Happy weekend! You might have missed some vital payments and commerce news this busy week, but the PYMNTS Weekender has you covered. We have deep dives on the gig economy, what AI really means to payment execs, and the Fortnite black hole, among many other subjects, including fresh and original research.
Top News
2,000 Staff Getting Laid Off As WeWork Faces Collapse
WeWork staff told the Guardian that they believe “the cuts will not stop there,” and that “little to no work is getting done” at the company. New projects have also been put on hold.
Facebook-Led Libra Names 21-Member Council After Top Firms Flee
The Libra Association also named its board of directors and formalized the consortium’s executive team following the Monday (Oct. 14) meeting.
REPORT: 22 Payments Execs Get Real About AI
PYMNTS queried 22 payments executives to get a sense of what’s real, what’s in the here and now, and what lies ahead for artificial intelligence (AI). We also asked for concrete examples of how their own firms — spanning payments processing, digital IDs and other functions — are leveraging AI right now, such as in core processing and risk scoring.
Google Announces New Products For Smart Home Innovation
Google has announced new products for its Made by Google event, which include a new phone, earbuds and devices for the Google Nest brand, to help facilitate a smart home.
What’s Wrong With The Attack On Gig Economy Pay
Drivers increasingly feel trapped, working for a company that keeps upping the percentage of their wages in exchange for picking up passengers and driving them from point A to point B. Adding insult to injury, the competition to get passengers into their vehicles is intensifying, making it even more of a challenge for drivers to keep even a modest income level at a steady state.
Trackers and Reports
How Subscription Merchants Can Avoid The SCA Conversion Cliff
In the new SCA Impact Playbook: Subscription Commerce And The SCA Opportunity, a collaboration with GoCardless, PYMNTS examines how Strong Customer Authentication (SCA) carries under-appreciated risks for this dynamic segment of the eCommerce market. These can be boiled down to three Cs: conversion, churn and card-based risk.
Bringing Autonomous Smart Shuttles To The Masses
There will be 41.6 billion Internet of Things (IoT)-connected devices around the world by 2025. Consumers and businesses have increasingly employed the technology in a variety of use cases as it becomes more sophisticated, from smart cars to sensors that can be utilized for smart cities.
How Data Aggregation Makes Home Mortgages Cheaper
The October Faster Payments Tracker examines how payment service providers are working to offer ever-faster international payments and the rapid domestic payments that accompany them.
Fun, Cool and Otherwise Interesting
How TaskRabbit, With IKEA, Is Reshaping The Gig Economy
One of the basics of platform design and ignition is getting “anchor tenants” on board who — given their size, scale and profile — tend to attract other stakeholders to the platform. What’s not as common is for an anchor tenant to acquire a platform to further scale its own business, and create an entirely new ecosystem in the process.
Mastercard And Branch Work To Break The Payroll Cycle For Hourly Workers
That instant payments have been a significant boon to workers in the gig economy is almost inarguable. A glance at the data demonstrates why.
Olo’s Noah Glass: What Restaurants Don’t Know They Don’t Know About Delivery Aggregators
The trouble with existential threats is they very rarely show up and announce themselves.
Red Ink Marks Marcus — And Goldman Sachs’ Risky Consumer Bet
Earnings season happens every three months, like clockwork. Also, like clockwork, banks give a glimpse into the state of how interest rates and the economy are faring — and, of course, consumers’ willingness to spend.
The Fortnite Black Hole — And What’s Next
In the year 2017 the world met Fortnite as it now knows it — a multiplayer “Battle Royale” competition that allows players from all over the world to attempt to digitally murder each other on an island, while wearing colorful costumes and doing sweet dance moves. It spent most of the 2018 going viral and taking over the lives of preteens everywhere.
We’re always on the lookout for opportunities to partner with innovators and disruptors.
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