Sat.Nov 02, 2019 - Fri.Nov 08, 2019

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Amazon To Build $40M Robotics Innovation Hub Near Boston

PYMNTS

Amazon is planning to build a $40 million state-of-the-art robotics innovation hub near Boston that will result in the creation of 200 tech and manufacturing jobs, Amazon announced in a press release Wednesday (Nov. 6). Tye Brady, chief technologist at Amazon Robotics, said the new hub will speed-up innovation and will be a “world-class facility, where our teams can design, build, program, and ship our robots, all under the same roof.”.

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Thailand’s interest rate at record low

Future CFO

The Bank of Thailand has recently cut its benchmark interest rate again. Down by a quarter-percentage point, the key rate is now at 1.25%. It was the country's second cut in three months to rein in the stronger Baht, which has gained more than 8% again the US dollar in the past year. The stronger Baht had an impact on exports and the country’s economy.

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Trending Sources

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Book Review: Behavioral Finance

CFA Institute

This book is a succinct but comprehensive review of behavioral finance and how investors and practitioners can compensate for their biases to improve their financial decision making.

Finance 52
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Preparing for an Economic Slowdown… Are You Ready?

Michigan CFO

People in the business community are beginning to hear rumblings, grumblings and have seen recent media attention given to the ?impending doom of an economic slowdown. Following the end of the Great Recession in mid-2009, the U.S. economy has enjoyed growth over the past decade making it the second-longest economic expansion in our nation’s history.

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Automation, Evolved: Your New Playbook For Smarter Knowledge Work

Speaker: Frank Taliano

Document-heavy workflows slow down productivity, bury institutional knowledge, and drain resources. But with the right AI implementation, these inefficiencies become opportunities for transformation. So how do you identify where to start and how to succeed? Learn how to develop a clear, practical roadmap for leveraging AI to streamline processes, automate knowledge work, and unlock real operational gains.

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Flywire Taps Former Apple Pay Exec As President, COO

PYMNTS

A relentless focus on customer experience and simplifying complexity are the defining characteristics of the most valuable companies in the world today. It’s a concept Rob Orgel, now the new president and chief operating officer at Flywire , told Karen Webster was foundational to his decade-long career at Apple — where he was part of the leadership team that developed, rolled out and grew the Apple Pay business.

More Trending

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Just a Little Higher? Antti Ilmanen on the Low-Return Challenge

CFA Institute

How can investors adapt to a low-for-long rate environment? Antti Ilmanen proposed several potential strategies.

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Improve your sales forecast accuracy with Anaplan and Salesforce Einstein

Anaplan

As a sales leader, you are asked to hold a tremendous amount of knowledge about the deals in your pipeline. With each rep and each territory, you need enough information to estimate deal maturity and the likelihood of deals closing.

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Study: US Housing Market Slows Down As Homeowners Stay Put Longer

PYMNTS

U.S. homeowners’ decision to stay in their homes longer is keeping much-needed inventory off the real estate market, causing a slip in home sales. New analysis by Redfin found that homeowners around the country are typically staying in their homes for 13 years, five years longer than they did in 2010. “If people aren’t moving on, there just are fewer and fewer homes available for new home buyers,” said Daryl Fairweather, Redfin’s chief economist.

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Finance needs a realistic expectation of AI

Future CFO

Touted as a disrupting or a frontier technology, AI has a glittering wrap around it. While PwC estimated US$15.7 trillion of economic potential of the technology in 2030 , CFOs in Singapore are implementing AI or have plans to do so in the near future for benefits including increased productivity, better decision-making capabilities, and enhanced processes.

Finance 52
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Data Talks, CFOs Listen: Why Analytics Is The Key To Better Spend Management

Speaker: Claire Grosjean

Finance teams are drowning in data—but is it actually helping them spend smarter? Without the right approach, excess spending, inefficiencies, and missed opportunities continue to drain profitability. While analytics offers powerful insights, financial intelligence requires more than just numbers—it takes the right blend of automation, strategy, and human expertise.

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Visa Teams With Tencent To Support Mobile Payments In China

PYMNTS

Visa has released a statement saying Tencent’s announcement that it will support international card schemes in its mobile wallet is “a great step forward” for the payments industry. “Visa believes this is a great step forward, both for consumers travelling to China and the overall payments industry. In a truly global commerce environment, collaboration is essential to provide consumers with a seamless payments experience,” Visa said in a release. .

