A new form of self-checkout that enables shoppers to pay and retailers to gather data without a point of sale terminal is starting to make steps toward the mainstream. Zippin, a company that builds checkout-free retail, has deployed its technology at 15 stores in the past two months, including a concession location at the Capital One Arena. Zippin’s technology allows shoppers to scan an app or swipe a credit card to enter a store and pick up what they need. The purchases are automatically charged when the shopper leaves the store. If checkout-free retail like Zippin’s can become widely used, it could radically change more than just payments. In addition to the line-busting benefits of self-checkout, checkout-free retail uses technology that can inform dozens of functions for mobile wallets and other banking or financial services apps, fueling cross-sales, customer service, personalized marketing and even artificial intelligence-powered commerce. “The technology for such ‘shop and go’ solutions is always improving,” Zil Bareisis, head of retail banking and payments research at Celent, now part of GlobalData, told. “However, it can still be expensive to install and operate, particularly for larger stores selling a broad range of items.” Checkout-free retail has struggled in larger stores with a broad range of products, due to factors such as the sensor cameras’ inability to identify a varied inventory or operate in a large structure. Sports facilities represent a progression to an incrementally larger format than a small pilot store. “This technology can be highly suitable in locations with limited product range and significant foot traffic, like stadiums, hospitals, academic campuses, airports, etc.,” Bareisis said. There are about 15 Amazon Go stores in the U.S., and there are about 700 checkout-free stores around the world, with 200 in the U.S., according to Datos Insights. “There is growth in this market, we’re seeing this in very specific use cases,” Alan Burt, senior manager and retail product lead for Datos Insights, told. While the technology that supports checkout-free stores is difficult to deploy, there is ample incentive. “Autonomous checkout isn’t about checkout,” Richard Crone, a payments consultant, told. “It’s about capturing first-party behavioral and [stock-keeping-level] purchase data.” The sensor technology can measure the amount of time consumers spend looking at items, what items they did and didn’t purchase, how they responded to special offers, and how much overall time they spent in a store. This can provide data that can be fed into an artificial intelligence algorithm and can produce messaging for cross-selling or marketing, or to enhance payment capabilities for a bank’s mobile app. Google traditionally owns this type of digital shopping data but is now being re-anchored in retail and digital wallet-linked credentials, setting the foundation for agentic commerce, Crone said. This puts Amazon, which operates the Amazon Rufus agentic commerce platform, in competition with similar agentic technology from Visa and Mastercard. A key advantage for Amazon will be Rufus’ integration of offline-to-online behavioral data from its Just Walk Out technology, which will be licensed to third-party retailers and e-commerce platforms to make Amazon’s agentic algorithms more powerful, Crone said. Another key element for checkout-free retail is consumer appetite. While checkout-free retail is mostly not available, its predecessor, self-checkout, is steadily expanding. The number of retailers with self-checkout grew from about 3,000 in 2021 to 10,000 in 2024 and is expanding at a rate to reach 24,000 by 2030, according to Capital One. “We tend to forget that the checkout process is a friction in the shopping experience. Most merchants would likely prefer that purchases be made without a checkout process to save on costs and improve the customer experience,” Tony DeSanctis, a senior director at Cornerstone Advisors, told.
Almost half of U.S. adults who use buy now, pay later products have experienced at least one financial problem: new study
Almost half of U.S. adults who use buy now, pay later products have experienced at least one financial problem, according to results of a survey from the consumer financial services company Bankrate and the market research firm YouGov. Bankrate and YouGov surveyed 2,354 U.S. adults between March 19 and 21. Of those who participated, about 30% said they had used at least one buy now, pay later service. Of those who used BNPL services, 49% of those surveyed reported at least one financial issue: 24% said they outspent their budget, 16% noted missing a bill payment after making a BNPL purchase, 15% regretted a BNPL purchase and 14% said they had a problem with a refund or a return. Taking out multiple buy now, pay later services at a time is among the biggest warning signs, Ted Rossman, senior industry analyst for Bankrate said, because BNPL is used most frequently by financially vulnerable populations such as the working class and young people. “People find this a valuable payment method to spread out their cash flow. The problem is if you overdo it and you lose sight of how much you spent. That’s concerning because it shows how close to the edge people are,” he said.
