Target is sharing how customers feel about the lanes, as well as how it is adapting to the ways in which its shoppers currently prefer to engage in the checkout process. Target says the Express Self-Checkout service has created an overall faster checkout experience, with total transaction times improving by nearly 8%. Additionally, the retailer has improved its Net Promoter Score (NPS) for checkout by 5 points. At the same time, Target has opened even more traditional checkout lanes, and recently found that a greater share of guests are choosing to make their purchase through those lanes that are staffed by our team members. Adrienne Costanzo, EVP and chief stores officer said, “By giving them a few options for checking out — on their own, with a team member or even using Drive Up — we’re making their experience fast, easy and on their terms.” Elsewhere in its business, Target shared in March that it is focusing on on-trend affordable assortments, omnichannel discovery, enhanced supply chain and fulfillment capabilities, expanded Target Circle membership, and strategic partnerships. Investments in these areas aim to accelerate Target’s strategy and drive more than $15 billion in sales growth by 2030.
Parloa’s low-code interface gives businesses the ability to create AI agents equipped with prebuilt or custom skills for tasks such as routing, authentication and handling frequently asked questions
Agentic artificial intelligence for customer experience startup Parloa GmbH announced that it has raised $120 million in new funding on a $1 billion valuation to accelerate its expansion across North America and Europe, enhance its Agent Management Platform and hire international talent. Parloa offers the AI Agent Management Platform, a platform that allows enterprises to design, deploy and manage AI-powered customer service agents across various communication channels, including voice, chat and messaging. The platform works via a low-code interface that gives businesses the ability to create AI agents equipped with prebuilt or custom skills for tasks such as routing, authentication and handling frequently asked questions. The agents are flexible by design and can be tailored to specific business needs, including integration with existing systems such as Salesforce Inc., ServiceNow Inc. and Zendesk Inc. for real-time access to relevant data. To complement its core offering, Parloa provides tools, such as large-scale testing and behavior evaluation, to fine-tune responses before deployment. Once live, a customer analytics dashboard delivers the ability to monitor key performance metrics for the continuous improvement of customer interactions. Parloa’s platform also assists human agents with features like real-time translation and suggested responses. The augmentation enhances agent productivity and ensures consistent customer service quality across different languages and regions.
The Hispanic Organization of Mortgage Experts (HOME) announced the launch of La Reina, the first-ever shoe created for women in mortgage
The Hispanic Organization of Mortgage Experts (HOME) announced the launch of La Reina, the first-ever shoe created for women in mortgage. La Reina, which is Spanish for “the Queen,” was designed in partnership with AliveShoes and manufactured in Le Marche, Italy. Nicole Yelland, HOME’s chief communications and strategy officer, told that the shoe pays homage to women in the mortgage industry who often have to resort to heels at business events. Each pair of shoes features a metallic gold sole to honor Hispanic and Latino culture. Besides the sole, the shoe is black and “high-end leather intended to go well with a suit,” Yelland said. “The other part of wanting to have a shoe that honors Hispanic and Latino culture is just to help people see it right. But people can’t know what they don’t see.” “Inspired by global voices like Bad Bunny, who use their platforms to push culture forward, we are shining a light on these powerful forces and giving them the recognition they deserve,” he added. “Launching during Mother’s Day week, La Reina will continue celebrating them throughout the year.”
US Treasury report on stablecoins mulls upside of offering interest – based on estimates that stablecoins will grow to $2 trillion by 2028
The US Treasury’s Borrowing Advisory Committee (TBAC) explored the impact of stablecoins on the demand for short term Treasuries. One topic was mentioned repeatedly – the potential for stablecoins to offer interest. The last iteration of the Senate’s stablecoin bill, the GENIUS Act, introduced a clause that banned the payment of stablecoin interest before receiving a positive vote by the Senate Banking Committee. The TBAC report used a figure from Standard Chartered research that estimates that stablecoins will grow to $2 trillion by 2028 assuming stablecoins don’t pay interest. As an aside, Citi also recently published forecasts. The mid April capitalization of stablecoins was $234 billion, which accounts for approximately $120 billion investment in short-dated Treasuries. Combining that with Standard Chartered’s figure, the report estimates that stablecoin investment in Treasuries will expand to $1 trillion by 2028. If stablecoins were to offer interest, the figure could be quite a bit higher, although no forecast was provided. That would account for a significant slice of the short term Treasury Bill market, which currently has a $6.4 trillion issuance. A key reason why most global stablecoin regulation has not supported the payment of interest is because there is a concern that bank deposits might shift to stablecoins, potentially affecting the economy with less credit available from banks, or credit might become more expensive. The TBAC report states that transactional demand deposits at banks that total $6.6 trillion are most “at risk” from stablecoins. Apart from delving into the potential for stablecoins to offer interest, two other issues were floated – the potential to allow stablecoin issuers access to the Federal Reserve and / or deposit insurance. This would help reduce the impact of de-peg events.