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Coca-Cola Supply Co. To Expand Blockchain Efforts After Successful Trial

PYMNTS

Coca-Cola’s supply chain operations are run by an IT firm called Coke One North America (CONA), and the company recently had such a successful run with blockchain software provider SAP that it’s going to expand the program from two to 70 manufacturers, according to reports. . Those manufacturers deliver about 160,000 bottles a day. The purpose of the blockchain push was to help improve distribution and allow the manufacturers access to others’ orders and specifications. .

SAP 55
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Google Health To Use Search To Innovate Healthcare

PYMNTS

The VP of Google Health has revealed that his focus for the division is on its search capabilities. Speaking at HLTH, a health care conference in Las Vegas, David Feinberg said that Google Health wants to make it easier for doctors to search medical records, as well as boost the quality of health-related search results across Google and YouTube. In 2018, Google hired Feinberg to lead the company’s expansion into the healthcare space.

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Walmart Rolls Out Paid Membership Program For Unlimited Delivery

PYMNTS

Walmart has introduced a new program called Delivery Unlimited in 1,400 of its stores. Customers who want to order groceries from Walmart without having to pay a per-delivery fee every time have the option of paying $98 a year or $12.95 a month, according to the company. “That means shopping has never been easier or come at a better value — order your full grocery list plus anything you may need for the week ahead (like that toy you forgot for the birthday party this weekend!

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What Your Financial Statements Are Telling You—And How to Listen!

Speaker: David Worrell, CFO, Author & Speaker

Your financial statements hold powerful insights—but are you truly paying attention? Many finance professionals focus on the income statement while overlooking key signals hidden in the balance sheet and cash flow statement. Understanding these numbers can unlock smarter decision-making, uncover risks, and drive long-term success. Join David Worrell, accomplished CFO, finance expert, and author, for an engaging, nontraditional take on reading financial statements.

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Why Friendly Fraud Is Anything But Friendly

PYMNTS

While there is little good to be said about criminal fraudsters who plague merchants by stealing credentials to snag goods with absolutely no intention of ever paying for them, they at least have the merit of being a fairly homogeneous group in terms of intention. The goal is to steal as much and as often as they possibly can. Fraud is their profession.

Numbers 53
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Deep Dive: Digital ID Systems Wrestle With Ethics

PYMNTS

Digital identities are flexibly changing forms as they gain ubiquity. Consumers around the world log in to eBay with their Facebook profiles, purchase lunches with Apple Pay and in some cases pay their taxes or register to vote with government-provided digital identities. Many expanding technologies raise ethical implementation concerns, and digital ID’s extraordinary potential means coordinating clear and internationally accepted guidelines is increasingly necessary.

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Will Asia Pacific countries still sign a trade pact without India in Feb 2020?

Future CFO

Will the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) trade pact still come through in February next year after India’s decision to pull out? While Thailand said in a statement on Sunday that member countries of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) are committed to signing sign trade pact in 2020, Thai government spokesperson Narumon Pinyosinwat was cited in a Reuters report that the earliest that the signing would happen is next February.

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Is the greenback going to weaken?

Future CFO

The US dollar index could fall to as low as 85 as the Fed expands its balance sheet by buying more bond assets, Mohammed Apabhai, head of Asia Pacific trading strategies group at Citi was quoted as saying in a recent CNBC report. The bank’s latest projection of the dollar index falls into the neighborhood of 85 to the high 80s while 85 is a “historical support level” for the greenback, he was citing as saying in the report.

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Forecasting Failures Are Costly: Heres How To Fix Them

Speaker: Dave Sackett

Traditional budgeting and forecasting methods can no longer keep pace with today’s rapidly evolving business environment. Static budgets, rigid annual forecasts, and outdated financial models limit an organization’s ability to adapt to market shifts and economic uncertainty. To stay ahead, finance leaders must leverage a future-forward approach—one that leverages real-time data, predictive analytics, and continuous planning to drive smarter financial decisions.

