Top Innovations
AMEX launches new digital B2B payments ecosystem for third-party issuers and acquirers to provide more efficient payments
American Express has launched a…
Intuit is to acquire financial health and credit-builder startup SeedFi
Intuit has entered into an…
Santander offers customers a budget calculator and financial health check to fight inflation
Santander has launched two new…
Fintech X1’s investing platform will allow its cardholders to buy stocks with their earned reward points
X1 announced the launch of…
Thales creates a voice payment card for visually impaired that works in tandem with a card-linked mobile app
Thales has introduced a Voice…
Cashplus Bank UK’s ‘next-gen’ business credit card includes sort code and account number for and BNPL options
Cashplus Bank UK’s next-generation business…
Key News
Visa becomes exclusive network partner for <strong>GoHenry’s cards for kids</strong> and teens
In a seven-year global partnership,…
New <strong>AWS DataZone</strong> enables companies to manage their internal data and make it accessible to employees
AWS introduced Amazon DataZone, a…
<strong>Cyber Monday</strong> spend reaches $11.3B for a 5.8% growth; surge reported in BNPL usage
Cyber Monday brought in a…
Chipotle’s <strong>Chipotlanes</strong> offer no-frills alternative to standard drive-thrus
Chipotle is bringing its “Chipotlanes”…
Lacoste opens <strong>gamified store</strong> <strong>in the metaverse</strong> utilizing token-gated technology
Lacoste is leveraging technology from…
<strong>Google Wallet</strong> is about to get digital driver’s licenses in beta
In the first batch of…
Advisors with J.P. Morgan Wealth Management have a new way to connect with prospective clients. Around 62 million JPMorgan Chase clients who use the Chase app or Chase.com can engage with Wealth Plan, the company’s new “digital money coach.” Assuming they meet certain investment minimums, they also can connect with an advisor. Given the number of digital customers at the bank, Wealth Plan might add new business for J.P. Morgan’s roughly 5,000 advisors. Wealth Plan allows customers to plan, save, and invest in one location. Customers can create goals and view their daily or monthly spending as a whole or divided into categories such as bills and utilities, shopping, and professional services. They can also predict how tweaks to their spending or savings could affect their finances down the road. Users can also securely link external accounts such as investments, credit cards, mortgages, and 401(k)s to get a big-picture view of their finances. Wealth Plan offers the ability to connect with an advisor and receive ongoing advice via video or phone from a J.P. Morgan financial advisor. With a minimum investment of $25,000, investors can work with a team of fiduciary advisors to create a personalized financial plan, be matched to expert-built portfolios, and receive ongoing advice via video or phone. Investors who have more to invest, generally a minimum of $50,000, can work with a dedicated advisor to create a personalized financial plan and customized portfolio. Self-directed investors can also trade on their own through the Chase app or at Chase.com, starting with as little as $1. There is a $500 initial investment minimum to use the firm’s robo-advisor.
AWS announced a new resource called AI Service Cards to improve transparency and advance responsible AI. Each AI Service Card is organized into four sections. The first is basic concepts, which provides information on the service itself and features included. The second is intended use cases and limitations, third is responsible AI design and considerations, and fourth is guidance on deployment and performance considerations. AI Service Cards bring a high level of transparency to customers regarding the AI models. AWS goes through a rigorous process when building them, but that can be somewhat hidden from the customer as they use the finished product.
Risk intelligence provider Shield’s financial compliance solution uses AI to conduct behavioral analysis and monitor employee activity across communication channels like WhatsApp, Slack and Microsoft Teams to continuously prevent data leaks. This automated approach enables organizations to automatically address insider threats and the exposure of regulated in a way that can keep up with the pace that data traverses throughout the environment. The main difference between Shield and other providers is the approach of its AI. Shield’s AI and ML technology is able to model real human behavior and generate proactive, relevant alerts that add critical context to every decision.