FCTI partners NCR Atleos to enable surcharge-free cash withdrawals and cash deposits at over 4,000 7-Eleven stores across the US for its issuer members and their cardholders through the Allpoint Network
NCR Atleos has partnered with FCTI, a trusted provider and partner to 7-Eleven, to bring Atleos’ Allpoint Network to more than 4,000 7-Eleven stores across the United States providing expanded, more convenient access to everyday banking transactions for its issuer members and their cardholders. By enabling Atleos’ Allpoint Network surcharge-free cash withdrawals and cash deposits at thousands of 7-Eleven stores, FCTI is fulfilling on its “ATM as a Destination” strategy aligning their services with the tools to grow consumer foot traffic at 7-Eleven’s stores. Additionally, Allpoint member issuers will continue their long-held access at over 3,000 Speedway branded store locations. “Growing foot traffic through the enhanced features and capabilities of our networked ATMs is core to FCTI’s mission,” said Masanori Sakaguchi, CEO of FCTI. “Implementing Allpoint aligns with our strategy and commitment to power the success of FCTI’s partners.” “Utility banking solutions are growing globally,” said Stuart Mackinnon, EVP & COO for Atleos. “Aligning with an established operator in FCTI presents Atleos and the Allpoint issuers we serve with significantly more endpoints to complete cash in and out transactions.”
Etsy blends human-recommended listings with ML and LLMs to expand the listings 20X and create an aesthetically cohesive collection that represents product variety and meets quality standards
Etsy is doubling down on a hybrid approach to artificial intelligence that keeps humans in the loop and ensures shoppers find what they want. The company is pursuing a strategy it calls “algotorial curation,” which blends recommendations by Etsy’s staff with advanced machine learning algorithms to scale curation across its inventory, Chief Product Officer Nick Daniel said. The process starts with human experts identifying trends and selecting listings that are examples of these trends. “After a collection is identified, our engineers use machine learning to expand it from roughly 50 human-curated listings to about 1,000. Finally, we use LLMs to make sure the full collection is aesthetically cohesive, represents a variety of products and meets our standards for quality.” The company uses Google’s Gemini multimodal model to power these experiences. Despite advances in generative AI, Etsy isn’t looking to eliminate humans from the equation. Instead, the company sees AI as a way to enhance human insight at scale, Daniel said. “Rather than removing human expertise from our merchandising work as AI becomes more powerful, we’re leveraging these tools to amplify the expertise of our team and create a more personalized experience. We’re putting human touch — from our buyers to our teams of employees to our sellers — at the center of shopping on Etsy. Because each item on Etsy is listed individually by a real seller, the data we have isn’t uniform — we’re not like a traditional eCommerce marketplace with a catalog or SKUs. AI can help us bridge this gap. We’re leveraging LLMs to extract key product details, like size and color, from listings, which improves search and helps connect the right items to the right buyers,” Daniel said. This strategy has yielded measurable results, boosting visibility and sales. “We used LLMs to generate alt text for listings that didn’t already have it and saw a nearly 5% increase in SEO visits and a nearly 3% increase in conversions to sales attributed to those visits,” he said.
Shopify’s first-quarter revenue surges 27% aided by the rapid checkout feature, Shop Pay’s 57% YoY growth processing $22 billion in GMV and by 64% penetration for Shopify Payments
Shopify’s first-quarter earnings results showed double-digit growth in gross merchandise volumes (GMV) and a continued movement toward streamlined checkout online and further inroads made in offline commerce. revenues were up 27% to $2.4 billion; GMV surged 22% to $74.8 billion. Offline GMV increased 23% and B2B GMV delivered triple-digit growth, up 109% from the year-ago first quarter, said President Harley Finkelstein. With a nod to the current fluid state of tariffs, Finkelstein pointed out that the company’s managed markets products give U.S. merchants “more options with our merchant of record service for collecting and remitting duties and taxes while managing other markets independently. This means if new duties are announced, most merchants can achieve compliance within hours. Later this month, we’ll introduce duty inclusive pricing, allowing merchants to set international prices that include duties in the product price. This ensures transparent pricing from the start and helps customers avoid surprise fees at checkout,” Finkelstein said. “Shopify Payments continues to be our largest product offering and a key driver. We made great progress in Q1, with payments GMV penetration hitting 64%,” Finkelstein said, as Shopify Payments expanded into new markets in Europe. Shop Pay, the rapid checkout feature, saw 57% growth year on year, processing $22 billion in GMV in the quarter. The Shop App continued its momentum in Q1, hitting over 94% year-over year growth in what Finkelstein termed “native GMV, an impressive acceleration and 84% growth last quarter.” Additionally, merchants are using Sidekick, the platform’s AI powered assistant, in increasing numbers, he said. The company expects current quarter revenues to grow in the mid 20% range year over year. As lower margin payment products are part of the mix, he said, gross dollar profit growth will come in at a rate lower than revenues; non-cash charges will also factor into margin impact.