Almost half of U.S. adults who use buy now, pay later products have experienced at least one financial problem: new study
Dollar General is integrating its retail media arm with Fetch, a rewards app that provides consumers with “Fetch points” when they submit receipts from partner brands and retailers. Via this collaboration, brands participating in DGMN can leverage Fetch to help drive incremental consumer purchasing behavior with rewards-based advertising as part of their DGMN investment. As a result of this new partnership, brands participating in DGMN can now seamlessly put their DGMN advertising spend toward Fetch rewards offers, unlocking a new ad format. “Shoppers come to their Fetch app with intent — they’re planning, buying, and ready to be rewarded,” said Courtney Cochrane, retail industry lead at Fetch. “By partnering with DGMN, we’re giving brands a way to meet consumers in those exact moments and drive real results. It’s not just about impressions — it’s about getting products into carts.” Other partnerships Dollar General has entered to expand DGMN functionality include teaming with experiential marketing platform Recess to let advertisers hyper-target the retailer’s customers through community-driven sampling programs. Through the Recess experiential sampling program, participating DGMN brands will be able to integrate products into consumers’ daily lives before they enter the store. Targeting capabilities allow advertisers to execute experiential sampling programs in targeted communities.
Arteria AI’s end-to-end digital documentation workflow auto-logs each change and decision to the deal and memorializes it in a detailed audit trail
Arteria AI has partnered with TruStage Compliance Solutions, a provider of financial transaction technology and expertise, to launch Deal Flow, a content modification and deal management integration that is purpose-built to support community banks and credit unions. Clients can now gain access to Arteria’s proven, end-to-end digital documentation workflow for commercial lending. Deal Flow is accessed through existing dynamic documentation workflows and streamlines the modification and redlining of commercial loan documentation. Each change and decision to the deal is automatically logged and memorialized in a detailed audit trail for complete assurance on compliance and procedural consistency. Notably, TruStage’s compliance warranty is preserved for all unmodified parts of the document. The result is that negotiated transaction documentation moves into the digital sphere – communication is centralized on a digital platform, the right workflow steps are automated, and rich reporting insights become available to further streamline the deal process. Arteria removes the need for legacy manual processes by streamlining the documentation lifecycle, speeding up decision-making for all stakeholders through a highly-intuitive interface.
Airbnb’s new feature lets travelers to book and add services across 10 categories like getting a massage or chef-prepared meal and experiences in 19 categories such as cultural tours and art workshops
As part of a broader app update, Airbnb introduced a new feature that allows travelers to book services and experiences, like getting a massage, haircut, or chef-prepared meal, or taking part in some activity. These new offerings can be added to your stay, but they can also be booked independently, Airbnb says. The move is meant to capitalize on the traffic Airbnb’s site already receives. Initially, Airbnb will allow users to book services across 10 categories and services will be offered in 100 cities worldwide across eight countries. While users can take advantage of services where they’re staying, they will typically have to travel to a venue for the experiences. Initially, experiences will include cultural and museum tours; outdoor, watersport, and wildlife experiences; food tours and cooking classes; art workshops and shopping experiences; and workout, wellness, and beauty experiences. The company is launching experiences in 19 categories across 1,000 cities in the world. Airbnb is also launching exclusive experiences on its platform called Airbnb Originals, which involve celebrity partnerships. Judson Coplan, VP of Product Marketing at Airbnb believes that Airbnb Experiences may inspire people to travel and take a trip they might not have thought about. Plus, he thinks the new offerings can lead to people discovering new things to do in their own town. Airbnb will take a 15% cut from services and a 20% cut from experiences. However, users will just see one price when searching for or booking either category. The company says hosts in these categories will go through verification and quality checks that include their experience, online presence, education, and required licenses. In turn, Airbnb hopes this could lead people to want to travel more and use its platform to do so.