Here are three of the big action items banks can take from the US Mobile Banking Emerging Features Benchmark Survey: 1) Prioritize support for the most in-demand tools: Two features were highly valued by over half of mobile banking users: seeing if an SSN has been breached and setting alerts for unusual account activity. But neither was offered by more than five FIs. 2) Identify and fill feature gaps within key categories. For example, Security and Control was the most valued category among mobile banking users, but the second-least-supported among FIs. 3) Better tailor mobile offerings to specific customer segments. FIs should examine and act on how preferences vary across generation, gender, region, household income, and technology adoption.
Neobank Monzo will be profitable in the next financial year, according to CEO TS Anil. Monzo has faced several challenges, including auditors questioning its ability to stay in business in 2020 and 2021, U.S. regulators telling the neobank in 2021 its application for a banking license was not likely to be approved, and the U.K.’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) investigating it for possible violations of AML laws. The statement also comes at a time when FinTechs have been taking cost-cutting measures and laying off employees. Anil also said Monzo is still looking at the U.S. as the next target for expansion. The company withdrew its banking application in the country in 2021 but now serves the market via a partnership with U.S.-based Sutton Bank, the report said.
Cashplus Bank UK’s next-generation business credit card is the first credit card to come complete with a sort code and account number that enables direct bank-to-bank faster payments. Cashplus says this makes its credit card more akin to a credit “account” that businesses can use flexibly to pay suppliers. The card also uses open banking to offer guaranteed pricing, meaning customers can quickly check exactly what interest rate they’ll get before going through a lengthy application process. Finally, Cashplus is adding some buy now, pay later-like features, with the ability to increase the repayment period on purchases from ‘up to 56 days’ to ‘up to 117 days’ for a monthly fee, and to restructure their credit card balance as an instalment loan if needed.
Featuring pre-configured connectivity with Empower, Black Knight’s powerful loan origination system (LOS), Borrower Digital helps lenders gain a competitive edge by providing a superior mortgage experience for their customers. Borrower Digital helps mortgage lenders optimize the POS and LOS interaction using the LOS database for transactional data. Borrower Digital also helps the borrower track progress throughout the origination process by notifying them immediately of any changes, and by using AI and ML document classification to manage documents provided by borrowers to clear conditions. Borrower Digital creates a simple, intuitive Q&A process that guides borrowers through prequalification, preapproval, full application and refinance.
Fintech startup Hitch has rolled out a HELOC platform to help homeowners tap into more than $100 billion in government grants available for home renovation. One of the biggest benefits for Hitch users is speed. Once approved, borrowers can access their funds in under three days. The company plans on launching a flexible HELOC that allows customers to open a line of credit without having to take a draw and enables them to convert outstanding balances to fixed rate payments in early 2023.
The growing sustainable finance market provides a path for banks to manage near-term uncertainty while capitalizing on trends that are reshaping the global economy, according to a new report from the consulting firm McKinsey & Co. By 2030, debt-focused investment supporting climate transition around the world could offer banks revenue potential of at least $100 billion per year, the firm found in its annual global banking review. Over the last decade, efforts to reduce emissions have focused on investments in renewable energy and the decarbonization of power generation, the McKinsey researchers wrote. They argued that the focus will widen in the coming years to include electrification, emissions reductions in energy-intensive industries and more.
Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS), an Amazon.com, Inc. company, announced new capabilities across its database and analytics portfolios that make it faster and easier for customers to manage and analyze data at petabyte scale. Amazon DocumentDB Elastic Clusters allow customers to scale beyond the limits of a single database node within minutes, supporting millions of reads and writes per second and storing up to 2 petabytes of data. Amazon OpenSearch Serverless automatically provisions, configures, and scales OpenSearch infrastructure to deliver fast data ingestion and millisecond query responses, even for unpredictable and intermittent workloads. With Amazon OpenSearch Serverless, data ingestion and search resources scale independently, allowing these operations to run concurrently without any performance impact.