FICO’s AI framework, enables Bradesco Bank to execute instantaneous credit and fraud decisions once managed by entire departments
FICO and Bradesco Bank are collaborating closely to embed responsible, real-time AI decisioning into core financial operations, enhancing fraud detection, credit modeling and customer experience. “For FICO, responsible AI consists of four major pillars,” said Scott Zoldi, chief analytics officer of FICO. “It’s around building the AI responsibly, which means building it correctly. It’s around explainability and interpretability. It’s around ethics, ethical AI, and then accountability and auditability of that AI.” One such case study in responsible, purposive AI adoption is Brazil’s Bradesco Bank. With FICO’s AI framework, the bank executes instantaneous credit and fraud decisions once managed by entire departments. However, with this power comes an absolute demand for transparency and accuracy. Customers won’t tolerate unexplained decisions, especially in financial services. For Bradesco Bank, responsible AI isn’t a bonus — it’s business-critical, according to Rafael Cavalcanti, CDAO & CRM director at Bradesco Bank. “I do think that this golden age brings high expectations of customers as well,” he said. “They want to have that same experience that they have when using streaming solutions or while doing online shopping. They want banks to do that. We need to combine these techniques, and at the same time, understand that what we do has a core value that is privacy and responsibility, and that’s what we do in Bradesco.”
Amazon’s newest AI tool is designed to help merchants improve their listings automatically suggesting product titles, attributes, descriptions, and missing details
Amazon said Thursday it is releasing a new generative AI-powered tool to help merchants improve their listings with missing details or attributes. Sellers often have hundreds of products listed on Amazon, and they need to update information related to them from time to time, which can be a cumbersome task. The e-commerce tech giant wants sellers to use its new AI-powered tool, called Enhance My Listing, to make the chore easier. The tool automatically suggests product titles, attributes, descriptions, and missing details to sellers based on seasonal trends. Sellers can accept, reject, or modify these suggestions before updating the product listing in Amazon’s catalog. Amazon said it uses its own Amazon Bedrock service for generative AI models to get insights from customer engagement on the platform. Enhance My Listing is rolling out to select sellers in the U.S. starting today, with an expanded rollout scheduled for the coming weeks. The company introduced generative AI tools for sellers starting in 2023 with a feature that helped them write product descriptions. In March 2024, Amazon added a tool that allowed sellers to create a listing by inserting a product URL from their websites. That feature also lets sellers upload a single image or write a few words to generate a listing. Amazon said that over 900,000 sellers have used its generative AI tools to date. The company added that over 90% of the time merchants accept AI-generated content without any edits.
That’s not necessarily an endorsement of the tools’ accuracy, to be clear — it could be that some sellers aren’t reviewing the outputs closely.
Forward-flow funding offers a reliable way to offload credit exposure and tap into short-duration, yield-generating assets by using granular, behavior-based data to underwrite and monitor risk
Forward-flow funding is emerging as a key capital access strategy for FinTech-enabled SMB lenders, offering a structured, upfront capital commitment from investors to support continuous loan origination and efficient risk offloading. For SMB lenders, particularly those in the FinTech space, this model provides a reliable way to offload credit exposure and recycle capital quickly. For investors, it offers predictable access to loan assets under predefined terms, often backed by real-time or near-real-time performance data. The appeal of forward-flow funding lies in its structural elegance and practical utility. Rather than waiting to secure capital post-origination or bundling loans into pools for one-off sales, lenders can secure capital commitments upfront. This allows them to maintain a continuous lending cadence, a crucial advantage in markets where speed and responsiveness define customer retention. What sets FinTech-enabled forward flow apart from its traditional counterparts is the use of alternative data to underwrite and monitor risk. This granular, behavior-based data creates a dynamic risk profile for SMB borrowers, enabling forward-flow buyers to evaluate and price credit risk with unprecedented precision. In turn, this has opened the door for more agile, customizable forward-flow structures — with investors opting for specific credit boxes or sectors, and even fine-tuning risk-return profiles based on real-time triggers. Forward-flow agreements offer a way to tap into short-duration, yield-generating assets while retaining some control over credit exposure. Merchant cash advances, invoice factoring, equipment financing and revenue-based financing are all seeing similar structural integrations. As underwriting models evolve, these products are increasingly being bundled into forward-flow arrangements to cater to investors with specific sectoral or product appetites. By integrating funding at the infrastructure level, these platforms can offer seamless, data-driven credit products that scale efficiently.