The latest global news and analysis in payments, retail, fintech, financial services and the digital economy.
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Off-price retailer Ross Stores saw “robust” sales growth in the quarter ended Aug. 1 as both existing customers and new ones sought prices lower than those of mainstream retailers, CEO Jim Conroy said during a Thursday (Aug. 20) earnings call. “We really want to be there for a customer that is battling higher gas prices […] The post Ross Posts 13% Sales Jump as Inflation Drives Shoppers to…
Anthropic expects its initial public offering to reach a record high, equaling or surpassing the one set by SpaceX, Bloomberg reported Thursday (Aug. 20), citing unnamed sources. SpaceX achieved the biggest-ever first-time sale when it raised $75 billion at the outset, and it later increased that figure to $86.2 billion with an overallotment option, according […] The post Anthropic Aims for…
If Congress doesn’t pass the CLARITY Act, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) will use its existing authorities to begin establishing a crypto asset market regime, CFTC Chairman Michael S. Selig said Thursday (Aug. 20). In remarks delivered at the Innovation Advisory Committee Conference in Washington, D.C., Selig said: “We owe it to the American […] The post CFTC Readies Own Crypto…
Google has released a new interactive button that publishers can embed on their pages to enable readers to select them as a preferred source of information, the company said in a Thursday (Aug. 20) blog post. The “Preferred Sources” button is designed to make it easier for readers to find their favorite publications in Google’s Top Stories, AI Overviews […] The post Google Launches Preferred…
For the first time in years, the U.S. bank branch count is moving up meaningfully, and some of the biggest banks are putting billions of dollars behind the physical network. FDIC data shows 69,167 branches at the end of 2025, an increase of 535 from 68,632 a year earlier. The 2025 increase marks a break […] The post Banks Add Branches as Physical Networks Lift Digital Sales appeared first on…
Stripe is known for processing payments. Ramp is known for managing corporate expenses. But this week, the two companies made almost identical moves: building the layer that decides which artificial intelligence (AI) model gets used. Ramp launched Router.com on Wednesday (Aug. 19), opening up a tool it had run internally for three years. A company […] The post Stripe and Ramp Are Betting on AI…
AT&T cut the costs of coding and some other advanced artificial intelligence tasks by as much as 56% by using tools that route employees’ queries to cheaper models when appropriate, The Information reported Thursday (Aug. 20). When doing so, the quality of the performance of the AI declined by only 2%, according to the report, […] The post AT&T Slashes AI Costs by Adopting Model Routers and Open…
Airbnb is building artificial intelligence into nearly every step of a trip, not just the chatbot. The company’s AI customer-service assistant now resolves nearly 45% of user inquiries without a human agent, up from about a third at the end of last year, operating in more than 50 languages with voice-call support planned later this […] The post Airbnb Tests AI Search After Automating 45% of…
The next frontier in working capital management isn’t squeezing another day out of receivables or stretching another day of payables. It’s deciding whether those dollars should be financed the same way at all. Two companies can report identical working capital requirements while sitting on different pools of risk. One may hold short-dated receivables from investment-grade […] The post Working…
Cybersecurity firm TrendAI uncovered a business email compromise (BEC) scheme in which an attacker tricked a victim into clicking on a link and was then able to reroute payments that were sent by the victim’s company and intended for its vendors, it said in a Aug. 14 blog post. In this attack, the adversary targeted […] The post Business Email Compromise Attack Hijacks Session Token to Steal…