Accenture PLC and Amazon Web Services Inc. said they they’re teaming up to launch Velocity, a new service that optimizes business outcomes up to 50% faster by removing the complexity associated with building and operating enterprise-scale applications and estates in the cloud. Velocity allows clients to adopt Accenture and AWS innovations more quickly based on the experience gained from thousands of Accenture and AWS projects. The solution assists clients in adopting new AWS services without recreating time-consuming, labor-intensive work and recurring costs at the start of every project. Using Velocity, organizations can solve complex industry-specific challenges to accelerate cloud success. With the previously gained knowledge of Accenture and AWS, Velocity also serves as a foundation for an expanded set of new, co-developed industry solutions.
Alternative payments account for only a small percentage of transactions and are no threat to credit and debit cards’ dominance of the payments market. 76% of in-person purchases were made with credit or debit cards in 2021 while 19% were made with cash. Digital wallets made up only 2.6% of card payments — not overall payments — in 2020, according to the Fed. Digital wallet use has grown in the past two years but Apple Pay — which handles three times as many transactions as No. 2 digital wallet Google Pay — still accounts for only 2.4% of overall in-store transactions, according to PYMNTS.com. BNPL’s $24 billion in transactions compares with $9.4 trillion for credit and debit cards last year. In contrast to other alternative payments, just 4% of retailers have implemented bitcoin online while only 2% offer another crypto payment option, according to the NRF payments study.
Walgreens will fulfill orders 24 hours a day, seven days a week at nearly 400 of its 24-hour stores — an industry first. With Walgreens’ new option, customers can order from the chain’s website or app and get products delivered in as little as an hour, no matter the time of day. Customers can choose the closest 24-hour store to place their order, and it will be delivered if within the delivery range.
Instacart has announced Instacart Promotions, a new suite of advertising solutions for brand partners to deliver more value and savings to consumers as they shop across the Marketplace. For the first time, all brand partners, including emerging brands, have self-service access and capabilities to launch new deal structures, promotions, and incentives with their Instacart Ad campaigns. Consumers will now see more promotions, coupons, and deals tailored to them as they search and discover products from their favorite brands on Instacart. Instacart Promotions enhances and streamlines how CPG brands can provide coupons and savings on the platform, aligning with one of our key priorities to make online grocery shopping more affordable and accessible.
Snap and New Balance unveiled a lens that leverages a mix of augmented reality (AR) and speech-recognition technology to offer gift recommendations across footwear, apparel and accessories. The Holiday Gifting Concierge Lens includes a selfie mode where users can verbally answer questions about their recipient using Snap’s voiceML’s technology for help when selecting a gift. In worldview mode, the lens provides an AR unboxing experience that displays a recommendation.
Amazon announced an easier way to connect AWS services called Amazon Eventbridge Pipes. It’s highly flexible, allowing developers to use a lambda function or an API, or whatever they are using to manipulate the data inside the pipe before it reaches the consumer. With Amazon EventBridge Pipes, you can integrate supported AWS and self-managed services as event producers and event consumers into your application in a simple, reliable, consistent and cost-effective way.
Temenos and Mbanq expanded their partnership to speed U.S. Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS) adoption. The companies announced their deeper collaboration, saying it continues a relationship that began last year when the companies joined forces to develop a Credit-Union-as-a-Service tool. “This partnership opens up the opportunity to target mid-sized banks in the U.S., enabling them to not only launch BaaS services such as deposits, credit cards or Buy Now, Pay Later, but also future-proof their technology stacks by kicking off an incremental core banking renovation,” the companies said in a news release. As part of the arrangement, Temenos — a Switzerland-based banking platform — has made a minority investment in Mbanq, a BaaS firm headquartered in Naples, FL. Temenos said it hopes to “capture the BaaS market which has seen explosive growth on the back of embedded finance valued at $7 trillion market capitalization by 2030.”
Google has launched a new app called Reading Mode that helps people with visual impairment and dyslexia read the content on the screen — especially articles. The newly released app works on any device running Android 9.0 or above. Once you install it on your phone, you will have to turn on the toggle for the app under the Accessibility settings. This allows the app to have a floating button on the screen all the time, so you can turn any app or webpage into a more accessible version. Reading Mode turns the content on the current screen into a simpler format. It features controls for adjusting contrast, font type, line space and size. The app also allows to quickly change the reading voice as well. Users can also turn on a toggle to have the app highlight current text being read by the voiceover feature.