Moderne and Diffblue partner to support app modernization by combining automated and deterministic code refactoring across entire codebases, autonomous agentic AI testing to catch potential bugs before they happen
Automated code refactoring company Moderne and AI-powered unit test writing agent developer Diffblue announced a partnership to deliver an integrated solution for enterprise application modernization. By joining forces, the two companies aim to help large organizations will be able to upgrade and modernize applications based on extremely large codebases with greater speed with less worry. The collaboration combines Moderne’s code transformation capabilities with Diffblue’s autonomous agentic AI testing capabilities to catch potential bugs before they happen. Moderne is built on the OpenRewrite open-source project, which provides automated, safe and scalable transformation across entire codebases. It’s deterministic, which means that it’s predictable for any task, including cloud migration, framework upgrades, security fixes and language updates. That’s important because the larger the codebase, the greater the chance that any update could introduce an issue — updating from an older version of Java, for example, version 8 to a more modern version such as 17. Through the integration, Diffblue’s testing capabilities will be built directly into Moderne’s OpenRewrite recipes so they can run at large scale during application transformation. They will also be activated within Moderne’s multi-repository AI agent, Moddy, to provide test coverage for mass-scale changes.
Survey reveals growing preference for seamless and invisible payments: in-app purchasing ability is most desired for food & beverage; millennials and Gen Zers prefer recurring payments
Among parents with children under 25 living at home, 72% say they would prefer to pay for everything through an app if they could, compared to 53% of consumers overall, according to a new survey from embedded payments infrastructure company NMI. Nearly two-thirds (64%) of Gen Z and millennials say they’ll take their business elsewhere if in-app payments aren’t an option. Sixty-eight percent of those surveyed want to use in-app payments for food and beverage purchases, like restaurants, coffee shops, bars and delivery services. Retail lands in the number two spot, with 53% of consumers opting for in-app payments in this sector. On average, 37% of consumers are interested in using apps to pay for everyday services like car washes and dry cleaning, and 30% for home services such as landscaping and plumbing. Among parents, the interest in these sectors rises significantly to 49% and 42%, respectively. The subscription model is especially popular among millennials (69%) and Gen Zers (66%), who prefer recurring payments for frequently used goods and services. There is also a rising preference for invisible transactions, as 64% of respondents embrace biometric authentication like Face ID or fingerprints, and 59% say the best transactions are the ones that feel like they never happened. Four-in-10 (43%) baby boomers are uncomfortable using biometric authentication, while 40% embrace it for its speed, security and convenience. In-app payments are set to play an even bigger role in business choice throughout 2025. Nearly six-in-10 (59%) consumers say it’s important that merchants offer app-based payments, and half (50%) would choose a business that does over one that doesn’t. Already, half of respondents use in-app payments weekly or more, and 55% expect to increase their usage this year.
PayPal and Venmo to enable instant in-chat checkout, supporting agentic commerce within Perplexity’s AI answer engine; account linking, tokenized wallet and passkey checkout flows would eliminate the need for passwords
Perplexity has partnered with PayPal to power agentic commerce across its Perplexity Pro platform. Starting this summer in the U.S., consumers can check out instantly with PayPal or Venmo when they ask Perplexity to find products, book travel, or buy tickets. ”This partnership unlocks new possibilities, where conversations now drive commerce,” said Alex Chriss, President and CEO of PayPal. ”We’re making it easy and secure to shop right in the chat when inspiration strikes. It’s a powerful step in making conversational commerce a reality.” The entire process, including payment, shipping, tracking, and invoicing will be handled behind the scenes with PayPal’s account linking, secure tokenized wallet and emerging passkey checkout flows, which could eliminate the need for passwords and streamline the experience to a single user query or click. Key features include: Agentic Commerce: Integration of PayPal’s commerce solutions, enabling users to buy products or services directly in Perplexity’s chat interface. Global Reach: Expanding Perplexity’s commerce tools to PayPal’s 430+ million active accounts across approximately 200 markets. Secure Transactions: Leveraging PayPal’s robust fraud detection and data security protocols.
