYMNTS

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.

Banking 56
article thumbnail

Smarter Card Solutions: Meeting the Challenges of Mid-Market Travel & Expense

Our 2025 Center Travel Survey is clear: as corporate travel increases, so does corporate credit cards distribution, and a rise in off-platform travel booking. This 61% rise causes various challenges: compliance, spend control, reporting problems, and a lack of visibility across organizations. To evolve with the ever-changing needs of travelers, decision-makers need a better solution.

article thumbnail

Tech Gains Boost Nasdaq To Record High

PYMNTS

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.

article thumbnail

Using Airbnb’s Playbook To Give Corporate Housing A Digital Makeover

PYMNTS

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.

article thumbnail

Four Payments Ideas That Had A Breakout 2019

PYMNTS

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.

article thumbnail

What’s Under The Millennial Christmas Tree This Year?

PYMNTS

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

article thumbnail

Bringing AI to Finance: How to Leverage Technology for Efficiency and Control

Finance teams are balancing more than ever, but manual processes shouldn’t slow you down. In this ebook from BILL, discover how AI is transforming finance—automating AP, expense tracking, and document management to reduce errors, increase efficiency, and improve financial control. Learn how real companies are using AI-powered automation to streamline workflows, detect anomalies, and gain deeper insights.

article thumbnail

Did Blockchain Peak In 2019?

PYMNTS

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.

article thumbnail

Payments Flash-Forward: Why December 2020 Will Be One To Remember

PYMNTS

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.

B2B 55
article thumbnail

Facebook Will Stop Using Phone Numbers For Friend Pushes

PYMNTS

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

Numbers 55
article thumbnail

Turkish Hacker From London Convicted Of Apple Blackmail Attempt

PYMNTS

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.

article thumbnail

Say ‘Goodbye’ to Clunky Spreadsheets and Say ‘Hello’ to Month-End Automation

Technology is rapidly changing the way accountants perform and manage month-end activities. Spreadsheets, emails, and shared drives no longer need to slow you down. In under four weeks, your team can start reaping the benefits of month-end close automation by vastly reducing spreadsheets, cut down on reconciliation work, speed up the month-end close, and better manage your remote team.

article thumbnail

RiskRecon Joins Mastercard To Amplify Cybersecurity Safeguards

PYMNTS

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.

article thumbnail

Colombia Blocks Uber From Using Its Ride-Hailing App

PYMNTS

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.

article thumbnail

JPMC Co-President Shares Economic Predictions For 2020

PYMNTS

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.

article thumbnail

Danske Bank Faces Additional Lawsuit From Investors 

PYMNTS

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.

Banking 54
article thumbnail

Outsourcing Vs. In-House: The Ultimate Battle For Better Collections

Speaker: Susan Richards

Your past-due accounts are growing, cash flow is tightening, and the pressure is on. The big question: Do you handle the collections internally or outsource to experts? Both strategies come with advantages and risks - but which one delivers the best impact for your business? In this session we’ll dive deep into the in-house vs. outsourcing debate, examining cost-effectiveness, efficiency, compliance risks, and overall recovery success rates.