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The Global Competitiveness Report 2019

Future CFO

The results of the GCI 4.0 in 2019 reveal that, on average, most economies continue to be far from the competitiveness “frontier”—the aggregate ideal across all factors of competitiveness. The report demonstrates that 10 years on from the financial crisis, while central banks have injected nearly 10 trillion dollars into the global economy, productivity-enhancing investments such as new infrastructure, R&D and skills development in the current and future workforce have been suboptimal.

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In First Month, Goldman Extends $10B In Apple Card Credit 

PYMNTS

Goldman Sachs said it doled out about $10 billion in credit lines in just over month for the Apple -branded credit card, Bloomberg reported on Friday (Nov. 1). . According to regulatory filings made public this week, Apple Card? customers had $736 million in loan balances at the end of September, though it’s not clear how that compares with other credit cards, as Bloomberg said banks do not break out performance by individual cards.

CFO 51
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Andreessen Horowitz To Launch School For Blockchain/Crypto Startups

PYMNTS

Venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz is offering a course to help entrepreneurs better understand blockchain technology and cryptocurrency companies, according to a report by CNBC. The firm was founded by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, and it has been one of the most active firms in the space, creating a $350 million fund dedicated to crypto investing.

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Goldman Extends $10B In Apple Card Credit In First Month

PYMNTS

Goldman Sachs said it doled out about $10 billion in credit lines in just over month for the Apple -branded credit card, Bloomberg reported on Friday (Nov. 1). . According to regulatory filings made public this week, Apple Card? customers had $736 million in loan balances at the end of September, though it’s not clear how that compares with other credit cards, as Bloomberg said banks do not break out performance by individual cards.

CFO 51
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Are Robots Replacing You? Keeping Humans in the Loop in Automated Environments

Speaker: Erroll Amacker

As businesses increasingly adopt automation, finance leaders must navigate the delicate balance between technology and human expertise. This webinar explores the critical role of human oversight in accounts payable (AP) automation and how a people-centric approach can drive better financial performance. Join us for an insightful discussion on how integrating human expertise into automated workflows enhances decision-making, reduces fraud risks, strengthens vendor relationships, and accelerates R

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Why Online Retail Fraud Is On the Rise

PYMNTS

Amazon has struggled with preventing counterfeit goods from infiltrating its marketplace. In the company’s ongoing efforts to prevent fraud on its site, Amazon announced a new program, Intellectual Property Accelerator, last month to help sellers make sure their products won’t be copied or counterfeited. From counterfeiting to identity theft to phishing attacks, digital fraud takes many forms — and online shopping continues to make consumers and merchants vulnerable to such attacks.

Retail 49
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Visa On Challenging B2B Payments Status Quo

PYMNTS

To change the status quo — to upend the way it’s always been done — the mantra goes, “think outside the box.”. Or in payments, think beyond the rails. To that end, Alan Koenigsberg, global head of new payment flows at Visa Business Solutions , said in a Masterclass interview with Karen Webster that the B2B space represents a landscape ripe with opportunity.

B2B 49
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SCA Awareness Issues Persist Among EU Merchants, Consumers

PYMNTS

Earlier studies found a surprising lack of both consumer and merchant awareness about the European Union’s Strong Customer Authentication (SCA) and second Payment Services Directive ( PSD2 ) regulations. Post-SCA deadline, a lack of readiness persists. SCA awareness is thankfully high among the payment providers tasked with executing and communicating the mandates to businesses and consumers.

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Why Amazon Decided To Bring Alexa Into The Bill Pay Flow

PYMNTS

It has happened to almost everyone. The bill comes in the mail — or maybe via email reminder — and the customer says, “Oh, I have to pay this,” then puts the bill down on their kitchen table or desk. Days pass, stuff piles up and, before the customer knows it, the due date has come and gone. Now, they owe the original bill, plus the late fee. Amazon Pay Vice President Patrick Gauthier told Karen Webster in a recent interview that billing is one of those areas in which, once the company put a lit

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Book of Secrets on the Month-End Close

Based off SkyStem's popular e-Book, the book of secrets to the month-end close will be revealed in this one-hour webinar. Learn leading practices when it comes to building a strong and sustainable month-end close that has room to grow and evolve. Learn about the power of precise estimates, why reconciliations are critical to closing the books, how and when to automate, and how the chart of accounts play into your close process.