Twilio’s new ConversationRelay, allows developers to build voice agents using their choice of LLMs; plans to make RCS messaging and WhatsApp Business Calling generally available
Communication tool provider Twilio announced updates including a next-generation customer engagement platform built for an artificial intelligence and data-driven future, along with a new strategic partnership with Microsoft Corp. to advance conversational AI. Leading the list of announcements was a next-generation platform designed to unify communications, data and AI into a single, flexible infrastructure for customer engagement. The platform integrates omnichannel communication tools, including voice, SMS, email, video and over-the top, with contextual data from Twilio’s Segment Customer Data Platform and a growing portfolio of native AI capabilities. The enhancements unveiled by Twilio span three core areas — conversational AI, compliance and personalization. The updates are designed to help businesses deliver more intelligent, compliant and tailored customer engagement at scale. ConversationRelay, a tool that allows developers to build voice agents using their choice of large language models. The service includes features such as real-time streaming, advanced speech recognition, interruption handling and human-like voice rendering. Conversational Intelligence is now generally available for voice and entered private beta for messaging, allowing companies to turn conversations into structured insights. Twilio introduced a new Compliance Toolkit, now in public beta, to help businesses manage requirements such as the U.S. Telephone Consumer Protection Act more easily. The company also announced plans to make RCS messaging and WhatsApp Business Calling generally available later this year. For personalization and insights, Twilio updated its Segment Customer Data Platform with a redesigned Journeys architecture that now supports event-triggered workflows and richer contextual payloads. The improvements are complemented with new integrations for SMS and SendGrid, as well as new partnerships with Amplitude Inc. and Attribution App. Twilio is also expanding data residency options in the EU for email and SMS, further strengthening its global compliance capabilities. Along with product updates, Twilio announced a new strategic partnership with Microsoft to jointly develop and deploy conversational AI experiences at scale. Under the partnership, Twilio will integrate its engagement platform with Microsoft’s Azure AI Foundry to power AI-driven communications, including multi-channel AI agents, advanced contact center assistants via Twilio Agent Copilot and multi-modal customer interaction tools.
Study: U.S. shoppers pull back from Temu, Shein; shift spending to Old Navy, Ulta Beauty, Nordstrom Rack and others known for affordability
New data from Consumer Edge showed a sharp deceleration in U.S. consumer spending growth in April on ultra-discount Chinese retailers Temu and Shein. In the three weeks leading up to April 27, American brands including Old Navy, Ulta Beauty, Nordstrom Rack and Savers Value Village picked up a significant amount of redirected consumer dollars from former Temu and Shein shoppers. According to the data, Temu’s U.S. year-over-year spend growth slowed sharply in April 2025, decelerating from nearly 50% growth at the start of the month to almost zero growth by the end. Shein experienced a similar deceleration, with year-over-year spend growth declining from approximately 30% to around 20% during the same period. “This dramatic slowdown coincides with rising U.S.-China trade tensions, the elimination of the duty-free de minimis treatment for low-value imports and a reduction in advertising spend that had previously fueled both platforms’ rapid growth,” noted Consumer Edge. To identify where consumers spent their money, Consumer Edge analyzed shoppers who made at least two purchases at Temu or Shein in January or February 2025 but no purchases in March or April. Key findings include: Old Navy regains market share: Long known for its affordability, Old Navy is reclaiming cost-conscious shoppers and capturing spending from those moving away from ultra-discount platforms. Its broad assortment of clothing for all age groups and genders continues to resonate. Legacy department stores reclaim value shoppers: Bloomingdale’s, Kohl’s and Nordstrom Rack are pulling in significant dollars from ex-Temu and Shein shoppers, benefiting from their wide selections across categories. Resale gains ground: Savers Value Village is also seeing momentum as resale becomes the new value frontier. Beauty shoppers shift: Retailer Ulta Beauty and brand SpoiledChild are benefiting from consumers looking to make personal care swaps.