It’s the end of another week and the end of a busy month. The PYMNTS Weekender is here to catch you up on the latest payments and commerce news. We have deep dives on retail’s digital D2C shift, blank-check companies, and DoorDash’s IPO plans.
Top News
DoorDash Moves Ahead With Q4 IPO Plans
DoorDash, the San Francisco-based prepared food delivery service, is planning to go public by year’s end, after filing confidentially in February. Like other delivery companies, DoorDash has become an essential business during COVID-19.
Goldman Sachs Eyes Creating $2B Tech Fund
Goldman Sachs is pondering a $2 billion venture and growth fund that could boost its stature in the world of technology investing and help it court bigger investors and investments. The $2 billion amount would make it one of the largest in the field, excepting Softbank’s Vision Fund.
Truist CIO: Overcoming The Roadblocks To Faster Payments
The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the need for FIs to quickly scale and roll out faster payment experiences, whether that means offering businesses instant access to loans or enabling access to consumers’ stimulus funds without any wait, says Bryce Elliott, CIO at Truist Bank. In this month’s FI’s Guide To Modernizing Digital Payments, Elliott discusses how legacy infrastructure can get in the way and how turning to cloud-based tools can help FIs.
How AI Helps Visa ‘Step In’ (Smartly) When Issuers Go Offline
When one part of a payments ecosystem goes offline, transactions can’t be completed. Visa announced today that its Smarter Stand-In Processing (Smarter STIP) leverages artificial intelligence (AI) to help the network act as “backup” processor to accept or decline authorizations when issuers go offline. Gourab Basu, vice president of global network processing at Visa, tells PYMNTS how deep learning keeps card (and card not present) transactions flowing.
Chipotle’s Chief Restaurant Officer On What’s Next For Restaurants
Chipotle recently beat analysts’ Q2 estimates as big boosts in order-ahead sales partly offset the hit to on-site dining. Scott Boatwright, Chipotle’s chief restaurant officer, tells PYMNTS that the chain had been improving its digital channel long before the pandemic and is using it to target an entirely new customer segment. Here’s how he sees the digital-first restaurant landscape shaking out.
Trackers and Reports
New Report: Helping Retail Treasurers Navigate The Digital D2C Shift (“How To” Playbook)
Not only have retail sales shifted online, but more consumers are buying more of what they want directly from the brand. In The Mastering Multichannel Commerce Playbook: The New Retail Reality, PYMNTS examines the supply chain, payments and liquidity requirements that confront treasurers as they manage the dynamics of this new retail channel.
How One Cloud-Native Business Bank Overcame Its Cloud-Migration Roadblocks (Digital Banks And The Power of The Cloud Tracker)
Even cloud-native banks can struggle to roll out solutions with the speed that customers need. In the latest Digital Banks And The Power Of The Cloud Tracker, Andrew Smith, director of technical operations for online business bank, Holvi, explains how to efficiently scale and deploy cloud services without slowing product rollouts.
Report: Helping Retailers Solve The Payments Piece Of The eCommerce Puzzle (Anatomy Of A Consumer Payment Playbook)
Six in 10 consumers are shopping more online and less in stores than they did before the pandemic. In the inaugural Anatomy Of A Consumer Payment Playbook, Rachel Wilkie, senior director of eCommerce for online footwear retailer Merrell, explains how innovations in payments are helping them attract customers and keep them loyal.
Fun, Cool, and Otherwise Interesting
Uber Health’s Push To Close Prescription Deliveries Last Mile
Uber Health made big news this past week with the announcement that it was scaling up its delivery services to include pharmaceutical products in some locales. That’s a major new add-on for Uber Health, which the ride-hailing firm launched in 2018 to provide patients with transportation to and from medical appointments.
The Specs on SPACs – And Why Blank-Check Firms Get Backing
‘SPACs,’ or ‘special purpose acquisition companies,’ have suddenly become the hottest thing in investing, raising money to buy a privately held firm that wants to go public without all of the paperwork. Are SPACs the wave of the future?
What The Amazon Fresh Store Says About The Future Of Grocery Shopping
Amazon on Thursday opened Amazon Fresh in Los Angeles — a combination grocery and curated Amazon-branded merch store with a heavy dose of technology in the form of smart carts that auto-checkout and Alexa-powered kiosks. Here’s why it holds clues into how Amazon thinks the future of grocery shopping will look.
Salesforce’s Addition To Dow Spotlights Connected Economy Impact
The Dow Jones Industrial Average has announced plans to swap out three stocks, including replacing Exxon Mobil Corp. with Salesforce.com. It’s only one stock index, but the Dow is shorthand for big business, and the swap speaks loudly to the tech sector’s growth.
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