Apple iPhone users with iOS 16.1 software can now share car keys in their Wallet with non-iPhone users, starting with Google Pixel devices. Keys can be shared via email, text message and WhatsApp and only works on cars that are compatible with digital car keys. There are several 2021 and 2022 models of BMW that can be unlocked and used via digital car keys on iPhones, Google Pixels, Samsung Galaxy devices. Apple’s digital car keys can usually be added to the Apple Watch (Series 5 or later or the Apple Watch SE) with the latest version of watchOS.
Apple has launched a holiday Apple Card incentive, offering an increased return on Daily Cash, within specific limits. The increased Daily Cash so far only applies to “qualifying purchases” from Apple, either online or in-store. The increase from 3% to 5% is specifically for new customers. Apple defines that as people opening an Apple Card account and also then using it, between December 1, 2022, and December 25, 2022. This offer also applies to new Apple Card users who are added to an Apple Card Family account during this period. They can earn 5% back on their own purchases, though there’s no increase for the rest of the family.
More Innovations & Trends
Tokens.com’s subsidiary Metaverse Group, has completed development of a metaverse experience and conference center for The UPS Store in partnership with Coffee Digital. The project includes a digital land lease and the creation of the first ever metaverse business center. The UPS Store launched its first step into the metaverse by building a content destination to help promote its new campaign ‘Be Unstoppable.’ This installation was developed in the Decentraland metaverse platform by Coffee Digital and Metaverse Group. It includes a multi-level building, where small business owners and the next generation of entrepreneurs are able to visit and learn how to build a successful and sustainable business.
Automated detection and response platform CyVers addresses the challenge theft of assets in Web3 with its real-time prevention and detection platform. The company’s SaaS platform helps to detect criminal activity and provides real-time intelligence to stop it. It is agentless and requires no deployment, and can be quickly integrated through an API or plug-in. CyVers can freeze illicit transactions and return stolen funds once an attack is detected — and before they become immutable on the blockchain. The platform leverages AI and ML to detect whether there is a pattern of abnormal or suspicious activities, patterns or criminal behaviors.
FIAT Metaverse Store, the world’s first metaverse-powered interactive showroom, features FIAT’s Product Genius – a real person – who is available to answer any customer question in real-time. The FIAT Metaverse Store can instantly transport the customer “inside” FIAT. Once inside, the Product Genius welcomes the customer, and together they can explore the car in sweeping 360-degree views and learn about its technology, address any questions about electric mobility, recharging and any contents of the New 500. Furthermore, the customer can take a look up close at how the Infotainment and the different driving and EV charging modes work. The client can also customize the model by choosing its body, color, interiors, and any other desired feature and literally see those changing in real-time.
The National Football League announced the launch of NFL Zone, a multifaceted, dynamic metaverse experience built in Fortnite Creative. Presented by Visa, the NFL’s Official Payment Services Technology Partner, NFL Zone is designed to engage existing fans while increasing fan discoverability through an NFL-inspired social hub for Fortnite players and NFL football fans alike. Through NFL Zone, the NFL will deepen its commitment to creating interactive fan experiences in the metaverse. Within NFL Zone, fans will find “The Hub” which offers a comprehensive fan experience including a virtual tailgate, Visa-sponsored stadium and mini game, and portals to maps inspired by individual NFL teams that will host “seek and sack,” a modified version of the popular “search and destroy” teamplay. Visa’s mini game “Blitz the Bag” features a “tag”-style gameplay where players sprint to pick up the bag first and try to bring it to one of the NFL stores located in the stadium without dropping it.
Innovations & Trends
We’re on the look out for the latest trends, strategies and innovations. Do you have something to share? We’d love to hear from you.
Share an Innovation with Us.
Digital Brief delivers the latest disruptive financial innovations.